Town and country planning in the United Kingdom

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(Redirected from Town and country planning)

Town and Country Planning is the system by which the British government seeks to maintain a balance between economic development and environmental quality in England. The essential framework for the system was set in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, with a critical addition in 1955 of green belts, which were introduced via a Government Circular.

Substantial responsibility for town and country planning has been devolved in to Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament.

The system has not altered much since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, which repealed all previous legislation, including the first Housing and Town Planning Act 1909, law to which they followed: Housing and Town Planning Act 1919, Town Planning Act 1925 and Town and Country Planning Act 1932. Current planning legislation is consolidated in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (TCPA 1990) although parts of that Act have been replaced or amended by the provisions of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (PCPA), which received Royal Assent on 13 May 2004.

However, the Government is engaged in a process of radical reform via the Planning Green Paper.

Contents

History

The roots of the UK town and country planning system, created in the immediate post-war years, lie in concerns developed over the previous half century in response to industrialisation and urbanisation. The particular concerns were pollution, urban sprawl and ribbon development. These concerns were expressed through the work of thinkers such as Ebenezer Howard and the philanthropic actions of industrialists such as the Lever Brothers and the Cadbury family.

By the outbreak of World War II, thinking was sufficiently advanced that, even during the war a series of Royal commissions looked at the problems of urban planning and development control.

These included:

  • the Barlow Commission (1940) into the distribution of industrial population,
  • the Scott Committee into rural land use (1941)
  • the Uthwatt Committee into compensation and betterment (1942)
  • (later) the Reith Report into New Towns (1947).

Also, Patrick Abercrombie developed a plan for the reconstruction of London, which envisaged moving 1.5 million people from London to new and expanded towns.

The culmination of this intellectual effort were:

The 1947 Act in effect nationalised the right to develop land, require all but a small number of specific exclusions to secure planning permission from their local authority (although provision exists to appeal against refusal).

The Act - the essential nature of which is unchanged - required local authorities to develop Local Plans (and more recently Unitary Development Plans) to outline what kind of development would be permitted where and to mark special areas on Local Plan Maps. It did not introduce a formal system of zoning as used in the USA. Counties were expected to develop Structure Plans which set broad targets for the wider area. Structure Plans were always problematic and were often in the process of being replaced by the time they were formally adopted.

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (2004) resulted in a number of substantial changes to the British Development Plan system. It did away with both Structure Plans and Local Plans in favour of Local Development Frameworks (LDFs), which are made up a number of Local Development Documents (LDDs) and Supplementary Planning Documents (SPDs). The Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS), which is produced by Regional Assemblies, replaces the Structure Plan as the strategic planning document (i.e. it is the RSS which will set targets for housing and employment development within each district in a Region in the future).

Local Authorities are also now required to produce Local Development Schemes (LDS) - which outline the work the LDDs/SPDs they intend to produce over a three year period, and Statements of Community Involvement (SCI) which outline how the Council will involve the local community. All LDDs and SPDs also have to be accompianied by a Sustainability Appraisal (SA) and a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The SEA is a requirement under European Union laws.

The apparent aim of the new planning system was to simplify and speed up the production of Plans. The system has not been in place long enough to determine if this is the case, though the increase in the number and type of documents an authority is required to produce (and the sheer number of new acronyms that have been introduced) would imply that these aims will not be acheived.

Use classes

  • A1: general retail
  • A2: financial and professional services
  • A3: restaurants and cafés
  • A4: pubs and bars
  • A5: takeaways
  • B1: offices, light industry
  • B2: general industrial
  • B3: storage and distribution
  • C1: hotels
  • C2: residential institutions
  • C3: dwellings
  • D1: non-residential institutions (schools, libraries, surgeries, libraries)
  • D2: leisure (cinemas, swimming baths, gymnasiums)

Elements of the modern system

Regional variants

  • England
  • Wales
  • Scotland

Reform

  • Planning Green Paper
  • Planning white paper (Scotland): Modernising the planning system

See also

External links

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