BLOG: : Youth perspective on planning for people and nature

This guest blog was written by Matt Curtis, 22, about his work experience helping with Groundwork’s response to proposed changes to the planning system.

I was recently lucky enough to gain some work experience with Groundwork UK, assisting with their response to the government’s Planning for the Future consultation.

For the last decade, the existing planning system has failed young people like me, resulting in a distinct lack of quality and affordable housing in the areas that need it most. Equally, the planning system has failed our natural environment, destroying many of our precious green spaces and with it our biodiversity. The onus on developers has been to ‘build, build, build’, with little care for the impact large scale development can have on the natural world and our indispensable connections to it.

So, needless to say, when the government published their planning white paper back in August, proposing the most radical reforms to the planning system since the Second World War, many heads were turned. However, as soon as the 84-page document had been digested, concerns were being raised by both those within the planning sector and those in the charity and environmental sectors.

Some of the rhetoric in the document is welcome, such as recognising the links between place and people’s physical and mental wellbeing, the role of planning in improving our natural environment, as well as the need to further ‘democratise the planning process’. Yet, despite these positive statements, the paper subsequently fails to provide detail of how the new system would effectively address these areas. Instead, the outlined proposals detract from these goals, promoting a new system of zoning which streamlines the current planning processes and reduces people’s right to have a say on future development in their area.

As someone with experience volunteering on my local Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group, I have an appreciation of the value that communities and local stakeholders can bring to the planning process and the invaluable role they play in ensuring development delivers the best outcomes for local people. Like many others, I found the suggestion of removing public engagement at the application stage most alarming. Currently, this is the point where people tend to get involved and can challenge developments they consider to be potentially damaging. Under the new system, this right would be removed, and communities would be left vulnerable to the whims of a ‘front-loaded’ zoning system – loaded in favour of development.

Here at Groundwork, we have been very open about these concerns in our response, stressing the need for a planning system that safeguards local democracy and provides equitable access to green space. Indeed, the lockdown period has made many of us all the more aware of how much we need outdoor spaces to preserve our physical and mental wellbeing. By the same token, COVID-19 has highlighted the significant inequality in access to green space, particularly for those from low income households, Black and Minority Ethnic groups, and people with disabilities.

For these reasons, in the new system we want to see Local Plans with detailed green space policies which consider local demography and natural habitats and are based on meaningful community engagement. After hearing from others at Public Health England and in the charity and environmental sectors during the consultation process, it would appear these goals are shared by many.

Through purposeful collaboration across sectors, I believe we can create a planning system that, at its best, enhances the quality of our lives and delivers measurable benefits to society, the environment, and the economy.