Joint letter to Peers on climate and planning

Dear members of the House of Lords,

Report Stage of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill (LURB) is a vital opportunity to reform the planning system to ensure that new development is in line with the UK’s legally binding climate targets and resilient to those impacts of climate change that are already locked in. 

Unfortunately, as it stands the Bill risks undermining the UK’s climate target and commitments under the Paris Agreement. 

Please support Lord Ravensdale's Amendment 191, which would introduce a statutory climate change test for the Secretary of State and local planning authorities to apply to both planning decisions and plan making.

Reform is desperately needed. The UN IPCC has warned that it is “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C.” The planning system must be a significant part of the solution - helping to create high-quality, healthy places to live as well as delivering on carbon reduction targets. But it is not fit for purpose.  Most local plans don’t contain comprehensive, robust policies on climate mitigation or adaptation. Far too many planning decisions still allow for high carbon development, despite us entering the 4th Carbon Budget this year. And local authorities that have proposed ambitious plans for zero carbon housing have seen them challenged or thrown out by the Planning Inspectorate. 

The government’s own statutory advisors, the Climate Change Committee, recommended that a "net zero test" be applied to planning decisions. Its newly published 2023 Progress Report  states that the government should ensure the planning system has an “overarching requirement that all planning decisions must be taken giving full regard to the imperative of Net Zero”. The Independent Review of Net Zero, led by the Rt Hon Chris Skidmore MP found that the current planning system is “undermining net zero and the economic opportunities that come with it” in the absence of a net zero test. The LURB provides the ideal opportunity to implement these sensible recommendations. We must act now.

Better aligning the planning system with the UK’s legally binding climate targets and commitments on adaptation will facilitate more high-quality sustainable development. It will give developers and local authorities the certainty they need to invest and plan for the transition to a net zero economy. And this will decrease costs, while increasing the delivery speed of low carbon projects. By contrast the lack of clarity in the current system risks delays, costs and legal challenges.  

This amendment would focus the mind of the Secretary of State and of local authority decision makers not just on the general desirability of mitigating and adapting to climate change, but on the specific objective of having to have special regard to carbon budgets. 

Without this amendment to the LURB, there is a real risk we continue to see plans, policies and decisions paying no more than lip-service to tackling climate change. 

Please give it your support at Report Stage.

The wording of the amendment is available here.

Yours sincerely ,

Hugh Knowles and Miriam Turner - Co-Executive Directors, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Hugh Ellis - Director of Policy, The Town and Country Planning Association

Smith Mordak - CEO, UK Green Building Council

Sarah Mitchell - Chief executive, Cycling UK

Richard Benwell - CEO, Wildlife & Countryside Link

Liz Emerson - CEO, Intergenerational Foundation

Linda Walker - Co-ordinator, High Peak Green New Deal

Ruth London - Director, Fuel Poverty Action

Dr Stephanie Wray - Chairman, The Mammal Society

Tessa Khan - Executive Director, Uplift

Richard Dilks - Chief Executive, CoMoUK 

Dr Darren Moorcroft - CEO, Woodland Trust

Alice Harrison - Strategy Lead, Global Witness

Helen Griffiths - Chief Executive, Fields in Trust

Janine Michael - Interim Deputy Chief Executive, Centre for Sustainable Energy

Amy McDonnell - Co-Director, Zero Hour

Rosie Pearson - Chairman, Community Planning Alliance

Chris Todd - Director, Transport Action Network

David Cowdrey - Director of External Affairs, MCS Foundation

Isaac Beevor - Co-Director, Climate Emergency UK

Neil Redfern - Executive Director, Council for British Archaeology

Louise Hazan - Co-Founder, Tipping Point UK

Dr Rose O'Neill - Chief Executive, Campaign for National Parks

Roger Mortlock - CEO, CPRE, The Countryside Charity

Doug Parr - Policy Director, Greenpeace UK

Katie White - Executive Director of Advocacy and Campaigns, WWF

Emma Bridge - Chief Executive, Community Energy England

Michael Copleston - Director, RSPB England