NPPF: The purpose of planning - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Hi Richard Section 39 (2) of the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act quite clearly charged the planning system with achieving sustainable development. The NPPF therefore presents nothing new in this regard. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/5/pdfs/ukpga_20040005_en.pdf Harriet

Many thanks for the link Harriet. Sustainability is certainly an issue raised in that document ... but in a sort of hands-off way: "The person or body must exercise the function with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development." In contrast, the NPPF is going for 'sustainable development' with all guns blazing, as shown by Greg Clark's very first sentence: "The purpose of planning is to help achieve sustainable development." The remainder of the document contains DOZENS of references to 'sustainability' or 'sustainable' (so many that I gave up counting) I can only assume that the government is very concerned about some critical natural resource shortage or climate change issue which is likely to appear Real Soon Now. Or perhaps the long term damage to our balance of payments due to the ending of North Sea oil & gas needs to be dealt with through an increased focus on a low carbon economy? Or are we simply seeking a 'push' for the economy by building lots of 'sustainable homes'? There MUST be a valid reason for this strong push for 'sustainable development' ... I can't imagine that Greg Clark and central government would have created the NPPF and pushed it through despite all the abuse that they received without seeing an urgent need. Anyway, if its Business As Usual at the LPAs with regard to 'sustainable development' then we aren't going to see a sudden increase in the number of low carbon projects etc ... in which case I hope that the worries which triggered the creation of the NPPF are illusory.

I don't think sustainable development is simply about low carbon or climate change, it is (as planning is) about achieving a balance between social, economic and environmental factors, and I don't think the main thrust of that has changed since Brundtland.

Totally agree Harriet. Sadly very few people seem to understand the need for - or the structure of - Brundtland type sustainability. I have seen planning applications where the applicants regard a photocell panel as imbuing the development with the Sustainability Seal Of Trust. I have also seen plans rejected by the LPA with arbitrary statements such as "this proposed house is five miles from the local town so clearly more motor fuel will be used by the applicants which makes this an unsustainable proposal." Sustainability is MUCH complex than either of the above examples would indicate. Sadly I have no idea how applicants, planning officers, councillors etc can be brought up to speed with regard to the true need & meaning of sustainability ... How many people do you know who have read the Brundtland report? And how many of those actually 'get it'? Declaration of interest: My firm is developing a software package which will allow a sustainability metric to be produced for a planned development purely by filling in several on-screen forms.

The trouble is that before anyone can be brought up to speed with sustainable development there has to be some consensus on what it means. If you actually know 'the true meaning of sustainability' you are probably unique. Having quoted Brundtland, the NPPF seeks in Para 6 to effectively define sustainable development as the totality of the document (market signals, viability, presumption in favour of development etc) except the bits where internationally recognised definitions of sustainable development are used!. If Brundtland is taken as the touchstone then unsustainable development should not happen irrespective of market signals, viability, unmet needs, the up-to-dateness of plans, the degree to which councils have co-operated with other councils etc. Logically the NPPF should contain a presumption against unsustainable development. This is probably why it avoids endorsing Brundtland. A further difficulty is that Brundtland sustainability is a continuum not an absolute. Almost all development has aspects which are sustainable and aspects which are not (irrespective of mitigation). Add in socio-economic factors and it gets even more elusive. A software package may help structure the consideration of sustainability issues but cannot make the judgement about where an acceptable balance lies.

Daniel, I agree; software packages can only give us an assessment of issues or criteria; it can't help us reach a judgement or balance. The same can be said for sustainability appraisal matrices.

The SA matrices and their software equivalents CAN act as useful checklists and can also provide 'sustainability scores'. Admittedly such scores can be rather fuzzy - but where two otherwise equivalent proposals or strategies are being considered then perhaps the higher scoring option should be the preferred route. A software based approach can also allow a standardised database to be built up over time. This database could then be used to correlate the various sustainability metrics with what actually worked or failed in the real world. Structured approaches also have the advantage of minimising the risk of accepting proposals which are only superficially sustainable. The risk of rejection of valid proposals through the incorrect or incomplete application of sustainability planning policy is also reduced. I suppose the acceptability of numeric methods depends on your viewpoint: Is planning an Art or is it a Science?

Real science gives specific answers to specific questions in an objective, replicable and transparent way. Planning can never be a science because it does not have a clear purpose against which its effectiveness can be objectively measured. (sustainable development doesn't fit the bill, particularly when as nebulously defined as in the NPPF). The validity of numeric methods is dependent on the quality of the inputs. Most such methods involve a high level of subjectivity and incomplete or inconsistent information and are at best pseudo-scientific.

PLANNING You have me worried now! If planning has no clear purpose then how do you know what direction to travel in, and when do you know you have arrived? Also how can you decide / justify / explain planning decisions if there is no clear purpose to the process? MATHS As you say 'real science' needs 'hard maths' ... which is how the Mars lander, Curiousity, arrived just 1.5 miles from target after a 350 million mile journey which lasted eight months. However we can use maths in a different way in the 'softer' sciences . For example we can collect data from a wide range of sources and then look back to score our successes and failures. Techniques such as factor analysis can then be used to identity key trends etc in the data. Large data sets will allow subjective data to be 'smoothed' and worked with : for example 'longitudinal studies' of large human populations use very little quantitative data - but they still provide valuable insights. Pseudo-scientific - but often effective. To summarise: even 'fuzzy' topics can be analysed using mathematical technique ... very, very few topics can be handled effectively and fairly using just 'intuition', 'empathy', 'rules of thumb', 'tradition' etc. An old management adage says: "You can't manage what you don't measure." You can't manage for improvement if you don't measure to see what is getting better and what is getting worse. I can however understand why the introduction of mathematical techniques to a workplace is unlikely to be welcomed.

The purpose of planning is delivering sustainable development. That is no help to a scientist. The problem is that in the real world, planning is about hundreds of conflicting and constantly changing aims and objectives. Determining the right balance and weighting between these can never be a truly rational process. It is as much about how places 'feel' as how they function. This is why you cannot automate planning judgements. No-one is afraid of quantitative methods, I happen to be the son of the head of a University maths department and have a background in retail planning. I just know enough about them to be aware of their limitations. My own view is that decisions which can be automated probably belong in building control.

Guys ..you are doing great. Just let us all know when we can vote on who wins the discussion

>>. Guys ..you are doing great. Just let us all know when we can vote on who wins the discussion Ho, ho! Actually, your vote comment is quite useful. In a general election we have millions of ill informed, biased people casting their votes ... and then a very simple mathematical process determines the next government. Democracy in the UK has seemed to work for many years using this very crude mathematical scoring system. Would the results have been better if those at the top had used intuition etc to manage the country without bothering with those pesky elections? Anyway, clearly this argument is going nowhere, so maybe we should wind it up.

The above discussions range over a number of topics and probably mimic, to some extent, those undertaken by the Coalition Government when they drew up the NPPF. As ever, they are always interesting. As a director of a small and growing firm of environmental assessment specialists, we encounter the need to appraise sustainability affects for both projects (EIA) and plans (SEA). I write especially in response to Harriet’s comment regarding the use of SA. And wish to emphasise that both EIA and SEA are tools for use in the design and determination of a particular product (be it project or plan/strategy). In their own right, they cannot and do not singularly define whether or not a particular project or plan will proceed. They work best as part of a toolkit. This point is made in the context of the sustainable development discussions above: SD is determined by a number of factors and a number of tools will be used to help us measure it. What is becoming increasingly important is that we could really benefit from better understanding limits and thresholds. I say this since SD limits and thresholds are likely to vary according to size, location and nature. It is this complexity which we need to appreciate and understand. This is the speciality of strategic thinkers, planners and environmental consultants alike.