‘This moment gives us a much greater chance to be radical and to do things differently’, said the Prime Minister with typical understatement in his Dudley speech at the end of June. ‘To build back better, build back greener, build back faster.’
Who could possibly disagree with that? Nobody, which is probably why the phrase was drafted like that. It means all things to all people, but the creative ambiguity, nee intellectual incoherence, is illustrated by the catchy ‘Jet Zero’ reference in that Dudley speech and lofty ambitions for the world’s first zero emission long haul passenger plane. The short-term priority is to try to save jobs and livelihoods, but that means restoring high-carbon sectors such as aviation.
The reduction of net emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2050 became law in the UK in June 2019. As the Committee on Climate Change recently noted though, whilst “initial steps towards a net-zero policy package have been taken this was not the year of policy progress that the Committee called for.”
The pandemic is a chance to reset the economy and to bring together the seemingly dichotomous nature of greener versus faster, but what would ‘building back better’, if it isn’t just vacuous sloganeering, mean for planning.
Sam Stafford puts this question to Hugh Ellis, Director of Policy at the TCPA; Jon Lovell, co-founder of Hillbreak (@Lovell_Jon); and Claire Petricca-Riding, Partner & National Head of Planning and Environmental Law at Irwin Mitchell (@PetriccaRiding).
Some accompanying reading:
'The sustainable, responsible and impact investment landscape', by Caroline McGill at Hillbreak
https://www.hillbreak.com/impact-finance-part-i/
The Future Homes Standard: changes to Part L and Part F of the Building Regulations for new dwellings
The TCPA responds to the Prime Minister’s ‘Build, build, build’ announcements
Reducing UK emissions: 2020 Progress Report to Parliament
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/reducing-uk-emissions-2020-progress-report-to-parliament/
Some accompanying listening.
Big Jet Plane by Primal Scream
50 Shades of Planning
50 Shades of Planning is Sam Stafford’s attempt to explore the foibles of the English planning system and it's aim is to cover the breadth of the sector both in terms of topics of conversation and in terms of guests with different experiences and perspectives.
50 Shades episodes include 'Hitting The High Notes', which are a series of conversations with leading planning and property figures. The conversations take in the six milestone planning permissions or projects within a contributor’s career and for every project guests are invited to choose a piece of music that they were listening to at that time. Think Desert Island Discs, but for planners.
50 Shades episode also include the 'All Around the World' series, which is being led by friend of the podcast, Paul Smith.
Paul put it to Sam that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. Planners here very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he chats with planning professionals and academics from a number of countries to find out what works well there, what works less well, and what can be learnt.
Sam is on Bluesky and Instagram, and his blogs can be found here (from where you can also sign up for his newsletter).
The 50 Shades platforms are expressions of Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers.
50 Shades of Planning is by planners and for planners and so if you would like to use the podcast or the YouTube channel for sharing anything you think that the sector needs to be talking about then do please feel free to get in touch with Sam via [email protected].
Why Fifty Shades? Well, town and country planning is very much not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between....
