Planning charity calls for new legal duties on poverty reduction

October 29, 2013

New legal duties should be introduced on poverty reduction and changes should be made to the National Planning Policy Framework to prioritise the issue, the Town and Country Planning Association has said.

In a report, Planning out Poverty, the charity claimed that planning had become increasingly disconnected from peoples’ lives “because it no longer deals with the issues people care about”.

The TCPA’s research project was a year in the making and was supported by the Webb Memorial Trust.

Kate Henderson, co-author of the report and TCPA chief executive, said: “We need a profound reconsideration of the social purpose of planning. This reconsideration must be framed by the undoubted capacity of planning decisions to impact on social exclusion, for better or worse – for example by creating easy access to work and recreation opportunities.”

The TCPA report argued that planning “could play a much more positive role by fully integrating (within both local and national public policy) with sectors such as regeneration and health and by reconnecting with issues that matter to local people”.

Dr Hugh Ellis, co-author of the report and the TCPA’s Chief Planner, said: “The debate about the future of planning has become a largely sterile discussion of the merits of continued deregulation. No attention is being paid to the positive potential of spatial planning to provide solutions to many aspects of our most difficult public policy problems.

“Good planning can offer greater opportunities for excluded communities, both at a national level, in shaping investment patterns, and at a local level, by getting the right outcomes from planning decisions.”

The report, which was based on the study and analysis of four communities who are seeking a pathway to regeneration, made 12 recommendations.

THE TCPA’S RECOMMENDATION’S IN FULL

Recommendations for national government

1: Make changes to the National Planning Policy Framework to prioritise poverty reduction.

2. Introduce new legal duties on poverty reduction.

3: Change the National Planning Practice Guidance to include guidance on poverty reduction and the promotion of social justice.

4. Enhance planning powers for local communities.

5: Target neighbourhood planning support in areas of social exclusion.

6: Review the impact of welfare, housing and planning reform on poverty reduction.

7: Introduce a new form of placed-based area planning.

Recommendations for local government

8: Integrate planning with local placed-based service delivery, including through ‘single integrated departments’.