TCPA calls for new Government department to handle strategic planning issues

The report calls for national debate around the potential creation of a new Government department to handle strategic planning issues and join up elements of decision-making currently shared between the Department for Communities and Local Government; Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; the Department for Transport, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The lack of a comprehensive planning framework means that "spatial responses" at local, regional and national levels do not sufficiently address the environmental, economic and social challenges the country is faced with, the report says. This is a threat to the nation's capacity to deal with 'environmental shocks' and also threatens to reduce economic efficiency. Along with a national institution, such as a 'Ministry of Sustainable Development', democratic regional bodies are also needed, it says.

"For example, while the most vulnerable part of England’s coastline, from the Humber to the Thames, is overseen by one ‘region’ of the Environment Agency, on the planning front this

area is subject to 30 planning authorities with no joint strategic approach," the report says.

“The report throws up a series of questions which urgently need addressing – principally the capacity of the government, as currently organised, to cope with the environmental, economic and social challenges facing the country,” said TCPA chief executive Kate Henderson. “It is a matter of concern that England – unlike Scotland and Wales – has no government department, or agency, charged with addressing acute strategic, or ‘spatial’, problems across the country."