The government is carrying out a land use consultation and we have until 25 April 2025 to make submissions: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/land-use-framework/land-use-consultation/ . This is part of wide-ranging changes to planning and regulations to allow development with less planning oversight and controls than before, despite the very serious problem of a shortage of construction workers. New towns are expensive and environmentally harmful solutions to housing needs.
We should all be speaking out and opposing many aspects of the government’s consultation on land use. The following article is based upon a much more comprehensive contribution to this consultation, which can be seen at www.catg.org.uk under OTHER RELEVANT SUBMISSIONS.
Government by the wrong priorities
The government’s priorities are simply wrong. Sustainable regeneration of settlements where there are at least some existing facilities must be prioritised over more encroachment of new settlements into the countryside, thereby creating more demand for facilities that already exist elsewhere. Local councils should be given funding to repurpose vacant structures, including residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural buildings, as well as developing above existing surface-level car parks. This should result in housing that does not need fossil fuels, is well insulated, and meets the real need for council housing and keyworker part-rent/part-buy units.
Tackling the UK’s environmental degradation as an ecological emergency
Moving from environmental concerns to practical policy considerations, the government’s land use consultation misses several key focal points. As a country that is one of the most nature-threatened in the world, we badly need: restoration of nature and peatland, expansion of wilderness areas and reforestation across the UK, real protection of protected landscapes through an expanded, well-resourced and much empowered environment agency, and much better environmental legislation. Apart from value to communities and species, there is the potential to address the £40bn tourism ‘deficit’ with the rest of the world – with far-reaching economic benefits.
Missing links in the land use consultation
The consultation on land use fails to address many issues. A gradual reduction in land used to feed domestic animals, and a greater emphasis on feeding people directly from UK land is desirable, and can create useful employment opportunities. Grade 1 farmland should be as well protected in future as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Taxes on meat should gradually rise as a luxury good, considering its impact on land use, including through a carbon tax on imported meat. But we are not getting the taxation from land that should be possible.
Towards land value taxation (LVT)
LVT can curb inappropriate forms of land use by zoning and levying it according to use. The ‘green deserts’ of large properties could be highly taxed; areas used for rewilding, and nature conservation can have a zero LVT. LVT should be set as a replacement for council tax and business rates and be used to reduce the amounts paid by those with the least property/income.
Gardens and allotments
There is no legislation in the UK that recognises the actual or potential value of gardens to our environment if they are properly managed. Local authorities should also ensure more allotments are created to help households produce more of their own food. This doesn’t mean that some forms of existing agriculture are necessary or fit with ‘agroecological’ approaches. We must consider whether sheep farming should be supported at all in areas where reforestation would make more sense. Factories crammed with chickens and cattle are abhorrent and environmentally damaging and should be phased out.
When we own the water …
If water is publicly owned and waste water is reused as a resource, this can lead to more useful work and be part of the restoration of our watercourses, with long-term implications for land use, drainage, and flood management.
Protecting greenfield sites
We should build apartments above the surface level of car parks wherever there is a need for low-cost housing: council and key worker homes, for example. Increasing land density in industrial estates and science parks and occupying long-term vacant land should be considered to meet housing needs. It makes much more sense to build housing close to existing facilities than to create new towns or urban extensions on land that is needed for other purposes.
We don’t need more centralisation
The overall impression gained from the government consultation paper is one of even greater centralisation in an inept, over-centralised state. To re-legitimise politics, and spread useful employment throughout the country, there should be decentralisation, with decisions taken by empowered and properly funded parish/town councils and unitaries. Decisions should be made at regional level by an elected assembly, and should be limited in scope. If the government intends to place mayors over a group of combined authorities, an elected assembly is required to hold the mayor to account, with a proportional representation list system whereby political parties can put up candidates – as happens in London. Local decisions on land use should not be determined by central government when it comes to new or supposedly ‘strategic’ projects.
Can governments act for the long-term?
The government claims it wants decisions fit for the long term. It is very doubtful that the major political parties, the planning committees, and most of the civil service have a reasonable idea of what the long term might look like. It is beyond their experience and ‘world view’. Long-term planning would prevent a wide range of utterly unsustainable developments such as the building of new trunk roads, urban sprawl, especially in water-stressed areas, new towns, the expansion of port settlements or residential areas threatened by sea-level rise, and new nuclear power stations.
Preparing for unavoidable aspects of climate change
The possibility of a sea-level rise of as much as two metres by 2100 cannot be ruled out; initiatives such as tidal barrages with coastal protection for estuaries are desirable as part of land use and adaptation plans for aspects of unavoidable climate change. We need absolute protection for ecologically sensitive and other types of designated sites, with an environment agency that is empowered to act to ensure this protection if neighbouring areas were to damage nearby designated zones. We need to better recognise the role of volunteers in conserving and protecting the environment by increasing their capacity everywhere. A simple way to do this would be:
Re-establishing the 1980s community programme (CP)
As an assistant manager of a CP scheme, for the long-term unemployed, at Canterbury City Council in the 1980s, I recognise the benefits of offering meaningful local work to those who need or want it.
Unitary councils should have a local CP working under the supervision of the council. Projects could include supporting staff in local environmental organisations, with built-in training. It is clear that CPs should be very different from area to area. Some might need forms of training to enable them to transition away from sectors that are in decline: e.g. high climate-impact sectors such as civil aviation and shipping, and the fishing industry in some areas. Former civil servants should be trained to be of use in unitary councils as their functions/capacities expand – as they should. CP jobs should have permanent contracts, so that supported training can be provided for realistic periods of time, depending on the area of study.
Land for the people
Major landowners and land managers have a major role to play in this consultation. It is unlikely that their contributions will be wholly positive. This may just draw in the most conservative elements among landholders and encourage them to pursue their own interests rather than those of communities, the environment or social justice – particularly in the distribution of land ownership. Adapting to inevitable climate change must mean empowering people in their own communities to participate in aspects of adaptation: a crucial part of future land use. Communities with low-lying coastlines and estuaries, for example, need strategic, local roles to coordinate adaptation to climate change, they need to help build tidal barrages in estuaries as part of community and port protection, and they need powers to compel resistant large landowners to take action to protect their own property without expecting massive government subsidies.
“Supporting the right actions in the right places in a changing climate”
Better land use depends largely on the resources and effectiveness of local government, and its accumulated knowledge, and support of the authorities. In areas with low-lying coastlines and estuaries, regionally coordinated investments are needed. These could include tidal barrages in estuaries as part of protection from sea-level rise and extreme storms; nature-based protection of larger low-lying areas that are highly vulnerable to even moderate sea-level rise; varied options for ports depending on geography, past investment and long-term viability, and, rather than creating new towns, regions should identify inland towns/cities that need very long-term protection plans to secure them for the future – even if that means some communities one day becoming islands connected by bridge to the UK mainland.
We must be sure to make our submissions before the 25 April deadline so that local opinions are taken into account and prioritised in these consultations.
We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
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