The chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has congratulated the Conservative Party on its victory in the General Election and has called on Boris Johnson’s incoming government to ensure local planning authorities are adequately resourced to deliver for local communities.
RTPI writes:
Victoria Hills said key issues now needed to be urgently addressed at a political level to ensure town planners and the planning system are able to deliver sustainable, well-designed, successful urban and rural places into the future. Planning also has a crucial role in helping to deliver the government’s net zero carbon targets by 2050, she said.
‘The RTPI congratulates Boris Johnson and the Conservatives on their victory in the 2019 General Election,’ she said. ‘We urge them to now act fast to ensure planning and planners are adequately resourced to enable local planning teams to deliver for communities. There is now a golden opportunity to invest in the much needed infrastructure to unlock the potential to deliver the communities that people want to live in. Strategic planning can play a key role and we urge the incoming Government to embrace it and more forward with further devolution. Over the past decade, local authority planning teams have seen a reduction of 42% in funding, a situation which must now be urgently addressed to enable us to meet the challenges ahead.’
A recent survey by the RTPI revealed that an overwhelming majority of UK planners want the government to give stronger direction and more resources to enable local planners to deliver net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Nearly 80% of respondents agreed that climate action should be a top priority for the profession, but only 17% felt their nation’s planning system or policy framework was well-equipped enough to deal with the current climate crisis. In a manifesto issued during the election campaign, Ms Hills also urged the next government to protect and grow devolved powers to city regions, remove barriers to city-regional spatial strategies for development and infrastructure and remove legal barriers to allow city regions to fully use their devolved powers. In addition, it highlighted that the future pipeline of urgently-needed planners via apprenticeships and planning schools should come to be strongly supported by government.
