Clause 5 - RSS: revision
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)
That is an extremely good idea and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That should be fed back into, if not guidance, the ethos, culture and messages that we shall want to convey as we elaborate the process of community involvement under the regional spatial strategy framework.
Now we come to the amendments that concern the regional spatial strategy, what it should contain and the principles and documents to which the regional planning body should have regard in preparing revisions. I entirely agree with the sentiment expressed in Amendment No. 128 about the need for the RSS to integrate land use planning, transport and sustainable resource management considerations. Including that in the Bill, however, raises difficult questions about what we mean by those terms in a way that will stand up legally. For example, how would the parties opposite define, in legal terms, what sustainable resource management means? I pause, and no offers are forthcoming.
The fact that the regional transport strategy is a part of the RSS and there is a requirement for a sustainability appraisal on the draft revision of the RSS provide assurance that transport and sustainability issues will be looked at in an integrated way within the RSS revision process. The consultation draft of PPS11 stresses the need for the RSS to provide a development strategy that provides priorities for the environment and transport among other topic areas. Guidance is the best way of achieving the integration of those matters that we are all looking for.
On the second aspect of amendment No. 128, I am concerned that setting protection of the environment as the overarching principal consideration of the RSS serves to unbalance its purpose. The policies in the RSS should help to deliver sustainable communities for the future. It will be necessary to weigh up social and economic considerations as well as environmental ones, without giving precedence to any one in particular. There is no chance that environmental considerations will be ignored. As well as the sustainability appraisal on the draft RSS required by the Bill, there will also—as we discussed, debated and agreed before—be the strategic environment assessment directive. That will require revisions of the draft RSS to be subject to an assessment of its effects on the environment.
Amendment No. 200 would add the regional economic strategy in each region and the minerals and waste strategies prepared by county councils to the list of matters that the RPB must have regard to when preparing a draft revision to an RSS. The hon. Member for Cotswold drew attention to that provision.
My view is that it is better to leave the matter to regulation and guidance, which will provide us with the flexibility that may be necessary if circumstances change. Draft regulation 8 requires the regional planning body to have regard to the regional economic strategy in the region when the draft revision of the RSS is being prepared. PPS11 emphasises the essential importance of the RSS and regional economic strategy complementing and reinforcing one another.
The reason why we should not include the county mineral and waste strategies is simple. There will be a significant number of partial RSS revisions that will not be concerned with mineral or waste matters. It would not be sensible to require the regional planning body to have regard to county mineral and waste strategies for completely unrelated revisions.
In conclusion, the amendments would not change what the draft revision to the RSS looks like, so they are unnecessary. That brings me to the remaining amendments in the group.