Planners call on government to help tackle climate change

The government has been urged to take “radical action” to help local planning authorities tackle climate change and reduce emissions generated in the built environment.

Speaking at the Royal Town Planning Institute’s annual conference yesterday RTPI president Ian Tant said local planning departments were key to devising and implementing policies to rid the country’s buildings and infrastructure of greenhouse gases, as well as making projects carbon neutral.

“It also falls to us to engage our communities so they come with us to accept the necessary changes,” Tant said.

Planners and adequate planning systems were crucial in progressing to zero carbon, Tant added, but a report by the Committee for Climate Change (CCC) published last month had illustrated there had been little or no progress towards cutting carbon emissions from buildings or surface transport.

“Now is the time for government to enable planners to take the lead to get things done,” Tant said. “We need to have the resources, the tools and the national policies to do the job. “We need to be able to return rapidly to strategic and local policy making and to proactive delivery, rather than be left or regarded as a regulatory function.”

Launching the RTPI’s “Resource Planning for Climate Action” campaign Tant told the conference the government had to take radical climate actions around buildings and transport “and to develop a tool to help local authorities gauge the carbon impact of existing and emerging local plans”.

The CCC’s report, published in May, called for “clear leadership right across government, with delivery in partnership with businesses and communities”. It argued that emissions reduction could not be left to the energy and environment departments or to the Treasury.

“It must be vital to the whole of government and to every level of government in the UK. Policies must be fully funded and implemented coherently across all sectors of the economy to drive the necessary innovation, market development and consumer take-up of low-carbon technologies, and to positively influence societal change,” it added.