Integrating Planning and Environmental Protection: An Analysis of post-Brexit Regulatory Styles and Practitioner Attitudes in the UK

ABSTRACT

Debates around the impacts of the UK’s exit from the European Union (‘Brexit’) have exposed the limited critical attention given to how planning systems intersect with environmental protection. This is an important omission, especially given deregulatory pressures on both planning and environment in many countries. In response, this paper uses documentary, interview and focus group data, to conceptualise different regulatory styles governing the environment-planning interface, and assess UK planning practitioner attitudes to EU environmental legislation and scenarios for future change. The data show practitioners largely supporting the fixed standards and robust oversight characteristic of EU environmental regulatory styles, anxious about deregulation, and interested in procedural flexibility. More fundamentally, it also reveals the compromises struck in regulatory design, and the importance of concrete development-environment challenges in constructing arguments for change. Consequently, planning occupies a pivotal position within wider debates about new environmental policy fixes, warranting more extensive professional discussion.

KEYWORDS:

• Planning
• environment
• European Union
• Brexit
• devolution
• deregulation

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the support of the Royal Town Planning Institute, who commissioned the research on which this paper is based, and to the reviewers and editors from Planning Theory and Practice for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research was commissioned by the Royal Town Planning Institute.

Notes on contributors

Richard Cowell

Richard Cowell is Professor of Environmental Planning at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, with research interests focusing on the interface between planning, environmental sustainability and policy change. His work has examined the relationship between knowledge and decision-making, between energy transition and land use planning, and between Brexit, environmental policy and the planning system. On the latter, Richard has produced research for the Royal Town Planning Institute on the future relationship between UK planning and EU environmental directives, and charted the turbulence that Brexit may cause for the governance of waste. As an associate of the Brexit and Environment network (https://www.brexitenvironment.co.uk/), Richard has also provided evidence and advice on the environmental governance implications of Brexit, especially for Wales. His academic research has been published widely in international journals, and he is a co-editor of the recent collected volume, The Routledge Companion to Environmental Planning.

Geraint Ellis

Geraint Ellis is Professor of Environmental Planning in the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB), and Co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. His research interests are in planning and sustainability with a particular emphasis on renewable energy, planning governance and healthy urban planning. He has published widely on these topics, leading major international projects funded by sources such as the UK Research Councils, the EU and the Irish Government. His recent projects have included examining the role of the built environment in healthy ageing in the UK and Brazil (HULAP), and leading an EU innovative Training Network on the social acceptance of renewable energy (MISTRAL). He holds a number of other positions, which include membership of the assessment panel for Architecture, Built Environment and Planning in the UK’s Research Excellent Framework 2021 and appointment by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) as an independent member of the Irish National Economic and Social Council. You can follow him on Twitter @gellis23.

Thomas Fischer

Thomas Fischer (PhD, Dipl-Geogr, FIEMA, FHEA), has 30 years of international practical, research and training as well as teaching experience in Impact Assessment, including Strategic Environmental Assessment, Environmental Impact Assessment, Sustainability Assessment, Health in Impact Assessments and others. He is Professor and Head of the Environmental Assessment and Management Research Centre at the University of Liverpool (UK) as well as Director of the WHO collaborating Centre on Health in Impact Assessments. He is also an Extraordinary Professor at North-West University, South Africa and an Honorary Staff Member at Berlin Institute of Technology, Germany. Thomas has written and edited several books, along with over 100 refereed journal articles, numerous book chapters, monographs and other documents, including impact assessment guidance.

Tony Jackson

Tony Jackson is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Dundee, where he taught and researched in environmental management and planning theory and practice until retirement. He has published widely on sustainable development, environmental assessment, and local economic development, collaborating with academics in Canada, Australia and New Zealand researching in similar fields to provide comparative analysis of such issues. He has undertaken funded research into indicators of sustainable development, the impact of improved ferry services for the Inner Hebrides, local labour market intelligence, the integration of environmental considerations into regional development plans, evaluation of environmental taxation initiatives, and policies targeted towards invasive species. He continues to be actively involved in supporting the Scottish Government’s Gateway for strategic environmental assessment and its annual forum for practitioners, and to serve as an editor of an academic journal.

Thomas Muinzer

Dr Thomas Muinzer joined the Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law (“AUCEL”) in 2020 as Senior Lecturer in Energy Transition Law. His teaching and research tends to focus on climate and energy decarbonisation law and policy, and environmental law. He has subsidiary and intersecting interests in the sphere of constitutional law, human rights protections, and the safe and responsible governance of energy and the environment. He wrote the first monograph on the world’s first example of national framework climate legislation, Climate and Energy Governance for the UK Low Carbon Transition: The Climate Change Act 2008 (Palgrave: UK, 2018). He is also Contributing Editor to the first book-length study of Climate Change Acts around the world: National Climate Change Acts: The Emergence, Form and Nature of National Framework Climate Legislation (Hart, forthcoming in 2020)

Olivier Sykes

Olivier Sykes (PhD, MCD) is a Senior Lecturer in European spatial planning at The University of Liverpool. He has researched, published, and taught extensively across the fields of European spatial planning, international planning studies, and comparative urban policy and regeneration. He is currently the director of research for the planning discipline at Liverpool and has held visiting fellowships and professorships at a number of other institutions. Olivier is the Editor in Chief of Transactions of the Association of European Schools of Planning and Policy and Viewpoints Editor of Town Planning Review. He has worked on a range of research projects for the EU, national, regional, and local governments, and professional bodies.