Planners call for strategic planning change - RTPI

More than 95% of planners have called for “effective” strategic planning in England, according to research commissioned by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI).

The research – Strategic Planning in England – from the University of the West of England’s Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments, shows that 96% of respondents agree that a change to current planning practice is needed across the private and public sectors. Statutory strategic planning was “almost completely abolished” in 2010, RTPI said.

According to the document, which RTPI said was the first nationwide study seeking to understand the nature of current strategic planning practice, more than 80% of planners support the government mandating strategic planning.

RTPI said statutory strategic planning “is widely regarded as vital for the management of key issues that cannot be addressed properly at the local scale, like building economic, climate, and nature resilience, and articulating long-term development and infrastructure needs”.

But for more than a decade, there has been no mandatory requirement for a nationwide approach to strategic planning in England. “Today, parts of England remain without strategic planning activity,” RTPI commented.

RTPI’s research reveals that 40% of local authority planners do not work in an …