Question
From time to time I see planning applications with Officer recommendations approving the removal of trees while other planning applications approve increased traffic on already busy roads.
My question is with regard to the Council flagship policy on climate emergency what specific directions has the Council given to its Planning, Environment and Highway departments to take climate emergency into consideration when dealing with all planning applications?
Minutes:
Question
From time to time I see planning applications with Officer recommendations approving the removal of trees while other planning applications approve increased traffic on already busy roads.
My question is with regard to the Council flagship policy on climate emergency what specific directions has the Council given to its Planning, Environment and Highway Departments to take climate emergency into consideration when dealing with all planning applications?
Answer
Planning policy is designed to help decision makers balance competing objectives such as protecting our environment and making new places for our people to live and work from. Our existing Core Strategy and Managing Development Delivery Local Plans to 2026, as obviously you know, embed sound planning policies to help us make decisions, mitigate change through infrastructure investment and other measures. Managing change in the public interest will inevitably lead to some very difficult decisions made around traffic and landscaping as part of that balance.
Climate change affects us all and our communities and as they grow the tensions you refer to will remain and we will need to carefully manage those. Policy within the new Local Plan will require developments to provide adequate landscapes and biodiversity gain as well as improved environmental performance with major residential developments being designed to achieve carbon neutral homes. A subsequent Supplementary Planning Document, the SPD, will also be developed to provide additional detail on how development of all types is expected to demonstrate the achievement of the policy requirements, including carbon neutrality.
As with the previous plan the new plan will establish a spatial strategy that allows for more people to choose to live and work where journeys can be undertaken in ways that do not add to climate change and ensure connectivity to allow working from home. Enabling our residents to make a choice for a healthier and more environmentally sensitive options such as walking and cycling for shorter journeys, including links to facilities, such as using local buses and train stations will help meet our collective commitments to address the climate change agenda.
Supplementary Question
My question is really dealing with more now than tomorrow. The Council has committed £50m to fight climate change and it is also opposed to Heathrow airport expansion if it is detrimental to the environment and the Council’s carbon footprint. Wokingham Borough Council’s planning guidelines are silent, as we stand now, on climate emergency. I have seen many examples where the environment plays second fiddle to random development.
The new Local Plan will need to be updated now to include climate emergency rules for the Planning Department to refer to as material considerations.
The Climate Emergency Action Plan on page 3 states: “This is a Plan for right now and for the future”.
My question is what action is being taken right now to refuse planning applications that are detrimental to the environment and the Council’s carbon footprint?
Supplementary Answer
It is a very good point and it is a point that we are obviously cognisant that we need to get right. Equally planning policies exist and it is important, and hence the reason why we did go with a draft plan earlier on this year, that we get those updated.
We will obviously look at all applications that come but obviously the larger ones are the bigger ones when it comes to carbon neutrality in terms of what can be done and what the Council can actually do in terms of fuel sources, localities, as you say, in order to make those. We are working on it; I mean obviously it is not an easy fix.
Having been in the energy industry all of my life carbon neutrality is not an easy one to achieve and it is something that we are in constant dialogue, especially with Gregor and his team, to ensure that we try to achieve what is important to us. It is not an easy fix Gary I am not at all saying that we can just change all our policies overnight so that every house is zero-carbon. It is not going to happen that easily but we are working on it and we have an agenda to get there and all those policies will be updated once we get the final Local Plan through.