The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The Department for Communities and Local Government is today publishing new planning policy and new planning practice guidance on waste. Both support the Government’s commitment to decentralise power to local people and give local people far more ability to shape the places in which they live. The new policy and guidance apply to England.
The new policy document streamlines previous waste planning policy, making it more accessible to local authorities, waste developers and local communities alike. It provides a clear framework to enable waste planning authorities to work collaboratively with their communities and consider, through their local plans, what sort of waste facilities are needed and where they should go, while also protecting the local environment and local amenity by preventing waste facilities being placed in inappropriate locations. It also takes into account changes to legislation, such as the removal through the Localism Act of the last Administration’s unpopular and top-down regional strategies.
The policy replaces previous policy in planning policy statement 10 as the national planning policy for waste in England, and will sit alongside other national planning policy for England set out in the national planning policy framework. The planning streamlined guidance to support the new policy replaces the companion guide to PPS10 published in 2006.
Taking into account responses received to the consultation announced on 29 July 2013, Official Report, House of Lords, columns WS162-164, we have strengthened the policy to set out a positive policy framework for planning for waste, and its contribution to sustainable development objectives. We have also emphasised in policy the importance of early and meaningful engagement with local communities, alongside an expectation that waste planning authorities should work collaboratively with each other and their district authorities in managing waste needs, consistent with the statutory duty to co-operate.
Moreover, the new policy strengthens and underlines the Government’s commitment to protecting the green belt from development. We have emphasised the special protection given to the green belt, and made clear our expectation that when preparing local plans, waste planning authorities will work collaboratively with other planning authorities to first look for suitable sites and areas outside the green belt. We have also removed reference in previous policy that waste planning authorities should give significant weight to locational need and wider environmental and economic benefits when considering waste planning applications in the green belt.
This approach brings national waste planning policy into line with the national planning policy framework, which makes clear that most types of new development should only be approved in the green belt in very special circumstances. This maintains and enhances the stringent protection against inappropriate development in the green belt.
The waste policy is available on my Department’s website, with the response to the consultation.
The planning guidance is available on my Department’s planning guidance website at: http://planningguidance.planningportal.gov.uk
Copies of these documents have been placed in the Library of the House.