UKGBC responds to publication of Planning and Infrastructure Bill

We welcome the Bill that can help promote strategic planning and clean energy, while ensuring strong environmental standards for sustainable, healthy communities.

Anna Hollyman, UKGBC’s Co-Head of Policy & Places said:

Every planning decision is an opportunity to create greener, safer and healthier communities. This bill indicates a welcome move towards longer-term strategic planning, investment in planning capacity and an acceleration towards clean energy. However, communities must have a meaningful voice in ensuring developments meet their local needs, and ‘streamlining’ environment assessments must not be code for weakening standards.

The planning system must work in harmony with nature and communities, not against them. The bill must prioritise the creation of climate safe, nature-rich, healthy and thriving communities up and down the country.

Climate Change Mitigation

We are in a decisive decade for climate action and with a decreasing number of years left to achieve 2030 climate targets, radical and rapid transformation from businesses and the global economy is essential.