Environmental Considerations in the Planning System

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 3:03 pm on 19 June 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:03, 19 June 2019

Well, I'm not going to comment on the individual planning application, about which I know nothing, and so I'm going to make my remarks much more general. But we changed—. Actually, my colleague Lesley Griffiths, one of the last thing she did as the planning Minister was to issue the new 'Planning Policy Wales' document, which fundamentally changes the planning system in Wales, which, I think—. People are talking about a review; we've just fundamentally changed the system, and, if you haven't read it, I recommend it to you. It is not a dry planning document. It's a very living document, which fundamentally shifts the landscape in Wales that we're talking about, and it does it in the way that you've just outlined. So, it talks about the sustainability of placemaking, it talks about using local resources in the best way, it talks about the development of proper planning processes with local people at the heart of it.

And, as I've just said, we're also putting the rest of that framework into place now. We will shortly be consulting over the summer on the national development framework. I encourage all Assembly Members to engage with that and come back to us with both their own and their constituents' comments on that plan. And, as I said yesterday, I've started to outline a process by which we want local authorities to put the strategic layer of plans in place. People have to be at the heart of that process, because it's their place that they're making and what we want to ensure is that the citizens of Wales feel that their planning system properly represents them. The individual decisions are then made in the light of the weight of the documents that their locality has put in place. So, if you don't engage with your local development plan process, you will not have a say in what those rules are when they come to each individual planning application. So, we need to strengthen that voice because I think often it's the case that a local community only realises when an individual planning application comes forward that there's an issue and they don't engage with the plan part of that process in quite the way we'd like. So, I very much welcome views on how we might get a better engagement so that people own their plan in a much more realistic way.