Why have a Sustainability Checklist for Developments?
Why have a Sustainability Checklist for Developments?
Regional Sustainability Checklists for Development are being drawn up to enable developers and local planning authorities assess the sustainability of designs and planning applications in a simple and straightforward way. This enables them to see whether the proposed development meets policy requirements and is suitable for the location for which it is intended.
In the late 1990’s, developers found that there was an increasing emphasis on the sustainability of developments, but that there was no clear guidance on which issues should be addressed and any guidance that did exist about the standards which should be achieved was fragmented and highly variable. Local authorities also sought this guidance.
To address these issues, in 2001/2 the DTI/Partners in Technology programme funded BRE to work with a range of experts (local authorities, developers, academics, statutory bodies) to produce a National Sustainability Checklist for Developments. This provided a set of questions covering a range of issues within and beyond the planning system, indicated minimum good and best practice, and provided a scoring system to enable users to see how well the development performed. (See also “Why have regional sustainability checklists for development…” elsewhere in these FAQs)
Why have regional sustainability checklists for development rather than a single national version?
The Regional Assembly and the Regional Development Agency in the West Midlands, Advantage West Midlands, felt that a Checklist specifically tailored to the policies, priorities and needs of the West Midlands would be a more focused solution to issues in their area.
Following recommendations and requests by, amongst others, the Sustainable Buildings Task Group and the Egan Review (see “Endorsements” elsewhere in these FAQ’s) , ODPM and WWF are funding the roll out of regionally tailored Sustainability Checklists for each of the other English regions to fit their particular needs, priorities and policy requirements.
Experience in producing checklists for other regions has backed the need for regionally specific checklists; whilst many issues remain the same across the regions, there has been a degree of variation with a few new issues being introduced in each region. Some issues do not feature in every region. The significance given to each issue varies from region to region, so the weightings of questions are re-set in each region to enable the appropriate prioritisation of questions. Therefore in the same way that planning and other policies vary at regional level, so does the Checklist. (See also: “Can you compare sustainability performance between regions?” elsewhere in these FAQs)
Why have modification at the local authority level?
Each local authority is required to produce its own Local Development Framework, informed by a Strategic Environmental Assessment/Sustainability Appraisal. This requirement is laid at the local level in recognition that the particular context of each local authority area differs somewhat.
As far as the Checklist is concerned, the Local Development Framework must correlate with the Regional Spatial Strategy, so we would expect that the key issues (and therefore questions) will remain the same. There may however be detailed local issues which are not applicable in the whole region and have therefore not been included in the Checklist. This may include coastal issues for example. (See also “Tailoring the Checklist for local authorities” and “Can you compare sustainability performance between local authorities” elsewhere in these FAQs).