‘Environmental capacity’ tool could revolutionise planning system

An “environmental capacity measure” should be drawn up to better plan where infrastructure and housing is built.

That is the view of Environment Agency deputy director Gillian Pratt, who called for a joined-up approach between regulators to improve the planning system when speaking at Utility Week Live.

She said being able to demonstrate the environmental capacity of an area would lead to better decision making when it comes to building homes or locating businesses.

“Wouldn’t it be lovely – and this is a vision we have for our environment planning – if we could understand and show where the capacity was in the environment and businesses can choose to site themselves there,” Pratt said.

“I think there is a lot more to be done in that area where we really understand what our environmental capacity is so that people can make the right decisions.”

She added: “One thing for sure is that with a growing population we do not have the capacity in every location to do everything, so we need to make sure we are choosing the right sites.

“That means we may have to do things in different ways so that the impact on water, or land, or air quality is appropriate for any given place.”

Pratt added that the UK’s approach to achieving net zero has so far focussed largely on decarbonisation but has not been joined up with tackling the nature emergency.

She said growing interest from the general public is, however, putting pressure on policy makers to consider the nature emergency as a key part of reaching net zero.

“The citizen voice in the environment is starting to grow with people much more interested in using bathing waters, for example,” she said.

“Through the pandemic the public were out more on the river banks and out in the environment so people have become a lot more vocal and interested which is super.

“But we need to help them to understand more about the environment that they are in, so I think it means things like sharing data, making data more readily available.

“It all comes back to making data available to consumers to be able to make informed choices.”