MPs have urged the Government to make adaptation and mitigation more central to its guidance on planning and climate change which needs to be revised.
That call has come from the Commons Environmental Audit Committee in a report which argued that, ‘new developments should only be permitted if they are suited to future climates and support the overall resilience of the built environment’.
The all-party group added: ‘Past experience clearly demonstrates that issuing planning guidance is not enough to ensure change. The Government needs to make sure that revised planning guidance, and action to improve the skills and capacity of planning departments, improves decision making.’
In a related but separate move the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has proposed that all public bodies should have a duty to apply a climate change adaptation test to all new policies and programmes.
