In England, strategic planning has been largely carried out on a voluntary, piecemeal basis without any formal structure. Stakeholders such as councils, various part of the NHS, local transport authorities and others have tried to coordinate their work for better outcomes. This has been limited in its impact so there are proposed changes to bring back a formal tier of strategic regional planning focussed on planning for new homes and employment, whilst seeking to plan for health and the environment.
Due to proposed changes to the national planning system, it is expected that there will be a range of plans at different ‘levels’ of planning. National planning will be at the top of the pyramid, very broad brush and setting a national direction. Strategic planning will sit beneath it, identifying and shaping development based on regional thinking. Local plans will be beneath strategic plans, forming the main document against which planning applications will be decided. Neighbourhood plans will then be situated at the lowest level, identifying local community issues and neighbourhood-scale solutions. All of these documents should be consistent with each other to create a strong planning framework for making decisions about new development.
It is worth noting that planning law requires planning applications and other planning decisions to be made against the Local Plan and Neighbourhood Plans (“the Development Plan”), unless there are other strong planning reasons (“material considerations”) not to. This is a really important aspect of the planning system in England, which is ‘plan-led’, to allow a degree of flexibility in response to both local concerns and other prevailing priorities at any given point. Strategic planning is designed to help connect some of these matters together at a higher level to achieve better, more balanced outcomes.