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In our Planning, Housing and Economy blog this month, Chitra Nadarajah, Senior Associate Director, UK Local Authorities at Aether, explains how a new ADEPT Community of Practice is bringing councils together to explore ways in which environmental and climate priorities can be embedded into emerging Spatial Development Strategies and how we can ensure that the environment moves from being seen as a blocker, to being an enabler of good, resilient growth. 

Spatial Development Strategies present a significant opportunity for local government. They will shape long term decisions about housing, infrastructure, economic growth and the development of places across strategic geographies.

For those of us working across the climate and the environment sectors, the important question is how we make sure environmental priorities are part of that conversation from the beginning, rather than something that needs to be added in later as an afterthought.

This is the focus behind the work that Aether is undertaking with ADEPT. We want to explore how environmental outcomes can be embedded into Spatial Development Strategies (SDS) in a way that is strategic, measurable and, importantly, practical.

The main focus of an SDS will inevitably be growth, housing and infrastructure. But resilient growth depends on much more than the number of homes built or the infrastructure delivered. It also depends on the resilience of the natural environment, our ability to respond to climate change and the health and wellbeing of the places we are creating.

This is a powerful opportunity to put the environment at the heart of growth from the outset, using it to shape better, healthier and more resilient places.

As Carolyn McKenzie, Chair of the ADEPT Environment Board, reflected at the launch of the project, natural capital and green infrastructure need to be considered alongside roads, housing and other infrastructure. The environment is not simply something where harm must be mitigated. It can actively contribute to good growth, resilience and healthier places.

Getting in early

Timing matters.

Spatial Development Strategies are plans that operate at a high level over a longer term and their influence will extend across large geographic areas for many years. That makes this a valuable opportunity to embed climate and environmental thinking at an early stage.

Our project is deliberately running ahead of the SDS process. We are not trying to write Spatial Development Strategies for participating authorities. Instead, we want to equip officers with the knowledge, evidence and practical approaches they need to influence their development. That distinction is important.

An SDS needs to remain strategic. It cannot contain every piece of local detail. At the same time, policies need a strong enough evidence base to support difficult choices and demonstrate what success looks like. The original proposal identified precisely this challenge: translating broad climate and environmental ambitions into practical, evidence-based policies that can support resilient growth. 

This means thinking about data and measurement from the outset.

If an environmental outcome is included in policy, how will we know whether it is being delivered? What baseline do we have? What indicators can tell us whether things are moving in the right direction? Where are the gaps in the evidence?

These are exactly the questions we want this work to help answer.

Developing something practical

We have started by identifying a small number of strategic environmental outcomes that have a strong relationship with resilient growth. We will explore how those outcomes could be integrated into strategic policy and how appropriate indicators and data could be used to measure progress. 

The intention is not to create a large or complicated new framework. Nor are we developing another standalone tool.

Instead, we want to understand whether we can develop an approach which is simple enough to work within the realities of local government but robust enough to give authorities confidence in the decisions they make. The resulting model must also be capable of being adapted to different places and policy areas.

Learning together

Central to the project is a Community of Practice bringing together technical and policy officers from the participating authorities.

This is important because ADEPT and Aether are not approaching the project on the basis that consultants have all the answers. The expertise within local authorities is the principal resource for this work.

The Community of Practice provides a space to bring that knowledge together, test assumptions, identify common problems and work through them collectively. Its purpose is practical problem solving and peer learning rather than simply sharing presentations. 

There are considerable benefits to working in this way. Authorities can avoid duplicating effort, share evidence and learn from each other while developing an approach that reflects the reality of limited capacity and resources.

Over the course of the project, the group will agree a small number of measurable strategic outcomes, explore appropriate data sources and identify gaps in policy or capability. There will also be individual work with participating authorities to understand additional local evidence and circumstances before the group comes back together to review the emerging approach. 

What have we learnt so far?

One of the clearest themes emerging from the Community of Practice is that the environment should be recognised as critical infrastructure. Healthy ecosystems, clean and secure water supplies, resilient landscapes and connected green and blue spaces are not optional additions to growth, they help to determine whether homes, infrastructure and communities can thrive over the long term. 

This thinking has been reflected in the strategic environmental outcomes emerging through the Community of Practice. 

The draft outcomes explore how growth, infrastructure and investment can create healthy, safe and functional places in a changing climate, while ensuring the SDS protects and strengthens the natural systems and ecological networks which underpin resilience. 

Together, they shift the focus from protecting the environment from growth to creating the conditions in which sustainable communities can develop and thrive.

We are also learning that measurement needs to be both simple and meaningful. The purpose is not to create a comprehensive environmental monitoring framework, but to establish a small number of defensible strategic key performance indicators supported by sufficient spatial data and evidence to inform decisions about location, pattern, sequencing, infrastructure and investment.

These KPIs can show whether growth is planned in places with lower or manageable environmental and climate risks, or where existing environmental, infrastructure or social pressures could worsen.

They can also highlight where growth needs more investment or collaboration, where environmental systems and infrastructure can be strengthened and also where action may be required across several authorities.

The project is now exploring what data is available to underpin these KPIs. Using national datasets can reveal broad patterns in climate risk, water stress, ecological connectivity and social vulnerability. Local evidence can provide insights into capacity, asset condition, operational resilience, investment and sequencing; factors that national spatial datasets cannot capture. Together these sources of vital information provide a strategic picture which also reflect local priorities and unique needs.

The next step is to hold sessions with each participating authority to draw on existing policies, indicators, datasets and monitoring across their places and spaces. These will help to refine the proposed KPIs and understand what evidence is available to measure progress against the Strategic Environment Outcomes.

At the most recent Community of Practice meeting in October, there was a genuine sense of excitement and ambition as participants saw the potential for this work to shape their Spatial Development Strategies in a positive way.

What matters most is that this is a genuinely collaborative and helpful process. We want participants to challenge the existing thinking and each other. If approaches do not work in practice, we need to understand why. If authorities have different views, those differences are useful evidence too. 

The aim is not to impose uniformity, it is to develop a shared approach that can be adapted to place.

Making the most of the opportunity

Environmental considerations are sometimes framed primarily as constraints on planning and development. Spatial Development Strategies give us an opportunity to shift that thinking.

Climate resilience, nature, water security, green infrastructure and wider, long-lasting environmental benefits are fundamental components of successful places. Thinking about them strategically can help authorities identify opportunities as well as risks and make better decisions about growth that support communities now and in the future.

That is what we hope this project can demonstrate.

If we can create a practical approach that helps environmental outcomes sit alongside housing, infrastructure and economic priorities from the outset, we have a much stronger chance of ensuring that growth is not only delivered but is genuinely resilient.

Further information

• Find out more about working with ADEPT as a partner organisation
• Explore more on the work of the ADEPT Environment Board

Author

Chitra Nadarajah is Senior Associate Director, UK Local Authorities at Aether