DiSECCS Work Package 5 : insights and recommendations

British Geological Survey

关键词: GroundwaterBGS;    Groundwater;    Groundwater management;   

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来源: NERC Open Research Archive

【 摘 要 】

The use of environmental research and information to inform planning policy is essential forgovernments to be able to develop, and deliver, new spatial approaches to delivering key priorities forour future places: to be able deliver 50,000 homes by 2021 alongside better places[1]; to develop theinfrastructure approaches required to reduce carbon emissions by 90 per cent by 2050[2], whilst at thesame time developing high quality places and vibrant economies; and to increase the resilience ofScotland鈥檚 communities to environmental change [3,4,5].Local Development Plans are the key spatial policies which will help deliver Scotland鈥檚 Energy strategy[3], Climate Change Plan [4], Economic Strategy and National Programme [5] over the next 10 years.Ensuring existing available evidence is utilised effectively to inform Scotland鈥檚 LDPs is, therefore, vitallyimportant to the realisation of Scotland鈥檚 future people and places.However, there is increasing realisation from all parties that existing pieces of key nationalenvironmental evidence which could help inform early understanding of land supply attributes,development costs, risk and opportunities, are not utilised effectively, if at all, within the preparationof many LDPs [6] . This is despite information having being developed specifically to help inform theseprocesses (e.g. BGS groundwater resource and vulnerability maps [7]), and significant past investmentby individual organisations, the Rural Affairs, Food and Environment (RAFE) digital group, andScottish Government to make information freely available from centralised web services [8,9].The Planning (Scotland) Bill (2017) [10] and Scottish Governments position paper 鈥楶eople, Places, andPlanning鈥? call that we find new ways to collaborate in planning to consolidate and improve evidenceprocesses, and recognises the importance of earlier use of evidence in Local Development Plans(LDPs) to realise new multi-faceted approaches for the delivery of our future places [11].The review was part of an in-depth three year Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowship led by BGS inScotland focused on developing better understanding across key organisations as to howenvironmental information can be used more effectively to inform early spatial planning approachesand policies in LDP preparation. For example, what environmental information, and analyticalpathways, are most appropriate and pertinent to informing earlier understanding of Housing LandSupply (HLS) attributes 鈥?this being seen as a key evidence gap required to inform LDP site allocationsand knowledge of risks and opportunities, in advance of call for sites, and detailed site investigationinformation [12-15].