Memorandum submitted by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (ACC21)

 

 

1. Introduction and Summary:

 

1.1 CABE welcomes this opportunity to submit evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee. As the Government's adviser on architecture, design and the built environment, climate change and sustainable development have become central to our work. Adaptation in particular is an increasing component of our advice and guidance to both public and private sector. Emissions reduction and mitigation more generally have long dominated the debate on climate change, but adaptation is as pressing a priority, and also provides many opportunities to improve the quality of life for local people.

1.2 The National Audit Office (NAO) report on governmental policy and implementation on adaptation is an excellent first step in measuring our preparedness to adapt to climate change at a strategic level. However, the departmental self assessments are too focused on the risks posed by climate change, rather than identifying opportunities presented in managing those risks. The new Departmental Carbon Budgets, and proposed local carbon budgets, are a good way to ensure that the impacts of our emissions are seen holistically, and will encourage departments to work together to find methods of carbon reduction. A similar approach is needed to bring together various policies and services that will be impacted by climate change.

 

1.3 Climate change and the shift to a lower carbon economy present an opportunity for policy makers to show leadership. Rather than waiting hopefully for the market to moderate our consumption of fossil fuels and other resources, it is an opportunity to create better places in which we can all live more resource-efficient lives.

 

Climate change, even when its man-made causes are accepted, often seems abstract and remote to the public. Mitigation and curbing carbon emissions are particularly intangible. However, the impacts of climate change, such as changing weather patterns, are evident, and prompt solutions with which everyone can identify and can understand.

The Victorians took bold steps to redesign cities and create new places that met the challenges of the day, namely pollution and infectious disease. Today, climate change provides the same opportunities to remodel our neighbourhoods. If we make wise choices now we can use this opportunity to make our neighbourhoods more beautiful and useable.

 

1.4 CABE has four recommendations to the Committee:

1.4.1. Everything we do happens in a place. This may seem obvious, even simplistic, but too often policy makers work in terms of service silos or administrative boundaries. This way of viewing the world fails to take account of the synergies and efficiencies which can be found in taking a place-based approach.

The built environment can be designed in such a way as to encourage public transport use, or walking and cycling. It can be designed to encourage people to leave their windows open and take advantage of passive cooling. Or it can be designed to encourage people to use their cars, keep their windows shut, and install air conditioning. All of these decisions about building design (on a micro-scale) or urban design (on a macro-scale) will need to be assessed in light of our changing climate.

A place-based approach to service delivery should be undertaken to create the greatest impact and value for money of climate change adaptation strategies. We have found through our work with the Core Cities in developing the Sustainable Cities programme (www.sustainablecities.org.uk), as well as our work in Design Review and Enabling, that there are multiple benefits to be had from taking a place-based approach. CABE is currently working with SDC, DECC, HCA and CLG to develop a programme of research that focuses on delivering place-based solutions to both mitigation and adaptation, while concurrently addressing issues of regeneration and social sustainability.

1.4.2 Many adaptation measures will need to be implemented across local authority boundaries. Therefore Government must encourage partnership working either through Multiple Area Agreements, or through extending the Manchester and Leeds City-Region pilots. Through evidence gathered from national and international examples, CABE has developed a methodology for Strategic Urban Design which could, and should, be used by regional and sub regional bodies and partnerships when adapting to climate change.

1.4.3 Local government has been incentivised to deliver on mitigation targets through the Comprehensive Area Assessment, in particular through NI185 and 186, Planning Policy Statement 1 (PPS1) supplement on climate change and more pressingly by the carbon reduction commitment.

Our research has shown that the incentives for responding to the adaptation challenge have not been as effective. NI188, Planning to adapt to climate change, should be made mandatory for all local authorities to demonstrate progress in this important area, and its evidence base should be strengthened. Similarly an updated PPS1 should reflect the importance of adaptation in any local development framework.

 

1.4.4 In particular, Government departments must formally recognise the strategic importance of green infrastructure, strategic networks of green spaces, in promoting a number of governmental objectives, not least in providing multiple benefits for climate change adaptation such as mitigation of the urban heat island effect and surface water management.

 

This should be enacted by creating a standardised methodology for local authorities to assess the quantity and quality of their open spaces in the upcoming update of Planning Policy Guidance 17. Urban green spaces in particular should be mapped and recorded in an accessible national database to enable cross boundary planning and delivery of green infrastructure.

Several Government departments including DEFRA, DoH, DfT, and CLG have commissioned research or guidance into the impact of green and open spaces in delivering their policy objectives. However, the crucial role of green infrastructure in climate change adaptation has been largely overlooked in policy terms. This is evidenced by its absence in the NAO report and the departmental self assessments.

 

 

2. The Government's response to climate change adaptation

 

2.1 The NAO report makes clear that the Adapting to Climate Change team at DEFRA and the UKCIP programme have made a good start on raising the profile of the adaptation agenda within Government, and CABE actively supports their endeavours. However, the understanding of the actual impacts of a changing climate appear to amount to a, perhaps unsurprising, concern for flood defences rather than any thinking about changes in the way in which services should be delivered, or cities and neighbourhoods planned. The high level adaptation plans due from Departments by Spring 2010 should include data on how changes to the built environment can contribute to addressing the effects of climate change.

 

2.2 In the NAO report, Figure 8, 'Climate change impacts and risks identified by Government Departments', the areas at risk are broken down in terms of departmental responsibility and this approach does not reflect the synergies between departmental agendas and the impact of these policies on people's well-being and quality of life. Government Departments need to demonstrate a more creative and holistic approach to managing the risks associated with climate change. We have analysed the self assessments of those departments with whom we have particularly close working relationships. We are also working with other Departments such as DECC, DoH and DCSF, but felt that our expertise is best applied to the following departments, specifically:

 

2.2.1 CLG: In managing the risks identified to both buildings and infrastructure it is important that CLG reflect the opportunities presented by green infrastructure in managing flood risk and the urban heat island effect. Planning Policy Guidance 17 on Open Space, Sport, and Recreation is currently being updated by CLG. This a prime opportunity to ensure that the planning policy reflects the strategic role of green infrastructure in climate change adaptation. Similarly there is an opportunity to update Planning Policy Statement 1 Supplement on Planning for Climate Change to expand the section on climate change adaptation. CABE would be pleased to expand further on the ways in which these opportunities can be used to best effect.

 

2.2.2 DCMS: The primary risk identified by DCMS is to the delivery of the Olympics in 2012. While this is indeed a significant risk in the short term, DCMS should also take account of the good practice being demonstrated by the Royal Parks Estate Management team in preparing for climate change.

 

2.2.3 DEFRA: As the lead department on climate change adaptation, DEFRA has gone furthest in terms of assessing the impact of climate change on its policy priorities. However, the focus of their identified risks is on food production and flooding impacts. They do not, however, recognise the significant impacts that warmer temperatures will have on the UK population, the majority of whom live in cities and will therefore be vulnerable to the urban heat island effect.

 

2.2.4 DfT: Transport infrastructure is at risk from climate change, but the department should identify the risks of having unsustainable infrastructure in light of climate change, rather than risks to existing infrastructure. In preparing for a changing climate it is important to achieve a modal shift from a car-dependent transport system to a more multi-modal approach. Many of the recommendations of Towards a Sustainable Transport System could be easily integrated into their risk management and opportunities plan.

 

3. Place-Based approaches to climate change adaptation

 

3.1 Our towns and cities need to adapt to the changing climate. This is about more than reducing flood risk and improving resilience. It requires a shift in the way our planners, public service providers, and local officials think about our towns and cities. The Government have recognised the importance of a place based approach to public services, both through their World Class Places report, and also through the new Total Place programme on joined up service delivery.

3.2 Taking a place-based approach to climate change adaptation means ensuring that local services are delivered in such a way that they can add value to one another and respond to people's changing needs.

 

3.3 Our villages, towns and cities have largely been built to accommodate a 19^th or mid-20^th century weather pattern. However, because the replacement rate of our buildings and infrastructure is so slow (80% of the building stock in 2050 is already in existence) we need to take a holistic and ambitious approach to retro-fitting them to be more resilient to a changing climate. While there is beginning to be a body of knowledge on how to retro-fit our homes and neighbourhoods for energy efficiency to curb carbon emissions, more consideration should be given on how to adapt our existing neighbourhoods to extreme weather events.

 

To this end CABE is working with the Sustainable Development Commission, Homes and Communities Agency, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Energy and Climate Change on developing a methodology for place-based approaches to adaptation and mitigation that confer wider community-level benefits.

 

The report from this piece of work is expected in Spring 2010 and we would be pleased to share it with the Committee at that time.

 

4. Local authorities working together to adapt to climate change

4.1 Local authorities have an important leadership role to play to ensure that infrastructure, buildings, public spaces and services take account of the changing climate as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

 

4.2 Dealing with climate change is about city and town planning and management in its widest sense, and is the responsibility of all those involved in strategic decision-making. This includes those senior officers and members with responsibility for economic planning, housing strategy, transport planning, children's services, health and well-being, environment, green space and regeneration as well as spatial planning.

 

4.3 The planning policy framework is a critical tool for local and regional authorities to implement strong principles that will affect action on climate change. CLG, in its review of PPS1 Supplement on Climate Change should ensure that adaptation has equal weight to mitigation.

 

4.4 CABE's research into the climate change policies of 50 local authorities in the core city-regions has shown that adaptation is one of the least well integrated policies across local authorities. This could be improved by a revision of the evidence base for NI188: Preparing to Adapt to Climate Change and by making this a mandatory indicator for all local authorities to show improvement against.

 

4.5 Many adaptation measures, particularly those which relate to changes in infrastructure and flooding defences, must be taken at a regional or subregional level. While there has been a proliferation of regional and subregional bodies and partnerships there has not been a commensurate tool developed to work at this kind of spatial scale. To fill this gap CABE has been developing a Strategic Urban Design toolkit which will enable these new bodies to plan for infrastructural changes in a holistic and design-led way. The bureaucratic boundaries which define our current regional structures are not necessarily the most appropriate ways to think about service delivery or the delivery of built assets such as shopping centres, transport networks and green infrastructure.

 

5. The importance of green infrastructure in climate change adaptation

 

5.1 Green Infrastructure is a strategically planned and delivered network of a wide range of high quality green spaces and other environmental features. It should be designed and managed as a multi-functional resource capable of delivering those ecological services and quality of life benefits required by the communities it serves. Its design and management should also respect and enhance the character and distinctiveness of an area with regard to habitats and landscape types.

 

Green infrastructure includes established green spaces and new sites and should thread through and surround the built environment, connecting the urban area to its wider rural hinterland. Consequently, it needs to be delivered at all spatial scales - regional, sub-regional, local and neighbourhood levels, accommodating both accessible natural green spaces within local communities and often much larger sites in the urban fringe and wider countryside. Green infrastructure has a significant role to play in the climate change and sustainability agenda and should be considered in its widest sense in this inquiry.

 

 

5.2. Well-designed green infrastructure helps adapt to the effects of climate change by:

· managing surface water run-off to prevent flooding

· storing tidal flood water to reduce the risk of tidal flooding in estuaries

· storing river flood water to reduce the risk of fluvial flooding, e.g. through the restoration of floodplains

· creating cooler microclimates and therefore reducing the need to cool buildings

· providing shelter and protection in extreme weather; providing habitats, corridors and a more permeable landscape to help wildlife adapt to climate change.

Well-designed green infrastructure mitigates climate change by:

· reducing travel through provision of local recreation opportunities

· providing sustainable transport corridors to reduce carbon emissions from vehicles

· supplying biomass or biofuels to directly replace fossil fuels

· supplying timber to replace less sustainable construction materials

· increasing local food production to reduce food miles

· improving carbon storage and sequestration.

 

5.3 The benefits of green infrastructure and high quality open spaces have been recognised by DEFRA, DoH, CLG, and DCMS. However, the role of green infrastructure in adapting to climate change is not represented in the management of climate change risks identified by these departments. The wider benefits of green infrastructure include:

 

Improve quality of life: Areas of multiple deprivation often contain the most neglected and under-used areas of public space. The rehabilitation of a park in a deprived area can act as a catalyst to rehabilitate the entire community.

· reducing crime (and the perception of crime) through natural surveillance in well used public spaces

· encouraging community integration through using green spaces for social events

· attracting businesses by ensuring attractive environmental surroundings

· increasing house prices by increasing green spaces

 

Healthier residents: Natural England has demonstrated the benefits of green space for many health problems including cardio-vascular disease, obesity, depression, coronary-pulmonary disease and diabetes.

· reducing the urban heat island effect through evaporative cooling, shading and providing corridors for cooler air to flow into urban areas as well as filtering polluted air

· providing safe, easily accessible green routes for walking and cycling

· reducing physical and mental health problems through physical activity and enjoyment of open space and nature

Stronger local economy

· increasing green space can lead to an increase in average house prices in an area

· creating environmentally attractive surroundings encourage businesses to relocate to a place.

 

5.4 Though green infrastructure must be delivered locally, it should be planned for at a regional or subregional level in order to ensure that the maximum multiple benefits are achieved. The revised PPG17 should set out the national policy for green infrastructure in accordance with the World Class Places action plan. This should also include a standardised methodology for assessing, mapping and measuring urban green spaces which should take account of both accessible and inaccessible green infrastructure. However, local authorities should, of course, be encouraged to set local standards for their accessible open spaces.

 

CLG should also work with other departments to develop a national database and map of existing urban green infrastructure. Current information is patchy and difficult to join together. Without such a database it will be impossible to plan effectively for this critical piece of infrastructure. If the new PPS17 policy and accompanying guidance set out a standardised methodology then this database/spatial map would be relatively easy to build and maintain as it would be gathered at the local level.

 

October 2009