National planning - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 277

AIMS AND
OBJECTIVES

PLANNING INSTRUMENT DELIVERY AGENT

EU programmes
Policy Directives European Union

National
Governments

National Policy
Statements

Executive
Agencies

Regional assemblies

Regional
Strategies /Partnerships

Local
Authorities Local Authorities Local

Plans

Figure 17.2 The hierarchy of plans 'translating aspiration into action'

planning and in England (outside London) and in the three areas of devolved
administration - Scotland, Wales and London.
Some of the changes have taken place as a result of changes in the structuring of
government. For example early development of the concept of spatial planning was
pioneered by the European Union (concerned with cross-border issues and trans-
national cooperation). However the practical implications of this were forestalled
by the desire of national governments (especially in the UK) to protect their own
jurisdictions and to assert the principle of 'subsidiarity'. (For a discussion of this see
Chapter 4 of Cullingworth and Nadin 2006.) The political project of devolution
undertaken by the New Labour Government provided impetus for 'national' planning
projects in Scotland and Wales and for a much higher profile of planning activity in
the English regions. Reforms in the pattern of local government have impacted on the
forms of local development and transport planning.
Other changes have occurred as a result of shifts in the importance of public
planning as perceived by the Government of the time. For example during the 1980s
the statutory development plan system was allowed to fall into a substantial degree
of neglect and parts were threatened with extinction. Privatisation of the bus and
rail industries was also conceived in a manner which, bar the protection of socially
necessary services, effectively amounted to the Government leaving outcomes to be
determined by the market. Local transport plans, initially hailed by New Labour as
the key instrument for bringing about integrated transport locally, have since operated
under a degree of uncertainty as the Government has vacillated about mechanisms
for local government funding and performance monitoring generally - quite separate
considerations.
Whatever the details at any point in time the overall pattern of transport and
development plans has been concerned with translating aspirations - national,
regional and ultimately local - into actions 'on the ground'. In the process these
physical changes have a strong influence on the character of particular places,
including their economic, social and environmental attributes, although this often
occurs in a disjointed fashion. In recent years the Government has therefore promoted
a reconceptualisation of development planning as 'spatial planning'. This seeks to take