UK Land Use Futures: Policy influence and challenges for the coming decades

This paper, originally contributed as part of the government's Foresight investigation of Land Use Futures, considers the likely shape of policies affecting UK rural land use up to 2060, based on literature review, analysis of past and current trends and drivers, and discussion with selected policy experts. The postwar, centralised approach to spatial planning and countryside management has come under increasing challenge from domestic and international needs and concerns. European policy influence has increased in respect of agriculture and the natural environment. Zoning of land-use and a restrictive approach to built development have gradually weakened, and land-use drivers have become more multifunctional. Policy has moved away from a ‘top-down’ process designed in Whitehall towards a multi-layered structure within which international agreements and negotiations must be reconciled with regional and local, partnership-based approaches to planning and management, via national frameworks and a complex mix of regulatory and market-based instruments. Climate and energy policy, as well as policies on food and health, will require new and more diverse forms of development. A major challenge for the future could be the extent to which current, multi-layered spatial planning policies can accommodate the scale of change implied by the new mix of drivers from other policy areas. There is the possibility of an increasingly differentiated response across the UK countryside, as well as much more radical change in the system driven from the centre, as pressures increase.While the Government Office for Science commissioned this review, the views are those of the author, are independent of Government, and do not constitute Government policy.

Research highlights
► Future rural land use policies will be shaped by the past, as well as current drivers and concerns.
► 3 phases of postwar policy built a complex decision-making structure reliant on devolved development control.
► In future, key drivers will be policies for climate change, energy supply and diet and health.
► We may need radical change in the next decades; the current system may prove unable to deliver.