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Our unique voice can be found through our long-established Journal, our highly regarded publications and throughout the local, national and specialist press. The TCPA campaigns for sustainable development through planning and provides provocative comment in response to the evolving policy agenda. Working in partnership with key public and private sector bodies, the TCPA helps to shape public opinion and government thinking.
The range and depth of the TCPA's policy work, research, projects and publications can be highlighted by a few of our recent achievements:
Government reform: Important topics of debate within the Policy Council and subsequent advice to Government in 2008 were the Planning Reform Act and the Energy Act. In particular, the TCPA’s enduring commitment to the policy area of “managing land values so that more of the proceeds go to the local community” provoked substantive input in response to consultations on a proposed Planning Gain Supplement and subsequently an alternative Community Infrastructure Levy included within the new Planning Act. The TCPA continues to respond to numerous consultations.
PPS1 - Planning and Climate Change: The TCPA Sustainable Housing (later Zero Carbon) Task Team achieved outstanding success in working with a range of member and non member organisations (particularly Friends of the Earth) to publish a “Planning Policy Statement on Climate Change Discussion Document” supported by a very broad range of private, public and voluntary sector bodies. Then Housing and Planning Minister Yvette Cooper MP credited the TCPA with being the first to call for new planning guidance to address climate change and the Government both consulted upon and later in the year adopted a Climate Change Planning Policy Statement (as an annex to PPS1). The new policy contains many of the provisions of the TCPA draft for discussion.
"The TCPA's outstanding work planning for homes as part of a sustainable future, has enabled it to play a leading role in shaping the growth of our communities, towns and cities. The TCPA was the first to call for new planning guidance to address climate change and I am delighted that partly as a result of this the Government is now taking forward an agenda second to none in achieving zero and low carbon development and in meeting the nation's housing needs. I and the Government have really valued the TCPA's research and policy thinking to make planning more responsive to peoples needs." The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP Minister for Housing and Planning in 2007
Regional Spatial Strategies: Under the auspices of the Regional and Strategic Planning Task Team and of some new TCPA Regional Representatives staff responded to Regional Spatial Strategies including the Examinations held in the Southwest and East Midlands regions in 2008. Responses were also submitted to the proposed alterations to the North East Regional Spatial Strategy and the London Plan and the TCPA did not object to extensions of the Mayor’s planning powers.