Debate contribution: Planning System: Fundamental Appraisal

Debate contribution by Mr Patrick Brown on 12 February 2024.

MLA

Mr Patrick Brown

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

12 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Planning System: Fundamental Appraisal

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4218211

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone for moving the motion. I congratulate her on her appointment as Chair of the Committee for Infrastructure, and I look forward to working with you on that Committee. I congratulate my colleague from East Belfast on his excellent maiden speech, and I congratulate in advance my colleague from Lagan Valley on what will, no doubt, be another excellent maiden speech. I very much welcome the opportunity to debate this important issue during the first full week of Assembly business and to send a strong message that planning reform must be prioritised in this restored mandate. As my colleague from East Belfast clearly laid out, we have some reservations about the wording of the motion. With something as technical and complex as the rules and guidance governing our planning process in Northern Ireland, it is vital that we send the right message. Reform without clear and justified purpose will only take us backwards. The motion, perhaps, misses an opportunity to more comprehensively and concretely embed the climate emergency and green economy within the topic of planning reform. In my maiden speech, it is only right that I take a moment to reflect on the importance of the natural environment in my constituency of South Down and the role that the planning process can and must play in protecting and safeguarding it for generations to come. Growing up in the countryside between Crossgar and Downpatrick has given me a special appreciation of rural life. From Carlingford lough, up through the Mourne Mountains to the shores of the Lecale coast, we are uniquely blessed in South Down with outstanding natural beauty. It will come as no surprise that, as a Member of the Assembly, I will seek to do all that I can to champion and protect those environmental assets throughout my term. I would like to take the opportunity to recognise the hard work and public service of former MLAs Sinéad Bradley and Emma Rogan, who represented South Down in the previous mandate, and, indeed, Jim Wells, who served the area since 1982. Jim and I disagreed on just about everything that you could think of, except the environment and animal welfare. We once found common cause campaigning to stop planning permission for an industrial-scale poultry farm outside Ballynahinch. I was a councillor at the time, and that application really demonstrated to me that the fundamental values underpinning our planning system are inherently flawed.

For example, it has always concerned me that animal welfare is not a material planning concern, given the minimal protections that there are against industrial factory farming or large-scale puppy farming.

In any reform, we must ensure that the planning system does not become further estranged from the public good. Planning policy must contain the incentives that are required to help us build a better society. That means not only growing our economy but addressing homelessness through aiding the delivery of high-quality social and affordable housing by, for example, reforming PPS 21 and ensuring that local development plans are finally delivered. We must ensure that the climate emergency is deeply and intrinsically embedded in planning policy and local development plans. Far too often, constituents of mine who are seeking to install renewable energy, particularly farmers seeking to diversify their income, have run afoul of an overly conservative interpretation of planning policy that would deny wind turbines or photovoltaic (PV) panel installations on the grounds of visual impact in the countryside, not perhaps realising that, unless we make the microgeneration of renewable energy more accessible, there will be no countryside left to enjoy. We can begin by exploring permitted development rights for certain small-scale renewable installations and amending policy in order to ensure that renewable applications are streamlined through the planning process. Enhancing trust and transparency in the planning process is also crucial. We need to look at the Planning Appeals Committee, include it in any reforms and ensure that there is a fair and open objection process that can help to balance the asymmetries that often exist between individuals and institutions. We must consider the departmental call-in process and ensure that it is transparent and efficient and that it does not unreasonably delay regionally significant applications, which are so often key drivers of our economy. Despite some reservations on the wording of the motion on the protection of our countryside and on the enhancement of and support for renewable energy, we are content to support it, and I look forward to working with the Minister and other Members to see positive and progressive reform of the planning system in this mandate.

776 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not qualifying

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:36 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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