Land Use Development Planning and the Notion of Sustainable Development: Exploring Constraint and Facilitation within the English Planning System

This paper explores the English land use planning system's actual and potential abilities to both facilitate and constrain the advancement of sustainable development through the preparation of statutory development plans. The exploration is empirically based, focusing upon the conceptual and procedural issues most pertinent to the incorporation of sustainable development within this sector of public policy making. The findings reveal a lack of unified coherence in approach amongst local planning authorities as they struggle to translate the rhetoric of sustainable development into practice. One can detect, however, areas of difficulty and potential opportunity surfacing in the plan preparation process relating to issues of public participation, Local Agenda 21, environmental appraisal, data gathering, resources and guidance. There is also an indication that the institutional framework for incorporation lacks the facility to adopt a consistent position with regard to what one can consider as sustainability-orientated application principles.