RICS submission on Planning Policy Statement 4: Planning for Economic Development
The new PPS on Planning for Sustainable Economic Development has been published and aims to put in place a national planning policy framework for economic development at regional, sub-regional and local levels for both urban and rural areas.

Within this framework, it will be the responsibility of the regional planning bodies and local planning authorities to determine how best to plan for economic development, in the context of their responsibilities and taking account of their particular local circumstances.

When published in its final form, this statement should be taken into account by local planning authorities and regional planning bodies in the preparation of their Local Development Documents and Regional Spatial Strategies.

These groups will need to consider the extent to which emerging local development documents and regional spatial strategies have had regard to the policies in the final statement.

RICS has added value by identifying those areas where further clarification is needed, and by giving insight into the impact on rural areas and regeneration areas.

What happens next is that the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) will issue a summary of responses.

It is not clear when this will happen but in general, this takes between three and five months.

To read RICS' full submission to CLG, please refer to the Word Downloads panel.