Our response, which you can find in the Prospect library, starts from the perspective of Prospect's policies promoting environmentalism and sustainable development. Creating communities which are in themselves sustainable and which are geared towards sound environmental principles is the only way forward if we, as a society, are to deal with the challenges that we face. Consequently, a planning system which puts sustainable development at the heart of the planning process is one that we welcome.
We used our submission to remind the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment that trade unions are valid stakeholders and ought to have been formally consulted during the consultation process. Furthermore, the establishment of a two-tier planning system places clear demands on the workforce as regards skills and development while cuts, at a time of austerity-driven public spending policies, risk the loss of capabilities and lead to a potential for skills gaps.
In Prospect, we of course have a different vision - based around the enhanced professionalism of those who work in public service delivery - and this has a central requirement of investment in people if it is to be achieved.
Consequently, we were surprised to find that trade unions, who represent a substantial element of the delivery of public services in Northern Ireland, were not encompassed formally within the consultation process and that an opportunity essentially to reach out to trade unions at a time of change had apparently been missed.
Our submission otherwise made the following points:
- the quality and sustainability of jobs created by growth needs to be balanced against the numbers of jobs displaced by economic change, with mechanisms put in place to quantify the level of displacement and set in place active measures of employment policy support
- we share the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions but require these in the context of energy policy to be planned for appropriately and strategically, and to start from an open recognition of the need to accommodate jobs displaced elewhere in centralised energy production
- we welcome the recognition that development must not only be sustainable but that it must proceed in an environmentally sensitive manner
- renewable energy sources may well encompass energy crops but these need to be locally supplied in view of the threat to development which is associated with energy crops being grown in 'third world' countries as a source of cash
- the planning system needs to incorporate an ambitious and visionary view of transportation, encompassing a strong set of initiatives focused on proactive encouragement for people to use alternative, and integrated, forms of transport.