TCPA "Planning Out Poverty"

The Town and Country Planning Association http://www.tcpa.org.uk/ has just published a report which addresses the question: what role can planning play as part of wider policy interventions to tackle entrenched poverty? This is an important question to ask and try to answer. And I was interested to see the overlap with some of the arguments in The Future of Planning. The report makes four key points:
- the planning system can make a difference;
- but it too often fails to consider distributional impacts and outcomes, particularly for those most in need;
- this is partly because planning has de-prioritised social justice; and
- there are practical measures that can redress this.
It then goes on to make a set of twelve recommendations which can be found at: http://www.tcpa.org.uk/pages/planning-out-poverty.html. There is a strong emphasis here on integrating a concern with poverty reduction into the National Planning Policy Framework, just as I argue for just sustainability to be so-integrated. The publication of the NPPF - while there may be key concerns over its current content - does offer an opportunity for incorporating new principles to guide planning practice. Other recommendations in the TCPA report are perhaps rather generalised, calling for new planning visions and powers. But this emphasises that the time is right for a debate on exactly how the planning system should be reformed and, perhaps, an emerging consensus among many, that low-income communities and those in poverty need to be a focal point for that debate.