This POSTnote outlines how collaborative decision-making can support multifunctional land-use decisions to deliver locally legitimate outcomes in England.
Land in England is under increasing pressure to deliver multiple objectives, including food production, housing, infrastructure, climate mitigation, nature recovery, water management and recreation. Research shows public expectations of the benefits land should provide have evolved. The government’s non-statutory Land Use Framework (LUF) sets out principles for managing these pressures, including multifunctionality, “right use, right place”, future-ready decisions and adaptive design.
Delivering these principles in practice would require changes to how land-use decisions are coordinated across existing governance frameworks, with tensions between the LUF and sector-specific decision-making frameworks, including the National Planning Policy Framework.