Safeguarding and conflicts in local minerals planning

An important but under-researched aspect of the planning system is the supply of minerals to meet present and future needs. The National Planning Policy Framework requires local planning authorities to safeguard a number of specific mineral resources for the longer term. Although the use of coal is being phased out of the energy supply, it is one of the specific mineral resources that ae required to be safeguarded. The national policy requirement is likely to be challenging given the pressures on the planning system to facilitate and enable the delivery of new development, particularly housing, to meet today’s needs. Furthermore, a possible lack of interest in planning for coal at the local level. This PhD examines the interpretation and implementation of the national planning policy requirement to safeguard coal in England. It explores how this requirement was interpreted and translated into local policy making in development plans and then used in practice to determine planning applications. Empirically the PhD presents findings from an extensive study of the local policy approaches to safeguarding coal across the English coalfields. This extensive study consisted of constructing a framework to establish and analyse how each coalfield mineral planning authority had interpreted the national policy requirement. From this extensive study one mineral planning authority was selected to explore in more depth the policy and implementation of coal safeguarding policy. The PhD provides a range of insights, including the finding that planning for coal is a marginal and specialist area of planning, but for those areas with coal resources it remains an important topic. Local policy approaches are shaped by the interests of key participants. It also demonstrates that the politics and policy of coal is place specific. More generally the PhD engages with the wider issues in planning theory and practice, including how planning policy is formulated and implemented; the role of participants in the planning system; and the need for flexibility within the overall planning system.