Intervention Point 3: Resilience & Sovereignty Test in Planning
🗺 What are we trying to do?
We want planning decisions to pass a new test: does this development protect or harm the community’s long-term resilience and sovereignty? This means considering not just houses, but whether infrastructure, services, and social cohesion are keeping pace.
🎯 What will this achieve?
- Stops approvals that undermine local capacity or control
- Requires national and local planners to assess long-term consequences
- Encourages joined-up planning that supports sustainable, self-reliant communities
🏩 NATIONAL LEVEL – What should our MP do?
✅ 1. Propose a national planning test
Push for an amendment to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) to introduce a “Resilience & Sovereignty Test” for developments that asks:
- Will this create excessive infrastructure or service pressure?
- Will it support or undermine local self-sufficiency?
- Is the community resilient enough to absorb it?
✅ 2. Lobby for joined-up assessments
Ask DLUHC and DEFRA to issue joint guidance that:
- Combines housing, health, climate, food, and infrastructure metrics
- Requires developers to show resilience benefits, not just housing numbers
✅ 3. Call for a Commons briefing or select committee review
- Raise awareness of recent planning failures that eroded resilience and control in local communities
- Demand a systematic response
🏡 LOCAL LEVEL (EHDC) – What can be done right now?
✅ 1. Apply the test in planning reports
Planning officers should comment on how each application affects community resilience, infrastructure balance, and capacity.
✅ 2. Introduce local policy wording
Use the Local Plan and Design Codes to insert principles like:
- Social cohesion
- Infrastructure balance
- Environmental and food system resilience
✅ 3. Refuse or amend risky applications
Where a development would breach the resilience of local schools, GP surgeries, water systems, or community fabric, refuse or negotiate terms.
🤝 What should our MP do locally?
- Back EHDC in applying a resilience test
- Promote EHDC’s approach as a pilot for national reform
- Include local data in national debates on resilience and planning