Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931
www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
0016-7185/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.02.001
Sustainable development in regional planning: The search for new tools
and renewed legitimacy
Dave Counsell, Graham Haughton ¤
Department of Geography, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, United Kingdom
Received 25 August 2004; received in revised form 27 January 2006
Abstract
This paper focuses on sustainability appraisal as a key technique for pursuing the political goal of ‘sustainable development’ within
English planning. We conclude that unlike many planning tools of the past which have sought to depoliticise decision making by using
more ‘scientiWc’ techniques, the early experience of sustainability appraisal has instead repoliticised them, by highlighting where tensions
exist but without providing solutions.
© 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Planning; Regions; England; Sustainable development; Governmentality; Sustainability appraisal
1. Introduction
Sustainable development has entered the lexicon of British
planning centre stage. No substantial local or regional
planning document is now complete without mention of
how it seeks to support ‘sustainable development’, often
adopting sets of principles and objectives which might variously
be derived from central government documents,
regional sustainable development frameworks, an authority’s
own deliberations over what it means by sustainable
development, or other sources. Moreover, since the 2004
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, sustainable development
has become a statutory purpose for planning in
England and Wales.
The notion of sustainable development is closely bound
up with a resurgent conWdence within the planning profession
that it has something important and distinctive to contribute
to society—however like so many others the
planning profession remains unclear about what is meant by
sustainable development. This comes in part from the many
ways in which sustainable development can be deWned and
drawn into policy debates: as an abstract concept and set of
related principles, as a policy agenda, and as a source of
legitimacy for diVerent types of policy (Blowers and Evans,
1997; Haughton and Counsell, 2004a). For planners there
are the added problems of how to mediate in debates
between groups which use diVerent understandings of ‘sustainable
development’ to legitimate their particular views of
how policies should be developed (Vigar and Healey, 2002;
Rydin et al., 2003; Haughton and Counsell, 2004b).
In this respect it is important to note that despite strong
eVorts to provide clear national guidance on what is meant
by sustainable development, in practice the term remains
subject to widely varying interpretations. Even within government
it is possible to argue that diVerent departments
have tended to prioritise speciWc aspects of the sustainability
agenda. Planners have been drawn to focus on the environment
and the participation aspects of the social dimension
to sustainability, the Environment Agency has focused
heavily on the environmental dimensions, and the Treasury
and Department of Trade and Industry have sought to
ensure economic growth considerations are always to the
fore. It is worth noting too that running parallel to the
requirement to put sustainable development at the heart of
the planning system has been a direction that greater transparency
and engagement with stakeholders is required.
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: d.counsell@hull.ac.uk (D. Counsell), g.f.haughton@
hull.ac.uk (G. Haughton).
922 D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931
In this paper we draw on the literature on governmentality
to focus on the role of sustainability appraisal in
regional planning, using the theory to interrogate the competing
rationales for how the technique has been introduced
and used. Sustainability appraisal has emerged as a
key technique in ensuring planning documents attend to
sustainable development (Smith and Sheate, 2001a,b; Short
et al., 2004; Benson and Jordan, 2004). We focus here on
the introduction of sustainability appraisal into Regional
Planning Guidance (RPG), the policy arena with which its
formative stages are most associated. It is worth noting that
sustainability appraisal was advocated by central government
in the late 1990s as a means of assessing both RPG
and Regional Economic Strategies (RES), with the
approach subsequently being adopted by those preparing
development plans, regional housing strategies, regional
waste strategies and others.
The main aim of this article is to interrogate critically the
use of sustainability appraisal as a means of mediating
between alternative understandings of sustainable development.
As part of this we use ideas of governmentality to
examine how new political subjectivities are being created,
involving analysis of how stakeholders in planning are
being drawn into using and supporting a particular
approach to sustainable development. We take issue with
some aspects of the governmentality approach, arguing
that it needs to engage more with the ways in which actors
shape and resist their incorporation into processes for legitimating
state goals. In undertaking this work we engaged in
an analysis of published regional planning and related sustainability
appraisal documents, plus 121 semi-structured
face-to-face interviews undertaken with policy makers and
stakeholders across the eight English regions in 2000–2003.
The interviews spanned diVerent stages in the policymaking
process in the eight regions. In most cases the
interviewees were policy makers in central and local government,
government agencies, regional bodies, pro-development
interests and environmental NGOs.
2. Sustainable development, knowledges and planning
2.1. Competing sustainabilities
The UK government was one of the most enthusiastic
proponents of sustainable development at the Rio Earth
Summit in 1992, attracted by the possibilities that it oVered
for developing a growth-oriented, market-friendly approach
to resolving environmental problems. Since those early days
when environmental issues tended to dominate discussions
about sustainable development, oYcial thinking in the UK
government has moved on markedly, shifting in 1999
towards an emphasis on the so-called three pillars of sustainable
development, that is its social, economic and environmental
dimensions.
The oYcial UK government deWnition in A better quality
of life: a strategy for sustainable development in the United
Kingdom argued that sustainable development involved
“ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for
generations to come” (DETR, 1999, p. 8). Backing up this
deWnition, the strategy identiWed four objectives, which it
said must be met at the same time:
• social progress which recognises the needs of everyone;
• eVective protection of the environment;
• prudent use of natural resources;
• maintenance of high and stable levels of economic
growth.
This deWnition of sustainable development is important
for its emphasis on the need to develop an integrated
approach to the four policy objectives. As such the oYcial
version of sustainable development promoted so-called
‘win-win-win’ solutions, that is those policies which can
provide beneWts for all four of the sustainable development
objectives without diminishing any of them. So for instance,
environmental gain should not be at the expense of economic
growth, and vice versa. To ensure that sustainable
development is adopted in various oYcial strategic documents
at regional level, it is expected to be explicitly taken
into account in RESs (DETR, 1998) and RPGs1
(DETR,
2000a; ODPM, 2004). Addressing concerns that the diVerent
sectoral strategies might conXict over how they interpret
sustainable development, the government introduced a
requirement that all regions should provide overarching
‘vision’ documents setting out objectives for sustainable
development called Regional Sustainable Development
Frameworks (RSDFs). The intention was that these would
reXect nationally agreed objectives but allow for regional
interpretation (DETR, 2000c).
Looking at recent planning policy we can begin to see
how central government planners have sought to ensure
that others follow the move towards a more integrated
approach to sustainable development, rather than prioritizing
for instance its environmental dimension. Central to this
has been the process of codifying agreements on deWnitions
and objectives within each RSDF. All other regional strategies
are in turn expected to pay heed to the RSDF objectives,
including those for economic development and for
planning. To ensure this happens both RESs and RPGs are
subject to a process of scrutiny against sustainability objectives—sustainability
appraisal. The objectives-led approach
of sustainability appraisal immediately highlights the importance
of debates about how sustainable development objectives
get chosen and used. It is in this context that we argue
that it is important to examine debates about the choices of
tools and their mode of implementation in order to understand
how the parameters of acceptable practice are shaped
in diVerent sectors, not least planning.
In 2005 the Government issued a new national sustainable
development strategy which moved away from the
1
RPG was replaced by statutory Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS) in
the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act.
D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931 923
objectives-led approach to sustainable development, albeit
without speciWcally disgarding it. In essence the old deWnition
of sustainable development failed to provide an adequate
basis for achieving clarity in how to translate its
ideals into practice. This was especially the case in regional
planning, where continuing confusion and controversy
often meant that even after protracted wrangling in the
production of draft regional planning guidance, it was ultimately
left to central government to arbitrate on diYcult
decisions.
2.2. Governmentality, technologies and planning
Looking at this issue at a more abstract level the choice
of planning tools is also one of choice about diVering professional
and scientiWc knowledges, philosophies and political
priorities. Seen in this context debates about the selection,
reWnement and application of new policy tools necessarily
also reXect wider debates about the role of planning and
planners in society, including their roles as brokers of
knowledge, guardians of scientiWc protocols and facilitators
of participative planning processes. There has been considerable
work already on how planners develop techniques for
making better decisions, notably exploring alternative ‘technical-rational’
and ‘deliberative’ models, although as Owens
et al. (2004) argue this has often tended towards an unhelpful
polarisation between these approaches. In their overview
of appraisal techniques, Owens et al. (2004) argue that in
analysing how appraisal is undertaken we need to examine
more carefully not only the processes of appraisal, but also
how appraisal inXuences policy outcomes. Their work also
highlights the need to focus on the role of diVerent kinds of
knowledge and when and how these are used within the
process.
In setting out to examine appraisal systems we wanted to
see whether the governmentality literature, drawing on
some of the later work of Foucault and his interpreters
(Foucault, 1991; Dean, 1999), might help us to move on
from current debates on technical-rationality and deliberative
planning. This is not a hugely radical departure, as governmentality
has been of growing interest to some planners
(see Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 2002), whilst a number
of recent contributions to regionalism debates have
examined the notion of governmentality as a way of analysing
the political rationalities of government (Murdoch,
2000; Painter, 2002). Foucault’s notion of governmentality
centred on how individual and collective actions are conducted,
involving “a concern with institutions, apparatuses
and knowledges, which constitute, regulate and survey the
political domain” (Ashenden, 1999, p. 152). Governmentality
is a term which is intended to embrace a much wider
range of actors than simply the state, though in his later
work Foucault did begin to place more emphasis on the
role of the state in establishing or legitimating systems and
rules of conduct (Jessop, 1990; Murdoch, 2000). As he put it
himself: “governmentality is at once internal and external
to the state, since it is the tactics of the government itself
which make possible the continual deWnition and redeWnition
of what is within the competence of the state and what
is not” (Foucault, 1991, p. 103). There is a link here to Jessop’s
(1990) work on the strategic selectivity of the state, in
which he emphasises the crucial role of the state in selecting
and giving legitimacy to institutions involved in new governance
structures, dictating the policy remit of diVerent institutions,
their need to work with others and not least their
level of resourcing.
In contrast to Jessop’s emphasis on state selectivities,
however, Foucault’s approach suggests a concern with
identifying the wider ranges of practices by which we are
governed and govern ourselves. The art of government in
this sense is not so much the way in which the state enforces
its rules, but rather the more generalised construction of
rationalities, knowledges and norms which inXuence people’s
behaviour and practices. This approach involves
examining the critiques deployed in identifying failures of
approach, how the objects of control are identiWed, and the
instruments and technologies initiated in pursuit of objectives
(Dean, 1999). This suggests an analytical focus on how
the political subjectivities of actors are inXuenced such
that they in eVect internalise the goals of the state. Governmentality
emphasises how governments exert control at
arms-length through various mechanisms for shaping the
behaviour of others, and that typically the state, and the
actors incorporated into the routines it sanctions, derive
legitimacy from each other.
This approach is helpful in thinking about how governments
and others involved in contemporary governance
structures construct dominant political and administrative
rationalities (Murdoch, 2000), drawing on particular
‘scientiWc’ knowledges and discourses. In particular it
prompts consideration of the devices, mechanisms and
technologies of government itself in pursuing its political
ends, including how these are devised and deployed in
ways which draw on particular understandings of the
scope, type and inter-connectedness of the issues which
they are seeking to address.
Our starting point is that both ‘integration’ and ‘sustainable
development’ are contestable ideas, whose adoption
and deWnition will lead to particular policies each with distinctive
sets of winners and losers. But it is not enough simply
to regard these issues as contested—rather we need to
examine how they are argued over and then deployed tactically.
For instance, it is possible to argue that ‘policy integration’
and ‘sustainable development’ have been absorbed
into the dominant discourses of RPGs in ways which have
reinforced rather than upset the status quo (Haughton and
Counsell, 2004b), in a similar pattern to how equal opportunities
issues came to be absorbed into, and rendered
uncontroversial within, regional economic strategies
(Painter, 2002). More critically, we want to argue that governmentality
work needs to be made more sensitive to
issues of ‘agency.’ In particular our analysis questions
whether it is helpful to simply assert that the ‘technology’
of sustainability appraisal allows the state to govern at
924 D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931
arms length through shaping how others behave, a classic
governmentality interpretation, when in practice actors
actively resist and shape how the technique is deWned and
utilised.
Taking a slightly diVerent perspective, Murdoch (2000)
argues that plans themselves represent a particular form of
technology which can become the sites of challenge over
opposing rationalities. Developing this further, arguments
about the adoption of particular planning techniques can
also be seen as being about how to ensure that decisions
are taken in line with prevailing rationalities. Debates over
the choice of planning techniques can present an appearance
of professional objectivity but they represent more
than this since the techniques also help in “actually constituting
the domains that are to be governed” (Murdoch,
2000, p. 513). In the case of sustainability appraisal, for
instance, it can be seen not simply as a means of policing
whether the preferred view of sustainable development was
incorporated into regional planning documents, but also as
part of a wider rethinking of how to deal with social and
economic issues in regional plans. It was not simply an
enforcement technique for the pre-existing planning system
in other words, it was part of the whole apparatus of
rethinking the boundaries of what constitutes the legitimate
domain of regional planning at a particular moment
in time. This may mean that when we witness debates
ostensibly about the legitimacy of sustainability appraisal,
they may also be about the legitimacy of planning expanding
its boundaries to take on a greater role in social and
economic issues.
3. Planning tools for engaging with sustainable development
So far we have argued that by deWning the parameters in
which a tool is used, those responsible for developing,
adapting and adopting it are drawing boundaries on what
constitutes legitimate policy concern. Put simply, a tool
which only looks at environmental issues, without attention
to social and economic considerations, is taking a particular
view which assumes that environmental issues can be
understood in isolation of their wider socio-economic context.
Likewise, an approach which measures economic
growth without taking account of environmental implications
such as depletion of the environmental asset base, is
adopting a particular set of assumptions about what constitutes
‘sustainable’ growth. Seen from this perspective,
debates over the adoption and adaptation of planning techniques
should be seen for what they are, not simply a dry
discussion about ‘neutral’ mechanisms or technologies, but
rather manifestations of how planning is constituted as a
political domain. As such debates about technical developments
can help reveal how political objectives become
incorporated within planning techniques.
The renewed interest in developing new planning techniques
as a response to the emerging agenda of sustainable
development has resulted in planners from both central and
local government drawing on concepts and techniques from
other disciplines. Carrying capacity, for example, was borrowed
from the biological sciences. The hope was that new
techniques would emerge which would help rationalise often
subjective deliberations about issues such as ‘thresholds’ and
‘criticality’ in deWning which aspects of nature should be
protected and which aspects could be traded against economic
and social gains (Owens, 1994; Jacobs, 1997; Rydin,
1998). Throughout the 1990s, both in public and in private,
planners were engaged in some intensive debates about concepts
such as carrying capacity, environmental capital and
environmental assessment. Despite considerable development
work and attempts to use them in plan preparation,
the eVective operationalisation of these techniques often
Xoundered because of basic deWnitional problems. For
instance, the concept of ‘critical natural capital’ (CNC) can
be readily understood and accepted, namely that there are
aspects of nature which are so important that they should be
inviolable in the face of society’s needs for development.
However, it is an entirely more contentious matter to decide
precisely which aspects of nature should be classiWed as
CNC (Gillespie and Shepherd, 1995). It has proven equally
diYcult to identify how much development can take place
without altering the essential character of a locality or
destroying the biodiversity value of a habitat. These diYculties
led to doubts being expressed about whether CNC and
thresholds actually exist in nature, and even if they do
whether they can be deWned through the application of supposedly
‘objective’ techniques. The increasingly prevalent
view is that the deWnition of which aspects of nature should
be protected ultimately requires political processes involving
a variety of value judgements (Healey and Shaw, 1994;
Jacobs, 1997).
Some of the more radical attempts to operationalise new
environmental techniques have been abandoned, partly
because of these diYculties and also because sustainable
development was itself redeWned by central government
(see above). The government preference for an ‘integrated’
approach to sustainable development has seen a major
reconsideration of the preferred tools for examining sustainable
development in planning. Under pressure to conform
to the oYcial deWnition of sustainable development
we have seen environmental capital becoming subsumed
into the more broadly constituted concept of ‘quality of life
capital’ (CAG Consultants and LUC, 1997, 2001) and environmental
appraisal into sustainability appraisal.
This process is not without its critics, something which
is particularly evident in debates about the government’s
approach to strategic environmental assessment (SEA).
The technique of environmental appraisal or assessment
has been used by planners for over ten years, but has risen
in importance since the European Commission made SEA
a mandatory process for those plans and programmes
likely to have a signiWcant eVect on the environment. The
SEA Directive came into force in 2004 in the UK, and
since then, plans for land use, transport, energy, economic
development and other areas must be scrutinised through a
process of SEA (Short et al., 2004). As its name suggests,
D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931 925
SEA is largely environmental in its remit, although not
exclusively. But for the UK government with its preference
for an integrated approach to sustainable development the
SEA process raised some real concerns that it would lead
to environmental issues being dominant in plan considerations,
unless the status of economic and social issues
could be raised by using SEA in tandem with an enhanced
form of the government’s preferred evaluation technique,
sustainability appraisal (Benson and Jordan, 2004). So
shortly after the SEA Directive came into force, draft guidance
was issued by the government on incorporating SEA
into the broader process of sustainability appraisal, initially
for Regional Spatial Strategies (and Local Development
Frameworks) (ODPM, 2004). In an article in The
Guardian newspaper at the same time, the lobby group
Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE)
argued that:
In England ministers have been keen to turn the
directive into a sustainability appraisal that examines
economic, social and environmental considerations
together. The language of politicians is of “balance”
between these priorities, which traditionally has
meant that the environment almost always loses out
(Hamblin, 2004, p. 13).
So whilst the adoption of sustainability appraisal has
found widespread support within planning circles precisely
because it ensures social and economic considerations are
not residualised, there are also concerns amongst some key
agencies that it can lead to environmental issues being
deprivileged relative to other techniques.
4. Sustainability appraisal as process
As we noted earlier, there has been a long-standing concern
within the planning theory literature about technicalrational
approaches to planning implementation, with its
focus on the deployment of expert knowledge and the use
of expert systems within planning decision-making (Owens
et al., 2004). More recently there has been a turn to examining
deliberative forms of planning, involving greater attention
to creating the conditions for more productive
engagement between planners and a wider range of stakeholders,
bringing a range of alternative knowledges to bear
in arriving at planning decisions. We do not intend to go
over this fairly well-worn set of debates here, rather we simply
wish to emphasise that they represent an on-going academic
and practitioner concern with how planning tools
are devised, adopted and adapted, and with who wins and
who loses when diVerent tools are chosen. Drawing on the
work of Owens et al. (2004), we structure our discussion of
the early application of sustainability appraisal here Wrst in
terms of process, second in terms of outcomes.
Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) documents were
produced for each of the eight standard regions in England
from the early 1990s until they were subsumed into
Regional Spatial Strategies in 2004. Each regional document
was intended to provide a strategic framework for the development
of policies in structure and local plans. In a substantial
revision of the arrangements introduced in 1998 (DETR,
2000a), some of the criticisms of the Wrst round of the system
(see Baker, 1998; Baker et al., 1999; Kitchen, 1999; Roberts
and Lloyd, 1999) were addressed. In particular the second
round of RPG preparation (post-1998) sought to make the
process more transparent, involving a wider range of
regional stakeholders and subjecting contested matters in
the draft documents to a formal public examination before a
panel of inspectors. This new approach to RPG preparation
also incorporated a commitment to securing sustainable
development, speciWcally involving a requirement to undertake
sustainability appraisal of RPG, plus detailed guidance
on how this should be carried out (DETR, 2000b). The aim
of sustainability appraisal, according to central government
advice, is to ensure that consideration of sustainable development
objectives is ingrained into the strategy-making
process, inXuencing it at all stages (DETR, 2000a; see also
ODPM, 2004).
Sustainability appraisal enjoyed a lot of support from
central government planners, one of whom told us that for
him sustainability appraisal was important because it
“should stop Regional Planning Bodies ducking the diYcult
issues”. In this view the role of sustainability appraisal
was to bring ‘discipline’ to regional planning negotiations,
but in the benign sense of requiring those involved to move
on from the previous round of RPGs which had widely
been criticised as bland and avoiding confronting diYcult
choices. The early experience of sustainability appraisal by
civil servants in regional government oYces tended to be
rather unsatisfactory, though our later interviews reveal a
growing support for the technique. So one oYcial early on
told us that they felt the approach was still “wallpaper covering
the cracks” (interview SE4).2
In another region an
oYcial told us that “It felt like we had to do one [sustainability
appraisal]. So we did one. Ticked it oV! But it had
only a marginal inXuence” (EM10).
These were perhaps not unexpected comments from
regions which had been early in the process of using sustainability
appraisal and were struggling to Wnd ways of
making it work. This was especially so since several regions
did not have access to the Government’s ‘Good Practice
Guide’ (DETR, 2000b) when their Wrst sustainability
appraisals were carried out, simply because they were
already well advanced in the process of RPG preparation
and did not wish to be held back. In consequence the methodologies
used and the stages at which they were undertaken
varied considerably across the regions.
It is worth noting here that the experience of sustainability
appraisal in planning has been expanding throughout
2
Interviews are coded by regional initials and a number for each interview.
Thus SE4 refers to our 4th interview in the South East region. Fuller
details of the sectoral background and timing of interviews can be found
in Appendix in Haughton and Counsell (2004b).
926 D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931
the last decade, with a survey in 2001 suggesting that 91%
of local authorities in the UK had carried out at least one
environmental or sustainability appraisal (Therival and
Minas, 2002). Eighteen sustainability appraisals related to
regional planning in England had been formally published
in the period up to March 2004 (Fig. 1).
Stakeholder unhappiness with sustainability appraisal
practice was also generally strongest in those regions where
RPG preparation had progressed to an advanced stage
before the government’s guidance on sustainability
appraisal was issued. In these ‘pioneer’ regions the sustainability
appraisal process was coming in at the latter stages
of the plan-making process and therefore appeared to be
being used to justify retrospectively some of the major decisions
on strategic ‘options’. For instance one environmental
campaigner commented “My feeling is that it was produced
almost as an afterthought anticipating the criticism that it
was going to getƒ It wasn’t integral to the process” (interview
EM4). This was fairly typical of a strand of thinking
which saw the early phase of sustainability appraisal in particular
as representing a political tactic as much as an
objective planning tool, a process for buying some goodwill
by at least going through the motions of ensuring sustainability
was taken into account in decision-making.
As we might have expected given the long tradition of
technical-rational thinking in planning, several stakeholders
were concerned about the lack of scientiWc rigour in sustainability
appraisals. Distinctive among these voices were
those planners and environmentalists who hoped that sustainability
appraisal oVered the prospect of developing
politically neutral, scientiWcally objective methodologies
which would make planning decisions more ‘rational’.
According to a planner working for a national lobby group
for instance “These appraisals are just tick boxes and lack
critical rigour” (SE8). In similar vein a government conservation
agency bemoaned that they were concerned about
sustainability appraisal in part because “It’s a weak scienceƒ
the science is still very crude and it needs a lot of
reWnement” (SE11). An environmental NGO in the North
West went further than this, arguing that “QuantiWcation is
the next step. At the moment sustainability appraisal still
involves a Wnger in the air approachƒ” (NW1).
By contrast, and perhaps not too surprisingly, prodevelopment
lobby groups felt that sustainability appraisal
had a very clear political objective, and it was for this reason
that they wanted a clearer scientiWc basis. One group
told us that it presented a world through ‘green coloured’
spectacles” (WM5). Another argued that: “No one seems
to know where they are going on this, there is no science,
it’s just best guess” (EM8). Perhaps most forlornly, one
lobby group representative told us that “I characteriseƒ
trying to get to grips with it as wrestling with jelly” (YH10).
What we can begin to see here is evidence of how debates
ostensibly about sustainability appraisal seem to be rooted
in much deeper concerns about how it was being used to
address the underlying politics, and whether it was indeed
breaking down prejudices by providing impartial information.
This links to the technique’s slippery qualities, as
being both partly ‘expert’ and ‘participative’ and also being
neither. It is not a technique which requires a scientiWc
qualiWcation necessarily, unlike say environmental impact
assessment, nor is it truly open and participative. Rather it
is dependent on the interplay between the ‘experts’ who
undertake the appraisal and those involved in setting the
terms of reference and also in responding to its Wndings.
Sustainability appraisal then lies at the interface of planners,
politicians and various groups claiming to represent
‘public opinion.’
Fig. 1. Sustainability appraisals within RPG, 1997–March 2004. Source up: up-dated from Counsell and Haughton (2002).
Region Stage(s) at which Sustainability Appraisal
published
Date published
North East – Draft RPG
– Proposed Changes to RPG
Dec. 1999
May 2001
East Anglia/ East of
England
– Draft RPG*
– Panel Report
– Draft Review
Dec. 1997
Sept. 1999
Jan. 2003 (draft)
East Midlands – Draft RPG
– Proposed Changes to RPG
– Draft Review
Sept. 1999
Feb. 2001
June 2003
South East – Draft RPG
– Proposed changes to RPG
Dec. 1998
May 2000
South West – Draft RPG**
– Proposed Changes to RPG
0ct. 1999
Feb. 2001
West Midlands – Pre-consultation draft RPG May 2001
Yorkshire and the
Humber
– Draft RPG**
– Proposed changes to RPG
– Draft Review
Oct. 1999
Mar. 2001
June 2003
North West – Draft RPG**
– Proposed Changes to RPG
July 2000
Jan. 2003
* Produced as a Environmental Appraisal (EA) under the previous arrangements for RPG.
** Produced in two or more stages
D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931 927
Whilst recognising some of the weakness, those involved
in commissioning or carrying out the sustainability
appraisals tended to be more positive about its contribution.
We interviewed one of the main consultants involved
in the early stages of devising and applying sustainability
appraisal techniques, who felt strongly that it was important
to be realistic in assessing progress with the technique:
Sustainability appraisal is not going to change the
worldƒ it’s about keeping on poking people in the
right directionƒ In this round of RPG it’s been like
we’ve doing it with of sticking plaster and twigs. It’s
been make do and mend hasn’t it (SW9)?
Similar sentiments were aired by those working for the
regional planning team in the East Midlands: “It’s a tool to
an end. It was used to improve the draft RPG which came
out, and that’s what it was there for (EM9).” In Yorkshire
and the Humber sustainability appraisal was interesting in
that it was undertaken using the same approach and the
same consultants for both RPG and the RES. Recognizing
that the process still needed reWning, it was nonetheless
stoutly defended by one of those involved: “My point is
that it’s not perfect, it needs revision, but the process is a
good one (YH3)”. Another oYcial from Government OYce
for Yorkshire and Humber went further and told us that
sustainability appraisal “has done more than anything else
for practical sustainability, in terms of showing where the
weaknesses and strengths wereƒ It was all heading for the
‘too hard to solve’ shelf (YH5).”
There are important questions too about who should
carry out sustainability appraisals and who they report to.
In essence these are questions about the independence of
the process and the overt and more subliminal pressures
brought to bear in setting the terms of study and reporting
mechanisms. As three people involved in regional planning
in diVerent regions told us
There are some cases where [the consultants] have
come to a view on what the eVect of a policy will be
which may not be everybody’s view (NW2).
[On the consultants’ report] There’s a lot of value
judgements. But the question at the end of the day is
who makes the value judgements (YH17).
Some of the Round Table didn’t agree with what [the
consultants] did. FoE for example were pro new settlements
whilst CPRE wouldn’t touch them with a
barge pole (SW8).
Undertaking sustainability appraisal in-house also
attracted criticism, for instance in the West Midlands one
business lobby group forcibly argued that “Sustainability
appraisal is an absolute joke, just three oYcers doing it on a
part time basisƒ Lots of good intentions but shallow as
hell (WM5).” Calls for more public participation in the
appraisal process tended to attract concern from those
most closely involved that it would slow the process up and
leave it as a surrogate for participation in RPG itself rather
than as a separate input to the process. One consultant for
instance felt that “I am not sure that you can have consultation
on an appraisal. I think it would be unending
(SW9),” whilst a Government OYce oYcial told us that
“What you want is to get it right rather than making sure
everyone feels they have had a say (SW7).” This said, there
has been a growing trend towards public engagement in
sustainability appraisal over time, for instance in Yorkshire
and the Humber where diVerent groups have the opportunity
to help steer sustainability appraisal and members of
the Regional Assembly’s various Commissions get invited
to comment on drafts.
What we can begin to see from these diverse viewpoints
and experiences is how misguided it was to expect planning
techniques such as sustainability appraisal to provide an
‘objective’ or ‘scientiWc’ approach. Clearly there is scope for
techniques to introduce an element of transparency and
objectivity, but ultimately there are limits to this since planning
decisions always result from social and political
choices over the choice of technique and also the regard
paid to the outputs of these techniques (Jacobs, 1997). What
we can see in the discussion so far is some of the teething
pains of sustainability appraisal, an approach which represents
a hybrid form of planning technique, somewhere
between the technical-rational and deliberative planning
approaches, and perhaps therefore something which proponents
of both are having to come to terms with.
At one level, sustainability appraisal did reXect some of
the governmentality thesis’ concerns with how particular
techniques can be used to deWne the terms of particular
debates—in this case by normalising the government’s deWnition
of sustainable development and its four main objectives.
But it only did this to a certain degree. Sustainability
appraisal directed discussion into areas which Wtted the
government’s agenda, but it did not prove to be straightforwardly
either a ‘self-policing’ or indeed a ‘disciplining’ governmentality
tool. Rather, it was inserted into already
highly politicised debates and seen for what it was, a way of
seeking to Xush out political disagreements. But as we will
see in the next section, sustainability appraisal was rarely
used to impose a solution or even to suggest solutions,
something which frustrated some stakeholders.
5. How sustainability appraisal inXuences outcomes
At we noted earlier Owens et al. (2004) argue that it is
essential to examine how appraisal inXuences policy outcomes.
In some respects, it is too early to begin to do this,
since regional strategies need to feed into local planning
documents in order to achieve many of their goals, and this
takes time. But it is possible to examine whether the process
of sustainability appraisal was perceived by planning stakeholders
as leading to better strategy documents and better
policies, in terms of highlighting and addressing key ten-
sions.
The results of our interviews suggest that whilst sustainability
appraisal has succeeded in ensuring that eVects on
928 D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931
all four of the Government’s objectives for sustainable
development were considered within RPG, many tensions
between objectives remained unresolved. In this respect the
interviews revealed widespread concerns that sustainability
appraisal was proving more successful in identifying conXicts
than in leading policy makers towards resolving them.
An environmental NGO in the East Midlands for instance
felt that whilst “They did go through the processƒ some of
the key Wndings, which were real, were totally brushed aside
(EM3).
In the North East three major environmental NGOs all
argued that in various ways sustainability appraisal had
raised important issues but that they had been disappointed
with the response. So one group expressed concern that “It
highlighted conXicts between policies in RPG but there is
no attempt to take things forward and resolve those conXicts”
(NE12). In similar vein the second group argued that
“There is no sign that it actually made any diVerence
(NE8)”. The third group were unsurprisingly adamant that
We weren’t the only organisation querying the fact
that the sustainability appraisal actually suggested
that parts of RPG were unsustainableƒ There was
never any commitment from [Regional Planning
Body] that in the light of the sustainability appraisal
they were going to change RPG, they were still trying
to defend it (NE10).
There were particular concerns expressed by some people
we interviewed about the reluctance in sustainability
appraisals to make strong recommendations on any environment
versus employment conXicts that had been identiWed
between policies in RPG. Whilst it was recognised that
it is not the intended role of sustainability appraisal to
resolve such issues it was nevertheless felt that they could
have given a stronger direction to policy makers about the
potential eVects of these conXicts. This led to a concern that
sometimes it was not clear what the implications of particular
Wndings were. One bemused government agency in the
North West for instance told us that the regional development
agency and regional planning body “have both been
quoting it at each other to defend opposite positions. So I
am not sure it has actually clariWed the situation (NW8).”
This relates to another set of considerations about
whether the methodology itself provided enough clear
information to be helpful for those wanting to advocate
speciWc changes to RPG. The early sustainability appraisals
in particular tended to be a form of tick box approach for
checking whether a particular policy promoted some aspect
of sustainable development, ran counter to it or was
broadly neutral. Responding to criticisms of the limited
information provided, later appraisals tended to give fuller
textual information justifying most judgements. But even
when this was done, as one person succinctly put it “It’s
how you weight the ticks and crosses in the matrix that’s
the problem” (SW12).
There was a concern too with a perceived lack of transparency
when it came to how or whether the conXicts identiWed
by sustainability appraisal were subsequently dealt
with. In the East Midlands for instance one Government
Agency argued that “they just came up with some phrases
that allowed them to leave things as they were because
overall it was not too bad” (EM5).
Some of these concerns about transparency can be usefully
illustrated from the early experience of the Yorkshire
and the Humber region, where sustainability appraisal followed
the national guidance more closely than elsewhere.
Transparency in draft RPG for Yorkshire and the Humber
was addressed by listing the changes made in response to
the appraisal at the end of each chapter. These chapter end
notes refer, for example, to an extensive re-writing of the
Regional Spatial Strategy chapter of RPG to address a
number of issues raised in the appraisal. On the other hand
the chapter on employment land was edited to reXect the
sustainability appraisal; the housing chapter was not signiWcantly
altered as it was endorsed by the sustainability
appraisal; and the appraisal was taken into account in drafting
the chapter on heritage and natural resources (the chapter
was incomplete at the time of the original sustainability
appraisal). These changes were criticised with some justiWcation
as being superWcial by some stakeholders, as for the
most part they were changes in wording rather than intent:
I saw no signiWcant change to RPG before and after
the initial appraisalƒ Well perhaps no change is too
strong, but there was no material change. The big
issues were side-stepped! (YH11).
As an example, the sustainability appraisal identiWed a
conXict between attracting inward investment and improving
environmental quality, suggesting that the demands of
large investors may result in the development of sensitive
greenWeld or car-based sites. The response in the draft RPG
was “to stress the sequential approach: urban and brown
Weld sites have preference, and new sites identiWed only if
the need for a balanced portfolio cannot be met from existing
allocations” (Yorkshire and the Humber Regional
Assembly, 1999, p. 35). This technocratic response perhaps
served to deal with the conXict at a superWcial level, but did
little towards resolving the real tension between policies
identiWed in the appraisal. Tensions were Xagged-up in successive
iterations of the sustainability appraisal between
possible greenWeld employment sites, in parts of the South
Yorkshire Objective 1 (EU regeneration priority) area and
around the Humber Estuary (the Humber Trade Zone),
and policies on biodiversity and conservation. However
these tensions still remain largely unresolved, to the continuing
concern of environmental bodies in the region. Indeed
it is diYcult to see how they could be completely resolved,
without a reassessment of political priorities in Yorkshire
and the Humber, something way beyond the scope of a sustainability
appraisal.
Sustainability appraisal has perhaps succeeded more in
highlighting the political nature of planning decisions,
rather than de-politicising decisions through its supposed
objectivity. And whilst Wne at one level, it left the value of
D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931 929
the whole process open to some dispute. For instance in
Yorkshire and the Humber one Government Agency
oYcial felt that “There has been a tendency for politicians
in south and west Yorkshireƒ to regard anything that
smacks of environmental assessment or restraints as being
a bar on jobs (YH16).” Backing this up, a local government
planner in West Yorkshire argued that political input
meant that “Some of the sustainability workƒwent down
like a lead balloon. People were saying ‘it’s alright getting
into all this academic theory, but we want to know precisely
what you mean and what the solutions are (YH14).” In this
sense, sustainability appraisal may have helped Xush tensions
out and place them in the political arena, but this does
not necessarily appear to have made things any easier for
the political process.
6. Conclusions
Sustainability appraisal has now been assimilated into
the core of regional planning processes and practices,
reXecting the concerns of a government keen to regulate
planning according to its own view of sustainable development.
We have sought to analyse this in terms of debates on
governmentality and its associated ‘technologies’. Focusing
on this emerging technique, we have examined how debates
about its adoption have embodied competing underlying
philosophies and professional and scientiWc knowledges,
notably involving selectivities in choosing the sustainability
approach rather than alternatives such as strategic environmental
assessment. This approach allowed us to examine a
complex rewriting of the policy architecture of planning in
ways which normalised a particular deWnition of sustainable
development, involving a rewriting of the national strategy
for sustainable development, the creation of Regional Sustainable
Development Frameworks, the requirements to
integrate policies across diVerent sectoral strategies and
their respective stakeholders, plus the development of the
sustainability appraisal technique as a way of tying all these
together.
The analysis has interrogated the complex nature of
some of the disputes over the general principles of sustainability
appraisal, and identiWed some early operational
diYculties in implementing the approach. Of these diYculties
perhaps the most important is that sustainability
appraisal has not developed as a ‘neutral’, ‘scientiWc’ or
more ‘objective’ technique, and instead actually returned
decision making to the political process. What it has
achieved, alternatively, is a greater transparency in the decision-making
process and, where sustainability appraisal
has been run in conjunction with stakeholders groups, it
has increased the legitimacy of the resulting Wndings. In
governmentality terms then we can see that the combination
of the new metrics of sustainability and the way in
which key groups have bought into the process, has worked
to enhance the capacity of the state to ‘govern’ sustainability
within both the planning process and those policy
spheres tied into it through processes of ‘policy integration’.
The participants in eVect could be said to be reinforcing the
legitimacy of the government’s approach to sustainable
development as well as the technique itself, whilst simultaneously
enhancing their own political status in relation to
the state. Yet as we have seen, the key actors are not passive
in how they have engaged with sustainability appraisal and
have sought to variously, shape, contest and selectively
utilise the technique in ways which suit their particular
purposes.
As part of this early experience of sustainability
appraisal there appears to be a growing awareness of the
problems about assuming neutrality and objectivity in
technical approaches, not least as problems are exposed
during public examinations and the like. Or to put it
another way, the subjects of ‘governmentality’ are not perhaps
the unwitting dupes that naïve readings of the theory
might suggest. Indeed, governmentality is weak in its treatment
of ‘agency’, which is problematic given that, as we
have seen here, those who are involved with sustainability
appraisal argue vehemently about its underlying philosophies
and biases, and seek to unpack and expose them in
the form of continuing critique. As part of this critique they
are also contesting the tool’s use in redeWning the boundaries
of the planning system itself, as it seeks to become
more integrated with other decision-making processes.
Stakeholders engage with sustainability appraisal so far as
it either has independent value as an addition to the pool of
knowledge on a subject, or in so far as they feel they can
use it to further their own ends. Sustainability appraisal
then exercises something of the disciplinary eVects suggested
by governmentality, but this should not be overestimated
as it was also powerfully resisted, reworked and
selectively coopted by some fairly sophisticated players in
the planning process.
As a technique, sustainability appraisal ensures that particular
processes are followed and that consideration is
given to the eVects of planning policies on the diVerent facets
of the sustainable development agenda. This is a major
advance which should not be under-estimated, but as our
analysis has sought to reveal, sustainability appraisal is not
itself an objective technique. In fact it is pervaded with
value judgments both in its process and also quite often in
its content. In fact we would go further and argue that
unlike many other planning techniques which have sought
to depoliticise decision making by using more ‘scientiWc’
techniques, sustainability appraisal has instead repoliticised
them, by highlighting where tensions exist but without
oVering to provide solutions. Sustainability appraisal then
has institutionalised and channeled conXicts about sustainability,
without necessarily resolving them. As a result of
the processes involved it could be argued that the capacity
of the state to govern and contain these conXicts is
enhanced, as new subjectivities are formed and with them
the legitimacy of the state is partly at least strengthened.
We can see evidence of these new subjectivities when we
look carefully. At the outset we might have been able to
predict criticisms of the new approach supporting the
930 D. Counsell, G. Haughton / Geoforum 37 (2006) 921–931
government’s weak market based approach towards sustainable
development, with its related concern to avoid prioritizing
any one of the pillars of sustainable development
above the others. Yet intriguingly, for all the problems
which people have pointed to during this research, sustainability
appraisal has proved a fairly resilient technique, garnering
widespread support, including from some
environmental groups. For social interest groups in particular,
the approach represents an important way of starting to
re-orientate plan-making towards a greater awareness of
the importance of social issues in relation to the environment.
In conclusion then, we have perhaps only begun to
see how sustainability appraisal is developing as a planning
technique and we can already see that as people reXect on
these early experiences new reWnements, new subtleties and
new ways of engaging with, or disengaging from, the technique
are emerging. In short, as well as mediating between
diVering knowledges, preferences, priorities and philosophies,
the process of sustainability appraisal is helping generate
new knowledges and understandings of the issues
being debated. As part of this we may be seeing a new faultline
emerge within planning policy, as we come to terms
with the fact that the new modes of deliberative engagement
within the process of sustainability appraisal come
under criticism for failing to result in major changes in policy
direction or in concrete policy outcomes. So whilst sustainability
appraisal has helped to achieve the planning
system’s goal of greater transparency and participation, the
failure to generate an improved capacity to govern economic,
social and environmental conXicts may yet undermine
this achievement.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by ESRC grants R000238368 and
RES000230756. We are extremely grateful to three reviewers
of earlier versions of this paper for their helpful com-
ments.
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