Why use the NEAT Tree in Built Environment professions?
- To move out of our Built Environment silos and start to view the environment and nature more holistically
- To look at the bigger picture (place, people and environment) within which a particular policy, plan, project or programme (PPPP) is set, recognising interrelationships and dependencies
- To identify opportunities to embed nature within decision-making processes to improve growth and development interests
- To secure greater certainty for investment because more complex and longer-term outcomes are clearer and agreed from the start
Reasons to apply the Ecosystem Approach
Placemaking
Managing the built environment is about making better places. This requires thinking more holistically about the kind of places and society we want embedding multiple benefits principles of equity, environmental and social justice.
Duty to Co-operate
The Duty to Co-operate (Localism Act 2011) requires strategic consultation at appropriate spatial and temporal scales within cross-sector partnerships. This goes beyond just housing matters (e.g. health, transport, economic development, landscape, education and social services) and involves considering the full range of ecosystem services.
National Planning Policy Framework
For the first time, current national planning guidance (National Planning Policy Framework paragraph 109) recognises explicitly the value of ecosystem services as part of a strategy for enhanced ecological connectivity.
The Built Environment has different regulatory environments in Scotland and Wales:
