What is this toolkit for?

As part of the Implementation Plan for the Yorkshire and Humber Plan (Regional Spatial Strategy to 2026) local authorities were invited to raise issues on particular policies that they were finding challenging to deliver.  Policy on delivering decentralised, renewable and low carbon energy within new developments was found to be particularly challenging.  There are a number of reasons for this:

• it is a relatively new area of policy,
• Government guidance is changing,
• the requirements of the policy overlap with other regulatory functions e.g. Building Control,
• many officers do not yet have the necessary technical skills to implement the policy,
• there is a lack of evidence at the local level, and 
• preparing Core Strategy policies is challenging and slow.

As a result local planning authorities are increasingly relying on Policy ENV5 in their decision making.

LGYH together with Yorkshire Forward commissioned AECOM to prepare a Renewable Energy Toolkit to help clarify Policy ENV5 and help local authority officers with its delivery.  This toolkit is a live resource and will be updated to reflect new guidance, good practice and comments from its users.

This toolkit has been developed to help local authority planning policy and development control officers in Yorkshire and Humber develop and implement policy for decentralised, renewable and low carbon energy in new developments. It introduces the legal requirements, national and regional policy, and the implications for local planning policy and development control.

It is intended to be a living document, which will be updated in response to changes in guidance, emerging good practice and your feedback.

It was funded by Local Government Yorkshire and Humber and Yorkshire Forward, and developed by AECOM