Preface to Part V

In the preceding Part on regulatory mechanisms we examined the evolution of legal responses to industrial pollution. We observed that although the licence remains at the heart of much environmental regulation, other instruments have become increasingly important. This deployment of a range of instruments is an expression of sustainable development, particularly ideas about extending responsibility for environmental protection to various agencies, individuals and companies. In this Part we similarly explore the range of legal techniques employed in environmental regulation, but in the markedly different context of controls over land use and development. In Chapter 12 we discuss the history of land use controls, before turning in Chapters 13 to 16 to specific areas of current law and policy relating to land use, followed by a contemporary case study on wind farm development in Chapter 17. We emphasise that the focus of this Part of the book is the environmental protection aspects of land use controls, with the objective of exploring the regulatory techniques employed.

The licence remains the ‘instrument of choice’ in town and country planning (discussed in Chapter 13). In contrast, the controls employed to regulate the use of land in ecologically sensitive areas have been more diverse, and generally of a voluntary nature. The key example of this type of control is the management agreement. This form of regulation, commonly used in the case of land designated for special protection (discussed in Chapter 15), tends to support self regulatory and voluntary approaches to regulation.