It will be extremely difficult to deliver the multiple products and services the UK needs from its land over the next decade. The UK has finite land resources, and it is unlikely that we will be able to grow enough food, restore biodiversity and nature, de-carbonise the economy and adapt to climate change while also building all the new homes, transport and energy infrastructure the government has promised.

Currently there is no process in England to help prioritise these pressures on land and the decisions that could underpin - or undermine - them. Land is already being purchased by private equity and businesses for particular purposes, such as forestry and carbon sequestration, without any strategic or democratic assessment of whether that land would be better used for other purposes.

It’s time to try a new approach to this kind of decision-making. This briefing sets out the case for a Land Use Framework for England - a process that delivers integrated, collaborative and place-based decision making and optimises multifunctional benefits from land.

We are convening conversations around land use decision-making, and trialling the process in Devon and Cambridgeshire, and we will bring evidence, and questions, from this work into the House of Lords Select Committee on Land Use in England which is due to report by the end of November 2022.

We would warmly welcome submissions to the committee's inquiry which help make the case for a Land Use Framework for England. The deadline for written evidence to the Committee's inquiry is 4pm on Tuesday 26th April 2022.

Download our briefing above, and make your submission here