Mr. Paul Hogan:

In the opening statement we set out all the things that planning has to do and we mentioned biodiversity as one of the key considerations. This is about trying to reinforce that plan-led concept. I think one of the questions was what national planning statements would do. In an ideal world, where we had the capacity to address biodiversity and greening and so on, we would use the national planning statement process to give effect to those sorts of considerations in the system. We are at present negotiating a nature restoration law in the European context, and that may well have some bearing on how we approach and proceed with this. The way for it to come into the system is through either the national planning framework, as revised, or an appropriately sectorally targeted national planning statement that would then cascade into the development plan system. Within the development plan itself, the move towards those clear strategies is really important. We would then have a strategy for the environment element. The strategy that would address natural and built heritage in the development plan would be the way in which that would come into each local authority's development plan to inform development proposals.