Policies, Places and Practices: Why Environmental Law Scholars Should Care About the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023

The Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023 has marked major reforms in how planning law legally conceptualises policies, places and practices. These reforms have an impact not only on the scope of planning law but also on the shape of environmental law in England and Wales. In particular, the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Act 2023 changes how different forms of national and local policy legally interact, creates new administrative regulation for protected landscapes and establishes a new framework for environmental impact assessment called the Environmental Outcome Reports. This introduction to the legislation illustrates the importance of understanding the planning law reform for environmental law scholarship more generally.