Planning and Rights: Some Repercussions of the Human Rights Act 1998 for the UK

The Human Rights Act 1998 (referred to as HRA 1998) has been heralded as an important development for planning decisions. It has prompted commentators to anticipate many legal challenges to planning decisions using the articles of the HRA. It is argued that the planning system can beneŽ t from such a jolt and the reconsideration it is engendering. The HRA reminds us about something fundamental: how planning may be inadequately re ective towards and effective at addressing power differentials and the breadth of social interests. There is a link to be made explicit between the need to review and reconceptualise planning and the decision-making process that the HRA 1998 may in fact demand. Recent planning policy such as the Urban White Paper (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), 2000) may go some of the way to provide this where the social and the local are brought back into the centre of planning concerns.