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Who decides how land is used? Collaboration in multifunctional land-use decisions

DOI: https://doi.org/10.58248/PN781 

Land in England is under increasing pressure to deliver multiple objectives, including food production, housing, infrastructure, climate mitigation, nature recovery, water management and recreation. Research shows public expectations of the benefits land should provide have evolved. The government’s non-statutory Land Use Framework (LUF) sets out principles for managing these pressures, including multifunctionality, “right use, right place”, future-ready decisions and adaptive design. 

Delivering these principles in practice would require changes to how land-use decisions are coordinated across existing governance frameworks, with tensions between the LUF and sector-specific decision-making frameworks, including the National Planning Policy Framework. 

Multifunctionality and land-use choices 

Multifunctional land-use means managing land to deliver several benefits at the same time, such as combining food production with carbon storage, biodiversity enhancement or flood mitigation. Land systems are ecologically, socially and economically interconnected, and their benefits and adverse impacts may occur over long timescales.  

Evidence shows some land-use combinations can deliver complementary benefits, while others involve conflicts that cannot be fully resolved. Evidence suggests that the implications of these choices are not always made explicit, so it is not always clear how the benefits and costs of these choices are distributed. Land-use choices, from national to local, are not only economic: they raise social and political questions about who benefits, who bears costs, and how decisions are perceived by affected communities. 

Fragmented governance and system constraints 

Land-use governance in England is fragmented across sectors, scales and institutions, including planning, agriculture, forestry, water, energy and environmental policy. Contributors identified a “missing middle” between national policy ambitions and place-sensitive decision-making. National frameworks set high-level goals, but no single body is responsible for coordinating decisions across sectors at regional scales. 

Land-use decisions are also shaped by wider structural constraints including markets, infrastructure, land tenure and financial incentives. These factors influence the choices of stakeholders and policymakers and how much existing governance arrangements consider multifunctional outcomes. 

Role and benefits of collaborative governance 

Collaborative governance refers to processes and institutional arrangements that bring together public, private and civic stakeholders to address complex problems that cannot be resolved by a single organisation. Studies show it can improve land-use decisions by integrating different perspectives and forms of knowledge, identifying shared interests and multiple benefits, and building stakeholder ownership, trust and legitimacy. Although collaboration can require more time and resources upfront, early participation and well-designed dialogue can reduce later conflict, support implementation and make decisions more durable.  

However, contributors to this briefing said collaboration does not remove the need for accountable choices which involve genuine trade-offs. Collaborative approaches are most effective when embedded within legal and governance frameworks that provide clear responsibilities, resources and links to decision-making and implementation, rather than relying on voluntary or project-based arrangements. 

Conditions shaping collaboration 

Contributors argued the effectiveness of collaborative land-use decision-making depends on five conditions:  

• legal and governance integration 

• participation and inclusion 

• power 

• knowledge 

• process design and facilitation  

These conditions are closely interconnected, and they shape how much stakeholders can meaningfully influence and participate in decisions.  

Effective participation requires involving people early enough to shape agendas, define problems, and influence outcomes, rather than simply respond to proposals. To help build trust and legitimacy in local decision-making, processes need to support inclusive and meaningful participation, address inequalities in resources, power, and influence between participants and facilitate recognition and shared interpretation of different forms of knowledge and evidence.  

Evidence shows that skilled process design and facilitation, sustained funding, clear links to implementation and institutional support are important for managing power dynamics and enabling collaboration across different contexts. 

Supporting collaboration in practice 

Collaborative governance goes beyond consultation by enabling stakeholders to influence decisions. Case studies including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’s (Defra) Landscape Recovery pilots, CLEVER Cities in London, and Connecting the Culm illustrate how this can support locally legitimate and implementable outcomes. However, fragmented governance, short-term funding and limited capacity can hinder wider and longer-term use.  

Evidence shows wider use would require investment in the social and institutional infrastructure that supports collaboration, including support for participation, process design, facilitation and local convening capacity, alongside stronger national-local coordination, clearer institutional responsibilities, sustained funding, stronger links to formal decision-making and implementation, and mechanisms to revisit decisions as conditions and knowledge change. 

Scope of this briefing 

This POSTnote examines how collaborative decision-making can support multifunctional land-use decisions in England, by building on strengths, identifying synergies and seeking new solutions to deliver locally legitimate outcomes across a fragmented policy landscape. 

Acknowledgements  

This briefing was produced in consultation with experts and stakeholders, who are listed at the end of the briefing. POST would like to thank everyone who contributed their expertise to this briefing.