Objective
Encouraging sustainable agricultural practices and the provision of environmental public goods
Description
The Land Use Framework is a non-binding public policy instrument designed to guide land-use planning decisions in England. It aims to balance competing land uses: housing, infrastructure, food production, nature restoration, renewable energy, and climate resilience. It uses spatial optimization modeling and data tools to help decision-makers at local and national levels make science-based choices. In particular, it commits to maintaining England's overall level of food production, protecting the best agricultural land, restoring nature on a large scale, and accelerating the delivery of housing and clean energy infrastructure. The Framework applies to England and will be updated every five years.
Country
United Kingdom
Ladder
National → Local
Nature
Financial
In which law/program is this instrument included?
Post-Brexit agricultural policy
From MLUF to LUF: what remains of multifunctionality?
The initial name of the instrument, the Multifunctional Land Use Framework, explicitly reflected the principle of multifunctionality: the idea that land, especially agricultural land, fulfills several functions simultaneously (producing food, storing carbon, supporting biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, etc.) and that the instrument must address these objectives together without prioritizing any one in particular. The problem is that this balance is difficult to maintain in practice: prioritizing food production weakens biodiversity, while prioritizing carbon storage risks ignoring the people who live and work on this land. Since there is no clear hierarchy among these objectives, an instrument faithful to this principle necessarily allows for compromise rather than a definitive answer. It was under this name, and with this ambition, that the FFCC designed and tested the instrument between 2019 and 2024. The instrument ultimately chosen by the government, the one that was submitted for consultation and then presented to Parliament in 2026, is simply called the Land Use Framework, without the explicit reference to multifunctionality. The institutional name chosen is therefore more restricted than the initial concept supported by the FFCC.
Chronology of the instrument
The Directory of Researchers of the Instrument
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Rami Ben Yohmes
Fieldwork in the United Kingdom (WP2 & WP3) | Research Intern, APIICC | Master's Student, Sciences Po Lyon
