The British Property Federation has today warned that local authorities lack planning and regeneration skills that will be needed in the wake of regional planning targets and regional development agencies.

The BPF said that few councils have the “full range” of skills in-house to take on  responsibility for regeneration and planning planning in their areas.

In a plea to the Department for Communties and Local Goverment today, it said local authorities should be encouraged to share their expertise and even merge regeneration departments in some cases.

Local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) combining different councils could be key to achieving this, the BPF said.

It also urged the government to introduce strategic planning above the level of local authorities. This would force councils to collaborate and to co-ordinate plans for important developments and infrastructure.

Michael Chambers, BPF associate director, said: “The duty to co-operate must be clearly defined in order to assist local authorities to work together collaboratively.

“However, such a duty to co-operate is not easily defined or understood, and so will need further elaboration to avoid confusion and to ensure that each local authority plays their part.

“If the duty is to take effect as it should, enabling authorities to work together effectively to produce cross boundary agreements and facilitating collaborative working, this should be clearly defined in the forthcoming legislation.”

Chambers said LEPs could be one way of making councils collaborate over planning and regeration but claimed there would be stumbling blocks, paricularly if there are more than 50 different partnerships approved across the UK.

“The likelihood that there will be over 50 LEPs does not fill us with confidence that such bodies will operate at an appropriately strategic level,” he said.

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