EPRC Seminar: A policy on the move? Spatial planning and State Actors in the post-devolutionary UK and Ireland

On Wednesday 10 December, EPRC hosted a seminar by Dr Ben Clifford and Professor Janice Morphet from the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. The aim of the seminar was to address the practical implications for continuing policy-making relations between UK nations in one policy area's planning. As a fully devolved function where concerted processes of "planning reform" have been implemented by devolved (and central) governments since devolution, there have been expectations for post-devolution policy divergence. However, based on an investigation of the role of civil servants in the British-Irish Council's workstream on spatial planning, and a forum known as the "Five Administrations", it has been found that the relational connections between these state actors suggest that they are key policy "transfer agents" which moderate this trend. More broadly, the findings outlined served to explain some of the continuities and commonalities in post-devolution planning reform.