EVIDENCE given by a North-East academic has been included in a major report looking at housebuilding and planning policy.

Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Professor of Town Planning at Newcastle University, spoke to the House of Lords Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment in July last year.

The committee has now issued the Building Better Places document, which outlines its findings and recommendations.

Professor Tewdwr-Jones is one of the country’s leading authorities on planning, land use, historic and contemporary urban change.

He gave evidence to peers about the need for national leadership and co-ordination in planning policy and called for the government to be more joined up in its thinking.

He said: “This can be co-ordinated only by the Cabinet Office.

“It cannot be coordinated by different spending departments. We need a synoptic vision of the spatial impact of their different policies”.

In the newly published report, the select committee said: “The built environment cuts across a number of central Government departments and our evidence has demonstrated that integration of policy is sadly lacking.

“We believe that the Cabinet Office should initially play a greater role in addressing policy co-ordination in this field, by reviewing areas of policy overlap between different departments and publishing definitive guidance on the division of responsibilities.”