Author: carrick

Populism. The new way to decide planning applications?

April 28th, 2012

As many of the more observant will have noticed, on 3rd May it is time once again for that one quarter of the electorate that can be bothered to visit their local school and mark a cross next to a name that sounds vaguely familiar.

Yes, it’s local election time. That period every four years when environmentally responsible political parties litter our doorsteps with unwanted flyers festooned with cut and pasted pledges, cheesy photographs and the occasional dubious graph to show just how bad ‘the other lot’ are.

It is pretty usual at this time in the electoral cycle for local councillors to re-appear into view and to shout from the rooftops their commitment to whatever the ‘popular view’ may be on matters affecting their constituents. This year however populism is more rife than ever. In many parts of the country we are expecting major upheavals of local government, with many key councils likely to change political colour or enter into cross party alliances. The stakes are particularly high – and all this is happening in the brave new world of localism.

This is not good news for planning decision making. Planning committees in March and April have in many places become opportunities to grandstand. Woe betide the applicant with a proposal that has a strong planning merit but a degree of local opposition – in this period, the chances of approval are likely to be seriously harmed.

Too often, it seems, decisions are being made at this time in the electoral cycle on grounds of political short term expediency rather than planning merit.

It seems perverse that while the rules of purdah (Sorry, politically correct WG, rules of the pre- election period) mean that politically sensitive announcements can’t be made in the period leading up to the elections, this doesn’t stop the most politically sensitive decisions being made in the same period in the name of local votes.

We can’t halt the planning process for several months every few years. That would be impractical. There is however surely scope to find a way to filter out the applications at risk from political manipulation?

The trouble is, I am not sure that politicians would want that. These ‘final’ decisions of an administration are much like presidential pardons – often unpalatable but the price we have to pay for our system of democracy. As Winston Churchill once put it, “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.”

NPPF – A culture of “yes”?

March 30th, 2012

This week saw the release of the much hyped (and imaginatively entitled) National Planning Policy Framework – and it seems that just about everyone who got a bit hysterical about the draft and its implications for building on the countryside seemed happy about it. The CPRE was “reassured”, the Telegraph considered the publication “a good day for those who care about the countryside”.

The brownfield issue was an unwelcome distraction from the essential objective of the new guidance – a re-assertion of the role of planning in proactively delivering economic development.

In recent years, planning policy and its application seems to have had an underlying objective of resisting all change that would take England into the modern era.

Merchant bankers (not cockney rhyming slang) moving from the city into the countryside, buying up the homes and then resenting new housing for the locals; Eco-mentalists in Europe affording levels of protection to bugs, bunnies, bats and dormice that human beings can only dream of; Middle class activists teaming up with the unions and green pressure groups to undermine the supermarkets that provide cheap and convenient groceries for busy, working class families; And my favourite – eco-mentalists trying to stop the very wind turbines that a few years ago they were screaming at us to turn to.

It seems that everyone wants development, but just not near them. Not an easy issue to address in an overcrowded island such as ours.

With some exceptions, we appear to have developed a ‘culture of no’.

This ‘culture of no’ sits well with some local authorities. It is much easier for an officer to reject a proposal that has local objections than to face the wrath of the public and the members defending a perfectly acceptable, but unpopular proposal.

Localism just adds another tier to this. Empowering local members is fine from a democratic point of view, but all too often the ‘popular’ decision is a short term one. Some local planning authorities prefer the politically sensitive decisions to be made by an Inspector so they can say to their electorate that “it wasn’t us that allowed it”.

The development sector ought to be able to rely on development plans. Section 38(6) of the 2004 Act says they should. Yet more and more often in recent times we have seen the development plan being set aside. Often this is because the plans just aren’t up to date or the policies are drafted by boffins with a poor understanding of the commercial property world. However, even when we have brand spanking new plans with sensible policies – and there are a few out there – they get ignored on a regular basis.

The “culture of no” means that the relationship between developers and local authorities is, in far too many cases, confrontational rather than constructive and practical. Instead of working together to achieve a better scheme for all concerned, we end up with an appeal Inspector considering a scheme to which the local authority has not provided any meaningful input.

The NPPF is a damp squib in a number of respects, with many of the more pro-development elements of the draft unceremoniously left on the shelf to appease the bearded and sandaled. What it keeps however is an unambiguous message to all decision makers that the presumption should be in favour of sustainable economic development.

The best bit however is that in a decision making context, it makes it absolutely clear that if the development plan is absent, silent or relevant policies are out of date, permission should be granted unless adverse impacts would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits of the development. Moreover, such decisions should be made without delay.

Many local planning authorities either have no adopted development plan or one that is out of date – and almost all are out of kilter with the changes of the NPPF – , so this presumption ought to be quite a blow to the “culture of no”.

The force of this change is however tempered in a number of ways. For example, local planning authorities have been given a twelve-month period of grace within which to continue to rely on their old plans. Additionally, the NPPF has not abolished “The Planning System – General Principles” which sets out the circumstances where authorities can properly refuse proposals on grounds of prematurity.

It would appear therefore that the “culture of no”, while under threat, still has wiggle room.

Pasty tax – A half baked idea for our high streets?

March 11th, 2012

Three months after Mary Portas’ high profile review, the UK Government has dealt a hammer blow to one of the current cornerstones of our beloved high streets. The timing of this blow is even more unfortunate when you consider the UK’s town centres currently have the highest average vacancy rates since records began (now 14.6%).

Bakeries, and in particular the rise of bakery chain Greggs, have been one of the few, if not only, high street success stories of recent years. The introduction of a 20% levy on some items in a sector that operates on tight profit margins will lead to some very difficult decisions for bakers up and down the country. If operations carry on in their current format, how and when to charge is the first obvious and well-documented grey area. If customers cannot stomach the price increase (sorry), bakeries may have to take a view on what temperature to serve their products at. In the past one would have said ‘woe betide anyone who serves me a cold sausage roll’. But at a time when everybody is watching every penny, we would probably prefer that to paying 20% more or anyone losing their job.

Unfortunately, this VAT change could mean another unwanted record in terms of average vacancy rates on our high streets, as bakers and your average blue-collar customer struggle to absorb the cost overnight.

The last thing our high streets need now is a VAT attack. Add to this the fact some big high street names, such as Game and Peacocks, are in administration and hanging on by a thread and you could be forgiven for feeling a tad cynical about Friday’s announcement that the Government will be adopting “virtually all” of Portas’ 28 recommendations (Taxing bakeries was not one of them). This will be of no comfort to high street bakeries.

There is an argument that other “take aways” are taxed in this way and this is just levelling the playing field. Bakeries are however an A1 use, one that we try to focus in our high streets and not one that we try and tuck away in the back streets. While the focus has been on Greggs, there are still many independent pasty shops who do not have the ability to cut costs in the way that larger companies do and will be hit hard by this.
In land use terms this will simply increase the number of voids in our principal shopping areas. Somewhat of a half-baked idea, then….

CIL – the antidote to green shoots?

February 24th, 2012

Successive governments have toyed with the idea of taxing profits made when securing planning permission. Indeed, betterment was a cornerstone of the early planning legislation.

A land tax has been tried by successive governments but abandoned for some reason or another – principally the concern that it would cause the property market to stop working and destroy the economy.

However, having done that successfully without CIL I guess the prudent Mr Brown had nothing to lose when he introduced this levy shortly before the public sent him packing.

Of course the option was always open to the new administration to pull back from this, but after inheriting a public debt of unprecedented scale, it was quite easy in political terms to convince a public increasingly cynical of all profit making enterprise that it should continue.

The fruits of that non-decision are now starting to show. This week we saw Redbridge introduce a charge of £70 per square metre for development in its Borough, equating to an eye-watering contribution of £317,730 for a residential development of 4,539 sq m. This is quite tame by recent standards however. The London Borough of Merton has proposed a rate of £385 per sq m for residential development and Wandsworth a rate of £575 per sq m. These are astonishing charges.

The way in which these rates are calculated is cloaked in mystery but the extension of a moist digit into the atmosphere represents at least 90% of the process, it would seem.

On the face of it, securing much needed public funds from developers seems like a good idea. However, at this point in the market anything that adds cost to development that is already hindered severely by the availability of finance and ever increasingly ridiculous demands for affordable housing and eco friendliness has but one outcome – that limited development that is happening at the moment will just not go ahead.

Coupled then with the ridiculous scenario that having committed (the landowner) to a significant CIL payment a developer may still need to pay for key infrastructure essential to the delivery of his or her development (Can you trust the local council to deliver a signalised junction adjoining your site in a timely manner when there is no Section 106 obligation requiring it to do so?) then you get a planning system that does the exact opposite of what it is intended to achieve. Development gets slowed, or stopped, at a time when what the economy really needs is for it to speed up.

A number of authorities have recognised the real burden that CIL is creating and have reduced their charges to reflect the economic climate. These are however the exception.

I am not for one moment claiming that we should drop CIL and revert to the lottery of Section 106 agreements. It is however time for the boffins in Whitehall and local authorities to apply joined up thinking in delivering a contributions protocol that supports the delivery of essential infrastructure but does not put the brakes on development at the time we need it most.

Its all about the jobs…

December 9th, 2011

It is not often that I find myself congratulating the Welsh Government. Today, however, I take off my woolly hat to them. They have released proposals to change planning policy to be more friendly towards new development and inward investment.

The credit crunch and recession have been with us for a number of years and it is surprising that it has taken so long, but I will not dwell on that. It is the content that counts.

In that respect, the policy is in many ways suspiciously similar to that which has been around in England for a number of years. The definition of economic land uses have been broadened to include other non traditional employment categories such as retail, leisure and public services. It also recognises that land supply needs to be considered for these economic uses and not just sheds and offices.

The general tenor is that planning authorities have a balancing act to achieve, supporting economic and employment growth alongside social and environmental sustainability.

It makes clear that planning authorities must adopt a positive and constructive approach to applications for economic development.

For some authorities, that is old news. There are a number of good examples in Wales where planning departments have been working alongside economic development colleagues to provide this kind of approach. It is however a wake up call to those other planning authorities and national park authorities that have traditionally seen development as a bad thing to be resisted at all cost.

In that regard it makes abundantly clear that the economic benefits of a proposal ought to be given equal weight to social and environmental issues and can in fact in some cases outweigh such considerations.

Perhaps the most significant part of the emerging guidance is that gives specific instruction to local planning authorities to look favourably on applications for economic land uses that are not in accordance with the development plan if the economic benefits of the development are demonstrated to outweigh any adverse impacts.

These changes are a real, and in my view welcome, poke in the eye for the eco-mentalist lobby (as Clarkson would describe it) that seems in recent years to have gained free reign over the planning system and in my experience frightened new investment and jobs out of the Principality.

It is also a clear message to those planning authorities who consider that their contribution to economic development starts and ends with the allocation and re-allocation of tracts of unattractive land for industrial sheds that they must change their ways.

The most important signal that the policy sends is to people outside of Wales. It shows investors and developers from across the border that they should not be put off by Wales’s obsessions with sustainability standards and carrier bags. It shouts loud and clear that Wales is once again open for business.

Whether the policy succeeds or not is of course in the hands of local authorities. While some will grasp the nettle, I am sure there will be some senior officers and councillors who will pretend that nothing has changed.

In those cases the Welsh Government needs to make it absolutely clear that they will not hesitate to intervene where old style planning stands in the way of new jobs.

Localism – People Power or Nimby Nirvana?

November 21st, 2011

Well we have it at last. The Localism Bill was signed into legislation last week and is now the Localism Act 2011.

Considering the fanfare that surrounded the Bill’s introduction, the passing of the Act was the legislative equivalent of Bonfire Night in the rain. Not surprising really, though. Perhaps before making such an issue of it, the Westminster Government should have realised that it had set itself the impossible task of satisfying the largely middle-class desire to set middle England in the stone age and halt all development while also remaining the friends of business and setting a positive framework for new investment in those very same areas.

The result then is a bit of a damp squib. Worse, it is a pretty indecipherable damp squib. Lawyers are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of all those legal challenges that will inevitably follow the application of the various elements of the legislation.

For those residing in England, the DCLG has published an idiots guide to the Act, presumably so that Ministers can understand what they have signed us all up for.

For Wales, the position is even more confusing. The legislation scribes have had immense difficulty in understanding how an Act of Parliament sits with Measures proposed by the Assembly.

In England, local authorities are to be given a general right of competence ( I will leave it to others to make the jokes about competence and local authorities being mentioned in the same sentence). This means that they can basically do anything that is lawful, much like an individual and not be constrained by that “silly old restriction” imposed by just a few centuries of public law that actions of public bodies should be constrained by the powers they are specifically granted.

There is also a community right to stop private landowners selling buildings or open space before the community has been given the opportunity to buy it off them. Sounds good, but how many communities will take advantage of this? I am willing to bet that apart from a few pristine villages on the fringes of London filled with wealthy and oft retired Major Generals, Guardian journalists, bankers and others that can spare a few ‘k’ to buy the village pub (that is being sold precisely because those same people couldn’t be bothered to drink there when it was trading) no-one is interested. A community right to build suffers, in my view, the same fatal flaw.

The piece de resistance of the English nimby’s Magna Carta is the neighbourhood plan. Apparently, what we really need to deliver the communities we want is yet another tier of planning documentation. What makes this one special is that it isn’t to be sullied by the views of elected district councillors. However divorced from reality councillors can be sometimes, they are still put there by the electorate. How can a neighbourhood plan prepared by unelected people be truly a plan of the neighbourhood?

So what does Wales get? Well for the first time in many months I find myself congratulating the Welsh Government’s planners for cherry picking the best bits of the Act and keeping us well away from the more loopy bits.

For example, we get changes to CIL. We get the requirement for pre-application consultation to be undertaken for certain types of planning application- the scope of which is to be established by a later development order. Sensibly, ‘local finance considerations’ are excluded as a material consideration in the determination of planning applications.

The argument of WG has been that many of the principles of localism have been a part of Welsh planning for years and we don’t need an Act to tell us to listen to the locals. If WG can carry that pragmatism forward in the various ongoing reviews of the welsh planning system and the new Planning Act, then there is hope for it yet.

It’s the economy, stupid

November 11th, 2011

As much as I try and avoid addressing the same topic in my blog twice, I simply cannot not stay quiet over the Welsh Government’s limp wristed efforts to support the economy of this fair nation.

Last week Carwyn Jones as good as shrugged his shoulders and told us there is no money to support the economy. Fine, we all know there is no cash, but how about using other powers that the Welsh Government have fought hard to achieve, to encourage a positive environment for inward investment, development and jobs?

Professor Dylan Jones-Evans summarised neatly the problem we have in Wales. We have a government that is either afraid of the business sector or lacking in any real understanding of the commercial world. When they have set up committees to look at key issues they seem to have an incredible knack of appointing retired people and unionistas. No wonder they appear to be looking backwards, not forwards.

I have read today the latest consultation from the planning department at the Assembly. It is seeking views on how the government can more accurately measure the sustainability of the planning process. It is a bureacrat’s dream. Let me quote you my favourite bit:

“The logic chain approach was used in the research to develop a ‘theory
of change’ for planning to enable measures to be devised. This would
understand the cause and effect of the planning system on sustainable
development”

The document is 51 pages long and is out for consultation until January.

Perhaps if they concentrated on delivering the economic strand of sustainable development then we would have something meaningful to measure.

Mr Griffiths, your carrier bags are suffocating our economy!

November 4th, 2011

For many years it was the case that Wales led the way in proactively encouraging development and the jobs that this could bring. While England and its planning system wrapped itself up in red tape, I was proud to be able to say that the Welsh approach was a simple and pragmatic one of supporting development unless there were reasons not to.

This mantra was not cast in policy. It didn’t need to be. The economic impacts of the 1980s closures of the mines sparked a realisation that Wales needed jobs from other sources.

As Wales’s economy rebounded however, the benefits of new development and the investment and jobs that it brings seem to have to be forgotten by some local authorities and certainly by the Welsh Government.

When the banking crisis hit in 2007 Scotland was quick to declare itself ‘open for business’ and dictats were sent to Chief Planners across the nation to ensure that new investment was received favourably. In England, new planning guidance was consulted upon and then issued, through PPS4, to support new economic development and subsequent ministerial statements have underlined the presumption in favour of development.

In Wales? Nothing. At the Planning conference in Cardiff in June 2009 I don’t recall Jane Davidson, the then Environment Minister in Wales, making any mention of the economic crisis or the role of planning in helping to address it. Indeed, speaking about this later with a WAG employee, I was told in no uncertain terms that economic development and planning were different departments!

Over the last three years there have been calls from many in the development sector for the Welsh Government to make some form of positive statement to encourage new economic development in Wales.

Instead, all we got were new rules on sustainability that, while laudable in principle, increased building costs for developers and therefore placed Wales at a further economic disadvantage from the rest of the UK.

In February Eluned Morgan, highlighted what we have all been saying for an age – ‘ It’s the economy, stupid’.

Certainly, reading through the press releases of the Welsh Government over the past year, one would have thought that the economy is fine and that the key political issues of the day were how to look after our pet rabbits (Yes, they have done a 36 page report on this), carrier bags, smacking our children and giving more powers to the Assembly.

Yesterday, some major wind energy companies hit the press with complaints about how difficult it was to negotiate the planning system and invest in Wales. One of the companies highlighted that the system was lacking in clarity, was “confused” and “investors could ultimately turn to alternative markets where there is greater certainty, either elsewhere in the UK, in Europe or beyond”. Harsh criticism, but, as much as I regret saying it, probably fairly leveled.

There is often a warning on the side of carrier bags reminding users to beware of suffocation. Perhaps the Welsh Government should heed this advice and give the development sector the oxygen it desperately needs.

I just want to chat with a planning officer… help!

October 27th, 2011

Up until a few years ago it was quite possible to ring up a local planning authority, speak to an officer about a proposal, reach a view as to whether it was likely to be a runner or not, and that would be the end of the matter.

Now it seems that there is a conspiracy afoot to stop planning officers making contact with developers and practitioners outside of an extant planning application. There are, it seems, three tactics to keep us apart.

Tactic 1: Call centres. You ring up what you think is an officer’s direct line only to be spoken to by a ‘customer experience facilitator’ who demands your postcode, jots down a garbled interpretation of your message and promises to get someone to call you back. Last week a colleague was told that someone would call back ‘within ten working days’. A fortnight to return a call! Of course, if an officer decides not to call you back, you have to chase… and speak to the call centre again.

Tactic 2: Duty officers. I have no issue with officers taking it in turn to deal with queries. However, they are often the most junior staff who can do little more than read back the UDP, LDF or whatever. I have called up a number of authorities where the development control officers on duty have no idea what is happening with their own LDFs or LDPs. Hmm. The worst tactic however is to have a duty officer available only on certain days of the week. So three days out of five there is absolutely no-one to deal with the query.

Tactic 3: Pre application charges. I suspect that the barriers described above are all part of a cunning plan to get us on the track of paying pre application charges. A few years ago the courts declared these as unlawful, but the Labour administration changed this, allowing charges provided that they reflected the cost of providing the service.

How can it be then that an increasing number of local authorities impose a charge for a single meeting that is twice or three times the cost of a senior planning consultant attending the very same meeting and undertaking the very same preparation? That assumes of course that the consultant is paid for that initial meeting which is these days often not the case.

These charges have arisen just at the time when developers are doing everything they can to reduce up front costs of new schemes. They simply make development more inaccessible to smaller, local developers.

Ah, I hear you say, but they can save the developer time and money later. In some cases that is true, although that doesn’t help cashflow. I must say however that so far, in virtually every case that I have paid for pre-application advice I have been sorely disappointed with the quality of the preparation, the seniority of who we ended up meeting and the robustness of the advice given.

There is some positive news though. Yesterday I met with a local authority historically not known for its proactive approach. My developer client was positively welcomed into the area by a senior officer and told he would be allocated a single officer that would deal with all of his projects so that development could be sped through the system as smoothly as possible. We got constructive and positive comments and all for no pre-application charge.

Strategic Environmental Assessment – And the point is…?

August 31st, 2011

I was asked this week to submit representations to a deposit plan on behalf of a landowner who wants the boundary of a town centre allocation extended a few hundred metres to include his site. It’s a great idea. It is a prime development site that could readily be developed in a manner that supports the town centre as a whole. But that’s not the point that I want to write about. What I want to vent my spleen about today is the ridiculously complex and time consuming process that making representations to plans has now become as a consequence of the SEA requirements.

The idea of considering the environmental effects of proposals at a plan making stage is on its face a good one and I applaud the EU for thinking about it. However once again the UK government has taken a simple concept, wrapped it up in red tape and translated it into bureaucratic mumbo jumbo that few regular folk can comprehend.

So now, instead of promoting the site’s inclusion within the town centre boundary and extolling its obvious benefits in terms of supporting the centre, jobs, encouraging sustainable transport patterns and the like, and confiming that no badgers or other bugs and bunnies will be harmed in the process, I now have to answer questions such as whether the proposal will “challenge anti social behaviour'”, “maintain coastal bathing waters” or, (my favourite) “empower people to take responsibility for their own health”.

But that isn’t enough. As the site I am looking at is within 2km as the crow flies from a field that some boffin has designated an SAC, I have to consider the effect of my proposed change on grazing levels, agricultural improvements and, the best of all, the effect on parasites.

Perhaps if the ecobureaucrats stopped sucking the life out of new development with pointless checklists the parasites would get a fairer deal….