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Begat
Local Government
Chronicle - 29 April 2008
And the Regional Spacial Strategy begat the Local Development Framework which begat the Core Strategy which begat the Allocation of Land Development Plan which begat the Supplementary Planning Document which begat….. panic.
When George Orwell wrote 1984 he cannot have imagined that he was the spiritual creator of the British planning system, but it is impossible to sketch the architecture of that system without the adjective “Orwellian” springing to mind. It is equally impossible to survey that architecture without realising what a heavily top-down system planning is. Of the five main steps outlined above no fewer than four are subject to approval by the Secretary of State. Only the final one is subject to council approval only.
It is, moreover, a system which can almost be guaranteed to provoke the maximum public protest for the minimum policy reward. This phenomenon seems likely to be multiplied when responsibility for drawing up the regional spacial strategies migrates from the regional assemblies – now on Death Row - to the regional development agencies. According to the latest “thinking” from DCLG, this process will be subject to the avuncular monitoring by a panel of the great and good from local councils which is a bit like getting the grandparents to do playground duty!
The new crop of RSSs are due to be signed off after the local elections. They are likely to be subject to immediate review to take account of revised population figures and the Government’s target of building 3m new homes by 2020 (not to mention eco-towns being parachuted into the equation.) So the whole Orwellian machine will grind into action once again.
There is one particular perversity/quirk/essential safeguard (depending on one’s point of view) which accounts for a huge amount of the aggro provoked by the targets for new homes set for each local authority: the treatment of “windfall” development. Councils are required to identify land sufficient to meet the targets without taking into account such windfalls – which include, most importantly, infilling and conversions. So if the owners of the three largest hotels in Harrogate or Brighton or Bournemouth or Blackpool were to decide to convert them into apartments those figures would not count against the planning totals for which land had to be made available. But, once they have been converted the new homes thus created do count against the achievement of the targets.
To take a concrete example Harrogate district will be asked to provide 2,995 net new homes by 2020. Therefore it has to identify the sites where these new homes may be built. Yet it calculates that in Harrogate town alone it should get (the forecast is commendably precise) 1,677 windfall developments – without (to my knowledge) any plans to convert the Majestic and the Cairn hotels! On top of that it reckons that it has sufficient brown-field sites to meet developments for five years – and more if the windfalls are taken into account.
The justification for this mismatch is that, in the past, councils have fobbed off the Government by offering windfall developments which fell far short of promised totals. The Government is not going to let them get away with it again. But the consequence of this procedure is to ignite fury as residents spot that the field at the end of the village or just beyond the last suburb is earmarked for 900 odd tastefully designed houses of which some 40 per cent will be affordable. It is assumed – logically but incorrectly – that once a piece of land has been identified for development planning permission becomes purely routine: in fact that will depend on the plans setting out the phasing of development.
Is it really unreasonable to count windfall development towards the planning totals provided councils have a back-up strategy in case the totals falter? At least it would re-introduce a “bottoms-up” element to a planning process from which may citizens are quite simply alienated.
Meanwhile here is a little experiment: type the words spacial strategy into the word processor and see what it does. A red line under spacial? A snappy spelling correction to special? My sympathy is with the computer.
© Local Government Chronicle
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