The Planner- January/February 2023

Community gains?

Will proposed planning reform really empower communities?

Planner power You’ve got the power, says incoming RTPI president Sue Bridge

Mining controversy

Cumbia coalmine gets consent, but challenges lie ahead

TO GRASP THE NETTLE

Housing. Climate. Levelling up. It’s time to get a grip on the UK, says Vicky Payne

Celebrating planning excellence

20221 and 2022. ievemennts o over recent years owcase your w workk. allo our

• Select your best work completed between 2021 and 2022. (For Young Planners, choose your best achievements over recent years.) • Choose the best category to showcase your work. • Create your account on our entry platform. This will allow you to edit your entry at any time before you make your final submission. • Familiarise yourself with the judging criteria. • Read our handy hints and tips to help with your submissions, in our ‘How to write a winning entry’ guide. • Complete and submit your entry along with some great images.

Entries will close on 21 March 2023. Visit rtpi.org.uk/excellence for more details.

WORDS: LAURA EDGAR

BY NATION

ANALYSIS

In early December, the government – in a press release, a written ministerial statement and a letter to local authorities – insisted that planning reforms, set out in what was at the time a forthcoming NPPF prospectus, and amendments to the levelling up and regeneration bill ahead of its reports stage, would “place local communities at the heart of the planning system”.

Fortuitous, really, as I’d already asked some planning professionals about this, following a parliamentary briefing for the TCPA New Communities Group in November, during which an audience member asked the panel how to put community back into the planning system. So, how did we arrive at a place of numbers and targets?

During industrial and agricultural growth in the 18th century, large conurbations and cities grew. This led to cramped and poor-quality housing. The Victorians sought to build homes for workers and Ebenezer Howard founded the garden city movement.

From this, the planning system emerged to enable the creation of healthy, thriving places. But, says Katy Lock, director of communities at the TCPA and FJ Osborn fellow, today’s “broken” development model favours profit over high-quality, affordable places. This, combined with a “failure to deal strategically” with housing growth, means the focus is on housing numbers.

Although housing targets have long been part of planning policy, Alastair Willis, planning director at Lichfields, says the “modern obsession” with numbers stems from Eric Pickles’ abolition of regional strategies and the “ensuing hours, days and weeks” of inquiry time spent debating what local objectively assessed housing need is.

“Despite several attempts to change the means of calculating a local housing

need, including returning to a national target of 300,000 homes per year, government rhetoric and irresponsible press reporting has continually heightened local anxieties and pushed it further up the headlines.”

Willis says the government faces a “major issue” to educate communities on the benefits of development while “rightly” maintaining an upward trajectory on environmental standards. “Without this, we face a housing catastrophe for all sectors of society.”

Housing numbers are difficult politically and, as Andrew Taylor, group planning and communities director at Vistry Group told The Planner, they attract the focus as a result.

Agreeing with Willis, Taylor says the system needs tweaking so that chief planners and council leaders have the space to create a vision and explain the

The annual housing target in England is 300,000

Castle Point Borough Council withdrew its local plan despite it being found sound to focus on people and places

Draft NPF4 features 20-minute neighbourhood policy to promote living well locally

“Sometimes planners actually do not know best and we need to be honest about that”Catriona Riddell

Making sure that a wide range of the community engages with the consultation process is paramount

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benefits of new development to existing and new communities. He argues that to demonstrate credible leadership they need to be at the forefront of discussions, however politically challenging.

Place-shaping not numbers

The focus on numbers isn’t UK-wide. RTPI Scotland’s policy, practice and research officer Robbie Calvert highlights that the revised draft NPF4 has put a renewed emphasis on fostering a sense of community. It features policies for community wealth building, living well locally through 20-minute neighbourhoods and a new duty placed on housing developers to provide a Statement of Community Benefit.

Indeed, some English councils do put the focus on place-shaping. Castle Point Borough Council, after the examining inspector deemed its local plan sound,

withdrew it. Ian Butt, head of policy and place, says that while the plan might have been found technically sound and met the government’s housing target, “planning is more than just ‘planning by numbers’”.

Members rejected it, feeling it “was not a place-shaping plan” and “did not reflect the priorities of local people”.

Butt says the council, like SoS Michael Gove, concluded: “If we are going to have a plan-led system, we need to focus on people and places and put communities back at the heart of how we do it.”

Making the development case

It is worth noting that the government says the method for calculating local housing need will remain, but that changes to it will be consulted on. This number will be an “advisory starting point” and “not mandatory”.

Mekor Newman, director at community engagement organisation NewmanFrancis Ltd, wonders if this means that numbers are set to become less important.

Nevertheless, the challenge is how to responsibly make the case for the need for new homes to communities. The concern reported by communities to NewmanFrancis is always ‘why here’?

Fears include density, the likely impact on the local environment and the effect of increased population size on limited infrastructure.

Referencing the company’s work in London, Newman explains that the areas targeted for development are usually lowdensity social housing estates where there is a case for improving poor housing. “The issue for those communities is the lack of prior discussion. Some of these estates have had little dialogue before the conversation gets to regeneration or some other large-scale development impacting their communities.”

Meaningful engagement should

happen at the earliest stage of a plan-led system, whether that be the local plan, neighbourhood plan or local place plans (Scotland). “We need to ensure that a wide range of the community engages with the consultation process to ensure the outputs serve the diverse range of needs of society,” explains Calvert. Earlier discussion “creates better listening and a willingness to engage in dialogue on new developments targeted in their area,” finds Newman. It is “about developing the local offer to the community as the trade-off for the investment and inclusion of new homes in their communities”.

Catriona Riddell, director at Catriona Riddell & Associates Ltd, concurs. “Many of the current problems in plan-making stem from the fact that local communities feel that planning is something they have little influence on, yet the outcomes often impact on them directly.”

Butt adds that people aren’t necessarily against development –just not convinced the right development is being planned for, or that they have a say.

A shared view with communities should be the starting point for any local plan, says Riddell. “Too often, this conversation only takes place through the two formal consultation stages in plan preparation (Regulation 18 and 19). Even the first stage is too late in the process as local communities often feel that decisions around priorities have already been made and they have very little real influence.”

Despite the stated aims of the announcements on an NPPF consultation, Willis feels that having a planning system focused on place and community is “further away than ever” and that government policy and rhetoric is instead “driving a

bigger wedge” between the development industry and communities.

“The long-term outcome is likely to be a significant reduction in housing output, increased unaffordability and older people being locked into larger family homes.”

He argues that the development industry must bear some responsibility, “particularly in how we engage with communities through the planning process”. Trust must be built through delivering on what is promised, and that starts with positive communication in language that is accessible.

Knitting it together

The conversation with communities must be honest – what can and can’t a local plan achieve. Riddell believes that local planning authorities need to be open to new ideas from communities that deliver the same outcomes but are achieved in a different way.

“Sometimes planners actually do not know best and we need to be honest about that. Sometimes the way forward will not be what local communities want but instead of simply saying ‘no’, we need to be better at explaining why, with some clarity around choices and implications of those choices (and potential degrees of impact).”

The conversation, once started, should continue, with expectations managed throughout. Furthermore, many voices in communities are not heard – they need to be empowered to get involved and see the tangible outcomes from that involvement through changes to the plan as it evolves, she says.

Of course, a developer will always leave, that is the reality, says Taylor. They can ensure a place is designed well and that the building blocks are in place

to create a community, they can even support early initiatives and coordinate the process but, ultimately, Taylor says capacity and enthusiasm from the local council and civic society is required “to be able to take up the threads and knit a community together”.

Stewardship features in the management of Letchworth, a garden city, and Bournville, the village founded by the Cadbury family for its employees, and which is often trumpeted as a sign of their success.

Lock emphasises that the longterm stewardship of places provides an opportunity to put communities at the heart of creating and renewing places, and it can also help to rebuild trust in planning. And the upfront provision of infrastructure can “help to create a sense of identity and community from the outset”. She says learning from the garden cities and new towns has seen community development officers being used in some new developments to help build a sense of community, providing everything from vouchers for fruit trees to putting on summer fetes.

Citizen panels are something some councils are exploring to develop their policy response on specific aspects of the plan, such as Brighton and Hove Council’s Climate Assembly. Hana Loftus, an expert in community engagement who has worked with a

number of councils, feels that including citizen panels in local plan preparation would “bring real transparency and assurance to the process and legitimise the outcomes” and that “having a citizen panel involved continuously through the whole plan-making period would really change the dynamic”.

“It offers structure, would be manageable in resource terms, and has other practical advantages.”

The reality

And so, to the reforms. For Newman, conversations about new homes and placemaking must come with a stronger “social objective”, and “bespoke solutions that reflect the needs and culture of the existing communities, engaging social and economic opportunities, and making plans for the new incumbents”.

Communities must also have the tools to influence and help shape these opportunities to create better buy-in.

Gove says that to deliver the new homes this country needs, “new development must have the support of local communities. That requires people to know it will be beautiful, accompanied by the right infrastructure, approved democratically, that it will enhance the environment and create proper

“It is about developing the local offer to the community as the trade-off for the investment and inclusion of new homes in their communities”

– Mekor Newman

neighbourhoods” . Newman sees intent in this statement to do things differently.

However, intention isn’t action. And there isn’t much optimism to go around.

Planning reform, explains Lock, requires a commitment to a statutory purpose for planning focused on the health and wellbeing of people and communities, with the climate crisis factored in. But while the narrative has been about strengthening communities’ role in decision-making, Lock believes “the reality is that reforms are likely to result in a highly centralised planning system which lacks public trust and does not operate in the public interest”.

RTPI head of policy, practice and research Richard Blyth says it is possible that changes to the NPPF might prioritise community land trusts and also a stewardship model, but that the “real changes” here would come from a shift in how public land is disposed of.

Blyth believes that there needs to be more conditions placed on public land disposals “to ensure a range of benefits, such as affordable housing, higher energy performance and long-term interest in wellbeing from owners.”

Willis, meanwhile, can’t remember a year since he graduated nearly 20 years ago when governments haven’t

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talked about planning reform. “Endless tinkering without a wider strategic understanding of the implications” has resulted in a system that is “significantly harder to navigate now than it was 20 years ago”.

“Yet authorities are still expected to determine major applications within the same 13-week period, with more issues to consider and less resources to do so.”

The priority must be to resource local planning departments, Willis argues. Most developers, he says, would pay more fees to receive a better service, but those fees must be ring-fenced to planning departments.

Riddell adds that properly resourcing the planning service applies to specialist support and expertise, too, such as people with the right engagement skills.

“There is an argument that earlier and more effective engagement in local plans will reduce overall costs with less needed later on in the process. But it is inevitable that if this is to be properly resourced, some redistribution of scarce funding will be needed.”

Like Riddell, Calvert notes that ensuring a high quality of community engagement is expensive, and that without appropriate resources it may not be delivered to a satisfactory level.

“RTPI Scotland is concerned that emerging local place plans currently have no resources or funding attached to them, for either communities or local authorities. This could lead to wealthier communities with resources being able to prepare locally led-plans but deprived communities not being able to progress them.”

There is certainly a role for guidance and good practice to highlight successful communities, says Taylor, but communities cannot simply be created by statute or policy.

It all comes down to “hard work, perseverance and dialogue”.

“The reality is that reforms are likely to result in a highly centralised planning system which lacks public trust and does not operate in the public interest”

SCOTLAND

News by nation

TOP STORIES FROM THE COUNTRIES OF THE UK AND THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

fi

sh

farm project

farm project

A plan for a fish farm that would be the largest in Scotland has been unveiled.

Loch Long Salmon Company is proposing to construct a ‘semi-closed’ scheme that would be able to house 8,000 tonnes of salmon in floating pens near the east shore of Loch Linnhe in Argyll. for around 1.6 million it would be more than double the size of the current largest facility in Scotland

unveiled technology has never been used in Scotland but has been trialled in Norway and Canada.

unveiled has never been used in Scotland but has been trialled in Canada

With capacity for around 1.6 million fish,

The development would comprise nine enclosures with outer walls made from a flexible, impermeable material and a mesh inner liner to house the fish, with waste from unwanted food and faeces collected and pumped ashore for treatment. The

company, the system a than an farm of the of the facing industr y, such as use of chemicals to pests sea lice, pollution of the and reliance on harmful deterrent devices to ward off like seals

According to the company, the system would have a much smaller environmental impact than an open-pen farm of the same size, helping to solve many of the worst problems facing the aquaculture industry, such as heavy use of chemicals and medicines to tackle infestations of pests including sea lice, pollution of the seabed, and reliance on harmful deterrent devices to ward off predators like seals.

A scoping request for the Loch Linnhe site has now been submitted to Argyll &

A for the Loch Linnhe site has now been submitted & Bute Council.

ENGLAND

Transport minister Huw Merriman has said the deadline for a decision to be made on the A1 Northumberland – Morpeth to Ellingham development consent order application has been extended to 5 September 2023.

The Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) consists of two parts. Part A comprises widening of the existing single carriageway to a dual carriageway for a 12.6km section of the existing A1 between Morpeth and Felton. Part B involves widening of the existing single carriageway to a dual carriageway for an 8km section of the A1 between Alnwick and Ellingham.

The Planning Inspectorate sent its report on 5 October 2021. A decision is usually issued by the transport secretary three months later, but the deadline was first extended from 5 January to 5 June 2022, and then to 5 December 2022 – each time by way of a written ministerial statement.

Merriman said the reason for the delay remains the same as was set out in the ministerial statement of 6 June 2022: “The extension is in light of the… statement made by the secretary of state on 26 May 2022 regarding the Union Connectivity Review.”

The NSIP is subject to Sir Peter Hendy’s Union Connectivity Review recommendations for ongoing projects. He has called for a multimodal study of the East Coast Corridor to identify options for improvement.

WALES

Welsh freeport bids include one involving Cardiff Airport

Cardiff Airport is part of a multi-site freeport bid in south-east Wales led by Newport City Council, which involves several underdeveloped locations in the Cardiff Capital Region.

Th e airport has signifi cant land around its terminal to accommodate freeportrelated developments.

Newport City Council had initially explored a freeport by working with Associated British Ports (ABP) and its Port of Newport.

Th is Newport-led bid now joins the other two

declared Welsh proposals – the Anglesey Freeport, focused on Holyhead port and involving Stena Line and Anglesey County Council, and the Celtic Freeport, which covers the ports of Milford Haven and Port Talbot. Th is is proposed by a consortium made up of ABP, Neath Port Talbot Council, and Pembrokeshire County Council.

All three bids will now be assessed by the UK and Welsh governments. Th e winner is expected to be confi rmed early this year.

IRELAND

Legislation for major overhaul of planning regime approved

A major overhaul of both Ireland’s planning regime and planning law has been agreed upon by the state’s Cabinet, with legislation scheduled for publication early in 2023.

Ministers insisted that the proposals, set out in the draft planning and development bill 2022, would bring “greater clarity, consistency, and certainty to how planning decisions are made”.

“It will make the planning system more coherent and userfriendly for the public and planning practitioners.”

Controversially, the government is proposing to make judicial review challenges to planning decisions more

diffi cult. Th e administration is also planning to restructure and rename An Bord Pleanála as An Coimisiún Pleanála in a move designed to separate its decision-making and corporate/organisational roles.

Housing and local government minister Darragh O’Brien (pictured) said: “Th is major overhaul of the planning system will provide clarity to those who use the planning system: those seeking to build or engage

in other activities, and those who want to have their say. It will ensure consistency between European and national law and between diff erent tiers of plan-making. And through provisions such as statutory and mandatory timelines, it will give users of the planning system greater certainty.”

Read the full story here: bit.ly/planner0102-Irelandplanning

NORTHERN IRELAND

Significant social housing scheme approved for Lisburn

Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council has approved proposals for a development of 120 social and affordable homes on Lisburn’s Ballinderry Road.

The scheme, by Apex Housing Association, involves a mix of family houses, bungalows for families with complex needs, flats, and accommodation for the over-55s.

Sam McKee, director at planning consultancy Turley, which acted as agent for the proposals, said: “The site offers a true mix of homes that will work to support housing needs in Lisburn with a strong amenity offering including a new playpark within the site.”

The approval includes measures to protect a nearby area of wetland.

The fines paid by water companies for polluting rivers and seas will be ring-fenced for projects that aim to create wetlands, revegetate riverbanks and reconnect meanders to the main channel of rivers, said the government.

Site investigation works are under way at Kilvey Hill overlooking Swansea as proposals for a major new outdoor leisure attraction make headway. 4

5

Edinburgh’s replacement local development plan, City Plan 2030, is to be considered by the Scottish Government.

The Planner reports every week on planning news from across the UK and Ireland. Scan the codes for the latest news feed for each country, or to sign up to our weekly News By Nation newsletter.

A development comprising 525 homes on the outskirts of Antrim has been approved by Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council.

A scheme involving more than 1,300 new homes earmarked for Donabate, north Dublin, looks set to go to the High Court. Residents have launched a drive to raise up to €40,000 to take legal action.

PLANNING, POWER & PROSPERITY

Thursday 23 March 2023 (10am-4.30pm)

ROYAL ARMOURIES, LEEDS

This year’s conference will explore how the North can use the powers of planning to drive a more prosperous future by harnessing its natural, geographic, economic and societal assets. We will be taking a deliberate exploration of the challenges ahead, considering the new drivers of economic growth, including a zero-carbon economy. Join us as we debate these important questions at this full day conference hosted in Leeds by RTPI North East, North West and Yorkshire.

Delegates can expect a packed programme including a keynote address, interviews, plenaries and workshop sessions providing opportunities for audience involvement and networking.

Plenary

sponsored by:

INSIDE VIEWS

Our writers and the RTPI on the issues of the day

BUDDY UP Planners and lawyersbest of frenemies?

FAR FROM HOMES

NPPF: The guide to how not to build houses

OPINION

Wild is the wind Scotland’s NPF4 opens up wild land to wind energy

Inside out

Irecently took the short walk from The Planner’s home in Clerkenwell to architectural and urban design practice Studio Egret West, which is currently hosting its Food for Thought exhibition.

Its supermarket aislestyled exhibition is presented creatively and thoughtprovokingly. ‘Five Percent for Food’ is a challenge to developers and planners to boost food production in urban areas. The creators reason that if we have prescriptive targets for housing, affordable homes, and employment, we should have them for food production. The project asks: in mixed-use projects, should we assign a minimum of 5 per cent of gross area to the production of food?

It got me thinking, as I’ve covered a spate of solar farm appeals recently which you can read about in our Cases and Decisions section – pages 46 to 51 – and on our website. In one appeal, in Devon, a

Rule 6 group complained about the loss of foodproducing land caused by the solar farms.

Solar farms aren’t necessarily incompatible with food production, and in many cases agriculture can continue despite the presence of the arrays. But this 5 per cent rule is interesting – the more food we can produce in urban or suburban areas, the more space we have for rewilding, renewable energy, or simply allowing arable land to rest.

I’m not sure I agree that urban locations necessarily optimise this idea; plots might be too small scale, too diffuse, but they could certainly contribute. I think larger edgeof-town and urban extension developments, with hectares of land set aside for green spaces, could make this idea work. Food for thought?

Ben Gosling is reporter on The Planner — ben. gosling@theplanner.co.uk

I’ve been writing for The Planner for more than eight years now and in each of them successive governments have announced reforms, bills or streamlining measures for planning. The latest of these –a nice Christmas gift? - were announced on 22 December.

Some of what we saw had been set out in Michael Gove’s written statement on 6 December (a response to a Tory rebellion), including confirmation that housing targets, already not mandatory, would no longer be… mandatory. (DLUHC says it “will make clearer in the framework that the outcome of the standard method is an advisory starting-point to inform plan-making”; Planning Practice Guidance already states that use of the standard method is not mandatory.)

While this may prove useful for local politics on development, the message for local authorities has remained throughout the various reforms: firstly, keep a

five-year supply of land; and secondly, adopt a local plan.

The latter requirement still stands, although still less than half of local authorities have up-to-date plans. As to the former, DLUHC is proposing to remove the requirement for those local authorities with upto-date plans to demonstrate a rolling and deliverable five-year housing land supply. This would take effect when a revised NPPF is published (it’s expected in the spring).

So, what will the impact of all this be? I’ve seen a fair bit of cynicism on social media, many thinking it all unlikely to help deliver the affordable homes we need - another thing we’ve heard plenty about over these past eight years. How will our broken housing market change as a result? Join us on our new LinkedIn page to discuss: bit.ly/ planner0102-LinkedIn

Laura Edgar is news editor of The Planner — laura.edgar@ theplanner.co.uk

“Solar farms aren’t necessarily incompatible with food production”

In which our writers reflect on what they’ve learned while creating stories for The Planner over the past two months.

“Housing targets, already not mandatory, would no longer be… mandatory”

ets, ould

Hippodamus Our correspondent within the RTPI

Leading the NPF4 conversation in Scotland

On 8th November, World Town Planning Day, Scotland’s Planning Minister Tom Arthur MSP presented the much-anticipated revised draft National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4).

Alongside it came a range of impact assessments, an explanatory report and the first version of a delivery programme. This draft, the culmination of more than three years of work, was debated in Parliament and approved on the 11th January.

Overall, the basic focus of the framework – with primacy

given to the climate emergency and nature crisis – is strongly supported by RTPI Scotland. Indeed, one aspect to have seen substantive change concerns energy, with more permissive wording added about potential development in wild land areas in order to achieve net-zero target ambitions and improve energy security.

Although we welcome NPF4’s aspirations, our key concern throughout the reform process about resourcing remains – the additional burden on

decision-makers could seriously disrupt an already over-stretched system. We’ve reiterated our calls on the Scottish Government for a comprehensive resource and skills strategy to be published as part of the next version of the NPF4 delivery programme –scrutiny of which is a priority for RTPI Scotland.

We’re also disappointed to see that no capital investment programme has been published with the framework, as happened with the Irish National

Development Plan. Nevertheless, we  support the intent to align NPF4 with other national plans, programmes, and strategies, particularly the Infrastructure Investment Plan (IIP), Strategic Transport Projects Review 2 (STPR2) and National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET).

The disadvantage of this approach is its sequencing, with the STPR2 and NSET already published and the next iteration of the IIP yet to be drafted. The government intends to position a newly proposed Planning, Infrastructure and Place Advisory Group as central to the production of the next IIP, and we welcome this. However, we would like to see more thinking on how this will work. We also await more detail on how the advisory group will shape and influence NSET and STPR2 delivery plans.

The delivery programme also sets out considerations about how existing funding streams can support NPF4 delivery. In particular, we note intentions to agree and factor in NPF4 funding requirements to the Capital Spending Review through the annual Budget process.

So, what next? Following its approval, the NPF4 framework will be formally adopted. We now expect the laying

of regulations and publication of guidance on the new generation of Local Development Plans alongside guidance on transition arrangements to smooth the process as we switch to the new system. It is good that we have a planning policy document and spatial plan for Scotland that has been scrutinised by interested individuals and organisations during its development and agreed on by Parliament. Attention now turns to delivering its laudable ambitions…

Submitted for Approval

A digest of planning-related material from across the media spectrum. Educational, entertaining, useful or simply amusing, The Planner humbly submits the following items, but if you think you’ve something that should feature here, let us know.

know. let us k

Late last year the government published its statistics on how different land uses are distributed across England. The PDF factsheet, which is basically an infographic, is the best thing. By some distance London is the most developed region but, frankly, it’s the map that shows just how far from reality so many people’s understanding of the country’s actual land use is. A very handy tool.

Caleb Simpson’s House Tours

Videographer Caleb Simpson’s TikTok channel is a curious treat. More than six million people follow his short-form house tours which began, The Guardian reports, as a way for him to learn more about strangers’ lives after working at home alone during the pandemic left him “craving human connection”. He goes up to people on the street, asks what they pay in rent, then asks if he can come and film their apartments. And they let him. We’re not entirely sure why this is as compelling as it is.

let

Building Sustainably: The Road to Net Zero

Cargo Sous Terrain

Ca

Anyone aware of the Hyperloop concept should be interested in Cargo Sous Terrain – not least because, unlike Hyperloop, this thing is actually happening. With goods transport accounting for a large part of traffic volume in urban areas, Cargo Sous Terrain reasons that there is a need for a subterranean city logistics system using environmentally friendly vehicles to take care of distribution in the smart cities of the future. Already under construction, its underground tunnels are scheduled to begin taking cargo in 2031.

Planning consultancy RPS has entered the podcast game with the aim of providing pragmatic advice through real-life case studies about how to fund, plan, design, and manage net-zero programmes in the built environment. Its first series explores the decarbonisation challenge faced by owners and operators of large property estates, given that 80 per cent of 2050’s building stock is already built.

English Land use statistics

How We Went Off-Grid

This book is about one couple “lifting the lid off the arcane world of Welsh planning, and the Nimbies (surely ‘Nimbys’? – Ed) who use their money and lawyers to intimidate local authorities into refusing permission”. Woof, that there is fighting talk. Not only does this book document their story, it also includes the authors’ successful planning application, reproduced in full “so that anyone can buy a piece of low-grade agricultural land for £10,000 to £20,000 and set out on their off-grid journey”.

Architecture at the Crossroads (TV)

First transmitted in 1986, this series was made at a time of disenchantment with modern architecture (“monstrous carbuncles”, etc.) and the belief that modern cities were failing. Episodes include Houses Fit for People, which looks at the high-rise concrete estate. But oh, the opening lines of the series! Playwright Peter Shaffer describes London architecture in 1969 thus: “This is a programme about murder. Architectural murder. You are going to witness the severed limbs and pulped torso of a murdered city.” Ouch!

Cities Reimagined | Chapman Taylor | Planning for Tomorrow

The RTPI has invested in new video output through the agency Content With Purpose, seeking to engage the wider public about planners’ work. Strong, high-production value shorts such as this one, on the reimagining of Coventry city centre, are the result. There’s a relatable feel to these videos, which don’t dumb down the content for viewers but instead point out past mistakes as well as current ambitions. They’re well worth checking out.

Climate resilient urban river edges using Nature-Based Solutions

Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning

Author Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago says this book provides “a radical counterhistory of urban planning that explores how capitalism and spatial politics have evolved”, outlining “an alternative vision for a post-capitalist urban planning, one in which the structure of collective spaces is ultimately defined by the people who inhabit them”. Expect archival research with ‘illuminating critical theory’.

This University of Glasgow workshop is offering an invitation to bring your ideas and experience in implementing local-scale solutions to a project to create climate resilient urban river edges. It’s aimed at all those who either manage flood risk directly or are involved in strategic or development planning, and/or is responsible for climate change, open space or emergency resilience of communities facing increasing risk of floods.

g SFA ONLINE January / February 2023 | The Planner | 19

QUARTERMAIN

Now then.

With all the correspondence flying around in the planning world recently, particularly on housing targets, I wondered if everyone needed some revised definitions in their planning dictionaries.

Would the following help?

The right houses: The number of houses, over and above the existing stock that needs to be built. This number is based on an objective assessment of what is needed looking forward 15 years.

Objective assessment: This predicts how many houses might be needed over the current stock having regard to people dying, being born, moving in or out of the area and assesses changes in lifestyles. It looks at the mix you might need and the affordability and concludes with a figure for how many new houses are needed. This is very unlikely to be the figure zero.

Standard methodology: A standard method of objectively assessing need aimed at making the above process simpler and reducing the time and money spent arguing at examinations about what this figure should be.

Plan examination: Where a plan is scrutinised. If you don’t use the standard methodology this is where the argument takes place. The right places: This is where you’re planning for.

Constraints: In some places not all the houses can be built, so fewer houses will be included in the plan. This is called the planned housing number.

Green belt: A constraint to stop urban sprawl but which also increases the values of existing houses already there. Often confused with environmental policies, it should be noted that environmental quality and public access are not relevant.

Urban containment policy: What green belt policy should be called when reviewed.

The planned housing number: The number of houses you think can be built having regard to constraints. This is quite normal and is not to be confused with the objectively assessed need.

Duty to cooperate: A process whereby you see if the houses you can’t accommodate can be built elsewhere. Used to be done regionally.

Five-year land supply: A pipeline of housing sites included in your plan to accommodate planned housing;

must keep this plan up to date and if you do, you don’t need one of these.

Up-to-date plan: A plan that is reviewed every five years to ensure that it is delivering on the planned number of houses, that sites are still coming forward as predicted and that its policies are still relevant.

Mandatory: You must do this. Like, have a plan Not mandatory: To plan for the standard methodology figure. This is just a figure that tells you what is needed, but the planned housing number is what goes in your plan.

Right houses in the right places: You deliver the above.

We know planning is more complex than just ‘housing’, but perhaps stepping back and revisiting why we have the need for a plan in this context would help in delivering the more holistic vision, too.

Here’s to new thinking in 2023 –and my best wishes to all of you who strive to help achieve this.

STEVE QUARTERMAIN

was formerly chief planner of England and is now director of Quartermain Ltd

you

“This is very unlikely to be the figure zero”

“Urban containment policy: What green belt policy should be called when reviewed”

This is my third column. If we were dating, this would be about the time that we started to open up and get to know each other a little better.

As such, I think I should share something which might not be entirely obvious from my writing: I am not a planner; I am a planning lawyer. A solicitor, if we are being pedantic.

Planning and planning law have a complicated relationship. Some might even call it unhealthily codependent. Like the leads in an unlikely buddy cop movie, or a very specific type of romcom, they need to work together to achieve the desired result and yet, each approaches the task from fundamentally different perspectives.

Our planning system is grounded in and bound by law. The bones of the system are statutory, with legislation and case law providing the framework within which planning policy, politics and the exercise of judgement and discretion must operate. Within those boundaries, however, it is the formation

and application of policy that brings developments to life.

The planning system is, at its core, about creating communities; its chief concern, the merits (or not) of the development anticipated. Planners want to make a ‘good’ decision.

Planning lawyers just want that decision to be lawful. Don’t get me wrong, the merits of the scheme are also very important, but when it gets right down to it, we will settle for a decision that is not vulnerable to judicial review and avoids as many adverse consequences as possible. This tension can lead to seemingly strange results. Take the CIL regulations, drafted in a manner so alien to how planning and development operates that an entire sub-genre of legal advice has sprung up on how to design mitigation strategies from the start.

Despite the occasional feeling of looking in a funhouse mirror when reading planning case law, there is beauty to be found in this seemingly dysfunctional relationship. Planning is inherently creative, forward-looking and concerned with subjective judgments.

Planning law provides a framework for those judgments, a mechanism for ensuring that they stay within bounds and a form of accountability for those rare occasions when they don’t.

Regardless of whether we think of the relationship as more akin to the antagonistic protagonists of a buddy cop movie or a romcom, when the two parts of the system work together effectively, they can produce results greater than the sum of their parts.

The key is recognising their differences and working with them. If we can do that then, regardless of the genre, our film should, hopefully, have a happy ending – which we can all agree is a good outcome, right?

outcome,

Or, to be a tad more topical, the Supreme Court’s decision in Hillside, which is a beautiful and finessed decision in a pure legal sense but has created a fair amount of chaos amongst those of us trying to apply it to everyday situations.

tegies from the start. d more the t’s decision in Hillside, tiful finessed ense but has created a chaos those of us it to situations.

& Gooch

“We’ll settle for a decision not vulnerable to judicial review”

NICOLA GOOCH is a partner in the planning team at Irwin Mitchell

“Like the leads in an unlikely buddy cop movie, or a specific type of romcom, planning and planning law need to work together”

ely buddy type of lanning ther”

There is no legal duty for new developments to deliver healthy, sustainable places. So the focus has not been on build quality or energy efficiency, nor on ensuring that developments enable a healthy, sustainable lifestyle for those who move in. Instead, the development of new homes has been seen by successive governments as a tool for unlocking growth.

This is despite the fact that we’re living through a climate emergency and in a country where those living in the most deprived areas will die up to 18 years earlier than those living in affluent areas.

It’s clear that planning reform is desperately needed – as is increased funding in this essential function. But it’s also clear from the recently published consultation on changes to the National Planning Policy Framework that the kind of planning reform that is needed is unlikely to come anytime soon. So, planners –and indeed all those working in the built environment sector – need to be looking at what they can do locally to improve the status quo.

Clearly, change is needed at the national policy level; a commitment is needed to

ensure that planning delivers good health outcomes. But there are things that planning authorities, urban designers and developers can be doing right now (some already are).

Updating supplementary planning documents and developing local plans that put health and wellbeing front and centre are just some of the steps that can be taken now. Strengthening sustainability appraisals for sites provides another opportunity. Braintree District Council uses theirs to assess the maximum distances new homes will be built from services such as GP surgeries, acknowledging “improving the health of the district’s residents and mitigating/reducing potential health inequalities” as a sustainability objective.

And Nottingham City Council’s Design Quality Framework is focused on the three pillars of sustainability and on ‘place psychology’ –another example of proactive action to enable good local planning decisions.

We can’t wait for national policy and laws to come into place through this government or any other. We must make good decisions now for the health and wellbeing of our future populations.

We are facing climate and ecological emergencies and many local authorities and organisations have declared the same. Trees are seen as part of the solution and, given their multiple social, economic and environmental benefits, we need to increase our urban trees and woodlands. Expanding the ‘urban forest’ has a direct impact on new developments at all scales. But how can we ensure that it happens in practice? Planning policy and development control are the key areas of influence; the time has come for planners, especially in local authorities, to demonstrate the beneficial role that planning can play when the development process aligns with emerging policy and best practice for trees. Trees feature in national planning policies in all four countries of the UK. Every local authority should have an adopted tree and woodland strategy, including best practice processes for trees in planning and development. This should set a level playing field and enable developers to include

calculations for retaining and planting trees from the outset. This can prevent conflicts later in the process.

With adopted planning policy in place, development teams must engage the right expertise at the right time. This means including tree specialists from the outset.

But even where policies exist, a knowledge and resources gap within local planning authorities and developers may hold back implementation and reinforce the current piecemeal approach. What may help to close this gap is reliable, evidence-based guidance and training.

This is where bodies such as the Trees and Design Action Group (TDAG) come in. Our work is to encourage collaboration between all the disciplines engaged with the built environment as they each have a role to play if we are to protect and expand our urban trees and woodlands as well as development in rural settings where the same best practice approach must apply.

Find out about TDAG’s activities: bit.ly/planner0102tdagguides and bit.ly/ planner0102-tdagevents

Matthew Morgan is director of the Quality of Life Foundation

Sue James is a chartered architect and convenor of the Trees and Design Action Group

“We need to be making good decisions now for the health and wellbeing of our future populations”

“Every local authority should have an adopted tree and woodland strategy”

Let’s not wait for planning reform to deliver healthy places

Planners are key to enacting an ‘urban forest’ policy

The recently published consultation draft of the NPPF represents the culmination of the government’s capitulation from the bold reformist vision espoused in the Planning for the Future white paper in August 2020.

In his foreword to the white paper, then prime minister Boris Johnson made clear that “Thanks to our planning system, we have nowhere near enough homes in the right places.”

To overcome this, he set out a bold vision to rip up the “outdated and ineffective planning system” so that it could be replaced with something which “gives the people of this country the homes we need in the places we want to live...”

This was echoed by the then secretary of state Robert Jenrick, who made it clear that: “This government doesn’t want to just build houses.”

Fast-forward twoand-a-half years, two prime ministers and three new secretaries of state (the current incumbent performing the metaphorical hokey-cokey to regain a role from which he was sacked), and we now have the NPPF consultation draft.

Instead of bold reforms driving housing delivery, we have a watering down of current policy. We have loopholes to justify the delivery of fewer homes than are objectively necessary; where the consequences of under-delivery will only impact the planning balance in the most extreme of cases; and where a shortage of housing is not, of itself, sufficient basis to justify a review of green belt boundaries.

For those who have followed the ailing fortunes of the government since August 2020 there is perhaps no surprise that the revisions are likely to appeal to rural homeowners far more than they are to those trying to get themselves on the housing ladder, constrained by a shortfall in housing in places where they want to live.

After all, who but a small select bunch of existing homeowners is going to benefit from a policy that encourages the construction of mansard roof extensions?

Perhaps they should have simply released a trackedchange version of the white paper: “This government doesn’t want to just build houses” – the result would have been the same.

‘M

enopause is inevitable. The steady haemorrhage of talented women from our workforce, however, is not.” –Caroline Nokes MP. We don’t have specific evidence relating to the planning profession, but there is no reason to suppose that we are any different. Fifty-one per cent of the population will experience the menopause; the remainder will know someone who is, has or will go through the menopause. According to Everymind at Work, 63 per cent of women say their symptoms negatively affect their work, 10 per cent leave their jobs because of the symptoms, many more reduce their hours and 11 per cent did not pursue a promotion. All this, just when women are often at their most productive stage of life. This has repercussions on the gender pay and pension gaps, as well as the number of women taking up senior leadership roles.

Achieving a diverse and inclusive workforce is key to good planning and is why the RTPI places such importance on equality, diversity and inclusivity

(EDI) and its action plan to achieve this. In this context it simply doesn’t make sense to lose women from the profession because of the impact of the menopause and we need to address it.

On 5 January 2023 I posted a LinkedIn comment on this topic and four days later had received more than 25,000 views. Comments, mostly from planners, ranged from saddening to inspirational. Examples of good practice, such as a support group at Birmingham City Council and ‘eye-opening’ training at No5 Chambers, need to become the norm if we are to bring about change. We need to address this issue as part of our approach to EDI, raising awareness and creating an open, supportive and inclusive culture where women in our profession feel comfortable sharing their symptoms and exploring solutions. Only then can we limit its impact on their working lives and retain their knowledge, skills and talent.

If you have examples of good practice and practical support for planners experiencing the menopause, please contact me on LinkedIn.

Paul Wakefield is a partner with Shakespeare Martineau LLP

Sue Manns MBE FRTPI is a past president of the RTPI and director of Sue Manns Associates

“Instead of bold reforms driving housing delivery, we have a watering down of current policy”

“We need to address this issue as part of our approach to EDI, raising awareness”

Draft NPPF can be seen as a guide to not building housing

The menopause’s impact on our professional lives

SUE BRIDGE

The RTPI’s new president, interviewed

FAIR SHARES

Vicky Payne on housing and spatial equality

BRUTE FORCE

FEATURES

Full beam Why planners have more power than they think

POWER STANCE

The RTPI’s new president believes planning’s central role in placemaking is one that makes the profession – and its practitioners – more powerful than they realise. Martin Read met up with Sue Bridge to find out more

PHOTOGRAPHY: KATE DARKINS

It’s fair to say that the RTPI president for 2023 is steeped in all things built environment. Sue Bridge’s father was a land surveyor and her grandfather a builder; her husband is a retired chartered surveyor and one of her brothers is an architect. “Property,” she says, “is what we’re about.”

Sue Bridge’s career in planning began when an early enthusiasm for archaeology was stymied by a lack of the required exam grades. Her father pointed her instead towards an urban land economics course at Sheffield Polytechnic, with its promise of a RICS qualification and a career as a chartered surveyor. Bridge, however, found herself swayed from this path.

“When we were getting our careers advice, I was told “to be a good land agent, you must know thine enemy, and thine enemy works in the planning department.” So I thought, ‘Actually that’s a good idea – I’ll go and work in

the planning department’. So I got a job at Sheffield City Council [as part of the course] and, well, that was it, I was hooked. I never did go back to surveying, or join the RICS.”

Bridge recalls her Sheffield years with considerable fondness. “I was going to public meetings, planning committees, working on housing action areas and general improvement areas. I worked on a project to regenerate the area around a multi-faith cemetery. There were some really good projects.”

She then studied for a post-graduate diploma at Sunderland Polytechnic on day release, working around a full-time job in development control at Tyne & Wear Council’s planning department.

What followed is a career trajectory comprising long-term commitments punctuated by significant sectoral shifts. After 11 years at Newcastle City Council, Bridge spent 13 in the development sector with Bellway Homes, seeing planning from an entirely different perspective.

Deciding to leave development came after a career rethink. “I’d started to fret about not being the decision-maker,” Bridge explains. “Local authorities are the decision-makers and that’s the position I wanted to be in. As it turned out, it was a good move for me.”

In 2008 Bridge returned to the public sector as head of planning at Northampton Borough Council. At the time, the authority was in special measures, its planning powers stripped. Bridge’s job was to reorganise and re-motivate the department before recovering the planning powers back from the then West Northants Development Corporation.

A difficult but ultimately rewarding role culminated in all planning powers being brought back in-house by 2013. Underpinning this process were two principal projects. First, Bridge talks

generously of the “really good people” she worked with at this time, and about how they grouped together to change the prevailing culture. Second, there was the need to completely re-digitise the council’s planning system. All told, it was work that expanded the new RTPI president’s horizons.

“The biggest lessons I learnt were about processes and systems, and how to manage change,” she says. “One reason it had gone wrong in Northampton was the lack of investment in people, for whatever reason. When I got there, people were lost – yet, in fact we had really good

Northampton was where “I learnt about processes and systems, and how to manage change”

enforcement and development teams.”

This interest in the people within planning comes across several times in our interview, as does the value she places in volunteering for the RTPI. Having served as a volunteer on the institute’s Planning Policy and Practice Committee and English Policy Panel, Bridge is set to remain as an RTPI

corporate trustee until the end of 2023, having been chair of the Board of Trustees until the end of last year.

This is an important role, if perhaps lesser-known, for which her contribution did not go unnoticed. One citation supporting Bridge’s nomination as one of The Planner’s Women of Influence noted that while most members would know the institute’s president and chief executive, “far fewer are aware of the importance of the chair of the Board of Trustees. This is an extremely demanding role as it involves being able to turn your hand to, attending to, and understanding all aspects of the day-to-day workings of the RTPI. The fact that the RTPI is continuing to thrive in the current circumstances is in no small part due to Sue’s guiding hand.”

Power play

Every RTPI president has a theme they seek to develop during their term. “For me it has to be about how planning is powerful,” Bridge explains of hers. “It’s about how the planner’s role in the development of place is one in which we hold and wield considerable power. We are the only one of the built environment professions that have to look at every element of a project and stitch them all together to achieve the planning balance. That is for planners to do as we are trained to consider the views of all consultees, to reach a view exercising what are considerable powers in pursuit of the best possible outcome.”

What’s really needed is for the profession to walk tall, says Bridge;

planners need to appreciate that what they do, and the process through which they come to decisions, is about carefully wielding considerable power, however subtle that power might seem at first glance. And part of this power is in the way planners engage with others in search of the balance.

“You will always encounter controversies and conflict. It’s not possible to achieve consensus on everything – the green belt, for example. But what we must do is establish and promote the common ground we have, acknowledging our areas of difference.”

There’s a steeliness to her resolve in this matter. “As president, I’m going to look at how we can get the message across about improving planning’s reputation and how we can look to see a resurgence in planning. These two things are key: If we can get our resources and reputation right, we can take that lead role.”

Retention strategies

Of course, taking a lead role means having a generation of leaders in key roles. For Bridge, the profession has recruitment and retention issues to attend to. More needs to be done to encourage undergraduates to decide specifically on planning, rather than stumble across it from another discipline.

“In some ways, that’s not a bad thing, because you have a much broader horizon if you come into planning as, say, a geographer. I came in from urban economics, for example. But I think we’ve got to have a double model, one that obviously encourages people to do the right A-levels, and to encourage people to become undergraduates in planning.” As for retention, Bridge expresses concern over the all too many planners who leave the sector over issues of money or status.

“One of the big gaps we have in

“The planner’s role in development of place is one in which we hold and wield great power”

Sue Bridge on…

…PLANTECH

“I’m slightly cautious about some of the things people say this wonderful new world of plantech can do. On paper, the solutions sound fantastic but if it’s not resourced, and more importantly if people are not properly trained, we won’t make the most of it. It’s not just about the software and hardware – it’s about the people and how they use it.

“There are also sectoral differences. The big consultancies are advanced users, local authorities and smaller consultancies not so much. When some younger planners go to work in local authorities they can be disillusioned at how behind it is compared with what they’ve been doing at college. The young ones coming through from university now? They’re miles ahead.”

…CHIEF PLANNING OFFICERS

“You used to have the chief property sur veyor, chief architect, chief planning officer – but none were statutory posts and now none exist in the way that they used to in local government. The government wants a chief placemaker in every authority? Well, they’ve got one, they’ve just got to make them the chief planning officer. But without it being made a statutory position, it’s not going to happen.”

“There’s a statutory requirement to have a local plan and a statutory requirement to review it in five years – the CPO should be a statutory position to drive that through.”

…BIODIVERSITY NET GAIN

“We haven’t seen the finished regulations and there are simply not enough ecologists out there to get to grips with it quickly enough.

“The whole nature-based solution concept is absolutely sound – we have a biodiversity crisis and it has to be sorted out. But is this the right way to do it? Government could have involved the industry a lot more and it would have been better to have a phased introduction. Inflation and the economy could be a real drag on its delivery. What worries me most about BNG is that absolutely everything needs to be assessed.”

…THE ONE SHORT, SHARP SHOCK THAT WOULD CHANGE PLANNING

“If the government made it a statutory requirement for all highway authorities to adopt the Manual for Streets it would enable people and places to be put before cars and lorries.”

local government and also potentially in the private sector, is in middlemanagement, and that’s because back in 2008 to 2010 we just weren’t bringing in graduates. I’ve seen this all the way through my career; we lose so many planners in times of recession, just at the stage we need them to step up to the next level. And when people leave they often don’t come back.”

The new generation of planners is impressive, however. “Our young planners are astonishing in their enthusiasm and vibrancy – they’re brilliant. They have great ideas and challenge us old fogeys. Take our North West region – they’ve this project on to bring private sector planners together with the public sector in a structured way to share ideas. That, to a certain extent, is where my ideas about promoting planning as a shared endeavour between these sectors has come from. When I’m in the North West in my presidential year, I’ll be looking at the success of that project.”

I ask if Bridge has a final, galvanising message to RTPI members as she begins her presidential term. “Be nice to

Bridge fears that a lack of ecologists could scupper BNG legislation

each other!”, she exclaims, before adding “No, hang on, that sounds pathetic…”

After a pause she says: “I think what we need to do is appreciate each other more. Whatever our starting point –public sector, private sector – everybody has a role to play in the system and in getting to the right answer. We have to work together if we’re to do that. Perhaps not in a partnership as such, but certainly as part of the joint endeavour that’s necessary to get to the right answer.

“Appreciating the role everyone else has within the process would be a good way of doing that. One thing we’ve been talking about within the institute is whether or not there is a role for both public and private sector organisations to offer sabbaticals to junior planners so that they can spend time among one another to see how the other side works. I know the biggest change in my career was the move from public to private sector. It really was like learning an entirely new aspect of the job. When you move you learn so much more about how the wider system works.”

I tell Bridge that RTPI chief executive Victoria Hills has expressed certainty that Sue “will bring some challenging ideas” to the role of president.

“Well, that’s put me on the spot!” she exclaims. “But yes, some of the work we’re doing at the moment, for instance on our member value proposition, is challenging; because if we want to really engage with all the members, it’s going to require significant change as well as being more aware of members’ concerns and the challenges they face.

“As a membership organisation, the RTPI has improved leaps and bounds over the last 15 years, but still around

25 per cent of planners are not RTPI members. That’s where we’re starting to really improve our member value proposition, so that people feel they really want to join us.”

Does the RTPI create a sufficiently distinct sense of community, I wonder?

“It’s getting much better, and that’s coming through in the One Institute project, focused at a more local level in the nations and regions, looking at how they work and how local members can engage more; most members, after all, relate first to their local branch.”

“The other thing we need to look at is our training and CPD – I think it could be more accessible. We have RTPI Learn, which has some very good modules on it, but I don’t think they’re signposted well enough and some of the in-person training events can be expensive. I also think there’s not enough encouragement for members to join the RTPI in the first place.”

When Sue Bridge left Northampton Borough Council in 2014, she announced what she then thought would be her retirement from the profession. Barely seven weeks later, she was back up and running in a private consultancy role. She says that she may again seek to step back after her time as RTPI president. For now, however, there is much work ahead.

MARTIN READ

is editor of The Planner

More interviews

The Planner has an extensive selection of interviews with key figures within and on the borders of the profession. Scan for details.

CVSue Bridge

Born: Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Education: Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University), Bsc Hons in Urban Land Economics, 1971-75; Sunderland Polytechnic, Post Graduate Diploma Town Planning

Career highlights

1987

Joins Newcastle City Council, working up to senior planning officer

1996

Moves to become director, planning and development, Bellway Homes

2008 Becomes head of planning at Northampton Borough Council

2008-2012

Joins RTPI’s Planning Policy and Practice Committee (Vice chair, 2011)

2014 Sets up her own business, Sue Bridge Consultancy Ltd

2015

Becomes member of RTPI’s General Assembly

2015-2016

Joins the RTPI’s English Policy Panel

2017-2018

Chartered member of RTPI’s Board of Trustees

2018

Becomes an RTPI fellow 2019-2022

Chair (2022) of RTPI’s Board of Trusteess

2022 Elected RTPI vice-president 2023 Becomes RTPI president

“Our young planners are astonishing in their enthusiasm and vibrancy – they’re brilliant”

The spatial sting

It’s time for politicians and planners to grasp the nettle on housing, climate and levelling up, argues Vicky Payne . Spatial planning and ‘doughnut economics’ show the way

IMAGE: SPOOKY POOKA

Surely, you cried, so few people couldn’t have such an impact? But they could. When I reached the fifth door of my advent calendar, Michael Gove capitulated. Although targets were only ever a starting point, it represented a shift. There is broad consensus this will reduce housing delivery and undermine plan-making: Merry Christmas.

A crisis

If you possess a functioning memory you may recall a government promise to build 300,000 houses a year, reaffirmed by Gove as recently as October. Many argue we don’t need that many. I believe we do.

If anything, housing needs are underestimated, being based on past trends. Household formation projections don’t take account of people who were unable to access housing, making

December 2022. The levelling up and regeneration bill is merrily making its way through the report stage to a soundtrack of supermarket Christmas tunes. It’s a special time when MPs can gather round, suggesting amendments. Puncturing the festive legislative atmosphere, a group of Conservative MPs tabled a mutinous amendment seeking prohibition of mandatory housing targets and the abolition of

undersupply a self-fulfilling prophecy. In 2018 Crisis identified a backlog of 4.75 million households and called for the target to be raised to 340,000 a year.

Overcrowding in the social and private-rented sectors has risen to the highest levels seen since data collection began, according to Overcrowded Housing (England), a 2021 report for the House of Commons Library. Housing is increasingly unaffordable: in 2021, the Office for National Statistics estimated that full-time employees would spend 9.1 times their annual earnings on buying a home: In 1997 the ratio was 3.5.

In 2020, England had the third lowest percentage of vacant dwellings of 23 countries selected by the OECD from its Affordable Housing Database, including close neighbours like France, and Denmark. This very low buffer exacerbates housing’s lack of elasticity (a long lag between demand and ability to meet it). When supply is inelastic, prices rise faster; while it’s not as simple as ‘more supply, lower prices’, the opposite point is easier to prove: having fewer homes than we need will increase costs.

More housing, more problems

If you accept that we need more housing, the next question is how to deliver it? Many people who accept the need still argue against new homes. Objections cluster at two scales: local and global.

At the local level are concerns about environmental impact, insufficient infrastructure, affordability and poor design. At the global level are broader climate objections: the carbon take of construction, carbon-intensive travel patterns and the impact on our biosphere.

These concerns are valid. Place Alliance’s 2021 National Housing Design Audit found that new housing design in the UK is overwhelmingly ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor’. A Home for All Within Planetary Boundaries, a November 2022 research

paper led by ecological economist Sophus Zu Ermgassen, concluded that building out the government’s 300,000 homes figure would consume England’s whole cumulative carbon budget for 2050.

You might conclude that we simply shouldn’t build any more new housing. Zu Ermgassen’s research suggested reducing demand for homes as financial assets using macroprudential policy, expanding social housing, reducing underutilisation of floor space and accelerating low-carbon retrofits. I agree that we should do all of that, but it won’t happen fast and won’t be enough. Even building exclusively on brownfield land won’t do it. Most housing is already built on previously developed land, as DLUHC’s Land Use Change Statistics for 2022 demonstrate, but even with significant government support, it can only be part of the solution, as Lichfields’ Banking on Brownfield report suggests.

Is it better to have unmet need than to build on greenfield sites? I don’t believe so. A safe, affordable home is not optional; it is a need, not a want, and its absence has deep impacts on wellbeing.

Planning barrister and author of A Home of One’s Own, Hashi Mohamed, captured this impact when writing in the Financial Times in September. “Cramped conditions limit our horizons not just physically but mentally. They affect the relationships you build, the friendships you sustain and whether you have the space and time to find your place in society.”

People whose only available water is unsafe don’t simply stop drinking. It does not follow that if new housing is badly designed and unsustainable, we should stop providing it. If we’re doing it wrong, we must learn to do it right.

Levelling up

Insufficient housing has implications for addressing spatial inequality: levelling up. Writing in Showhouse magazine,

In the know: Vicky’s recommended reading

Overcrowded Housing England, House of Commons Library, 2021 bit.ly/planner0102overcrowded

OECD Affordable Housing Database 2020 bit.ly/planner0102-oecd

How does supply and demand affect the housing market? (LSE blog) bit.ly/planner0102-lse

A Housing Design Audit for England (Place Alliance) bit.ly/planner0102designaudit

A home for all within planetary boundaries bit.ly/planner0102planetary

DLUHC Land Use Change Statistics 2021-22 bit.ly/planner0102landuse

Banking on Brownfield (Lichfields report) bit.ly/planner0102bankingbrownfield

Our Homes in the North (Showhouse blog) bit.ly/planner0102homesnorth

The housing crisis sits at the centre of Britain’s ills (Financial Times) bit.ly/planner0102-ft

Doughnut Economics Action Lab bit.ly/planner0102doughnut

IN

NUMBERS

Crowded houses

829 k

An average of 829,000 households – or 3.5 per cent of all households – lived in overcrowded conditions between 2017/18 and 2019/20

Paul Smith at Strategic Land Group recently highlighted the government’s intention to target new homes towards areas of unaffordability – namely London and the South East. But a huge driver of that demand is the strength of the economy. So one option that would support levelling-up would be to make other destinations more attractive with investment and infrastructure, rebalancing demand for homes. The traditional approach of ‘create employment, attract population, build houses’ can also be inverted, especially with flexibility around working locations.

I once used Lowell near Boston as a case study: the post-industrial town focused not on replacing jobs but on creating attractive, affordable, neighbourhoods, drawing a highly employable population who then brought business to the area.

Growing the amount of housing in

an area helps to create a critical mass to support shops, services and public transport, all of which diminish without sufficient people using them. A vicious circle begins where demand reduces, services shrink and fewer people want to live there. We should aim to start the

344 K

An average of 344,000 (8.7%) of all social-renting households and 302,000 (6.7%) of all private-renting households were overcrowded in this period

virtuous circle of increased population, greater demand, improved amenities and justifiable infrastructure spending.

The doughnut

There are compelling social arguments for housing at both the personal and macro-spatial scales, but there are legitimate quality and climate concerns. Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics provides an excellent conceptual framework for such tension. The concept is deliciously simple: humanity’s aim should be to “meet the needs of all within the means of the planet”. No one falls short on life’s essentials: food, housing, healthcare, political voice, etc (‘the inner edge’). We also try not to overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, such as a stable climate, fertile soils and a protective ozone layer (‘the outer edge’). We aim to stay within the sweet spot; inside the doughnut.

‘Doughnut’ economics is an excellent framing tool for housing. We can place Hashi Mohamed’s rallying cry for safe, stable, affordable homes on the inner edge and the research paper showing targets eating up our entire carbon budget on the outer edge. In April 2020, the City of Amsterdam publicly embraced the doughnut as a tool to guide its social and economic recovery from the pandemic. Could we take a similar approach in the UK?

A way forward

In 2020, Amsterdam embraced the doughnut as a tool to guide its recovery from the pandemic

We already have policy tools that could be strengthened using the doughnut model: strategic spatial planning and design coding. Taken together they could help us

“We already have policy tools that could be strengthened using the doughnut model”

183k

By comparison, 183,000 – or just 1.2 per cent – of owner-occupying households were overcrowded. This represented a decline in overcrowding in owner-occupied housing since 1995; rented housing saw a significant increase in overcrowding over the same period.

balance the needs of people and planet. Join me, for a moment, in my personal planning utopia.

For starters, there is a national spatial plan for the UK, developed around the levelling-up agenda. This plan creates a high-level aspiration for a functional and sustainable arrangement of housing, employment and transport.

Strategic spatial planning would then be undertaken at the multi-authority level or at the single-authority level with cooperation. We have seen delay and disruption with joint local plans and multi-authority documents like the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework. But my utopian vision takes place in a different political and ideological landscape, and my hope is that would make things easier.

The spatial planning process would foster a much closer relationship between the policy vision for a place and its spatial expression. So often, I read documents that say all the right things from a social and environmental perspective, only to look at the key diagram and fail to see a relationship between the words and the map.

A spatial strategy based on the principles of doughnut economics (or even the core principles of most existing plans) might take the following approach to identifying appropriate locations for development.

1 Eliminate land with significant physical constraints (eg, important landscape features, flood risk, etc);

2 Eliminate areas that fall beyond an accessible distance from current or planned public transport infrastructure

and substantial local centres; and 3 Identify areas (using the Index of Multiple Deprivation) where development might be most needed, and explore ‘bundling’ challenging brownfield sites in areas of low viability with higher-value greenfield.

This gives an idealised spatial picture. From there, it is necessary to negotiate and make compromises. This would be done in a conscious, transparent way, acknowledging trade-offs rather than obfuscating with cheery comms. Outputs would be visual, legible and accessible. The process would include the challenging of engaging local people in high-level, long-term conversations.

Once locations have been identified, design coding comes in. The 2021 National Model Design Code already requires local planning authorities to draft local codes. They would have a clear remit to code for development that balances the needs of people and planet, setting higher standards of quality and sustainability for new development.

Although we might never eliminate opposition to new housing, I believe that demonstrably putting development in the right place and setting much higher-quality standards would bring us to a much more evenhanded discourse.

VICKY PAYNE is strategy, research and engagement lead at the Quality of Life Foundation. In her previous role with the urban design consultancy Urbed, she helped to develop the National Model Design Code.

A wish list for change

Leadership: Grasp the nettle of hard social and environmental issues like housing. Transparently address hard truths. Reinstate national housing targets, develop a national spatial plan. Step up.

Resources: Invest in the people, skills and systems of planning departments. Give time and money for continuous internal improvement, rather than chasing the radical reforms of politicians and think tanks.

Power: Give local authorities the ability to assemble land, borrow money and deliver development directly. Give them a clear remit to draft strategic spatial policy and design codes that balance the needs of people and the planet and hold them to account.

Support: Help the development industry and local authorities adjust to this new reality. Acknowledge commercial challenges, develop transition measures, let go of lazy demonisation.

Globally the depressing economic picture is used to justify slashed budgets and cancelled plans. But our salvation may lie in the opposite: taking action. Imagine the potential of a spatially balanced country, a planning system equipped to take on social and environmental challenges, and a population in high-quality neighbourhoods. We must look at the real problems facing us and acknowledge that the cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of doing something.

A job specification that required applicants to amass technical knowledge and apply this in antagonistic settings with aggrieved members of the public might find few takers.

So it is with enforcement which –even by the standards of planning’s perennial recruitment problems –stands out for its staff shortages.

Things have become so concerning that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities commissioned research from the RTPI to find out what has happened and how it might be remedied.

One thing unearthed in Planning Enforcement Resourcing, the report that followed, is that planners can get a degree and pass an entire career with minimal exposure to enforcement; and that even though it underpins planning – what, after all, is the point of planning decisions that are not enforced? – it is viewed as a backwater compared with policy and development control.

As Kate Longley, an independent planning enforcement contractor, puts it: “I think one issue is that in enforcement things will be confrontational, which many people don’t like.

“With a planning application you are expected to visit the site and people will be happy to see you, but with enforcement they don’t want you there

and that can be difficult.”

Planning Enforcement Resourcing makes grim reading for those who think enforcement matters. It identified a 43 per cent decrease in net expenditure from local authorities on planning as a whole to £480 million in 2020/21, which had been “felt acutely by enforcement teams across England”.

Among respondents, 80 per cent said there were insufficient officers in their team to carry out the workload, 89 per cent faced a backlog and fewer than half felt they had the capacity to monitor compliance once successful enforcement action has been taken.

The RTPI’s survey found that the recruitment of enforcement officers

“Enforcement is important and difficult, but also thankless and under-resourced”

was “often impossible” as a result of “low graduate interest, the squeezing of more traditional entry paths into the profession and the increased competition from recruitment consultancies” which has “decimated the talent pool”.

Contracting offered higher pay and more flexible working than did a staff job and the pandemic-induced backlog had lowered staff morale.

Evidence from councils suggested that pay was only one factor in the difficulties facing enforcement –because rates were the same as for other planning roles – with one saying: “The reputation of enforcement discourages young planners because of the perception from people that planning

Farmer Robert Fidler hid an illegal ‘castle’ behind hay bales. He was told to dismantle it.

enforcement isn’t particularly nice and that people get a lot of aggravation.”

Planning’s poor relation

The RTPI concluded that a combination of low awareness and interest among graduate planners, enforcement teams “being stretched to their limits” and facing “immense pressure” from both politicians and the public were all factors.

It warned that the talent pool was “being drained” and ‘repeat offenders’ breached planning rules knowing in all likelihood no penalty would result.

“Without a change from the status quo, the service which is being provided to the public will continue to deteriorate and the planning system will lack teeth,” the report inferred. These findings all sound familiar to Craig Allison, senior planning enforcement officer at Hambleton District Council and chair of the National Association of Planning Enforcement (NAPE).

“Enforcement’s problems stem from the earliest stages of planning as it does not form part of planners’ education,” he explains.

“When I did my degree 10 years ago it was not mentioned and my experience of dealing with young planners now is that little has changed.”

Allison happened to apply for an enforcement job and “found I enjoyed it”, but fears that most planners see it as a poor relation to policy or development control.

So do many local authorities, which he says, view enforcement “as not something that makes money whereas development control brings in fees, so it does not receive much attention”.

Allison says: “There are three legs to planning: policy, development control and enforcement, and the latter is not seen as equal and it should be part

IN NUMBERS 73% 50%

The enforcer’s tale

The RTPI’s research has found a 43 per cent decrease in net expenditure from local authorities on planning as a whole, from £844 million in 2009/10 to £480 million in 2020/2021. The institute’s survey of 133 enforcement officers representing a third of England’s local authorities found that: said their authority had struggled to recruit enforcement officers in the last five years;

80%

said there are not enough enforcement officers in their team to do the work;

53% 89%

said their service does not monitor compliance once enforcement action has been taken.

say they use external contractors;

said they have a backlog of cases; and

of planners’ education. I’m sure local authorities that are struggling to recruit enforcement officers would be happy to offer further training.”

Short staffed councils may turn to external companies to undertake enforcement work, such as Ivy Legal, whose partner Izindi Visagie is a member of the NAPE committee.

She says enforcement needs planning’s brightest and best “because it is important and difficult, but also thankless and under-resourced, which is the part that requires change”.

Visagie agrees that enforcement is seen as less important than policy or development control even though lack of enforcement undermines both.

“People are not attracted to it. Maybe they would be if they could see the level of technical skills involved,” she says. “Enforcement is not for the fainthearted, but it is not greatly respected within authorities.”

As the report respondents felt, Visagie agrees with Longley that there is an ‘aggravation factor’ that acts as a deterrent. “In enforcement you are dealing with complaints all day and it is a very difficult and technical job to do,” she says.

“In addition to the actual work you have to deal with the comeback as any enforcement decision will make one person happy but antagonise another who will resist it to the nth degree and the enforcement function can also be not adequately supported by local authorities who do not appreciate what is happening on the ground.”

Contractors are another – if costly – way to fill the gap and Longley says from her experience “too many councils rely on contractors who are inexperienced and lack the knowledge needed.

“Some councils are entirely staffed by contractors and are almost desperate

Former police officers once played a major role in enforcement as they could deploy their investigative skills and report outcomes to planners for action, without needing much in the way of formal planning knowledge themselves.

This source has, though, shrunk. The RTPI found an increasing emphasis on planning qualifications had reduced the eligibility of those recruited from the police.

Allison says: “Ex-police officers used to make up many enforcement teams and they were not planners but had the investigative skills, and I learnt from one of them. There are fewer nowadays; I’m not sure why, they

‘They were not planners but had the investigative skills’

may have just chosen to retire.”

Broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm developments have pushed enforcement into the spotlight

to just get the enforcement service working, so they use people who may not be experienced.”

Even though councils may typically pay a contractor £45 an hour and an equivalent employee £20 to £25, Longley says: “It is a contractors’ market because of the lack of people working in enforcement or willing to enter it.

“There’s a salary incentive to work as a contractor and you also have the flexibility. If I want to work from home I can. I don’t have to ask anyone.”

A world without enforcement?

Longley thinks the near-cessation of enforcement during lockdowns gave councillors a glimpse of what a world without this service might be, and they did not like it and may become more sympathetic to resourcing the service.

Speaking for councils, David Renard, leader of Swindon and housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, says: “It is a positive step that the government has committed to improving capacity in

The courts and Planning Inspectorate (PINS) present problems for enforcement officers with delays – and in some cases questionable leniency – harming morale.

Allison says: “Courts could do more because even when you take a complicated case through it can result in a small fine and you have to ask if it was really worth it.

“I think the courts do not often deal with planning cases so they are not used to them and we need to inform magistrates better of what is involved.”

Visagie adds: “The courts must improve services both in terms of the severity of penalties but also just in terms of efficiency.

“Cases can have 24 hearings and not only because defendants may try to spin it out in the hope the local authority will give up. There can be judges unavailable, cases not listed when they should be and lack of court time.”

Both she and Allison think PINS is improving, although the former cites “teething problems with people who are new to it getting to grips with enforcement issues” and the latter says that: “You can still wait six months for a decision while meanwhile the breach is going on and causing grievance to the public.”

the sector by developing a planning skills strategy, but this measure must be progressed quickly.

“Councils have expressed concerns regarding their stretched capacity and the difficulty of accessing the relevant skills and expertise to implement and enforce local plans.”

There is support for the RTPI’s findings from the Home Builders Federation, although it feels its members are seldom on the receiving end of enforcement action.

“The findings reflect the impact of under-resourcing across the entire planning sector,” a spokesperson says. “The planning system is on its knees and struggling to function or deliver and central government needs to find a way to ensure departments are sufficiently funded.”

Despite the specific problems faced by enforcement, it seems it is part of the general malaise of an underfunded planning system – and for this the ball is in DLUHC’s court.

It recognised the issue by commissioning the RTPI report and will increase fees, but the research suggests that something more fundamental is needed to revive planning’s enforcement function.

A DLUHC spokesperson said: “We have announced our intention to increase fees so that all local planning authorities can increase their resources. We will consult on these proposals in due course.” Watch that space.

is a freelance journalist specialising in planning and the built environment

Read more Read more features about all aspects of planning on The Planner’s website

MARK SMULIAN

‘You can still wait six months for a decision’

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Strong reaction as controversial Cumbria coal mine gains consent

The levelling-up secretary has granted permission to the UK’s first new coal mine in 30 years near Whitehaven, Cumbria, after finding that its environmental harms could be justified by the coal it would provide to the steel industry in the UK and Europe.

Michael Gove backed inspector Stephen Normington’s conclusion that the need for coal outweighed possible impacts on the environment, heritage, landscape and Sellafield Nuclear Plant.

However, the Climate Change Committee has suggested that 85 per cent of the coal will be exported.

The move has also prompted a strong reaction from campaigners against new coal mines, with Greenpeace’s policy director Doug Parr saying the UK risked being guilty of “climate hypocrisy”. Hugh Ellis of the TCPA described the move as a “shocking dereliction of duty”.

The decision may also lead to divisions within the Conservative Party as Alok Sharma, former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and president of COP26, described it as a “backwards step”.

The appellant, meanwhile, described the proposed development as “the world’s first net-zero mine” on account of its plans to offset any emissions created.

In allowing the mine, Gove backed inspector Stephen Normington’s conclusion that the need for coal outweighed its potential harms to the

natural and built environment.

Normington referenced policy 217 of the NPPF, which allows environmentally unacceptable developments if they provide “national, local or community benefits which clearly outweigh its likely impacts”. He discounted “downstream emissions” as a consideration in his judgment.

The inspector noted that the UK is “almost wholly dependent” on importing coal for the steel industry,

@AlokSharma_RDG

Alok Sharma

We write upwards of 40 appeal reports each month. You can access them at www.theplanner.co.uk/decisions (or scan the code, left) and you can subscribe to our weekly Decisions Digest newsletter, sent out on Monday mornings.

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and was satisfied that there was a UK and European market demand for the coal produced by the Whitehaven mine.

Normington also acknowledged that although the mine would contribute to some greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it would use offsetting measures to achieve net zero, despite criticisms about the use of offsetting being at the core of the mine’s mitigation strategy. This strategy had led to West Cumbria Mining describing the proposal as the “world’s first net-zero mine”.

The inspector judged that the ‘downstream emissions’ – emissions produced by burning coal in steelworks – were not a consideration for the appellant, who has no control over the use of the coal once sent to customers. Normington said that “the impacts of GHG emissions from the subsequent use of the coal… cannot reasonably be regarded as indirect significant effects of the proposed development”.

The mine would be about five kilometres from the Lake District National Park and visible from parts of the St Bees Heritage Coast. But the site was described by Normington as being currently in an area of “decay and neglect”. The inspector decided that the proposal would replace some of the derelict land currently present and landscaping would help to reduce visual impact. However, the mine’s railway facility would have a “significant” visual effect notably at grade II listed Scalegill Hall, and Normington ruled that the proposal would have an “overall adverse” effect on the Pow Beck Valley area.

Concerns were raised by interested parties about the effect of seismicity on the Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Facility, however, no issues were raised by the Office for Nuclear Regulation.

The mine would result in the loss of

some ancient woodland at Bellhouse Gill, but Normington was satisfied that this would be compensated for by more planting.

The inspector concluded that the development would lead to environmental harm, but judged there would be an “overall neutral effect” on climate change, saying: “In my view, the likely amount of coal used in steel-making would be broadly the same with or without… the proposed mine.”

The inspector found that the production of coal for the steel industry and generation of 532 jobs were benefits that would “clearly outweigh” the mine’s harmful effects.

Gove backed his inspector’s findings, saying that “the proposed mine is likely to be much better placed to mitigate GHG emissions than from comparative mining operations around the world”. He allowed the appeal.

Insight

Maggie Mason, retired planner and climate campaigner

Location: Former Marchon Site, Pow Beck Valley and area from the former Marchon Site to St Bees coast, Whitehaven, Cumbria

Authority: Cumbria County Council

Inspector: Stephen Normington

Procedure: Called-in Decision: Allowed Reference: APP/ H0900/V/21/3271069

bit.ly/planner0102-coalmine

“Paragraph 217 is the only policy in the NPPF applying a presumption against permission, unless benefits significantly outweigh the unacceptable environmental impacts. There’s a whole stack of impacts, including on ancient woodland, on local tourism, that weighed against the benefits. Then there’s the huge climate impact. A figure you hear commonly is 400,000 tonnes of CO2e – that is the residual operational emissions, after mitigation. But what about annual 8.8 million tonnes in end-use emissions when the coal is burned? South Lakes Action on Climate Change legal team is looking at whether it’s possible to bring a statutory appeal against the decision,”

January / February 2023 | The Planner | 47

Tower will provide ‘visual enhancement’ to Woking

Woking town centre will gain a 28-storey-tall tower after an inspector ruled that the building would not harm the area’s appearance.

Watkin Jones Group Plc & McKay Securities Plc appealed against Woking Borough Council’s decision to refuse permission for the development, which would house up to 366 homes, commercial floor space, and community spaces.

The scheme had been refused at appeal in 2021, but the secretary of state decided earlier this year that that decision should be quashed.

Inspector Christina Downes decided that despite the current council’s determination to “restrict” tall buildings around the eastern part of the town centre, there was no policy impediment to erecting a tall building on the 0.45-hectare site.

Allowing the appeal, Downes decided that the development, composed of a central, 28-storey tower flanked by two 22 and 25-storey towers, would not have a negative visual impact. Speaking of the plans, the inspector said: “The overall composition would enhance this part of the town centre where development over the last 50 years or so has been generally uninspiring.”

Location: Crown Place, Chertsey Road, Woking GU21 5AJ

Authority: Woking Borough Councill Inspector: Christina Downes Procedure: Hearing Decision: Allowed Reference: APP/ A3655/W/20/3259819

bit.ly/planner0102-woking

Councillor slams Ringmer homes scheme as ‘grubby’

A development of 100 homes, plus community facilities, has been approved near the rural South Downs, as an inspector felt that the proposal’s benefits outweighed its impact.But

development were in detailed discussions with our planning officers, who have a multitude of concerns about what is proposed, but on the day that the 13-week determination period passed, they went behind our backs and appealed to the planning inspector to get their grubby plans approved.”

report notes that the council failed to issue a decision about the original planning application, but identified issues with it including its visual and heritage impact.

A previous plan for the same site for 70 homes had been dismissed by the secretary of state for being out of scale with the village.

Location: Land at Broyle Gate Farm, Lewes Road, Ringmer, East Sussex, BN8 5NA

Authority: Lewes District Council

This has prompted a furious response from councillors at Lewes District Council, with Zoe Nicholson, deputy leader of the council, saying: “The agents for this rogue

Croudace Homes Limited wanted to build the homes, as well as a football pitch, tennis courts, gym, skatepark and public open space for a site near Ringmer, East Sussex.

Inspector David Cliff’s

However, Cliff found that the proposal’s positive contribution to the local housing supply outweighed the level of harm caused to the countryside and heritage, and allowed the appeal.

Inspector: David Cliff Procedure: Inquiry Decision: Allowed Reference: APP/ P1425/W/22/3298993

bit.ly/planner0102-ringmer

Quarry extension would be ‘highly intrusive’ in Dorset AONB

Permission to extend the Chard Junction Quarry has been refused after an inspector found that the proposal could harm the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Aggregate Industries UK Ltd wanted to extend the existing quarry and keep it operational for seven years. Around 930,000 tonnes of sand and gravel would be extracted before the site’s restoration.

But Dorset Council refused to grant planning permission for the scheme, deciding that it would negatively affect the area’s appearance.

Additional homes at country manor wouldn’t safeguard heritage

Permission to convert the grade II* listed manor house Northaw House in Hertfordshire into apartments and provide 19 other homes on the surrounding land has been refused.

Appellant LW Developments Ltd had previously been granted permission to convert Northaw House and build 13 homes, but submitted this application with an additional six dwellings. The company said that these homes were necessary to make the heritage and restoration works on the house financially

Inspector J Woolcock said the appellant had underestimated the contribution that the appeal site makes to the AONB’s appearance, adding that the quarry would be “highly intrusive” to the landscape.

The inspector recognised that the effects would only be short-term, but judged that this would not mitigate the harm caused. “The compensatory environmental enhancements would not offset the residual landscape and visual impacts.”

Woolcock also pointed out that noise from the silt press at the quarry would reach an unacceptable level in the evenings and night-time.

“The contribution that the appeal site could potentially

make to the supply of sand and gravel in the neighbouring counties is not likely to be so important that it would justify [the] development”.

The appeal was dismissed.

Location: Aggregate Industries Uk Ltd, Chard Junction Quarry, South Chard

Authority: Dorset Council Inspector: J Woolcock Procedure: Inquiry Decision: Dismissed Reference: APP/ D1265/W/22/3295006

bit.ly/planner0102-dorset

feasible. Welwyn Hatfield Council had refused this newer scheme, however.

Inspector A Edgington addressed the impact of the proposal on Northaw House, parts of which date from the 17th century.

Edgington found that the proposal would lead to a loss of historic fabric at the site, and judged that the new homes would have an “undoubtedly suburban character”.

The appellant had argued that these new homes were vital “enabling development” –the proposal would have a harmful effect on heritage, but this would be justified by the need to fund conservation and restoration works on the listed buildings. But the inspector was unconvinced by the appellant’s claim that the previously permitted scheme wouldn’t generate the capital needed for works on the heritage assets.

Edgington accepted that the consented scheme would cause some heritage harm, but ruled that the appeal scheme, with additional homes, would “increase the magnitude” of harm, and dismissed the appeal.

Location: Northaw House, Coopers Lane, Northaw, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, EN6 4NG

Authority: Welwyn Hatfield Council

Inspector: A Edgington Procedure: Hearing Decision: Dismissed Reference: APP/

bit.ly/plaanner0102-northaw

Care village would unacceptably alter surrounding countryside

A proposal for a care home and care-assisted bungalows near Woodbridge, Suffolk, has been dismissed after an inspector judged that it would have a visual impact on its rural setting.

Christchurch Land & Estates (Melton) Ltd wanted to build the care village, including an 80-bed care home, 72 assisted care bungalows, a café, a bowling green and car parking on a greenfield site north of the village of Melton.

Residents would have a minimum age of 75 and would take a minimum care package of four hours a week. However, East Suffolk Council was vexed about the plan’s location, its visual impact, and the size of the rooms.

Inspector R Norman felt that the scheme would be acceptable in terms of its location, as new bus stops and a shuttle bus service would be provided to take residents into Melton.

The two parties disagreed about whether

Climate emergency justifies solar farm

the appeal site had a rural or ‘urban fringe’ character. Norman observed that the site was within a countryside setting and said “the development would introduce a built form that is not characteristic of the existing area”, and decided that it would contribute to the “erosion” of the area’s rural atmosphere.

Despite criticising the scheme for its “urbanising” influence on the area, Norman dismissed concerns that it would lead to coalescence between Melton and Ufford. However, the inspector did not feel that the proposal’s benefits outweighed the harm caused to the area’s appearance. The appeal was dismissed.

the landscape.

An inspector has decided that a solar farm’s impact on the countryside near Stratfordupon-Avon is justified by its contribution to battling the climate emergency.

Appellant Low Carbon wanted to build the solar farm on an 82.5-hectare site near Bishop’s Itchington. Around 25 hectares of the site would remain free of solar panels, and altogether the farm could power 16,500 homes. A 40year permission was sought.

Stratford on Avon District Council had announced the climate emergency in 2019, but had refused this scheme owing to its visual effect on

Inspector Phillip Major observed that the appeal site was part of a “mixed pastoral and arable” area, but its tranquillity was reduced by the nearby M40. The site is also near the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

He disagreed with the council’s view that the plan would have “a significant and adverse impact on landscape character”, finding instead a “moderate” impact that could be managed by landscaping.

Neither did Major share the council’s view that the response from walkers would be to say “what a shame” when seeing the solar farm. The inspector suggested that many would “welcome” the concept of green energy.

Location: Land off Yarmouth Road, Melton, Woodbridge IP12 1QH Authority: East Suffolk Council

Inspector: R Norman Procedure: Inquiry Decision: Dismissed Reference: APP/ X3540/W/21/3280740

Allowing the appeal, Major noted that the council ’s wish to be “at the forefront of climate change adaptation” by 2030 and said the proposal would help to achieve this.

Location: Land near to Bishop’s Itchington, Stratford on Avon, Warwickshire

Authority: Stratford on Avon District Council

Inspector: Philip Major Procedure: Hearing Decision: Allowed Reference: APP/ J3720/W/22/3292579

bit.ly/planner0102-solar

WW2 aircraft-inspired home found to be of ‘exceptional quality

An inspector has granted permission for a unique house based on the Second World War-era De Havilland Mosquito bomber, after deciding its design constituted ‘exceptional quality’. bit.ly/planner0102-mosquito

Green belt petting zoo enforcement action upheld

An inspector has upheld an enforcement notice against a petting zoo operating without planning permission in Adlington, Cheshire, after deciding that the zoo was harming the green belt. bit.ly/planner0102-pettingzoo

Benefits of cancer retreat centre don’t outweigh green belt harms

Permission for a specialist retreat centre near London for young people suffering from cancer has been refused as an inspector found it would impair the green belt.

bit.ly/planner0102-retreat

Shortfall of Gypsy Traveller pitches outweighs landscape harm

Shortfall of Gypsy ihldh

An inspector has allowed a residential Gypsy and Traveller site in Whiteparish, Wiltshire, after deciding that the need to address the area’s shortfall in pitches outweighed the proposal’s effect on the landscape. bit.ly/planner0102-traveller

Green belt energy storage plant will aid transition to renewable energy An energy storage facility has been approved in the Yorkshire green belt. The inpector said its contribution to enabling renewable energy outweighed its “considerable encroachment” into the countryside. bit.ly/planner0102-storage

Historic pub can’t be converted into homes

istoricpubcan’tbeconverted

A proposal to convert the Boar’s Head Inn in Shropshire – a grade II listed public house – into three homes has been refused after an inspector determined that the proposal would harm the building’s heritage value. bit.ly/planner0102-pub

Sports car workshop not suitable for countryside

Permission for a high-performance sports car workshop in rural Essex has been refused after an inspector judged that the development would be harmful to its setting. bit.ly/planner0102-sportscar

Homes allowed on Croydon site allocated for school

An inspector has granted permission for a residential development on a piece of land earmarked for a secondary school, after deciding the area’s need for homes outweighed its need for the school. bit.ly/planner0102-croydon

nner0102-croydon y

Cambridge research park can proceed ‘without delay’

uld oydon site mi idhk

Permission for 56,473 square metres of office and research and development space has been granted in Cambridge, with the inspector concluding that there were no conflicts with local policy.

bit.ly/planner0102-researchpark

Evidence Base

Research, surveys, policy, guidance, consultations and legislation from around the British Isles

1,0791,4716

Overseas investors in Edinburgh, 2000 RESEARCH

Non-domestic property owners in Edinburgh city centre, 2017

Research

Lost in imagined space: A psychoanalysis of participatory design

This open access ScienceDirect article is an intriguing study that finds that ‘spatial thinking’ is rather varied and people assimilate design ideas in different ways. Food for thought for participatory designers. bit.ly/planner0102-sciencedirect

Repower to the people: The scope for repowering to increase community shareholding in commercial onshore wind assets in Great Britain Timely report from the University of the West of England considering how communities can be engaged and rewarded through ‘repowering’ of wind turbines that have reached the end of their original lifespan. bit.ly/planner0102-turbines

Ownership

diversity and

fragmentation: A barrier to urban centre resilience

The findings in this open access Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science paper are clear: between 2000 and 2017, the ownership of building stock in five big Northern retail centres shifted from financial institutions and towards a more fragmented collection of overseas investors, private individuals and unlisted property companies. The question the paper poses touches on one of the big planning

52 | The Planner | January / February 2023

concerns of our post-Covid world: what does this changing pattern of ownership mean for urban governance models if visions of resilient, mixeduse city centres are to be realised?

Broadly, it’s a little of this, a little of that. City centre management becomes more challenging; opportunities for innovation may grow in property use and even in leasing arrangements. More info: bit.ly/planner0102-urban

‘We need to put what we do in my dad’s language, in pounds, shillings and pence’: Commercialisation and the reshaping of public sector planning in England

From the University of Sheffield, series, this considers “how the impacts of austerity and ‘marketled viability planning’ have entrenched the ‘delivery state’, a powerful disciplinary matrix representing late-neoliberal governance”. Can we put that in my dad’s language?

bit.ly/planner0102-publicsector

Policy & legislation

Call for evidence: Just Transition to Net Zero Wales

Wales continues to enact progressive policy and legislation and this looks of a piece with things like the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. “Delivering a just transition will mean that, as we move to a cleaner, stronger, fairer Wales, we leave no one behind” says the blurb. But plans must stand on “robust evidence” – hence the call, which is looking for “best practice” relating to managing the shift to carbon neutrality in ways that are fair to all.

Share your evidence by 15 March: bit.ly/planner0102-walesnetzero

Around the nations England

Cornwall’s carbonneutral economy promise We don’t know where to start with the confusing morass of proposed planning reforms in England, so we suggest you take a look at our columnist Nicola Gooch’s breakdown from December. LURB’s Labour’s Lost: bit.ly/planner0102-lurb

Instead, let’s focus on the proposed Cornwall devolution deal which will, it is claimed, “accelerate the transition to a carbon-neutral economy” for Cornwall. £360 million over 30 years is a bit of sweetener. bit.ly/planner0102-cornwall

Scotland

Offshore wind developments – collision and displacement in petrels and shearwaters: literature review

Renewable energy good; dead seabirds bad. It’s actually a serious matter, to understand the nature impacts of renewables so they can be mitigated. This paper is a step towards fi lling a gap in the Scottish Government’s Sectoral Marine Plan for Offshore Wind. bit.ly/planner0102-wind

Ireland

Short-term tourist letting bill Ireland is fi nding the unregulated short-term letting market a curse as well as a blessing. This bill would introduce a registration scheme that will bring this kind of accommodation into line with hotels, youth hostels and similar places. bit.ly/planner0102-letting

Legal insight

created for nutrient neutrality against their biodiversity net gain requirements. This may ease the land cost.

‘C

oncern’ is one way to describe the reaction to Natural England’s latest nutrient neutrality advice. But is it an obstacle or an opportunity?

Under the 2017 Habitats Regulations, a local planning authority may only grant planning permission if satisfied that the development will not adversely affect the integrity of a nationally designated habitat site. Natural England identifies 31 aquatic habitat sites as being in unfavourable condition because of nutrient pollution.

Sewage is one such source, so local planning authorities with wastewater treatment works hydrologically linked to affected sites must heed the advice. In effect, they cannot permit hydrologically linked development which would increase the amount of overnight accommodation.

In practice this affects new residential development, self-catering chalets, boarding schools and static caravan sites. The advice may also apply to other developments which generate overnight stays or draw people into the catchment area, such as conference facilities.

When Natural England expanded its advice to cover 74 local planning authorities in March 2022, it also slightly opened the door to them on the basis they may allow developments if it can be demonstrated that the expected net increase of nutrients can be offset with mitigation measures to the extent that the development’s nutrient impact on the habitat site is neutral or is a net loss.

To this end, some developers have adopted wetland creation. Wetland habitat can be delivered on or offsite; these habitats may be proposed in conjunction with planning conditions which seek their creation and maintenance in perpetuity. Natural England advises that perpetuity is 80 to 120 years so it is expected that this is secured with long-term controls.

The land cost of this may be prohibitive, particularly where the need to mitigate the nutrient problem has not been factored into viability assessments at the local plan-making stage. Forthcoming regulations on biodiversity net gain may allow landowners to count wetlands

Land use change can also be used to mitigate nutrient impact. Natural England’s generic methodology for calculating nutrient impact assesses the impact of converting nutrient-generating land uses to lower nutrient generating uses. Conversion of agricultural land, which can emit significant nutrient pollution, to developable area or open space can mitigate a development’s nutrient impact. It is expected that local planning authorities secure these land use changes by planning obligation. The converted land could also be subject to a management plan to maximise nutrient sequestration.

Natural England’s advice is often criticised as the root of the problem; however, the nutrient issues in England have been a slow train coming. Although it may be difficult for some developers to achieve nutrient neutrality through habitat creation or land use change, they should appreciate that the door is still ever so slightly ajar.

The solutions for nutrient neutrality will be site and catchment-specific. Although that means that nutrient neutrality will be dealt with on a painstaking case-by-case basis, it also means that novel nutrient neutrality solutions will be assessed on their merits and may be secured under existing planning controls.

GRACE PINAULT is an associate in the planning and public law team at Dentons UK & Middle East LLP

“Natural England’s advice is often criticised as the root of the problem; however, the nutrient issues in England have been a slow train coming”

Is there a way to break the deadlock on nutrient neutrality?

How will Natural England’s stance on nutrient neutrality affect land use plans for sensitive habitats? Mitigation is key, says Grace Pinault

FoE to raise challenge against approval of Cumbrian coal mine

Levelling-up secretary Michael Gove granted permission for the mine – proposed by West Cumbria Mining – on 8 December. He backed inspector Stephen Normington’s conclusion that the need for coal outweighed any possible impacts on the environment. (See Appeals, p.46.)

However, the Climate Change Committee has suggested that 85 per cent of the coal would be exported. Its chair, Lord Deben, said that “phasing out coal use is the clearest requirement of the global effort towards net-zero – whether in the power generation sector or steelmaking or other heavy industry.”

Friends of the Earth said that its claim focuses on the mine’s climate impacts.

Niall Toru, a lawyer at Friends of the Earth, said: “By giving the go-ahead to this polluting and totally unnecessary coal mine, the government has not only made the wrong decision for our economy and the climate, but we believe it has also acted unlawfully.

“Michael Gove has failed to account for the significant climate impacts of this mine, or how the much-needed move to green steel-making will be impacted by its approval.

“The steel industry is under no illusion that it must decarbonise if we’re to meet our climate goals, which calls into doubt the long-term viability of the mine and the jobs used to justify it.

“Just as many jobs could be created locally through a programme to guarantee every home in the area is properly insulated. This would bring a myriad of benefits the mine simply can’t offer, such as lower energy bills, warmer homes, and fewer carbon emissions released into our atmosphere.

“With the world facing a climate emergency, we shouldn’t have to take this challenge to court.

“Any sensible government should be choosing to leave coal in the ground, and accelerating the transition to a safe, clean and sustainable future.”

Legal briefs

RTPI East Midlands New Year Debate: Planning for Housing in a Time of Crisis Head to Leicester on 17 January to hear six speakers, working in pairs, debating the issue of housing in a time of economic, social and environmental crises. Book tickets through the RTPI.

https://bit.ly/planner0102-NYdebate

County council ponders legal action against districts over lack of CIL proceeds

Local Government Lawyer reports that Gloucestershire County Council is considering legal action against some of the county’s district councils over “tens of millions of pounds” in unpaid community infrastructure levy (CIL) fees. https://bit.ly/planner0102-cil

£1.3bn Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon scheme dismissed The £1.3 billion Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon scheme has been dealt a blow by the Court of Appeal, which judged that as the project had not commenced within five years of receiving planning permission, its development consent order was no longer valid.

bit.ly/planner0102-lagoon

Government will launch consultation on local support for onshore wind

The government will launch a consultation exploring how local authorities demonstrate community support and respond to views of local people when considering onshore wind development.

bit.ly/planner0102-onshore

Five lessons from Labour’s devolution plan

Anthony Breach picks apart Labour’s proposals for devolution, which was led by Gordon Brown. This blog, for Centre for Cities, thinks the report is an “important shift” in Labour thinking. bit.ly/planner0102-devolution

Friends of the Earth announced on January 4th that it is going to file legal action against the UK Government for its decision to grant planning permission for a coal mine in Cumbria.

nstead of tarmac drives, it’s fruit trees and play spaces that will line the car-free streets of Ordnance Lane in York, where 85 zerocarbon homes are being built to the Passivhaus international energy performance standard.

The rows of terraced housing will be insulated with recycled newspapers and triple glazed, with heat pumps and solar panels installed – features expected to cut fuel bills by as much as 70 per cent.

Eventually, there will be 600 such homes on four council-owned sites across the city. Together, they form the City of York Council Housing Delivery Programme, a council-led green homes revolution which won the Silver Jubilee Cup as the overall winner at the RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence in 2022.

The project, which also picked up the Plan-Making Practice Award, was hailed by the judges as “an impressive response to the climate emergency”.

YORK HOUSING DELIVERY PROGRAMME

A SENSE OF CONTINUITY

York has a rich history of breaking the mould when it comes to housing. In 1902, chocolatier and philanthropist Joseph Rowntree built the model village of New Earswick, designed by Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker. This new ‘garden village’ contrasted sharply with the dark, overcrowded and insanitary Victorian slums exposed by Rowntree’s son Benjamin Seebohm in his 1901 book York, Poverty: A Study of Town Life. Not only did each terraced home have a garden with two fruit trees and space to grow vegetables, but the light-filled interiors had the unimaginable luxury of an inside toilet. The model houses became prototypes for the national Homes Fit for Heroes programme after the First World War and widely adopted in leafy council housing estates.

Today, York is once again at the forefront of housing innovation. Rowntree gave his workers “airy, light,

safe and sanitary housing surrounded by green”, says Denise Craghill, executive member for housing and safer communities at City of York Council. “We saw the future of Passivhaus and zero-carbon in use homes in terms of sustainability and social inclusion, tackling fuel poverty and the climate crisis.”

As in New Earswick, the Green Party councillor adds, the aim is to “raise the bar nationally for local authority and private sector developers”.

NET-ZERO GOAL

York will be the first local authority in the UK to achieve Passivhaus zerocarbon housing at scale. The £45.5 million programme started in 2017 as standard affordable housing. However, after the 2019 election, the new Green/Liberal Democrat coalition was keen to deliver net-zero carbon in use across all developments. The council drew up a design manual outlining

In brief

City of York plans to build Britain’s biggest net-zero housing scheme

Car-free streets with focus on walking and cycling will promote healthier, low-carbon lifestyles

The 600-house programme aims to tackle climate crisis, fuel poverty and social isolation

Homes England funding has increased affordable housing from 40 per cent to 60 per cent on first two Passivhaus schemes

Mikhail Riches/Darc

CASE STUDY

4

what its new housing should aspire to: healthy homes and neighbourhoods, distinctive and beautiful places, supporting sustainable travel and low environmental impact.

The council hired Mikhail Riches, the architectural practice behind Stirling prize-winning Goldsmith Street, a socially rented Passivhaus terrace in Norwich. That low-rise, high-density scheme with its feel of a Victorian terrace was hailed by RIBA judges as a “modest masterpiece”. York is pushing the envelope further.

The project rethinks the way neighbourhoods can work. “Parking throughout the sites is focused on specific areas, so other parts can be kept car-free,” says Lizzie Le Mare, director at

Tibbalds, which provided planning advice and support throughout. Green corridors dotted with trees and raised planters will run between rows of terraced housing and around developments, providing child-friendly spaces to play, sit together and grow food. Each house will have a bike shed with electric charging points and use of shared e-cargo bikes.

As in Goldsmith Street, tight-knit terraces will be positioned to maximise solar gain – only in this project the roofs will also be covered with solar panels and homes will have energy-efficient heat pumps. “Renewable sources will generate enough energy to heat, light and power the houses, including mechanical heat recovery systems that supply fresh,

filtered air,” explains Tracey Carter, director of housing at City of York Council. “This approach not only minimises negative environmental impact but will drastically reduce residents’ bills.”

Building homes that are net zero in operational carbon is more expensive than a standard build. The fact that the council owns all the sites helps the balance sheet. Among the brownfield sites earmarked for the Passivhaus homes are Duncombe Barracks, in Clifton, an underused site bought from the MoD; Ordnance Lane, which includes Victorian terraces built for married officers that will be refurbished alongside new-build housing; and Burnholme in Hemsworth, a former school.

Judges’ comments

“It is a progressive plan that responds positively to the challenges of developing in a highly sensitive heritage context. The programme demonstrates how three brown fi eld regeneration sites with different characteristics can be brought forward with community input to deliver sustainable, affordable housing and assist in creating mixed communities.”

Low-rise housing will be built at a “gentle density” of around 50 homes per hectare and social housing will be subsidised by private sales. Initially, the aim was 40 per cent affordable across all sites. But extra funding from Homes England means 60 per cent of the homes will now be affordable at

Duncombe Barracks and Hemworth, including 20 per cent socially rented and 40 per cent shared ownership.

OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME

“The city is constrained within tight local authority boundaries where green belt surrounds the city and the historic environment is dense and closely woven,” says Le Mare, adding: “Not only is spare land at a premium but development must respect the existing character of the historic and culturally significant city. Within the historic core of York there are 24 character areas, making York one of the most complex areas of conservation in the UK.”

What’s more, York doesn’t have an adopted

Bike friendly neighbourhoods are cetnral to the programme

Central York from above

Current housing in York

Duncombe Barracks site

local plan. However, the council as landowner and planning authority was able to identify the best, most sustainable sites for development, Le Mare explains. “Consultation and engagement were important elements in the pre-application process and a specialist consultant was brought on board to manage consultation at a neighbourhood level.”

Even though the new brownfield developments are firmly in line with government policy, the scheme has generated opposition. Some locals were firmly against it, fearing the lack of parking spaces could have a negative impact on the surrounding streets. “Parking came up a lot in consultation and

engagement with residents. Residents were concerned a low-car development would be unrealistic and people moving in would rely on cars anyway,” Le Mare recalls.

Planners needed to show how a low-car development could work in practice. “This included promoting alternatives to car travel, including cargo bikes, so even the kinds of journeys people say they really need a car for – food shopping and taking the kids somewhere – could be done by bike,” says Le Mare. “York is the perfect place for a low-car

scheme because it’s such a compact city.”

Could the project provide an exemplar? “Absolutely, it could. If the public sector can shake up developments, then private developers can do something that’s not the norm. Planning policy is behind all these ideas but getting it through – getting the local community behind it and elected members to vote for it – is the biggest challenge.”

RACHEL

MASKER

is a freelance journalist specialising in the built environment

Case studies and The Planner

The Planner regularly produces case studies on projects showcasing fresh and award-winning thinking. Visit our website for more.

Winners shine at awards

RTPI news pages are edited by Ashley Lampard at the RTPI, 41 Botolph Lane, London EC3R 8DL

Clockwise from top left: Silver Jubilee Cup winners Sophie Cole and Lizzie le Mare; RTPI President Sue Bridge; Head Planner of the Year Karen Syrett; RTPI past-president Wei Yang and host Sasha White KC

Editorial: rtpinews@rtpi.org.uk

RTPI (switchboard): 020 7929 9494

RTPI news pages are edited by Ashley Lampard at the RTPI, 41 Botolph Lane, London EC3R 8DL

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Net-zero carbon housing, homeless accommodation, and a transformation of a tower block estate in London were among the winners at this year’s Royal Town Planning Institute Awards for Planning Excellence.

For the first time since 2019, winners of individual categories at the awards were revealed in person on 30 November at The Mermaid in Central London.

Chief executive of the RTPI Victoria Hills, who attended the event, remarked on the outstanding quality of entries in this year’s RTPI Awards. “Together, they have demonstrated the important role planners play in creating well-designed and sustainable communities, as well as their positive contribution to our society.”

A Housing Delivery Programme in York – which aims

to tackle the climate crisis by delivering mixed tenure, net-zero carbon housing across council-owned sites –carried off the prestigious Silver Jubilee Cup, awarded to the project judged most outstanding overall, and it won the Excellence in Plan Making Practice award.

“It was fantastic to see York’s innovative Housing Delivery Programme win this year’s Jubilee Cup,” said Hills. “By creating a strong local plan, the City of York Council is not only improving the lives of future generations within the area, but is addressing the current, real-life challenges faced by communities today.”

Judges chose the programme, which was submitted by the City of York Council and Mikhail Riches, because of the imaginative response it has taken to challenges faced by place, land values, and planning policy position.

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Clockwise from top: Networking and drinks; the audience; RTPI CEO Victoria Hills and host Sasha White KC; Small Planning Consultancy of the Year, Kevin Murray Associates; International Award commended, Atkins

RTPI ACTIVITY PIPELINE

Current RTPI work and events – what the institute is doing, and how you can get involved

Celebrating planning excellence

Applications for the RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence 2023 are now open.

The awards highlight the positive contribution planning professionals make in the communities we serve around the world.

There are 15 categories to choose from, including a new ‘Inspirational Leader of the Year’ award. Entry is free and you can

start yours on our online platform now, saving and making as many changes as you wish until the deadline on 21 March.

The shortlist will be celebrated locally in the summer, and then nationally with the finalists, in November, where the Silver Jubilee Cup will be awarded. For more details and the category criteria, visit bit.ly/planner0102-excellence

New Chartered members

Congratulations to the following planners who were recently elected to the Chartered membership of the RTPI

London

Aira Temporal

Christian Milner

Lucy May

Seyi Obaye-Daley

Wai Lok Ng

Lauren Liu

Alexander Davies

Mark Wiseman

Thomas Bender

Peter Hall

Frances Haines

Herta Gatter

Yasmin Darch

Daria Zakharova

Kaiqi Zhang

Laura Dodds-Hebron

Bin Guan

Benjamin Hood

Kathryn Humber

Annabel Johnson

Tara Johnston

Jordan Martin

Joseph Oakden

Jodie Rhymes

Edward Leigh Gethin Davison

Robert Green Jayanand Kumaraguru

James Paterson

Emily Rickard Maria Vasileiou

East of England

Charlotte Dew

Hollie McPherson

Talent Masuku

Dean Starkey

Lucy Smith

Anthony Collier

Jacob Kaven

Janice Guy Philip Hardy

Ida Jonsson Gahnstroem

Chun Jonathan Kwok

Rachel McGall

Thomas Roe Danielle St Pierre

South East

James Ellis

Laura Archer

Olivia Fuller

Emma Whitley

Tondra Thom

Adam Constantinou

South West

Callam Pearce

Kelly Prosser

Lucy Paffett

Rob Palmer

Leigh-Anne Laws

Emily Pugh

Matthew Fothergill

Ben Siddle

East Midlands

Jamie Alderson

Jamie Alderson

Andrew Stock Oliver Clawson

West Midlands

Benjamin Richards

Beth Leadbetter

Kerry Mee

Lucy Bartley

Chloe Smart

Emma Posillico

James Hodgkins

Ugne Staskauskaite

Adam Place

Michael Brown

Daniel Hibberd

Georgina Kean Daniel Wilson

North East

Clare Leighton Rebecca Worthy Rachel Cooper Grant Rainey

Leigh Dalby

North West

Katelyn Nagle

Suzanne Cantillon

Victoria DemetriouSmith

Molly Leonard Philip Carter Adam Birkett

Nick Brookman

Roshnee Chavda

Eithne FitzGerald

Yorkshire

Christopher Cole Garry Hildersley

Ali Abed

Sarah Welsh

David Wordsworth

Scotland

Adam Cairns

Iain McMillan

Kieran McFarlane

Ross Jamison

Rhiannon Martin Chloe Flower

Timon Moss Weronika Myslowiecka Jaiman Patel

Northern Ireland

Maire McNamee

Natasha McCann James McDermott

Wales/Cymru

Michael Higgins

International

Jessie Chor Sin Chong

Pak Ka Rebecca Li

Yuen Ting Chong

Ho Yin Chui

Kate Sin-kit Kwok

Ling Yan Viola Yeh

Ming Yan Leung

Hoi Yan Yim

Munawer Syed

Horman Cheung

Wing Chung Ivy Fok

Sui Leung Rachel Lo

Wing Man Cheryl Yeung Wing Yee Yeung

Planner Live North 2023

The Planner Live North returns in 2023 for another one-day event focusing on powering up the North through planning. A stellar line-up of speakers as well as a list of plenaries and breakout sessions will soon be announced for the event, continuing the conversation around how opportunities can be created in our underfunded Northern cities to attract investment and drive sustainable business growth.

RTPI’s London headquarters: Your space in central London

In 2021, the Board of Trustees agreed to make a significant investment into the RTPI’s London headquarters in Botolph Lane. Since then, the RTPI has been busy with the renovations. The final phase of the programme has now been completed, and in midDecember, the ribbon was cut.

New RTPI Code of Professional Conduct

On 1st February, all RTPI members will be required to comply with a new Code of Professional Conduct, which sets out updated and amended ethical standards for all members. It applies to all categories of membership and worldwide.

The full membership was consulted on these proposed changes over the summer and all comments have been taken into account and further amendments have been made where needed. Key changes to the code are:

• A clearer requirement not to offer or accept bribes

• A clearer requirement to apply reasonable standards of skill, knowledge and care to all work undertake

• A clearer requirement to comply with CPD requirements

• A requirement to base professional advice on appropriate evidence and without improper manipulation

• A requirement to hold client money safely

• Embedding the existing supplementary regulations on advertising and the use of the logo within the code

• Updated equality requirements

All information about RTPI disciplinary processes and ethics can be found at: bit.ly/planner0102-code

Same building, new look

The RTPI is keen not only to ensure that these new offices are of high quality in design and finish – a reflection of the RTPI’s brand – but welcoming and accessible for everyone.

That’s why a new shopfront and a bigger lift car have been fitted to accommodate wheelchair users; double-glazed partitions around meeting rooms have been fitted to manage the acoustics and control noise within

the working environments –particularly important for those with neurodivergent conditions – and high-contrast colours in the accessible toilets have been included to aid those with visual impairments.

What this means for members

Although this project will provide an improved workspace for staff, the institute is also creating a membership hub that will provide a ‘touchdown’ space for members. This dedicated space allows RTPI members to take advantage of the newly refurbished office for collaboration and accessibility whenever they find themselves in Central London.

Simply call the RTPI’s front desk or drop in next time you are in London to book your space in Botolph Lane’s new membership hub.

RTPI to run second year of mentoring scheme

Are you mid-career and looking for a mentor to help with your professional development? Or are you looking to develop your own skills as a mentor?

Applications will soon open for the second year of NURTURE, the RTPI’s pilot mentoring programme designed exclusively to support the professional development of Chartered RTPI Members in UK and Ireland who are at a mid-career

point and looking to progress.

About 86 per cent of mentees who responded to the RTPI survey in the programme’s first year left feeling prepared for broader professional responsibilities, while 82 per cent of mentors stated that they felt they benefited from mentoring.

Register your interestonline, and the RTPI will notify you when applications open. For details, see bit.ly/planner0102-nurture

The Planner’s year –first quarter 2023

Redactive Publishing Ltd, 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0LN

23 January

Launch of the Planner Jobs Careers Survey 2023. Our annual survey aims to build a long-term picture of the state of the profession, with questions ranging from salary to working conditions to workplace support. This year we’ll be taking a closer look at the wellbeing of planners. Take the survey: bit.ly/planner0102-plannercareers

8 March

Women of Influence list published on The Planner website for International Women’s Day. This is our annual acknowledgment of the impact made by the women in planning, nominated by you.

23 March

Planner Live North conference, Leeds. Our coverage of a day of discussion about planning and growth in the north of England will include video interviews with delegates and participants – and we’ll even be leading a session on how to tell the story of planning memorably. bit.ly/planner0102-plannerlivenorth

Beyond print

The Planner is more than a print product. We’re building a significant presence on the web with lots of online-only material and opportunities to connect through social media. As a Planner subscriber, you’ll have full access to all of our content.

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You can also sign up for our weekly email newsletters bit.ly/planner0102weeklynewsletters

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© The Planner is published on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) by Redactive Publishing Ltd (RPL), 9 Dallington Street, London, EC1V 0LN. This magazine aims to include a broad range of opinion about planning issues and articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the RTPI nor should such opinions be relied upon as statements of fact. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any print or electronic format, including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet, or in any other format in whole or in part in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher. While all due care is taken in writing and producing this magazine, neither RTPI nor RPL accept any liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. Printed by Warners. RTPI CONTACTS

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What are we up to during the first quarter of 2023? Plenty. Take a look below and please do take part where you can.