OCTOBER 2014 CHIEF PLANNERS THEN AND NOW // p.20 • LOOKING TO THE FUTURE // p.24 • 100 YEARS IN 100 DOCUMENTS // p.30 • GARDEN CITIES REVISITED // p.36 • DIGGING UP THE PAST // p.40
T H E B U S I N ES S M O N T H LY FO R P L A N N I N G P R O F ES S IO N A LS
PLANNER
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19142014: A CENTURY OF LANDMARKS How planning has developed since the RTPI's formation
SEPTEMBER 2013 / THE PLANNER 00 www.rtpi.org.uk p1_cover_oct.indd 1
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PLANNER 16 24
CONTENTS
RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S
THE
O CTO BER
20 14
NEWS
8 Wolfson Prize winner lashes back at critics
9 New measures to boost British house building
10 NSIP plan fast-tracking gains strength 11 Maidenhead improvement scheme is unveiled 12 Is Westminster on the road to ‘devo max’? 13 South Yorkshire seeks £56 million for flood defences
OPINION 6 HRH Charles, Prince of Wales, RTPI patron: Town planning needs to be a proactive art
18 Laura Bartle: RTPI practices aid p professionals overseas
19 Paul Farmer: A century of exchange 19 Craig McLaren: How many planners does it take to change a light bulb?
“REFERENCE HAS BEEN MADE… TO THE ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH A GREEN GIRDLE AROUND LONDON” LONDON’S GREEN BELT, FEBRUARY 1935
COV E R I M AG E | PE T E R C ROW T H E R
FEATURES
INSIGHT
20 Planners must reconnect with planning’s founding principles. By Kevin Murray and Vincent Goodstadt
44 Legal landscape: Opinion, blogs, and news from the legal side of planning
14 Chris Shepley: When it’s sixty-four – the RTPI at 150
118 Martin Willey: L Learning on the job
QUOTE UNQUOTE
“OUR CORE CITIES WILL CONTINUE TO GROW AS MULTIFUNCTIONAL CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE WITH GROWING AUTONOMY”
20 16
24 Chief planners of England, Wales and Northern Ireland consider how to address challenges posed by the growing population. By Mark Smulian 30 A hundred years in 100 documents, by Kelvin MacDonald 36 Garden cities revisited: David Rudlin talks about URBED’s 2014 Wolfson Economics Prizewinning concept 40 Simon Wicks considers English Heritage plans for new guidance on archaeology
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48 Career development: Local planning: compiling an evidence base 50 Plan Ahead – our pick of upcoming events for the planning profession and beyond 52 RTPI round-up: News and interviews from the institute 58 Plan B: Planning – the oldest profession?
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RTPI London
Future City Summit
9.30am–5.00pm networking drinks from 5.00pm onwards
23 October 2014 – Siemens Crystal The RTPI is 100 years old this year. The RTPI London Centenary Future City Summit is a one-off opportunity to debate, discuss and learn more about the future of planning in London over the next 100 years Planners and built environmental professionals face immense challenges in accommodating London’s future growth. How should the city expand? Should we be growing upwards or is green belt review and garden cities the answer? Join RTPI London for the debate. Spaces are available for just £75 for rtpi members.
Key note speaker: Rt Hon Dame Tessa Jowell MP &RQÀUPHG 6SHDNHUV Stewart Murray, Assistant Director, Planning, GLA; Michèle Dix, Managing Director of Planning, TfL; Peter Murray, Chairman, NLA; Shaun Spiers, Chief Executive, CPRE; Professor Michael Batty, Chairman of the Management Board, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL: Daniel Raven Ellison, London National Park: 5LFKDUG %URZQ, Associate Director, Centre for London; Ben Derbyshire, Managing Partner, HTA Design; John Dickie, Head of Policy, London First; 7UXGL (OOLRWW, Chief Executive, RTPI ; Cath Ranson, RTPI President; plus more TBA
For more information and to book please go to
futurecity2014.eventbrite.co.uk
LAWYERS DISTINCTLY FOCUSED ON REAL ESTATE Davitt Jones Bould is the largest award-winning real estate law firm in the country. Legal 500 Leading Firm: Real Estate, Planning, Property Litigation Chambers Leading Firm: Real Estate, Planning
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PLAN UPFRONT RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S
Leaderr Here’s to our second century To be president in our centenary year is both an incredible honour and a very special privilege. With the centenary we celebrate the institute’s proud heritage of 100 years of professional planning, beginning with our very first president Thomas Adams. We have had a truly memorable year so far. I have witnessed, during my visits to the regions and nations, the way in which members have embraced the year and got involved in local and national activities. We have had debates, conferences, concerts, dinners, fund-raisers and all manner of events. Each region has chosen to celebrate the centenary in its own special way. Highlights for me have been in meeting members, students and staff across our home nations and around the world, gaining insights into planning excellence and enthusiasm
Cath Ranson sans frontières, a visit to Aberdeen, welcoming our honorary members to lifetime membership at our incredible centenary concert in Exeter Cathedral and coming home to Wales, to Pembrokeshire’s worldclass coastline and the RTPI Cymru centenary challenge. The centenary has certainly helped to empower the institute through more active member engagement. I hope that this will continue. I believe we have grasped the opportunity that the centenary has provided to improve public,
interdisciplinary and government understanding of the power of planning for good and through our very extensive policy and research programme we have reinforced the institute’s role in leading thinking and brokering dialogue. Our Planning Horizons research paper series has taken a long-term as well as global view of planning, examining the contribution that planners can make to some of the challenges we face in the 21st century. The centenary has helped us to begin to set the context for the long-term vision of the profession for our second century. Everything we do is inspired by our mission to
“WITH THE CENTENARY WE CELEBRATE THE INSTITUTE’S PROUD HERITAGE OF 100 YEARS OF PROFESSIONAL PLANNING”
advance the art and science of town and country planning for the benefit of the public. That core principle will remain. Perhaps, as much as anything, this year has given us all a renewed pride in being part of a noble profession. And what of the future? A hundred years after the establishment of planning as a professional discipline not only are the challenges the world faces today of a scale and complexity significantly greater than in 1914, but the cost of failing to respond to them will also be much greater. Those challenges were truly daunting, but planners then proved up to the task. We will again. One thing is absolutely clear – planning and planners are going to be needed more than ever. I have no doubt that the institute will continue to thrive and will be around in 2114 to celebrate our bicentennial. RTPI President 2014-15
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Average net circulation 20,646 (October - December 2013) © The Planner is published on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) by Redactive Publishing Ltd (RPL), 17 Britton St, London EC1M 5TP. 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 partww 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 Polestar Colchester Ltd.
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O CTO B ER 2 01 4 / THE PLA NNER
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NEWS
Analysis { WOLFSON ECONOMIC PRIZE 2014
Wolfson Prize winner lashes back at critics By Simon Wicks
W
olfson Prize winner David Rudlin has hit back at official dismissal of his vision for a wave of new garden cities as “urban sprawl”. Writing exclusively for The Planner, the URBED director responded to criticism of his Uxcester garden city proposal by planning minister Brandon Lewis, saying: “These cities should be grown as an alternative to urban sprawl, or the development of new freestanding garden cities. “We should have the confidence to expand existing, popular, attractive towns and cities that are already well served with infrastructure, just as we did in the past.” Planning minister Brandon Lewis had released a statement on the day the prestigious £250,000 award was announced in which he stressed that the government would have no interest in replicating the scheme. “We are committed to protecting the green belt from development as an important protection against urban sprawl – today’s proposal from Lord Wolfson’s competition is not government policy and will not be taken up,” he said. The government itself is inviting locally led organisations to bid for garden city support, and favouring projects on brownfield sites. Rudlin’s response suggests that his proposal may be closer to government thinking than the minister’s statement supposes. He points out that he and co-author Nicholas Falk
8
advocate brownfield development first – but this alone cannot meet housing need. What Uxcester garden city proposes is locally-led extensions on mainly greenfield land around large market towns. For every acre of greenfield taken, an acre of accessible green space will be given to the community. Rudlin argues that the scheme replicates the “natural” growth of traditional towns. “One might argue that these places should not grow, but this has consequences,” Rudlin writes. “The University of Oxford worries that its position as a world-leading university will be threatened if its lecturers can’t afford to live in the city, and many of these places face similar pressures from employers. “We need to combine our commitment to brownfield development with a properly planned approach to building on green fields.” The 2014 Wolfson Prize had asked ‘How would you deliver a new garden city which is visionary, economically viable and popular?’ The contest attracted 300 entries, whittled down to a shortlist of five. Rudlin’s winning entry was praised by judges for “the personal and human-scale nature of the vision and the fact that the authors decided to argue not just for one place, but for a transferable model applicable to around 40 locations in the UK”. Homeless charity Shelter was runner-up with a plan for a 15,000-home settlement on Kent’s Hoo Peninsula. Read David Rudlin’s response to the minister’s critique on pages 34-37.
What were the finalists suggesting? (1) David Rudlin and Nicholas Falk, URBED (winner): 40 garden city extensions to market towns 80-100,000 homes a year 30-35 years of development 20 per cent affordable Social contract with residents
(2) Shelter (runner-up) 1 garden city in Hoo Peninsula 15,000 homes 15 years development Eventually growing to 60,000 homes 37.5 per cent affordable New model to attract private sector investment into quality housing and jobs (3) Barton Willmore 40 garden cities, with 4 garden city ‘types’ 40-50,000 homes in each 25 years development 35 per cent affordable Garden City Mayors and Garden City Commissions
(4) Chris Blundell, director of development and regeneration at Golding Homes 1 garden city, south-east of Maidstone 15,000 homes 1 new HS1 station 40 per cent affordable Led by a Garden City Development Corporation
(5) Wei Yang and Partners and Peter Freedman 30-40 garden cities in an ‘arc’ From Southampton to Oxford, Cambridge and Felixstowe 10,000 homes and 10,000 jobs in each 10-15 years development 30 per cent affordable Locally controlled Garden City Development Corporation
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PLAN UPFRONT RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S Freeing builders from ‘unnecessary' red tape is the aim of the measures
£100 million project on former colliery site begins
New measures to boost British house building British house builders and councils could save £114 million a year as a result of measures announced by the government. Published on 12 September, these aim to ensure that homes are built to “demanding standards” particularly those of security, wheelchair accessibility and space – while still saving house builders and councils money by cutting red tape. Currently, the rules on how new homes can be built encourage wide differences across the country, with councils able to pick from a range of standards. This, says the government, increases costs and creates uncertainty, bureaucracy and duplication for house builders while the standards can be unworkable, particularly those for solar and wind energy. Communities minister Stephen Williams said that more homes of better quality are needed and that more needs to be done to free house builders from “unnecessary” red tape and let them get on with “building the right homes, in the right places, to help families and first-time buyers onto the property ladder”.
‘Landowner’s charter’ launched in Scotland A new “landowner’s charter” setting out a commitment to the principles and responsibilities of modern ownership has been launched by Scottish Land & Estates (SL&E).
He said: “We are now slashing this mass of unnecessary rules down to just five core standards, saving house builders and councils £114 million a year whilst making new homes safer, more accessible to older and disabled people and more sustainable.” The government is now consulting on how the current standards can be consolidated into the five core standards, including the introduction of a national regulation of the security standards as well as the consideration of wheelchair access. A spokesperson for the Home Builders Federation told The Planner: “The government made a commitment shortly after getting elected to cut red tape so it’s positive that progress is being made. Reducing the red tape and regulatory costs that are levied on house building will make more sites viable and help increase housing supply. “As with all these things, the devil will be in the detail. Ensuring what criteria would allow local authorities to introduce space standards, for example, will be key to the success of the policy in reducing red tape and costs.”
The organisation, representing landowners and rural businesses, insists that its membership will “take reasonable steps” to ensure that ownership of land is visible. The body has also stressed that its members will “communicate estate plans to those who will be affected by them”. SL&E chairman David Johnstone said: “We recognise that there is always scope for improvement in the way landowners operate
I M AG E | A L A M Y
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Work has started on the transformation of the former colliery site at Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire. Representatives from Rushcliffe Borough Council, the Housing and Communities Agency (HCA) and developers Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes, alongside other key partners, met at Hollygate Park to see work get underway on the eight to 10-year project. Cotgrave is a 34-hectare derelict pithead site that will deliver 450 new homes, 141 of them affordable. The project, which is valued at about £100 million, will provide almost 600 new jobs through the development of an 18,500 sq m business park. Councillor Neil Clarke, leader of Rushcliffe Borough Council, said: “This major development is a massive boost for Cotgrave and Rushcliffe’s economy, as well as providing new homes and giving local people opportunities for work and training. It is another way we are transforming Cotgrave from a former pit village into an even more desirable location to live and do business. Rushcliffe Borough Council is proud to continue to support developments which benefit local communities.” The HCA has invested £3.6 million into the Hollygate Park development. Graham Dobbs, head of Midlands North for the HCA, said the HCA is “really pleased” that the work and investment it has put in – alongside that of Rushcliffe Borough Council, the developers and local people – has now come to fruition. John Dillon, managing director of Barratt and David Wilson Homes North Midlands, said: “Hollygate Park will be one of our most prestigious developments, and having worked in partnership with the local authority and others towards the same goal, we can confidently say this will be an exceptional place for people to call home.”
in a modern Scotland. We are responsive to constructive criticism and it is right we do everything we can to ensure land-based businesses and estates operate in an open and transparent manner.” The charter stipulated that SL&E members will “work with tenants and the wider community to encourage and support enterprise and business development where this fits with estate or farm objectives”. But David Cameron,
chairman of Community Land Scotland, denied the charter would make much difference. “You have to ask how it will empower communities to develop the land on which they live and work and directly share the benefits of that development; how it will stop land being bought and sold for the wrong reasons; and how it will give a community long-term stability when land passes from one generation or individual to another.”
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NEWS
Analysis {
Infrastructure projects Lee Tunnel River Lee Acton
INFRASTRUCTURE
NSIP plan fast-tracking gains strength
Thames Tideway Tunnel (the ‘super sewer’)
£4.2bn + 25km + 7.2m
internal diameter
(16m) from Acton to Abbey Mills
Clocaenog Forest wind farm
£100m + 32
+
turbines
By Laura Edgar
T
he passing of three major developments in September is a sign that the government’s fast-track infrastructure planning scheme is “increasing in strength and importance”. That’s the message from Planning Inspectorate chief executive Simon Ridley in the wake of approvals for three massive utilities schemes – the Thames Tideway Tunnel, Clocaenog Forest Wind Farm and a new power station in North Killingholme, Lincolnshire. The three projects take to 24 the number of developments passed under the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) fast-track scheme, introduced in the Planning Act 2008. Just 21 projects had been passed in six years until September; now three have been approved in a month. Is this a sign that the coalition’s efforts to fast-track a wider range of schemes is working? An indication of a maturing system in which developers, planners and policymakers have got to grips with processes? Is it just coincidence that three applications reached a crucial stage at the same time? Or does the acceleration in approvals suggest that schemes are being pushed through without proper consideration? Ridley would seem to favour the former options, saying: “These decisions demonstrate the increasing strength and importance of the National Infrastructure regime.” “The Planning Inspectorate is fulfilling its responsibilities by undertaking thorough, impartial examinations and ensuring full community consultation within statutory deadlines,” he said. “The certainty of knowing when a decision will be made following full consideration of public views provides developers and investors with the confidence needed to plan the infrastructure improvements this country needs to secure future economic growth.” Until 2012, only major proposals relating to energy, transport, water and waste were considered ‘infrastructure’ for the purposes of the scheme, which gives applicants the right to have their decision decided by the secretary of state rather than local authorities. The Planning Inspectorate, on behalf of the secretary of state, decides whether or not the application meets the standards required to be formally accepted for examination. After acceptance, the development consent order process takes 12 to 15 months. In late 2012, then-planning minister Nick Boles announced that a wider range of commercial developments could be added to the list. This year the first of these, Paramount, a Disney-style theme
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96
megawatts of energy, supplying electricity to 40,000 households
North Killingholme power project
470mw + 2.5m megawatts of energy
tonnes of CO2 capture a year
+
140
full-time jobs
park in Kent, was given NSIP status by communities minister Eric Pickles. London Resort Company Holdings, the company behind the project, hopes to submit an application by early 2015. Although a theme park might be stretching the definition of a NSIP, in his letter to the firm Pickles said that the project “would be likely to have significant economic impact on an area wider than a single local authority”, adding that the physical size of he project meant he felt it to be of national significance. The NSIP website shows that seven projects are being examined by inspectors, six are in their pre-examination phase, and are 10 waiting for acceptance onto the scheme. The projects are across the UK, from Northern Ireland to East Anglia, and have been submitted by a wide range of agencies and organisations, including the Highways Agency and the National Grid. Complaints have been few and far between – until the Thames Tideway Tunnel “super sewer” was passed. Hammersmith & Fulham Council expressed concern about the decision to use a residential area in Fulham, Carnwarth Road, as the site for a concrete borehole. It feels misery could have been avoided if the scheme had been over the river in Barn Elms, a green field site. Council leader Stephen Cowan, said: “This is a disgraceful decision by the government, which effectively says that a piece of parkland is more important than a community where thousands of people live. The park would COMPLAINTS HAVE have been restored after construction was BEEN FEW AND completed, but using Carnwath Road will FAR BETWEEN – cause misery to thousands for years.” UNTIL THE THAMES Will such discontent see the council TIDEWAY TUNNEL challenge this decision? If so, could we “SUPER SEWER” see the fast-track scheme grind to a halt WAS PASSED – at least in the case of the “super sewer”?
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PLAN UPFRONT RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S
£160m Maidenhead improvement scheme is unveiled A scheme for a new £160 million entrance to Maidenhead to revitalise the town centre alongside a new Crossrail station are due for consultation this month. Called The Landing, the plans for the Broadway site (between Broadway, King Street and Queen Street), are being developed with the aim of creating new routes and a “fresh sense of place” between the railway station and the wider town centre. The proposed development, to be unveiled by developer London & Aberdeen at a public exhibition early this month, will include a central public open space, new pedestrian areas, office space, new homes, retail and restaurants. Drawn up in conjunction with the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead (RBWM), the scheme also promises an ‘Oxford Circus-style’ crossing between King Street and Queen Street. RBWM’s ambition is to improve the connections between the town centre and the railway station before the arrival of Crossrail in 2019, which has the potential to generate a significant economic boost for the Berkshire town. Doug Higgins, managing director at London & Aberdeen, said: “With Crossrail arriving in 2019, Maidenhead needs an entrance to the town which it can be proud of. Our family has lived here for over 30 years and we know that The Landing needs to kick-start the rejuvenation of Maidenhead by raising the bar. “After a history of disappointment for this site, we’re extremely keen to hear what the Maidenhead community thinks about our vision and draft plans. We’d encourage everyone to come to the exhibition and give their feedback.” The company aims to submit a planning application later this year and, if it is approved, hopes to complete the development in 2019.
Cost of The Landing – a project to form a “fresh sense of place” for Maidenhead town centre
South Downs National Park rejects oil-drilling plan A plan to engage in test drilling for oil and gas beneath the South Downs National Park in West Sussex has been turned down by the park’s planning authority. The proposal by Celtique Energie Weald Limited to install a well and the associated infrastructure for a conventional drilling operation at Nine Acre Copse in Fernhurst was unanimously rejected by the planning committee for South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA). The application covered a temporary period of three years. According to the SDNPA website, the plan is not to engage in the controversial horizontal drilling method and no mention is made of shale gas and oil or fracking in direct relation to the application. However, a recent British Geological Survey study estimated that there could be billions of barrels of shale oil beneath the Weald Basin, including the South Downs National Park, which could potentially be extracted using the fracking method. The SDNPA website also goes on to give a lengthy explanation of fracking. Margaret Paren, chair of the park’s authority, said: “Members of the SDNPA planning committee refused planning permission because the applicant has failed to demonstrate that exceptional circumstances exist and that it would be in the public interest for such exploration to The chalk ridge of take place within the protected the South Downs landscape of the South Downs. forms England's Planning permission was also newest National refused because of the adverse Park impact on the tranquillity and amenity of the National Park.” Celtique Energie CEO Geoff Davies said in a statement on the company’s website that although the decision has left the company disappointed, it is not surprised. “The decision fails to take into consideration the importance of this project to the nation and the comprehensive steps Celtique would be taking to ensure that all exploration work would be done sensitively during the very temporary period we would be working in the National Park.”
Irish government allocates €23m to improve social housing Alan Kelly, the Republic of Ireland’s minister for the environment, community and local government, has announced the allocation of €23 million capital funding to some 31 city and county councils to undertake improvement works on social housing. A total of €8 million will be allocated to local authorities for adaptations and extensions to social houses to meet the needs of tenants with a disability or to address serious overcrowding. I M A G E S | I S T O C K /A L A M Y
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Under the Government’s Social Housing Investment Programme, local authorities can use suitable vacant stock to meet particular needs, however, there are also situations where there is no option other than to adapt or extend an existing dwelling. The minister has assessed the requirements for such works with each local authority and announced allocations for each authority based on the level of need identified. The minister has also announced that he is allocating a further €15 million to be invested in upgrading the energy efficiency of local authority homes this year. This is part of a threeyear jobs stimulus programme that will improve the energy efficiency of 25,000 of the most poorly insulated local authority homes.
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NEWS
Analysis { RETAIL DEVELOPMENT
Is Westminster on the road to ‘devo max’? By Laura Edgar
A
lhough its citizens voted ‘No’ to independence, Scotland’s referendum is part of a larger trend spreading across the British Isles. In Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, London, Manchester and other UK cities people are pressing for devolution of powers to regional and local bodies. In the weeks leading up to the Scottish referendum, an Institute for Public Policy Research North report, Decentralisation Decade, launched by Nick Clegg, argued that 80 years of centralisation has failed and that it is time to start again. The County Councils Network has proposed devolved funding across skills, employment and planning, as well as greater powers for councils to reinvest the proceeds of growth locally. Meanwhile, a ResPublica report, Devo Max - Devo Manc, suggests that Manchester should be the first completely devolved city in England. In the last issue of The Planner we featured Northern Ireland’s chief planner Fiona McCandless, who is helping the province prepare for the handover of powers to larger regional government structures in April 2015. Wales, where a move towards fewer but larger regional councils is likely, is going through a similar debate. And a BBC/ICM poll found that 49 per cent of Welsh respondents support more devolution of powers to the Welsh Assembly. There are also some arguing that non-English MPs should be excluded from voting on Englandonly matters at Westminster. Former Welsh secretary John Redwood, in particular, is pressing the case for an English parliament. Fellow Tory Bernard Jenkin has gone further, calling for a federal UK system with an English first minister. So what are the main parties saying?
Conservative: c Draft legislation on Scottish devolution to be published in January. c David Cameron has said that as Scotland gets more powers so should England, Wales and Northern Ireland. c Some Tories argue for an English Parliament.
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SCOTLAND Greater devolution: The major UK parliamentary parties all promised greater devolution of powers to Scotland should the nation vote ‘No’ in the independence referendum. Former PM Gordon Brown has created an agenda for change.
NORTHERN IRELAND Transfer of powers: 26 councils reduced to be reduced to 11 in 2015. Powers to be transferred under the Local Government Act 2014 and the Planning Act 2011 will include planning, roads, urban regenerations, community development, housing and local economic development.
MANCHESTER City regions: Manchester has been advocated in a ResPublica report as the first English city that should be granted devolved powers. Other reports argue for greater devolution to UK ‘city regions’ and the Core Cities group is campaigning for greater tax raising powers to fund city growth. Major parties have indicated support for city regions.
WALES “Super-councils”: Two proposals on the table for local government reform in Wales: merging of the existing 22 councils into just 10; retention of the councils, but with a layer of four regional “super-councils” above them, with strategic planning and transport powers.
l Devolution to the max
“LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS WILLIAM HAGUE SAYS ‘HOME RULE‘ WILL BE A KEY ELECTION ISSUE”
LONDON English parliament? The case for an English parliament is growing in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum. The Conservatives are already putting plans together for English MPs only to vote on English matters, with some voices calling for a separate English parliament, others for a de facto English parliament within a federal UK. Likely to become a major election issue.
Cameron says this is “not remotely near”, but c Leader of the House of Commons William Hague says “home rule” will be a key election issue. c George Osborne has indicated that there is party support for devolution to city regions.
Liberal Democrats: c Promised devolution must be given to the Scots. c Further powers must be delivered to Wales. c Northern Ireland must be further devolved. c Nick Clegg agrees Scots, Welsh and Irish voting on English matters needs a solution, but Scotland
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PLAN UPFRONT RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S
£56m South Yorkshire seeks £56 million for flood defences A £56 million investment is planned to improve Sheffield’s flood defences. Sheffield City Council has registered six flood alleviation schemes – costing a total of £56 million – to receive
government funding over the next few years. These will reduce the risk of flooding for about 6,000 homes and 2,000 businesses and support the building of new homes in the city. A £19 million project in the Lower Don Valley is already under way. The proposed schemes are: a £12 million flood alleviation programme on the River Sheaf; a £12 million scheme in the Upper Don; an £8
Sheffield is at the confluence of seven major rivers (Don, Porter, Loxley, Rivelin, Rother, Sheaf, and Moss) and so is prone to flooding
should come first. c Clegg launched Decentralisation Decade.
The amount of investment Sheffield City Council is seeking to build up South Yorkshire’s flood defences million culvert renewal programme; a £3 million environmental scheme to manage surface water from planned developments on the Manor and Arbourthorne estates; and a £2 million flood alleviation programme on the upper Blackburn Brook, which would benefit the houses in Chapeltown and Ecclesfield. The £37 million for the five schemes would come from a £23 million government grant and the remainder from partnership funding. Jack Scott, cabinet member for environment, said climate change studies had predicted thousands of homes and businesses were at risk of flooding. "This potential impact could come at an economic cost of £1 billion to Sheffield residents."
Joint project launched on NI planning powers Northern Ireland’s environment minister Mark H Durkan has announced a joint project between the Department of the Environment (DoE) and Newry, Mourne and Down Council to prepare for the transfer of planning powers. At present, DoE planning for Newry, Mourne and Down operates from Downpatrick and Craigavon. But under this initiative Newry residents are seeing planners on their doorstep for the first time. By the end of September members of the DoE Area Planning Team had relocated to new sites in Downpatrick and Newry to work alongside future council colleagues. Planning functions are due to transfer from central government to local government on 1 April 2015. Durkan said: “This project will help shape how councils deliver planning, bringing it closer to the public in the new Newry Mourne and Down Council area, post-April 2015.” Charlie Casey, presiding councillor of Newry, Mourne and Down Council, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen as the pathfinder project to transfer planning services from central government to council, resulting in greater local accessibility for everyone. “We hope this new means of service delivery will transform the nature of interaction between the public and planning service on all planning matters.”
Welsh government proposes “super council” plan
Labour: c Former cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw has called on the party to set up a constitutional convention to discuss English devolution. c Ed Miliband has been urged to include devolution in the party’s election manifesto, but he has said Scotland should be dealt with first. c Miliband has pledged £30 billion of spending powers to English regions. Paul Swinney, senior economist at Centre for Cities, told The Planner: “What you will find is that that they will have to find an answer to the Scotland, Wales and English question all at once. What is given to the nations, the biggest cities will also want a slice of, so I imagine what they will do is consider all of devolution at the same time, even if it is not acted on at the same time.” Could further devolution and a more equitable distribution of money offer an economic revival to depressed parts of the UK and poorer cities? Swinney said: “Greater devolution of power would change this, allowing cities to tailor policy to meet their challenges. This would help to support growth of their economies.” I M AG E | A L A M Y/G E T T Y
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Four “super councils” like Greater Manchester’s regional authority should be created in Wales, says a discussion paper published by the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA). The plan, which offers an alternative to the devolved government’s plans to reduce the number of local councils, would involve the creation of combined authorities to take on responsibility for transport and strategic planning. The paper says the strategy could be a better solution to problems in local government than the council mergers suggested in the wake of the Williams Commission. This suggested that the existing 22 Welsh local authorities could be reduced to between 10 and 12 as a result of voluntary or forced mergers. Under the latest WLGA proposal the existing structure would continue while delegating strategic functions to the regional bodies, as happens in Greater Manchester. “The fear is that the local authorities recommended by the Williams’ Commission will be too large to be
local, but too small to provide the scale necessary for regional planning, and the delivery of some key services,” says the paper. It adds: “The problems identified by the Williams Commission could be more easily and more effectively remedied by legislating to ensure consistent delivery of regional services rather than legislating to achieve fewer local authorities.” Meanwhile, Denbighshire councillors have voted to explore a possible voluntary merger with Conwy Council.
The Williams Commission says councils in Wales should merge into 10, 11 or 12 authorities from the current 22
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CR THP I :R1 0I0 SY E ASR SH E P L E Y
O Opinion When it’s sixty-four – the RTPI at 150 “Time to reflect”, said Mevagissey. She had been born in the year of the RTPI’s 100th anniversary, when there had been a fashion for naming people after the places where they were conceived. She had learned to live with it, but her brothers Mousehole and Looe were somewhat less sanguine. Fifty years later in 2064, she was the head of one of the new super authorities that had been spawned by the Great Picklesian Discontinuity. There had always been swings of the pendulum but in the early 2010s it had swung violently against all that planners held sensible and rational. The famous plaque in Botolph Lane recorded the casualties – those who had fought and died in the trenches to defend British traditions against the cruel and ruthless armies of the enemy. There had been losses of course, and at times it looked as though the battle might not be won. Axis forces had reached the very gates of the 1947 Act before being pushed back. The whole country pulled together to save its planning system from occupation and ruin. But from tragedy came unexpected triumph. Cuts meant that local authorities had amalgamated and eventually reorganised (as they should have done 50 years earlier) into a group of sub-regional giants. Bitterly opposed at the outset by the sort of people who had the time and self-importance to write to
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SHE HAD BEEN BORN IN THE YEAR OF THE RTPI’S 100TH ANNIVERSARY local papers, these powerful bodies had become very popular. They had cash to spend and muscle to fight with the centre, and had wrested a bit of power from London. The pendulum swung back. They had huge planning departments with experts in things like conservation, ecology and design, which they used to have in the old days. And at last they had a system of localism that worked. Not the illusory Picklesian topdown localism, which had in practice been a mask for more centralism. But the real deal, based on smaller town and parish councils that had
some clout. Those did a lot of the detailed stuff very well, leaving Mevagissey to dream and strategise and plan. The regional economies boomed as these councils thrived. Financial services had disappeared up their own fundament in the 20s. People were moving out of London following the floods of the 40s, when MPs with wet feet had voted to move Parliament to Pontefract. HS4 (from Newcastle to Penzance) had become the backbone of the economy. House prices had fallen following the public sector building boom, which began in 2015 (though Chinese billionaires were inflating prices in desirable places like Stockport), leaving people with more disposable income to spend in the high street (internet shopping had collapsed in the 30s, throttled by its own spam).
Most planning was done by wearable digital interfaces. Mevagissey would mention ideas to revitalise the inner city to her jumper, which would transmit them instantly to people’s glasses. Passengers on amphibious trains at Dawlish could comment via their trousers on the local plan. Pedestrians roamed among driverless cars discussing the Regional Strategy. At the Cornish border controls on the Tamar, where stern guards denied entry to second homeowners, children passed the time planning garden cities. Planning committees met virtually, arguing loudly through inter-stellar space about the demolition of much-loved wind farms. Mevagissey still met real people – sometimes in her noiseless, hi-tech office – where they would come to congratulate her on the latest decisions. And sometimes at RTPI events, which were celebratory in nature. “Time to reflect”. That it was the mad extremities of the Picklesian era which had led to this recovery, this golden age, this planners’ paradise. A version of this article originally appeared in RTPI South West’s Branchout magazine
Chris Shepley is the principal of Chris Shepley Planning and former Chief Planning Inspector
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RTPI CENTENARY
Inbox
Centenary projects chart the passing decades The RTPI’s centenary projects have been many and varied, and two in particular deserving of a wider audience
(1) The centenary timeline This is an animated online resource that presents the history of the institute in a timeline stream that anyone familiar with Apple’s ‘Time Machine’ software or the computer game ‘Guitar Hero’ will instantly grasp. Users visit the site and then drag the timeline forward, in doing so they bring forward information into view across four ‘streams’ – the era’s people of note, key legislation, the institute’s own activity (reports, publications, staff) and events. As a way of contextualising the development of the profession and the institute’s role in it, it’s remarkably effective. The project, managed centrally at the RTPI, has yielded a decent reference tool. Indeed, when compared with other such timelines (the ‘TikiToki’ timeline software itself is open to all), the RTPI’s is by far the most comprehensive. n Visit tinyurl.com/RTPITime
(2) The centenary audio history RTPI past-president Martin Willey set himself the task of interviewing planning professionals from across the age spectrum about the profession and practice of planning in the decades within which they were most active. Each a little over 10 minutes in length, interviewer Willey having has thus far spoken to the following: The 1920s - Robin Tetlow (on behalf of his parents, both planners in this decade) The 1930s – Colin Jacobs The 1940s – George McDonic The 1960s – John Dean The 1970s – Cliff Hague The 1980s – Stephen Wilkinson The 1990s – Helen Harrison
The podcasts chronicle the important issues of the time – the impact of the 1947 Town & country Planning Act, for example – and there’s plenty of personal perspective. George McDonic seems to have fallen out of love with the concept of planning delivered through a unitary authority (“It’s so remote – local issues don’t seem to be considered”) while John Dean, who believes architects need more coaxing to engage with planners, claims that “localism is just phoney window-dressing. I’m amazed that Labour has not woken up to
the fact that you can actually combine big government with localism to provide a new deal for communities.” Robin Tetlow recounts how his father John was inspired by having seen Sir Raymund Unwin speaking in 1937. “He had a major influence, with all his talk about garden cities and urban design (civic design at the time)”. Tetlow’s father was in the former Ministry of Town and Country Planning when the 1947 act was being brought together. Then there’s Colin Jacobs, who recounts what it was like to be (literally) drawing up plans based on the 1932 act, while Helen Harrison speaks warmly of Patsy Healy’s enthusiasm and excitement for the profession. Of course, these are purely personal accounts, but their brevity makes them easily digestable and enjoyable. n Visit tinyurl.com/RTPICentenaryAudio
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Quote unquote FROM 191738
then as now? The institute’s early years were ripe with debate, as the RTPI’s archives make abundantly clear. That said, the topics under discussion seem eerily familiar to those of today. Here’s a flavour…
Garden cities
Tall buildings “So… we propose to increase the height of buildings allowed in London to 100 feet, or to twice the width of the street, where that is less than 50 feet. This will turn our streets into canyons of gloom, and spread the winter shadow over far more space than is ever likely to be left open.” Sir Raymond Unwin, Urban Development The Pattern And The Background, August 1935
“Just now, with public interest aroused, with vast programmes taking form, with our idealism again at high pitch, with officialdom eagerly seeking sensible, satisfactory types of projects, now is the great opportunity for one or more agencies… to focus attention on the “garden city”. We should by all means and at once examine the principles and the possibilities in this type of development.” Mr Jacob Crane, president of the American City Planning Institute, “American City” magazine, February 1935
Green belt Population growth
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“The fact is that the County of London, taken as a whole, has for many years been full, and freely flowing over in all directions, and in this, as in some other matters, the Greater London area (comprising the Metropolitan and City Police districts with an area of 693 square miles) and not the Administrative County of London (117 square miles) must be taken as the unit for consideration. We find that whilst the population of greater London (including the County of London) in the period 191131 diminished by 124,682 0r 2.8 per cent. It is significant too that in the last ten years of that period (1921-31) the increase in the population of Greater London was 723,741 or 9.7 per cent., as compared with a ratio of increase for England and Wales of 5.5 per cent. This indicates that the London area has again become, as it was prior to 1901, a magnet drawing to it population from all over the country.”
“Reference has been made… to the attempt to establish a green girdle around London. At the beginning of the century this belt could have been found about 6½ miles from Charing Cross. Latest investigations have put it at between 13 and 14 miles, so that the problem has become increasingly difficult year by year. Thousands of houses have been built on what it was then hoped could be saved. The never-ceasing flood of development made reconsideration essential.”
Frank Hunt, The Face Of London, 1910-1935
London’s Green Belt, February 1935 I M AG E S | G E T T Y
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Cycling infrastructure
The purpose of planning
“I will not enter into the controversy as to whether cyclists should be compelled to use the few and inadequate tracks which have been laid up to the present. An enormous “speed up” of this work is required… “A strip of such a road reserved by means of a simple hedge or fence, on one side, for the sole use of cyclists (in both directions) would be invaluable to all road users.”
“To plan means to order or organise, to organise is to control, and to control we must devise rules and enact laws. Thus “orderliness” is the very first requirement of planning of any description, but law is only indispensable as being a means to an end.” Professor R A Cordingley, Town Planning Ideals Restated, February 1935
Affordable housing “Although we admit that in some large cities and towns, and in certain circumstances such as the high cost of land, the provision of a limited number of flats is necessary, we think that many municipalities would erect houses in preference to flats; and that, so far from being especially encouraged, flats should only be erected where demanded by exceptional circumstances.” Flats and Houses for WorkingClass Accommodation, April 1935. Joint investigation by the Institution of Municipal and County Engineers and the Town Planning Institute
Garden cities “Mr E B Havell rightly says: “The most advanced science of Europe has not yet improved upon the principles of the planning of garden cities of India.” Nevertheless, we in this period have lost Eastern and not adopted Western.” Garden Cities from Town Planning Past with the Present by V C Mehta, Chief Engineer, Nagpur Improvement Trust, September 1938
The Problem of Accommodating Cyclists from Modern Road Problems by E L Leeming, Engineer and Surveyor to Urmston District Council, January 1938
Architects and developers
The planning system
“Were I going to lay out a town, I would rather trust a cow to make up the graceful lines than most of the engineers. Have you ever noticed a cow-path in the country? It is always graceful.”
The (planning) system, as it is at present legally based and operated, is not only quite inadequate to deal with such national aspects, but also in many ways inadequate to deal effectively with the broader regional requirements into which the national aspects must often be merged, and through which they must largely be expressed and satisfied.”
Town planning “One satisfactory feature of the competition is that it has secured a design that it is practicable to carry out and likely to commend itself for this reason to the citizens of Croydon.” Winning entry (and £500 prize): F W Halfhide and R J O’Donoghue, London Croydon civic centre competition design
Patrick Abercrombie quoting the author of an American Civic Association’s report, ‘How to Lay out a City
The planning system Garden cities “If, as I believe to be the case, the modern development of town planning in this country is the outcome of Sir Ebenezer Howard's idea of garden cities, I was in it from the beginning, years before any Town Planning Act was passed… " "There can be no questions that in the matter of town planning everyone has much to learn. We do not yet know what are the boundaries of its sphere, much less have we mastered the details of the many and various problems which it will bring to light." G. Montagu Harris, president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, speaking in December 1927
“Industrial town are those which have suffered most intensely from the want of Town Planning powers, the first Town Planning Act of 1909 being too late by 80 years to safeguard their rapid development period.”
The Need for National Planning, from Report of the National Survey and National Planning Committee of the Institute, May 1938
Town and Country Planning Act 1932, Journal of the Town Planning Institute, Herbert H.Humphries CBE, 1933
The planning system “To the outsider who sees ‘most of the fun,’ we as a body have appeared rather as a set of cranks with ‘hobbies to ride’, who have allowed our discretion to override our prudence.”
“Town planning has suddenly made its appearance as a technique within a human habit that is as old as humanity itself – the grouping together of human habitations.”
Mr. Thomas H.Mawson, ‘Some of the larger problems of town planning’
Professor Patrick Abercrombie, writing on ‘Town Planning Literature’, 2017
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B E S T O F T H E B LO G S
O Opinion
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Laura Bartle, urban. spatial and community planner at OpenPlan, working in the UK and the Caribbean
While I was studying for my master’s degree and over the years that th immediately followed, the RTPI’s influence on me related almost exclusively to the APC process and CPD. That changed six months after I achieved chartered status when, in 2012, I started working in the Caribbean. I view this time as the start of a much stronger connection with the RTPI. The role of the institute in the English-speaking Caribbean is well established and being a member substantiated my credibility and undoubtedly provided me with opportunities to make significant contributions to projects so early on in my career. This included policy formulation as part of the National Spatial Development Strategy for Trinidad and Tobago and, more recently, leading an Integrated Sustainability Appraisal as part of a Community Plan that OpenPlan is preparing on behalf of the Government of Barbados. Many English-speaking Caribbean nations are working on reforming planning legislation from that which, in most cases, is based on the 1947 English Town and Country Planning Act, to better suit the issues faced by individual islands. Despite this colonial legacy, the principles and approaches adopted in the UK today are looked on as best practice, and I have been able to
Martin Willey, retired planner and manager with wide experience in public, private and voluntary sectors
Learning on the job
RTPI practices aid professionals overseas draw on this extensively. For example, objective-based policy is proving to be an attractive and successful alternative to the prescribed standards, zoning and subdivisions that our Caribbean counterparts are accustomed to. This differs somewhat from my interpretation of the situation in China. Between 2005 and 2008 I was in Shanghai conducting dissertation-related research. From my interactions with students and a range of urban professionals it was clear that the interest at this time was on British urban design and architecture, rather than our planning methods and strategies – so the influence of the RTPI appeared much less here. As well as seeing the benefits of RTPI association overseas, I’ve also been particularly interested in – and impressed with – the RTPI’s responses to the criticism that planning in the UK has faced over recent years. Publications such as the Planning Horizons series provide excellent material for the profession and, combined with a general feeling that the RTPI has significantly strengthened its voice at a national level, it has helped to improve my own perception of the status of planners in the UK. And with the eyes of other nations looking to us so closely, this can only help to bring about more chances for UK planners to spread their wings on the international scene too.
“THE ROLE AND PRESTIGE OF THE INSTITUTE IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING CARIBBEAN IS VERY WELL ESTABLISHED”
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I’ve been a planner since 1967, chartere chartered in 1973 and benefited greatly from doing a day-release course at London Southbank to prepare me for RTPI external exams. I learned “on the job”. Carrying out the centenary interviews has been a fantastic experience, including the first with Colin Jacobs, who practised planning in the 1930s. His interview, and others, reminded me of the derivation of the planning profession in health, land surveying, design and engineering. When I started, much of the training was in urban design. One-third of RTPI intermediate/final exams were a design exercise. In those days our presidents were leaders in many areas – Francis Tibbalds on design and masterplanning, Colin Buchanan on traffic and planning, Nat Lichfield on the cost/benefits of planning – and planning had real status in government policy. It was the foundation for such issues as community engagement, conservation, countryside planning, social planning, New Towns and strategic planning. In the 47 years since, there have been many changes where the balance of government policy between environment, society, and the economy has changed back and forth in emphasis. Currently, it is on the economy and in many cases shows a lack of understanding as to the market benefits of long-
term strategic planning. The RTPI has grown in membership and has very different governance arrangements from when I was a “part-time student” member of council. It has been transformed into a stronger, more representative and member-engaged body and continues to improve, especially in the area of communications, internally and externally, and in our influence of government and the opposition. I became a planner because I saw the process as one that “created better places” and I have been blessed by being surrounded by some great planners who have achieved that objective whether in government, in private practice especially multi-disciplinary ones, working for the World Bank, the RSPB, in academia, social regeneration or inward investment. As president in 2009, I found that planners were committed people, prepared to innovate and I have never met a planner who, when asked to contribute a little more to the RTPI and the profession did not say ‘yes’. For the next 100 years, I would like to see an increase and broadening of membership as currently under consideration and a further increase in the engagement of fellow professionals in demonstrating the public benefit of professional planning
“I BECAME A PLANNER BECAUSE I SAW THE PROCESS AS ONE THAT ‘CREATED BETTER PLACES’”
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RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S
Have your say Would you like to see yourself in these pages? Get in touch by email – editorial@theplanner.co.uk Topical, inspirational, angry or amusing – we consider all relevant comment
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Paul Farmer, former CEO of the American Planning Association, senior planning official in Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, and, professor of planning and architecture at several universities
Craig McLaren is director of RTPI Scotland
How many planners does it take to change a light bulb?
A century of exchange
Planners in the UK and the US have sh shared experiences and succes successes for 100 years. Centenaries have been celebrated by the American Planning Association in 2009 and the Royal Town Planning Institute in 2014. Wonderful friendships and productive professional relationships have been developed along the way. Even before the establishment of APA and RTPI, planners and other design professionals exchanged ideas. Sir Ebenezer Howard visited Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Riverside, Illinois, an early railroad suburb near Chicago, as he was refining his garden cities principles. Riverside’s 1869 plan, unlike places based on a grid, added strong curvilinear components and rural landscapes. Letchworth and Welwyn informed Clarence Stein and Henry Wright as they built American communities such as Radburn, New Jersey in the 1920s, Chatham Village in Pittsburgh and the US Land Resettlement Administration’s Greenbelt Towns in the 1930s. Thomas Adams, the RTPI’s first president, took part in the third annual conference of planners in the US in 1911 and was instrumental in the creation in 1929 of the world’s first comprehensive regional plan by the Regional Plan Association of New York and New Jersey. We have exchanged theories and practices on topics from
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regeneration to transport, affordable housing, and climate change. In the 1990s the two bodies developed a scheme that provided an opportunity for an individual planner to share an experience with a colleague. Relationships have been strengthened through an annual exchange of presidential, chief executive and member visits and lectures, presentations at each other’s conventions, study tours, and collaboration on research such as the RTPI’s study of the global capacity for planning. The latter was carried out as an early action of the Global Planners Network, of which RTPI and APA were two of the four founders. This network of nation-based planning bodies was created in advance of UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum in Canada in 2006. RTPI, APA, the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Commonwealth Association of Planners set out to change planning practice. At APA’s 106th National Planning Conference in Atlanta this year, APA recognised RTPI’s contributions with its designation as a National Planning Landmark. It noted: “RTPI has elevated the standards of ethical planning practice, and sponsored generations of pro bono services that exemplify the passion and commitment to excellence that inspires community builders in the UK and across the world.” Let the next 100 years begin!
“RTPI HAS ELEVATED THE STANDARDS OF ETHICAL PLANNING PRACTICE”
On being asked to write about what the RTPI means to me I ponder pondered on the thought that planners can sometimes be criticised for being part of an – at times – cumbersome process. We become the butt of bad jokes about how many planners does it take to change a light bulb, with critics teasing us by saying that if this was the case we would we need one to undertake impact assessments looking at wattage, colour and type of light bulb; one to check if it is in accordance with the light bulb development plan; one to undertake an extensive community engagement exercise; one to organise the survey to ensure it doesn’t impact on bats… and so it goes on. The weakness in this criticism is the presumption that a light bulb is always the answer. And that’s where RTPI comes in. In my mind, the institute has a key role in supporting planners to take a step back, to reflect on the big challenges and issues faced in our day-to-day work; to lift our eyes and look to alternative ideas. The expertise in the institute’s membership allows us to develop new thinking and to promote these ideas and messages to influence the legislative and policy contexts that we work within. The institute’s accreditation programmes and professional standards setting encourages
planners to look beyond the one dimensional approach, beyond the short term, beyond the confines of a discipline or funding programme, and, beyond the immediacy of our own backyard. It can help planners to act as the enablers, facilitators and solution providers that make great places for people. And the institute’s training, CPD, and online resources allow people to find out more about groundbreaking initiatives and to hear about the big picture. We’re rightly proud of planning, and the institute’s awards identify and showcase the best of planning to others across the globe. As an international organisation, RTPI can help us to share and learn from the different approaches being taken to planning across the UK and Ireland, and beyond; the policy and research output this year is changing the nature of debates on big challenges we face domestically and globally, such as housing, the economy, spatial thinking and climate change. This is a collective effort with the institute acting as the focus by bringing together planners, staff, stakeholders and partners to support one another and to explore how best to ‘change the light bulb’ or, dare I say, come up with an alternative light bulb ‘eureka moment’ of doing something differently.
“EXPLORE HOW BEST TO ‘CHANGE THE LIGHT BULB’ OR, DARE I SAY, COME UP WITH AN ALTERNATIVE LIGHT BULB ‘EUREKA MOMENT’”
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WHO L EADS
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INTRODUCTION INTRO
The challenge facing planners in the next century is to reconnect with the ethical and social foundations of the profession to bridge the gap between power and responsibility for planning. By Kevin Murray and Vincent Goodstadt 20
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It is right that we celebrate the achievements of 100 years of planning, its milestones m and outstanding people. It is also a time to reect on o where planning, particularly as practised across the UK, can step up its response to the growing challenges all ll societies face and whether we, as planners, are adequately equipped to tackle them. The planning challenges arising from climate, technological and demographic change have been well highlighted in the RTPI’s recent Planning Horizons papers and other reports1. Underlying these is a call to rediscover the ethical and social foundations of planning, and view it as much more than a regulatory process. The big question, however, is this; even if the challenges we face in the 21st century are accepted by all sectors in society, has our 100-year history left us in a strong place from which to tackle these issues?
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“PLANNING IN BRITAIN HAS NOT BEEN ONE CONTINUOUS VIRTUOUS PROGRESSION. THERE HAVE BEEN UNDESIRABLE EFFECTS AND OUTCOMES ALONG THE WAY”
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SOME REFLECTIONS
British planners have been global leaders in the evolution of planning processes, practices and content. British planning systems provided frameworks for controlling urban sprawl, renewing inner cities, and safeguarding natural assets – for instance, through the early planning, new town and national park legislation. Planning in Britain has not been one continuous virtuous progression. There have been undesirable effects and outcomes along the way, such as the blight from road schemes, or under-resourced redevelopment leading to desolate townscapes, while the separation of the strategic and local planning functions by authority was at best unfortunate, and the adoption of the Skeffington principles of participation has taken over a generation to work through. Even so, many countries have taken up and even overtaken earlier British templates, such as the Dutch Randstat, the Danish ‘Finger’ Plan, French national planning, the Swedish national urban parks, or the German green cities such as Freiburg. Throughout this history our best planning has traditionally sought to be evidence-based with a proud tradition of public engagement, while seeking to balance economic growth with social and environmental impacts. However, the cumulative attempts to embed these principles in statute and regulation have resulted in a regulatory creep full of unintended consequences. For example, additional regulatory tests of the evidential base of plans, of community involvement and of sustainability, have added little except cost and delay. Similarly national policies, even in their currently reduced form, have been used in a formulaic manner in an adversarial environment, effectively supporting institutionalised nimbyism. As a result, planning is viewed by some as little more than a reactive environmental ‘traffic warden’. Away from the leading edge of current practice, we need to recognise the following: c Development is not all plan-led – more often being guided by a raft of criteria-based polices characteristic of many plans; c Most plans are not yet fully spatial and, with a few notable leading exceptions, still gravitate towards a set of land use zoning policies; c The ‘market’ is imperfect and exceedingly short term, and therefore creates many of the social and environmental problems that planners are asked to ‘solve’; c Local communities and individuals are often detached from proactive planning, despite the undoubtedly exemplary engagement emerging in many localities; and c There is still a degree of disconnect between plans and delivery dimensions – in particular, the agents responsible for their implementation.
The approach to development planning has to be continually re-appraised as the traditional ‘development plan’ cannot be the sole basis of forward planning. Rather it should be seen as the necessary statutory ‘holding document’ complementing more visionary strategies and proactive proposals.
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SHIFT IN LOCAL AUTHORITY POWERS AND RESOURCES
British planning was established essentially as a local government activity. However, this has been eroded by a systemic loss of powers and the creation of external delivery vehicles, such as development corporations, regeneration companies and agencies. The capacity of local councils has been further circumscribed by radical reductions of resources. From a height in the 1970s, locally controlled finances have been more than halved – frustrating councils’ potential for action. These changes have seen: c A reduction in strategic planning capacity; c A loss of architectural and design skills within planning establishments; c A loss of specialist skills, especially in terms of conservation expertise; and c A loss of project management and delivery capability and experience. Many of these skills can and have been supplied through a consultancy or contract, but there has not always been the client-side experience and confidence to manage these effectively, nor the resources to fund them.
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“OUR BEST PLANNING HAS TRADITIONALLY SOUGHT TO BE EVIDENCEBASED WITH A PROUD TRADITION OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT”
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WEAKENED POLITICAL AND PLANNING LEADERSHIP
Planning policies and proposals put forward to address the seismic shifts in the technological, social and economic bases of society have often also been hidebound by a managerialist culture, focusing on short-to-medium term statutory plans and key performance indicator targets, often without strategic spatial context. There are notable exceptions where the impact of planning has been sustained, as in city regeneration in central Manchester and Birmingham, managed urban expansion in Cambridgeshire, and strategic planning in Clydeside and Tayside. Some places have also adopted a very long-term perspective – like the Glasgow City Vision – outside any statutory framework. There is, however, generally less evidence across the UK of bold visionary plans and delivery mechanisms that can compete with European exemplars such as Malmö, Hamburg or Bordeaux. The major successes have generally been where: c Planning policies have set out proactive development priorities upstream and not merely a set of reactive control criteria; c Implementation ‘partners’ have been integral to plan-making from the outset, and not treated as mere consultees or annexed to the plan; and c The plan has been linked to public sector expenditure programmes, effecting the delivery of a common vision. But behind all these successes – some award winners – a key factor has been the presence of strong political and professional leadership. The great achievements in planning over the past 100 years have been led by planners and politicians of vision. In the words of RTPI Gold Medallist Sir Robert Grieve they had a vision of “a better, more socially equitable, more beautiful future than is now the fashion or expectation”. 22
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NEED FOR NEW COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP
Absent or weak leadership arises in part from divided political and economic cultures, where one side is seen to serve either the economic and business players, or the community/voters. This is a false dichotomy because planning needs to deliver for both the community and economy, and therefore plan for both in an environmentally conscious manner. This synthesis can no longer be delivered by the old-style municipal leadership. If there is to be transformational change in the quality of life in town and country a brand of collaborative ‘place leadership’ is required that goes well beyond any minimalist obligation to co-operate. Essentially, the gaps between those responsible for preparing and implementing plans need to be bridged. This includes central government and planning authorities, civic stakeholders in academia, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), communities and, particularly, the ‘corporate’ sector. There is a need to supersede the silo and turf war culture of organisations, and reverse the adversarial default position that characterises planning discourse. Such new collaborative leadership requires not just joint working, but a ‘sharing of power’. This requires complementary priorities through time using each political cycle to add to the beneficial elements of the past, rather than cancelling them out. We must therefore resolve the paradox of the ‘plan’ being a political football, while recognising that ‘plan-making’ is essentially a political process. Heather Campbell calls this ‘making places together’ through ‘co-production’. This requires a consciousness and contemporary leadership capability that transcends both planning professionals and political leaders. This blend of leadership needs, inter alia, to be able to: c Make the connections between community needs and economic potential; c Envision place-related change, particularly through targeted infrastructure investment; c Be able to work constructively with business and public agencies but, crucially, also with a more knowledgeable and enlightened public; and c Think well beyond political and business cycles – and convey this longer-term picture across generations. Collaborative leadership is thus something more progressive and holistic, exemplified by several leading European mayors across the likes of Bordeaux, Lisbon, Helsinki, Freiburg, and now being demonstrated in London, Manchester and Bristol.
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CONTRIBUTING TO ‘PLACE LEADERSHIP’
Planners need to be a part of this place leadership – to contribute, evidence, advise and inspire. This requires the planner to be more than a technocrat or manager of development pressures. We need to prepare plans that lead change, not react to it, challenging the myths and being confident enough to draw a line in the sand around what is unacceptable. Where our best planners have influence, they use their knowledge, skills and aspirations to lead political, environmental, business and local communities of interest to shape change. This requires an updated model for planning, shifting towards: c New forms of plans that are much more than meeting regulatory regimes; c Creating markets for new development and lifestyles, rather than being driven by historic patterns of behaviour; c A programme-based approach to public investment, rather than short-term project and ‘challenge bid’ funding; and c A genuine participatory planning process, rather than tokenistic ‘checklist’ of consultative procedures. Ideally, this means the wider policy community sharing common analysis and building a shared perspective of the future, which is followed through into place-shaping and delivery. This is not just a question of promoting ‘grand projects’, but embedding them in a greater vision. It requires a refreshing of the culture and language of planning – for example, around understanding and creating markets. This, in turn, requires us to bridge the chasm between planning schools and practitioners to add rigour to planning practice and reality to intellectual debate. Planning across Britain works because planners make it work, but this has sometimes been despite the ‘system’. Yes, it could be improved by a short-term sticking plaster, but it really needs a new collective starting point. We need to promote deeper thinking, an updated culture, and a proactive mindset, ensuring delivery that goes beyond the latest variant of ‘survey>analysis>plan’. Fifteen years on from the seminal New Vision For Planning, it is time to rearticulate the purpose and goals of planning, and with it the culture, education and skills needed to address these in the 21st century. We are not alone in the call for change. There have been notable recent contributions, from leading academics and practitioners such as Adams, Rozee, Shepley and Wong. Planners need to demonstrate leadership in facing up to longer term and wider environmental challenges for planning, using the New Vision principles of sustainability, inclusiveness, spatiality and integration. There are already many award-winning exemplars where this is happening within the different UK planning regimes. This needs to be translated across the board, with ‘best practice’ becoming ‘common practice’. There is a need for an orchestrated leadership debate involv-
ing not only planners and planning schools, but also those in the wider planning community, to articulate this renewed approach, values and sense of purpose which would lead to: c All public agencies, institutions and NGOs moving beyond narrowly purposive to integrated solutions; c All planning schools becoming major resources for creative and technical thinking, actively engaged in leading and raising the public debate; and c Investment and developer interests creating – not just exploiting – the infrastructure capacity across existing communities. A new wave of professional leadership will generate the forms of practice needed for planning to be transformational, co-produced and deliverable, with the full potential of academia being harnessed for practical community benefit. Let’s follow the best, and start the place leadership debate now.
THE AUTHORS
Vincent Goodstadt is the past president of the RTPI and a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association. He is currently an executive board member and trustee of the RTPI, chair of its English Planning Policy Panel and vice-chair of the Planning Policy, Practice and Research Committee.
Kevin Murray is chair of the Scottish Planning Skills Forum and honorary professor of planning at Glasgow University
DOWNLOAD n The RTPI’s five Planning Horizons papers take a long-term view of planning and how it can address 21st century challenges. Download them at: http://www.rtpi.org.uk/knowledge/research/planninghorizons/
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or those old enough to remember the futurology of the 1960s, we should now be living in an era of flying cars, with our nutrition gained from a single daily pill. But when the RTPI celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1964 the then chief planner John James took a rather more realistic view in a lecture looking 50 years ahead. He foresaw that planners would be concerned with “a regeneration of the vitality of the provincial city regions within, or close to, their present boundaries. “Siphoning off their new growth and wealth into long-distance overspill schemes may have the consequence of impoverishing the parent body.” On less sure ground, James predicted “we can, perhaps, look forward to the complete renovation of our urban environment by the end of the century”, adding that “it should, in fact, be possible to build more during the next 50 years than the sum of all the buildings now standing”. James also expected that even the “average working man of the future” would possess two cars and two homes, but was perhaps right in foreseeing that “the increased demand for space will result in greater diffusion of activities and especially in the
outward spread of cities”. He wondered, presciently as it turned out, “whether the coalfields will change their economy rapidly enough to support the progeny of their highly virile populations”. In language strikingly similar to today’s, James noted: “There has been a growing awareness over the past few years that we are moving rapidly into a new form of human settlement pattern, best described as a city region” though he thought, “the lowering of residential densities in the overcrowded and obsolete inner cores is likely to go on.” James accurately foresaw the vast growth in motor traffic and warned “we cannot leave the roads to the highway engineer and meanwhile get on with the planning ourselves. It is all one process”. With great foresight, he also expected a severe skill shortage in planning. Local planning authorities were even in 1964 “already several hundreds short of their present complement of planning staffs to undertake the normal work, and “most authorities would accept the case for a larger complement, as we do in the ministry”. To mark the RTPI’s centenary, The Planner asked James’s successors as chief planners also to peer into their crystal balls to see 50 years ahead. {
TO MARK THE RTPI’S CENTENARY, THE CHIEF PLANNERS FOR ENGLAND, WALES AND NORTHERN IRELAND CONSIDER HOW THOSE COMING UP THROUGH THE RANKS OF THE PROFESSION MUST ADDRESS THE CHALLENGES OF BOTH THE GROWING POPULATION AND THE UNPRECEDENTED DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT IT IS BRINGING. MARK SMULIAN REPORTS
RELOADING THE PLANNING
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Steve Quartermain Chief planner ENGLAND
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sk any planner about ‘vision’ and they will understand the question; how they answer will often depend on where their experience has been achieved. One of my own over-used phrases (which I almost certainly stole from someone else) is that a vision without reality is just an illusion. I use this to remind planners that planning is about real outcomes, people, places and prosperity; and it will still be so in 50 years’ time. It is about making life better and should be regarded as a positive profession that stimulates growth, and brings forward development in the right place at the
right time, providing jobs and housing in a sustainable environment. But while many planners will recognise this ambition, the challenge for us all is to reflect on why this ambition is not always delivered and what changes we may face in the next 50 years that will shape how we can respond to ensure this happens. There are a complex and inter-related set of factors that will come into play that will influence this direction of travel: lifestyle choices, environmental constraints, and the need for growth are just a few of the issues that come to mind. I want to highlight a few specific matters that I think will be significant in shaping planning in the future. First is the need to recognise the need to build more homes and address the cultural negative attitude to development. Too often development is seen as a bad thing. But in 50 years’ time we can look forward to a matrix of neighbourhood plans that have I M AG E | TOM C A M PB E L L
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embraced the need for change and have acknowledged the benefit of new development. Linked to game-changing advances in technology, changes in working patterns and attitudes to ‘places of work’ and homes will lead to a more sustainable approach to development in both urban and rural locations. This is not the story of sprawl that is so easily touted but a nurturing of a thousand communities and allowing them to thrive. Welcome back the local shop, school, youth club and (not just for planners) the pub. In tandem with this, and not contradictory to it, our core cities will continue to grow as multifunctional centres of excellence with growing autonomy. These centres will be supported by strong education and research and a truly global economic access, which will create thriving liveable cities with strong functional green infrastructure. These cities will be supported by the expanding high-speed transport network and surrounded by
1 “PLANNING IS ABOUT REAL OUTCOMES, PEOPLE, PLACES AND PROSPERITY; AND IT WILL STILL BE SO IN 50 YEARS’ TIME”
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locally determined green belts. To accommodate this growth a combined strategy of site release and reuse of publicly owned land, much of it previously used, will have restricted the new land take so the overall built upon land remains at around 12 per cent. This allows for the protection of the environment and the recognition that the countryside is not only accessible as a place to visit but is also critical for food production. It also gives space for appropriate responses to climate change challenges with greater opportunity for decision-makers to engage in a more fundamental debate around locational distribution of development; perhaps with greater emphasis on development outside the south east linked to structural infrastructure investment. This creates a new strategic vision for England as a whole but driven from a perspective of communities. Is this all an illusion? The reality is that this will only come to fruition if a number of things come together; first there is the need to get political buy-in at all levels that planning facilitates ‘good’ things and is a positive influence on where people live and work. Planning brings certainty, and brings investment, Professionals and communities must seize the day and create a connected matrix of plans that are fit for purpose and designed for their locality. Developers and planners should work to ensure that decisions are taken promptly and when approved built promptly While 50 years may seem a long time so too does 13 weeks! To deliver this I accept we need the skills and confidence within the industry to grow. Working with developers, planners and local councils need to see themselves as leaders in the implementation of their plans, making things happen, making things better, Can we do this? I genuinely believe we can but planners should not wait for me to say, “make it so…” 26
Rosemary Thomas Chief planner WELSH GOVERNMENT
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2 “PROPERTY LED, PHYSICAL REGENERATION CANNOT DELIVER THE QUALITY BUILT ENVIRONMENT THAT WE AND OUR COMMUNITIES WANT. A MORE HOLISTIC APPROACH IS REQUIRED”
he basic planning issues are similar, 50 years on, as land is a finite resource. The need for new homes, improved co-ordination between authorities, burgeoning city regions, and the integration of transport and land use planning, was a recurring theme in the 1960s, just as now. One of the key structural changes was the establishment in 1999 of elected national assemblies and the devolution of key responsibilities, including land use planning, to ministers in the Celtic nations, including Wales. By 2064 referenda and related issues will, I believe, be a distant memory. Wales will be a more confident nation, with its own planning agenda, at ease with its identity and its neighbours. It will also have a different structure of local government of larger, more resilient units, capable of providing a quality planning service. The 1960s was an era of major public expenditure, including on infrastructure, reflecting national ambitions and assumptions of continuing growth and development. Since then problems arising from many comprehensive redevelopment areas in our town centres
have been documented, and hard lessons learnt from system-built residential developments. The evidence is that property-led, physical regeneration cannot deliver the quality built environment that we and our communities want. A more holistic approach is required, which enhances the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of people and communities. Our climate is changing and the manifestations of this will become ever clearer, with rising sea levels, increasing frequency of flash floods and summer water shortages, combined with changing patterns of vegetation and agricultural production. The issues of climate change, housing and transport will be of paramount concern; we may face tough choices about whether we continue to defend coastal communities or whether we need a new form of settlement pattern, with land abandonment in some places. Energy also presents challenges. The future is market-driven solutions, complemented by smaller-scale community and individually driven initiatives at local level. It boils down to taking responsibility for the resources that we rely on, trying to marshal and use them for the public good. In his 1964 paper, Mr James said the most urgent need was securing fresh ideas on how best to tackle rapidly increasing pressures on our land and society. The need for skilled, resourceful and innovative professionals will continue.
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Fiona McCandless Chief planner NORTHERN IRELAND
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he year 1964 marks a generation and period of time that I feel comfortable with and recognise; yet it is difficult to envision the changes that will occur over the next 50 years. There is a deep human comfort associated with the past and the sense of permanence of the natural world that change occurs gradually; however, changes in our world have been significant and with the advances of new technologies things are likely to change more dramatically over the next 50 years.
The world population continues to grow and this, and the demographic changes of an ageing population, will become even more challenging. The increase in older age groups will create demand for flexible and varied housing and transport provision, particularly as most people will outlive their ability to drive a car. Planning must also respond to the increasing need to encourage healthy living and lifestyle choices. The links between planning and health are recognised but not sufficiently developed in terms of redesigning sustainable communities and cities, and changing behaviours, encouraging walking and cycling. The concern about child obesity in particular must demand more child-friendly designs in housing developments. Residential neighbourhoods must be designed so as to encourage out-
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3 “PLANNING IS A POLITICAL ACTIVITY AND PLANNERS INCREASINGLY NEED THE NECESSARY LEADERSHIP SKILLS TO POWERFULLY COMMUNICATE AND ACHIEVE CLEAR GOALS”
door play, walking to school and shops – a back-to-the-future approach. Inevitably as the population grows, and with the changes in transport and domestic economic activity, so does the demand for energy. Even with more efficient use and improved technology, demand will increase to support our more sophisticated lifestyles. That raises a key issue for planners – where and how to secure the energy needed to support that demand while addressing the need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, reduce carbon emissions and impact on climate change. Renewables are not sufficiently secure as a supply on their own and it is inevitable that some degree of reliance on fossil fuels will continue. The emphasis on energy efficiency will be increasingly important in terms of housing supply and transportation, and unconventional sources may be alternatives. It is essential that sufficient research is undertaken to ensure that progress is achieved. The issue of energy supply has proved extremely contentious and illustrates the need for planners to develop more effective methods of engagement with local communities. Over the past 50 years planners in Northern Ireland have worked against a backdrop of civil unrest followed by the emerging peace process. The focus was not on place-shaping or addressing climate change, but influenced by the political environment. Planning is a political activity and planners increasingly need the necessary leadership skills to powerfully communicate and achieve clear goals within an increasingly complex political and legislative framework. The next 50 years will, we hope, see a period of political stability, with the resulting opportunities for growth and development. One of the key challenges will continue to be securing economic growth while protecting the environment. O CTO B E R 2 0 14 / THE PLA NNER
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John McNairney Chief planner SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT
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lanners are naturally well placed to anticipate and respond to longterm change. Improving the quality of our lives is central to our profession and I expect people and communities to remain at the heart of our work. A focus on spatial planning, on prevention and delivering quality outcomes will support our response to future challenges. Demographic change has always driven planning, but by 2064 we may well be seeing a broader population shift from south to north at a European scale. A growing, ageing, and more mobile population will require us to think differently about our places and spaces, beyond increasing and diversifying our housing stock. Enhanced natural and built environments will support wellbeing, and play a fundamental role in attracting and retaining a skilled workforce and investment. Climate change will bring opportunities as well as challenges. Our streets and green spaces could become more vibrant, but our settlements will need rethinking to allow for cooling as well as heat, and to build more resilience into our building stock. Climate change will also mean that the protection of productive land and water management will feature more prominently in future land use plans. Scotland’s National Planning Framework provides the foundation for reflecting long-term challenges and opportunities spatially. City regions will continue to be drivers of growth, promoting investment and making efficient use of land and
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“INNOVATIVE TRANSPORT SOLUTIONS COULD RESHAPE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT PATTERNS AND MAKE A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE QUALITY OF OUR PLACES”
infrastructure. Higher density, smarter cities and towns, with ultra-low emissions buildings, attractive green networks and accessible clusters of cultural and service provision will emerge. At a national level, by 2064 some of our most remote coastal and island areas are likely to be experiencing renewal and growth, as a result of their strategic location on new northern shipping routes and their potential for renewable energy generation being exported via a European scale energy grid. Technological change will lead to challenges and opportunities that we cannot fully predict in 2014. For decades, we have failed to stem the tide of growing car
ownership. But between now and 2064 growing congestion and its economic impacts will demand more radical transport and land use planning approaches. Innovative transport solutions could reshape future development patterns and make a significant contribution to the quality of our places. All of these changes mean that we will need a planning profession that is adept at recognising and handling its changing context, and which communicates well with others. Planners will need to continue to strive to not only plan, but also deliver real and positive change on the ground.
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C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S – F R O M A S P
“Town planning is a profession that is often misunderstood, but which affects all our lives. It is incredibly important, therefore, that it is represented by a body such as the RTPI, not only in its members’ interests but also to play an important role in promoting awareness of planning. Well done, RTPI, and we hope that you continue to support the profession for another 100 years.” The decade we think was best for the planning profession… “The 1950s, for the way in which the country recovered from the damage inflicted on our cities during the war and used the opportunity to plan positively and futuristically in a way that dramatically changed the
way we lived by dealing with slums and overcrowding and inadequate infrastructure and community facilities.” The most significant planning decision of the past 100 years… “It has to be the creation of green belts. They are the longest-lived part of this country’s planning policy base, they have significantly shaped the way in which urban Britain has grown and its relationship to the countryside, and they are argued over even more hotly today than ever.”
CONTACT US:
ASP Old Bank Chambers London Road Crowborough East Sussex TN6 2TT 01892 610408 www.asplanning.co.uk
C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S – F R O M AT T W AT E R S J A M E S O N H I LL
“Thomas Adams’ initial vision for the profession was ‘a Town Planning Institute to advance the study of Town Planning and Civic Design to promote the artistic and scientific development of towns and cities and to secure the association of those engaged on or interested in the practice of Town Planning’. That vision has been met and surpassed! Congratulations to the RTPI for its growth and success!” The decade we think was best for the planning profession… “It is difficult now to imagine that postIndustrial Revolution growth took place without a proper planning context. Lack of a planning context gave rise to the most appalling urban slum
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conditions as industrial growth took place with no concern for social consequences. Enter the RTPI in 1914 in the nick of time. Best decade — 1910-1920.” The most significant planning decision of the past 100 years… “Patrick Abercrombie’s ‘open space’ proposals of 1943/1944 are said to constitute the most brilliant open space plans ever prepared. They defined the green belt around London and the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act provided
a statutory context for planned growth. The open countryside around London is remarkable and a product of green belt policy. Allied to that, the new towns movement enabled London’s burgeoning population to be accommodated without unchecked urban sprawl.”
CONTACT US:
01992 568039 salvatore.amico@attwaters.co.uk www.attwatersjamesonhill.co.uk www.asplanning.co.uk
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YEARS IN 100 DOCUMENTS ONE WAY TO MAP KEY POINTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PLANNING THOUGHT AND PRACTICE SINCE THE FORMATION OF THE (R)TPI IS TO IDENTIFY THE BOOKS, ARTICLES, SPEECHES, DECISIONS AND DOCUMENTS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED OR MARKED DEFINITIVE CHANGE IN PRACTICE. HERE, KELVIN MACDONALD FORMER RTPI DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND RESEARCH, PRESENTS HIS OWN 100
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became a planner partly because of a plan. I went to a talk on the 1964 South East Study as part of an A-level project and I was hooked – by a book. Of course, anyone’s compilation of the most influential planning documents must be personal, reflecting in part one’s own view of what is important in planning and of when changes in practice really took place. My own list is set out at the bottom of these pages. It’s a work in progress as I keep thinking of other material I really should have included. It currently stands 100 years, 100 documents 1914: John Burns Speech at the TPI Inaugural Dinner | 1915: The Ruislip Northwood Town Planning Scheme | 1915: Cities In Evolution, Patrick Geddes | 1918: Tudor Walters Report | 1920: Plan for Welwyn Garden City by Louis de Soissons | 1922: Le
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Corbusier’s Contemporary City | 1928: England And The Octopus by Clough Williams-Ellis | 1929: First Report of the London Regional Committee | 1932: Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout | 1932: Recent Advances In Town Planning, Thomas Adams | 1933: Town and Country Planning Summer School starts
| 1933: Town And Country Planning by Patrick Abercrombie | 1935: Restriction of Ribbon Development Act | 1940: The Distribution Of The Industrial Population (the Barlow Report) | 1940: Thomas Sharp, Town Planning | 1941: Listed Buildings powers | 1942: Compensation And
at 155 entries, but for this centenary piece I have cut it to 100 – 100 documents over 100 years that shaped the way we planned at the time and, in many cases, still shape planning practice. Of course, planning practice did not start on the day the TPI came into existence. When the first 115 members of the new Town Planning Institute came together in 1914 they already had a wealth of influences to draw upon. They could look back over more than a thousand years of planning and planners (Aristotle wrote about the first known town planner, Hippodamus of Miletus). They could look to utopian visions of ideal cities from Plato through Thomas More to William Morris and Ebenezer Howard. They could gain inspiration from practical guides to planning from Raymond Unwin (among others) and to journals such as the then newly published Town Planning Review. They could also look to other recent ideas expressed through plans – implemented or otherwise – such as those for Chicago and for Letchworth. The documents I have identified are simply a continuation of this stimulating train of thinking, policy and action. Three notes of warning: The first is that I have avoided key developments in planning theory per se. Some key theory articles have snuck in, such as Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation – but only because I believe they have changed planning practice. Secondly, I have had to concentrate largely on the UK – and, to be honest, Betterment (the Uthwatt Report) | 1942: Land Utilisation In Rural Areas (the Scott Report) | 1942: White Paper on The Use of Land | 1942: Town Planning And Road Traffic, Alker Tripp
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England. To do otherwise would have meant a hugely expanded list. However, this does mean that the wealth of influence and seminal practice from around the world is largely unacknowledged. This has a knock-on effect in reducing the number of entries on issues where some key thinking was being undertaken internationally. Thirdly, my list shows that I am a child of the 1960s; there is a heavy preponderance of publications from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. But enough apologies. Such a list lends itself to analysis by date, topic, common theme or breaks in the continuum of policy development. In this article I substitute any such rigour with a few random thoughts – the first that, with hindsight or otherwise, not all the material on my list is material I admire or would turn to in a moment of personal crisis about the value of planning. I have included a couple of actions in my list – events such as the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932, the occupation to try to prevent the demolition of 144 Piccadilly in 1969 or the protests to try to halt the M3 extension at Twyford Down did, I feel, mark a real change in the public’s view about aspects of planning. Perhaps my list will serve to add a little professional pride in this centenary year. It should certainly add some context to the challenges that planners face today and show what we and others sometimes forget – that we have a long history of tackling the issues that we sometimes think of as insurmountable. 1942: Maps for the National Plan | 1944: Greater London Plan | 1945: A Plan for Kingston upon Hull prepared by Edwin Lutyens & Patrick Abercrombie | 1946: New Towns Act | 1946: The Clyde Valley Report by Patrick Abercrombie | 1946: Dower Report on National Parks | 1947: Town and Country
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(1) 1944: Greater London Plan (2) 1963: Traffic In Towns (the Buchanan Report) (3) 1981: The Brixton disorders, 10-12 April 1981 (The Scarman Report) (4) 2013: The Planners, BBC Two There have been many welcome attempts to popularise planning. My father, an architect, had a copy of the Penguin edition of the 1944 County Of London Plan in his bookshelves and reports such as Colin Buchanan’s Traffic In Towns, the Scarman Report on the Brixton Riots and books like Judy Hillman’s 1971 Planning For London, Community and Privacy in 1966 and Bob Colenutt and Peter Ambrose’s The Property Machine were published in paperback. That legacy of bringing planning to a wider public is shown most recently in the BBC Two series, The Planners (later Permission Impossible).
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(5) 1933: Town And Country Planning by Patrick Abercrombie (6) 1940: Thomas Sharp, Town Planning
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Planning Act | 1948: Plan for Stevenage by Sir Frederick Gibberd | 1948: The Redevelopment of Central Areas‚ guidance by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning | 1949: National Parks & Access to the Countryside Act | 1952: Principles and Practice Of Town And Country Planning, Lewis
Many of the publications popularising planning were produced during the Second World War. These include Thomas Sharp’s Town Planning (1940) and Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s Town and Country Planning – published in its second edition in 1943 by the ‘Home University Library’. The Prefatory Note to the first edition of Town Planning highlights the apparent dichotomy of looking to the future in such a constructive way (one of the hallmarks of good planning) when one might have thought that, back then, minds would be on other things: “In a sense town and country planning is planning for living: planning for living is planning for peace: and most planning in war is planning for death.”
Keeble | 1955: Ian Nairn’s Outrage | 1955: Circ. 42/55: Green Belts | 1956: Clean Air Act | 1957: Plans for Roehampton Estate designed by Robert Matthew and Leslie Martin | 1960: The New Birmingham, Herbert Manzoni | 1960: The Image Of The City by Kevin Lynch | 1961: Jane Jacobs’ The
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Death And Life Of Great American Cities | 1961: Homes For Today & Tomorrow (the Parker Morris report)
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1R T0P I :01 0 0DY OE A CR S U M E N T S (6) 1918: Tudor Walters Report (7) 1942: Land Utilisation In Rural Areas (the Scott Report) (8) 1947: The Redevelopment Of Central Areas – guidance by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning (8) 2003: The Sustainable Communities Plan Naturally the list contains a large number of official reports. All of these were, in their own way game-changers from the Tudor Walters report looking at housing standards in 1918 (itself commissioned and published before the Great War had ended) to the prosaically titled Report On Land Utilisation in Rural Areas (the Scott Report) in 1942 and from The Redevelopment Of Central Areas in 1948 to the Sustainable Communities Plan in 2003 (hastily followed by The Northern Way in 2004).
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(10) 1942: Compensation And Betterment (the Uthwatt Report) (11) 1997: The Population: Where Will It Go? Not all official reports were dry officialese – many contained hardhitting thinking. The Uthwatt Report, for example, came very close to recommending the nationalisation of all land. Perhaps the last report in that proud tradition of government tackling complex issues in a reflective and open way was John Gummer’s The Population: Where Will It Go? in, I think, 1997, and the lack of any more recent reports of this nature shows in part the privatisation of policy thinking – or maybe just the lack of such thinking at governmental level.
(16) 1960: The New Birmingham, Herbert Manzoni The 1960s plan for ‘The New Birmingham’, published by the Birmingham Mail, is chosen because it is a clear reflection of a type of thinking about planning that was all too prevalent at the time. I could equally have chosen Wilf Burn’s 1961 Plan For The Centre Of Newcastle or even Sir Hugh Wilson’s plan for Brighton town centre, finally rejected by the council in 1973.
(12) 1929: First Report of the London Regional Committee (13) 1963: White Paper on Central Scotland (14) 1967: Pedestrianisation of London Street, Norwich (15) 2003: The ‘Merton Rule’, Merton Borough Council
(17) 1928: England And The Octopus by Clough Williams-Ellis (18) 1955: Ian Nairn’s Outrage (19) 1961: Jane Jacobs’ The Death And Life Of Great American Cities
Some documents have been chosen simply because they show planning practice at its best. The First Report of the London Regional Committee in 1929 set out the idea of planning against a background of green space rather than adding green as an afterthought to urban areas. The Scottish Office’s White Paper on Central Scotland used a land use based strategy to drive government investment. Alfie Woods’ pedestrianisation of London Street in Norwich in 1967 against prevailing opinion started a practice that has benefited many many areas. In 2003, Merton’s development control policy on energy generation (the ‘Merton Rule’) showed how planning could use the day-to-day tools available to it to address the most pressing issue facing us.
Not all of the documents chosen show planning in a good light. There is a stream of books and pamphlets that some would say criticise the failure of planning; others may see them as calls for even more effective regulation and policy. It is interesting that this stream should have started so early in our 100-year period – with books like The Call Of England by Henry Morton in 1927 and England And The Octopus by Clough Williams Ellis a year later calling for greater controls over development. These were followed by even more trenchant critiques including Ian Nairn’s Outrage in 1955 and Jane Jacobs’ The Death And Life Of Great American Cities six years later.
1961: Planning At The Crossroads by Lewis Keeble | 1962: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson | 1963: White Paper On Central Scotland | 1963: Traffic In Towns (the Buchanan Report) | 1963: The Reshaping Of British Railways (the Beeching report) | 1964: South East Study | 1965: The Future Of Development
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Plans, Report of the Planning Advisory Group | 1965: National Plan, Dept. for Economic Affairs | 1967: Pedestrianisation of London Street, Norwich | 1967: Town and Country Planning White Paper | 1969: People And Planning (the Skeffington report) | 1969: Civic Amenities Act | 1969: Operating
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Manual For Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller | 1969: Housing Act | 1970: Llewelyn-Davies’ plan for Milton Keynes | 1970: Report of the Roskill Commission on the Siting of the Third London Airport | 1971: Town and Country Planning Act | 1972: Black Road, Macclesfield – work by Rod
Hackney | 1972: Planning #1 | 1972: The Limits To Growth by Donella and Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers
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(20) 1969: Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller (21) 1972: The Limits To Growth by Donella and Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers (22) 1974: EF Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful (23) 1962: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (24) 1987: Our Common Future (the Brundtland report) (25) 1990: Our Common Inheritance
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Listing the documents in this way shows the clear development of planning thought. For example, the late 1960s and early 1970s show the burgeoning concern with our planet and its finite resources – from Buckminster Fuller in 1969, through Limits To Growth to Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful in 1974. The environmental agenda went hand in hand with this – from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which drew attention to the threat posed culminating in wildlife by agricultural practices more than half a century ago, to the Brundtland Report (Our Common Future) in 1987 and the UK’s Our Common Inheritance three years later.
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(26) 1977: Inner Area Studies
(27) 1947: Town and Country Planning Act (28) 1965: The Future Of Development Plans, Report of the Planning Advisory Group
On rare occasions, the list shows not a build-up and development of policy but a fundamental change in it almost overnight. The publication of the Inner Urban Area studies in 1977 heralded both legislation (the 1978 Inner urban Areas Act) and a growing body of UK and European reports that extolled urban living and provided a range of examples of how urban areas were being, and could be, revived. It also marked the abrupt end of the New Towns programme as resources and skills were taken away to pump into existing urban areas. Similarly, the decision by Geoffrey Rippon in 1973 to list more than 250 buildings in Covent Garden marked an abrupt official endorsement of the move from redevelopment to renewal.
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Planning reform is one of two constant themes that run through the 100 years. It started as soon as the 1947 Planning Act came into effect with, for example, a less restrictive GDO being introduced in 1950. However, the first major reforms – starting with the setting up of the Planning Advisory Group in 1964 – had allowed the act to operate for 17 years. The second reform, heralded by a report on the Future Of Development Plans in 1986, had allowed the 1974 system 12 years to operate. The subsequent 1990 Act had 24 years before the 2004 Act. After that, planning reforms came along at increasingly frequent intervals until now, when the process of adjusting the system seems to have become a continuous process.
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1973: Covent Garden Listing | 1973: The Essex Design Guide | 1973: The Planner In Society by David Eversley | 1973: The Containment Of Urban England by Peter Hall et al | 1974: E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful | 1975: Community Land Act | 1976: Planning and the Future, RTPI |
1977: Inner Area Studies | 1979: Michael Heseltine’s speech at the Town and Country Planning Summer School | 1979: Planning In Crisis: The Grotton Papers, Steve Ankerman, David Kaiserman, Chris Shepley | 1980: Circ. 22/80: Development Control | 1981: The Brixton disorders, 10-12 April 1981 (the
Scarman report) | 1981: The Coin Street inquiry | 1981: London Docklands Development Corporation | 1984: North Southwark Plan | 1986: The Future Of Development Plans (again!) | 1987: Our Common Future (the Brundtland report) | 1989: A Vision Of Britain by the Prince of Wales | 1990: Town and
Country Planning Act
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“PERHAPS MY LIST WILL SERVE TO ADD A LITTLE PROFESSIONAL PRIDE IN THIS CENTENARY YEAR. IT SHOULD CERTAINLY ADD SOME CONTEXT TO THE CHALLENGES THAT PLANNERS FACE TODAY”
(34) 1914: John Burns’ speech at the TPI Inaugural Dinner
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(29) 1961: Planning At The Crossroads by Lewis Keeble (30) 1973: The Planner In Society by David Eversley (31) 1976: Planning And The Future, RTPI (32) 1979: Planning In Crisis: The Grotton Papers, Steve Ankerman, David Kaiserman, Chris Shepley (33) 2001: The RTPI’s New Vision For Planning
Finally, this is the first entry on my list. Burns told his audience that in 100 years’ time “you will be credited with earning the grateful thanks of those who follow you for the fine enthusiasm, the good temper, the patient advice, and disinterestedness with which you have thrown yourselves into this movement”. ’Nuff said.
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A constant theme is the nature of planning itself. Lewis Keeble asserted that planning was ‘at the crossroads’ 53 years ago and David Eversley looked at The Planner In Society in the following decade. The RTPI itself joined the debate with Planning And The Future in 1976 and with its New Vision in 2001. The seminal work in this stream of thinking was Planning In Crisis (otherwise known as The Grotton Papers). We seem quite good at gazing at our own navels. David Eversley wrote that, “Some claim that the planner has lost his way; others that he is an anachronism, a mere technician arrogating to himself professional status. He is almost universally feared and disliked”. It was not until 2001’s New Vision that planning regained its sense of pride.
1990: Our Common Inheritance | 1992: (Local) Agenda 21 | 1994: Plans for Brindley Place by Argent | 1996: Manchester City Centre Redevelopment Plan by EDAW et al | 1997: Standards In Public Life (the Nolan Review) | 1997: PPG1: General Policy And Principles
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| 1997: The Population, Where Will It Go? | 1999: European Spatial Development Perspective | 1999: Towards An Urban Renaissance, Urban Task Force | 2001: The RTPI’s New Vision For Planning | 2001: A New Commitment To Neighbourhood Renewal | 2003: ‘The Merton Rule’, Merton Borough Council |
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2003: The Sustainable Communities Plan | 2003: Wales Spatial Plan | 2004: Delivering Stability: Securing Our Future Housing Needs (the Barker review) | 2004: National Planning Framework For Scotland | 2007: Olympic Park Masterplan | 2007: Planning For A Sustainable Future | 2008: Planning
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Act | 2011: Localism Act | 2012: National Planning Policy Framework | 2013: The Planners, BBC Two
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C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S – F R O M C G M S
“Congratulations on 100 years of achievement, and in growing into being one of the leading professional bodies in the UK. The RTPI has demonstrated that independence and impartiality remain key virtues for such a profession, and these qualities will be needed more than ever to meet the challenges of the next 100 years.” The decade we think was best for the planning profession… “There can be little doubt that the best decade for the planning profession was the 1940s. Despite the great difficulties of the war, and its aftermath, the decade saw the publication of the three seminal reports by Scott, Barlow and Uthwatt which formed the basis for the
“
two key pieces of planning legislation, the 1947 Planning Act and the New Towns Act 1946.” The most significant planning decision of the past 100 years… “Of the many potential candidates, the grant of consent for The Shard at London Bridge in 2003 will come to be seen as a defining moment in planning because of the effect it will have on planning in many of our cities, not just London. It demonstrates that the planning system can accept innovation, providing it is
of the highest quality architecturally, and that tall buildings can stimulate regeneration and be one answer to the need to accommodate growth in cities, to reduce the need to build on green field sites.”
CONTACT:
140 London Wall London EC2Y 5DN www.cgms.co.uk 020 7583 6767
C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S – F R O M G I LLE S P I E S
“Congratulations to the RTPI on 100 years of town planning. Over that hundred years our towns and cities have changed immensely and it is challenging to imagine how they will look 100 years ahead. One thing is certain; positive change can only be achieved when all of us working in the built environment professions share high aspirations and common goals.” Michelle Bolger, head of landscape planning southern region, Gillespies (based in London)
CONTACT:
Offices: London, Oxford, Glasgow, Manchester and Leeds www.gillespies.co.uk 020 7253 2929 jim.gibson@gillespies.co.uk
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The decade we think was best for the planning profession… “Arguably, the post-war decade was the best as it was a radical period when planners helped the country rebuild and redefine itself. Visionary acts established National Parks, green belt policy, garden cities and, with the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, a strategic vision for UK planning delivery and governance was put in place that still affects daily lives and the planning profession today.” Jim Gibson, partner, Gillespies (based in Manchester)
The most significant planning decision of the past 100 years… “The 1949 Act of Parliament that saw the creation of the National Park system was hugely significant, not just because of its impact on tourism and the protection of our valued landscapes. The instigation of the act was driven by public pressure. This reflects recent developments in the planning process that puts public participation at the heart of the process.” Jon Simmons, partner, Gillespies (based in Glasgow)
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W
hile sifting through the RTPI’s archives for this RTPI centenary issue of The Planner, we encountered plenty of reference to garden cities, writes features editor Simon Wicks. No surprise there – except that, almost a century on, we’re engaging in very similar debates about the practicality and the mechanics of such settlements. The government sees a new wave of garden cities as one solution to the nation’s housing woes. But how? And where? Interest is so intense that Conservative peer Lord Wolfson dedicated the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize to proposals for 21st-century garden cities. After all, in the decades since we last planned new towns, we have quite possibly lost the expertise. A competition could inspire policymakers, planners and developers. And, indeed, the entries offered a multiplicity of approaches. Ultimately, the prize went to David Rudlin of urban design co-operative URBED, co-writing with colleague Nicholas Falk. Rudlin and Falk argued for the extension of existing market towns in line with garden city principles, rather than the construction of new ones. They used the fictional town of Uxcester to illustrate their scheme, noting that it could as well be Oxford, Guildford or York.
THIS YEAR’S WOLFSON PRIZE FOR ECONOMICS HAS STIRRED UP PLENTY OF DEBATE – AND EMOTION – ABOUT THE POSSIBILITIES FOR A NEW WAVE OF GARDEN CITIES
In fact, the URBED planners argued that 40 towns could be extended over 30 to 35 years. “You need time to grow a real place, just as you do to grow an oak from an acorn,” wrote Rudlin and Falk. “It is easier to promote new development in a way that adds to the diversity of a place that already has a patina of history that cannot be faked or created in a few decades.” Their approach would build on the “traditional way in which towns were built”. But it would also mean building on green belt land. The authors argued that this was unavoidable – urban/brownfield areas should cater to around 60 per cent of housing demand, leaving “the balance of 80,000 to 100,000 homes a year” to go elsewhere. Planned additions to existing settlements would be better for our ‘green and pleasant land’ than “the equivalent of building a Milton Keynes every 15 months”. Planning minister Brandon Lewis quickly dismissed URBED’s proposal. “We are committed to protecting the green belt from development as an important protection against urban sprawl – today’s proposal from Lord Wolfson’s competition is not government policy and will not be taken up,” said Lewis in a press release. “Instead, we stand ready to work with communities across the country who have ideas for a new generation of garden cities and we have offered support to areas with locally supported plans that come forward. But we do not intend to follow the failed example of top-down eco-towns from the last administration. Picking housing numbers out of thin air and imposing them on local communities builds nothing but resentment.” New garden city or urban extension? We asked David Rudlin what he thought of the planning minister’s response to Uxcester garden city.
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THE CASE FOR GROWTH
reinstate this if elected next year. Others, like the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Richard Rogers, have argued for higher figures and cited data to show that there is sufficient capacity within our urban areas to accommodate most of the housing we need. The question becomes one of geography. Industrial towns and cities, and London boroughs, can and do accommodate their housing growth within their urban area. But what do you do if you are Oxford or York, Guildford, Gloucester, Bath or Shrewsbury (or Uxcester for that matter)? These were the places that we targeted in our essay. Places that do have capacity for some urban housing, but nowhere near as much as they need to meet their demands for housing growth. DAVID RUDLIN One might argue that these places should not grow, but this has It’s a risky business suggesting development on green belts, writes David consequences. The University of Oxford Rudlin of URBED. It earns you the opprobrium not just of government worries that its position as a worldleading university will be threatened if ministers and the local media in the 40 towns and cities that we suggested might be expanded using garden city principles, but also some of the its lecturers can’t afford to live in the city, advocates of the urban renaissance – who are normally our natural allies. and many of these places face similar So let’s be clear just what we did argue for in our Wolfson economics prizepressures from employers. Our argument winning essay. is that, far from being constrained, these We first made it clear that we remain committed to the principle of cities should be grown as an alternative brownfield first. This is something that we have argued for over many years to urban sprawl, or the development of and is an important element in the urban renaissance that has taken place new freestanding garden cities. We need in our cities. However, those critics like Paul Cheshire, who have argued to combine our commitment to that the brownfield first policy effectively choked off the supply of green brownfield development with a properly fields, thereby reducing the supply of housing and pushing up prices are planned approach to building on green not entirely wrong. fields. We should have the confidence to In the 10 years leading up to the credit crunch we saw a huge reduction expand existing, popular, attractive towns and cities that are already well in greenfield housing and a commensurate growth in urban apartments. What we didn’t manage to do was to replace houses built on green fields served with infrastructure, just as we did with houses built on brown ones. When the collapse took place in the in the past when we built Edinburgh apartment market (particularly outside London) the shortfall in housing New Town, Bath or Bloomsbury. The problem is that we have lost this provision became evident. We can argue about the proportion of housing that can be accommodated ability to plan for urban growth. So large is the financial windfall for the within urban areas. Until the NPPF, government policy was for 60 per cent owner of a field allocated for housing to be built within urban areas, and the Labour Party has said that it will
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A voice from the past “Energy and enterprise is required in building garden cities; skill is required in designing them; some break away from the line of habit and of least resistance is required,” wrote P J Osborn in London – An Awful Warning for Glasgow in the September 1938 issue of the TPI Journal. “But essentially it is less difficult, when you add up the sum of operations involved, than extending cities by suburban rings and central redevelopments, with all their complications of street widenings, subways, main drainage, tenements, transport services, and their complex system for safeguarding health gains the perils of the massing of humanity.”
URBED’s garden city proposal envisages carefully planned extensions to existing market towns
that an entire industry has developed to cajole, harass and challenge the planning system into releasing land for housing. On the other hand, planning authorities are consumed with local plan enquiries, appeals, challenges to their five-year housing supply, to their duty to co-operate and to the ever-growing evidence base required to back up their local plan. The best brains of the planning system are engaged on either side of this self-perpetuating battle (earning good fees for everyone involved, except for the hard-pressed planning officers). Meanwhile, the resulting pattern of settlements happens almost by default. Housing consents dribble out on the least contentious fields around every town and village in a way that is unco-ordinated, makes no sense and cannot be served by infrastructure. No wonder people are so upset by housing development. This is not the way that it happens in other parts of Northern Europe and Scandinavia. The bulk of our essay is concerned with creating a development process in Britain that allows us to plan positively for housing growth and, in doing so, for the future shape of our towns and cities. This is not particularly radical; it is what the planning system was created to do. We must wrest back the system from lawyers and land agents and learn to plan positively once more. If we do so, then maybe we can start to change the attitudes of all those people who are horrified by the thought of housing development.
The author David Rudlin manages urban design co-operative URBED. A planner by training, he has been responsible for private sector masterplans including Temple Quay 2 in Bristol and The New England Quarter in Brighton. David is author of a number of research reports, including 21st Century Homes for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
n Read more about the five entries that made the Wolfson Prize final on page xX
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here’s archaeological potential anywhere and everywhere in the UK,” says Rob Bourn, former Berkshire county archaeologist and now archaeology director for London-based planning consultant CGMS. “This is why archaeology has become an important element of the planning process. But you don’t know it’s there until you dig it up.” Until 1990, “digging it up” was something developers did without obligation to investigate and preserve. Public interest ensured that nationally significant finds were researched and recorded – usually with state funding. But plenty of evidence of past human activity was destroyed. Then in 1988 the remains of the Rose Playhouse were discovered beside the Thames in London – on a building site. “Planning permission had already been granted and contractors were on site,” recalls Jon Humble, an inspector of ancient monuments for English Heritage. The possibility that the archaeology might be lost to construction inspired a popular campaign. English Heritage, the Museum of London and developer Imry Merchant negotiated – the remains were preserved beneath the new office. But it was a close call. “It was decided this shouldn’t be allowed to happen again,” explains Humble. In 1990 the government issued Planning Practice Guidance note 16
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IT’S A QUARTER OF A CENTURY SINCE THE CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE ELIZABETHAN ROSE PLAYHOUSE LED TO ARCHAEOLOGY BECOMING A FORMAL ELEMENT IN PLANNING. AS ENGLISH HERITAGE PREPARES TO LAUNCH NEW GUIDANCE, SIMON WICKS CONSIDERS ITS IMPACT
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Exacavations at (above) the Rose Theatre site at Bankside, and on the Crossrail route
(PPG16). “This was created on the principle that the polluter [i.e. the developer] pays. It gave clarity to local planning authorities on [archaeological] processes. It also meant that for a relatively modest public investment we were getting significant commercial investment. Remains were recorded and sometimes preserved in situ.” PPG16 had a massive impact on archaeology in the UK – not all of it good.
The effect of professionalisation Humble notes that a new breed of development management archaeologists and archaeological consultants emerged post-PPG16. More archaeology is taking place. But there’s a downside, articulated in 2013 in a paper by Peter Hinton, chief executive of the Institute for Archaeologists (IFA). “PPG16 did not give the profession a clear locus: it merely established an industry – one conducted in a competitive market where minimal, and sometimes negative, commercial advantage was secured by professionalism,” Hinton wrote, adding that the “archaeological market exhibited classic symptoms of market failure”. The problem, as Bourn candidly notes, is that “most developers don’t want archaeology on their site. It’s a cost to them that doesn’t really deliver any value to their end product”. In 2010 PPG16 was superseded by Planning Policy Statement 5 (PPS5), which shifted the focus to a more holistic approach to the historic environment based on an understanding of significance and was accompanied by detailed guidance from English Heritage. In 2012 the NPPF condensed planning policy into one document. Hinton approved. “The historic environment and its study through archaeology sits right alongside the natural environment… The significance of this should not be underestimated.”
Roman Chichester uncovered “It’s an extremely rare event that you come upon something that important that it really should be preserved [in situ],” says Chichester borough archaeologist James Kenny. “When that happens you need to negotiate with all parties and come to some result. “We had one in Chichester a couple of years ago, an underground garage development on the back of an historic frontage. That meant digging a big hole. None of the assessment indicated anything significant. But when they dug the hole they found a Roman house with mosaic floors. “We had to negotiate with the owners and the architects about what they could do. We compromised and got them to agree to preserve the archaeology beneath a ramp down into the car park. The owners made a little inspection chamber. “There was an archaeological requirement on the planning and we were able to use the planning condition to ensure full record. The preservation in situ followed a lot of negotiation.”
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Not for archaeologists English Heritage’s draft Historic Environment Good Practice Advice In Planning – an update in the wake of the NPPF – takes the form of three ‘notes’. Note 2: Decision-Taking in the Historic Environment deals with archaeology. “I think it probably is a useful document for planners, particularly in authorities that don’t have an archaeologist,” says James Kenny, borough archaeologist for Chichester. “But I don’t consider it to be directed at people like me. The guidance that came after PPS5 provided more detailed explanation on how to apply [the policy]. But should I have to stand up in an enquiry, it’s useful always to have a document that comes from an authority other than yourself.” Bourn concurs. “There’s already a whole process and a whole lot of local plan policy and accepted good practice,” he says, adding: “The
NPPF works very well in that it does what it sets out to achieve – archaeology remains an important part of the planning process. “There are disagreements between people like us and the local authority planners in terms of when work should take place and so forth. But the NPPF seems to work.” The new guidance, he says, “is really just a clarification of the NPPF”.
Digging deeper
Around 3 per cent of planning applications require an archaeological response, says English Heritage, and there are some 5-6,000 archaeological investigations going on at any time as a result of the planning process. Fewer than 150 applications a year are turned down because of archaeology. In most cases, sites are simply recorded and any artefacts removed; nationally important finds and preservation in situ are comparatively rare. “People like us will tend to push for appropriate mitigation,” admits Bourn. “The push from the local authority is potentially that we want this preserved. There’s some horse-trading and we come to a settlement. “You’re weighing up the harm to heritage features against public benefit. We don’t always agree and sometimes we end up at public inquiry.” The current trend is towards engagement and education. “If you’re not going to write it up, you may as well have not bothered in the first place,” says Bourn. Five exceptional discoveries since PPS5 But there are currently only 87 historic environment record centres and a reduced number of local authority archaeologists because of (1) 1995: Medieval synagogue, (4) 2013: Roman London, the recession. And increased house building is Guildford – a probable secret Walbrook, London – a mass of going to put more pressure on an already synagogue beneath a high street discoveries has given the straining system. shop unearthed between tenants. Bloomberg Place construction “Any system needs to be properly site the label ‘the Pompeii of the North’. resourced to make it work properly,” says (2) 2007: Romano-Celtic burials, A2, Gravesend, Kent – three English Heritage’s Humble. “It’s been a longvery early burials of high-status (5) 2014: 10,000-year-old road, term aspiration of ours to see a statutory Catterick, North Yorkshire – individuals, replete with requirement on local authorities to maintain discovery of a Mesolithic substantial grave goods, a historic environment record.” settlement during roadworks discovered during road That means a layer of resources that pressuggests Britain’s longest widening. “We found a series of ently is provided piecemeal – and selling the road, the A1, has been in use for innocuous 3m x 3m brown benefits of archaeological discovery to 10,000 years. blobs on the slope overlooking developers, as well as government. Watling Street,” says Rob “We’ve got what’s goes on onsite going fairly And a sign of things to come: Bourn. “It was one of the most exciting and unexpected finds.” well,” says Kenny. “But there are sometimes difficulties with what happens afterwards – ! 2014: Neolithic henge, Iwade, Kent – uncovered (3) 2009: Mass Viking burial, with results, publishing. You should let the Weymouth, Dorset – 54 during preparation of a site world know about it and provide the artefacts decapitated individuals for a 400-home residential to a local museum to get them the resources discovered during building of a development. to preserve that. We’re lacking in requiring relief road. resources to be put forward. “Most developers see archaeology as an unfortunate requirement of the planning process, and what happens in the field is part of the process and that’s it. We’ve some way to go as a profession.” n Read English Heritage’s draft Historic Environment Good Practice notes: 1. The historic environment in local plans http://bit.ly/XmXoie 2. Decision-taking in the historic environment http://bit.ly/XJCfPy 3. The setting of heritage assets http://bit.ly/1Dlvc0i
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C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S – F R O M AT K I N S
“We should be proud to be celebrating a century of professional planning in Britain, guided largely by the Royal Town Planning Institute. The RTPI continues to stimulate wide debate around how we can best shape our environment. Whilst the future remains uncertain, what is clear is that we need a ‘plan-led’ approach formed from robust evidence and informed consensus.” The decade we think was best for the planning profession… Without question the most significant planning decision of the last 100 years is the granting of Royal Assent and the subsequent enactment of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Giving Local
Planning Authorities the duty to make plans and the powers to implement them through control over development rights underpins all that the planning profession has achieved since. The most significant planning decision of the past 100 years… Whilst the planning legacy of the 1960s is not one of unmitigated success, arguably, it is the decade when planning came of age. It was a time of optimism when the profession was held in high esteem and there was a widely held belief
that planners could modernise our cities and make them better places in which to live.
CONTACT:
Atkins Ltd Euston Tower 286 Euston Road London NW1 3AT joanne.farrar@atkinsglobal.com
C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S – F R O M B O Y E R P L A N N I N G
“So the first 100 years of the RTPI have come and gone and it has grown into an organisation that assists in developing planners, creating the best and most sustainable places, and influencing decision-takers to ensure that town planning is recognised as a key profession in shaping our future. Happy birthday to the RTPI!” The decade we think was best for the planning profession… “At Boyer we think it was the creation of the Urban Development Corporations in the 1980s, as this spearheaded economic growth in many deprived areas, together with delivering social and physical
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improvements. In particular the London Docklands Development Corporation, which regenerated much of the East End of London, bringing jobs, wealth and prosperity to London.” The most significant planning decision of the past 100 years… “We think the introduction of the green belt is the most significant decision. Initially conceived to restrict ribbon development, this planning designation now covers 13 per cent of land in England
and provides the most controversial and confrontational battleground between developers and Nimbys.”
CONTACT:
Crowthorne House, Nine Mile Ride, Wokingham, Berkshire, RG40 3GZ janeHirst@boyerplanning.co.uk www.boyerplanning.co.uk t: 01344 753 225 m: 07736 717 515
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LLegal landscape
ENDLESS CHANGE IS NOT ALWAYS PROGRESS Too much government legislation – a lot of it piecemeal – is stifling the planning system. Reform needs to be both coherent and comprehensive
be deemed to be comparable with the types of cases that led to the passing of that act in the first place (i.e. T5!); and c Our failing town centres – and pretty much anything else the Treasury can think of to blame it for.
The planning system in England has become increasingly dysfunctional as successive administrations seek the ‘simpler, faster, fairer system’ – the holy grail of the endless programme of reform that the system has suffered since the beginning of this century. A bewildering array of statutes now governs our system:
Many of the changes made have been through secondary legislation involving changes to permitted development through the General Permitted Development Order or the Use Classes Order. Radical changes have been made to the policy and guidance framework with the publication of the National Planning Policy Framework in 2012 followed by Planning Policy Guidance as a result of the Taylor Review into existing guidance. Surely no one can possibly deny that we need reform of the planning system if we are ever to achieve a “simpler, faster, fairer system”, but the somewhat incoherent, bitby-bit approach adopted by the coalition government is creating ever more confusion. Let’s get a grip and work out what we actually want the system to do – consolidate the legislation and allow those charged with the challenge of delivering a sustainable future get on with it!
c Town and Country
Planning Act 1990 (as amended) c Planning and Compensation Act 1991 (as amended) c Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (as amended) c Planning Act 2008 (as amended) c Localism Act 2011 c Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 Our secretary of state focuses on minutiae, for example – refuse bins and renting out parking spaces, while blaming planners for a lack of vision and taking planning powers from local planning authorities deemed to be underperforming.
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Leonora Rozee Meanwhile, the national housing crisis continues to dominate the headlines, society gets more unequal, and our national infrastructure teeters on the edge of catastrophic breakdown. The coalition government has delivered a blizzard of planning initiatives all aimed at deregulating the system on the assumption that the
“SURELY NO ONE CAN POSSIBLY DENY THAT WE NEED REFORM OF THE PLANNING SYSTEM IF WE ARE EVER TO ACHIEVE A SIMPLER, FASTER, FAIRER SYSTEM”
planning system is (at least partly) to blame for: c The failure of the housing market – Alex Morton (Policy Exchange – the think tank founded by former planning minister Nick Boles, among others): “Don’t blame the developers, Britain’s planning system pushes up prices”; c The sluggish economic recovery – remember when the PM declared planners “enemies of enterprise”?; c Our creaking infrastructure – under the 2008 Planning Act, brought in to ‘speed up’ the delivery of major infrastructure, 24 projects have received development consent some six years after the passage of the act. Arguably, only one of which, Hinkley C nuclear power station, can
– LEONORA ROZEE OBE MRTPI is a former deputy chief executive of the Planning Inspectorate
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C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S F R O M N E X U S P L A N N I N G
“Congratulations on reaching 100 years. A memorable achievement.”
The decade we think was best for the planning profession… “1900-1909. A decade that saw the publication of Garden Cities Of Tomorrow, Raymond Unwin winning the competition to plan Letchworth and inputting to the Hampstead Garden Suburb Act, the passage in to law of the Housing and Town Planning Act 1909, and the opening of the world’s first planning school in Liverpool. A decade of planning achievement that speaks for itself.”
What do you believe was the most significant planning decision in the past 100 years and why? Agree with them or not, the establishment of green belts around our historic towns and cities has proved to be the most enduring, politically and socially acceptable of all planning decisions. Ask anyone to name something which the planning system has achieved and, most likely, green belts will get the nod.
CONTACT:
Nexus Planning Suite A 3 Weybridge Business Park Addlestone Road Weybridge Surrey KT15 2BW a.ross@nexusplanning.co.uk www.nexusplanning.co.uk
’ on si is m er p to s le ac st ob g in om rc ve ‘O The day will be of interest to developers, consultants and others involved in private sector planning and topics include:
Cornerstone Barristers will be holding our third annual
Cornerstone Planning Day on Monday 10th November 2014 at the Royal College of Surgeons and Chaired by Mark Lowe QC.
• • • • • • •
Neighbourhood plans; Old Plans, consistency and the NPPF para 14 presumption; Green belt development; Renewable energy; Environmental statements; Confidentiality and viability assessments and Enforcement.
To book now and take advantage of our early bird discounted rates for individual and group bookings: http://cornerstonebarristers.com/event/cornerstone-planning-day
London. Birmingham. Cardiff.
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RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S
LATEST POSTS FROM THEPLANNER.CO.UK/BLOGS
B LO G S This month… concealment; how a recent ruling may help avoid the need to argue planning matters in front of a magistrate.
L E G I S L AT I O N S H O R T S Concealment – where are we now? Steven Bell Deliberate concealment is a headache for planning departments. Where there is potential to argue deliberate concealment the inevitable question will be whether you are obliged to first apply for a planning enforcement order and whether you really have to argue planning matters before a Magistrates’ Court. A recent inspector’s decision has perhaps clarified matters. Sections 171BA to s.171BC of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 enable a local planning authority to apply to the Magistrates’ Court for a planning enforcement order where an apparent breach of planning control has been deliberately concealed. The decision, dated 24th July 2014, deals with an appeal against an enforcement notice served by the Broads Authority. The appellants were living in a building that could only be described as a ‘pig rearing building/ barn’. From the outside there was little evidence to indicate that anyone was using it as a single dwelling house and there were no windows visible. The appellants argued that they had not been covert in their works nor had wilfully deceived anybody nor falsified any record to make their case.
The Broads Authority noted that the appellants had failed to notify building control of the building works; to register for council tax; to register for electoral purposes; to register the address with Royal Mail. Counsel for the appellants submitted these were omissions rather than deliberately misleading conduct. The inspector stated: “It appears to me that the appellants embarked on an explicit strategy to keep the presence of the residential unit that they had formed in the Barn secret from the Council….” Counsel for the appellants requested a ruling as to whether the Broads Authority could pursue part of its case based on deliberate concealment given that the Broads Authority had not taken action in the Magistrates’ Court under section 171BA of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The inspector, in his decision letter, states: “… I ruled that, having regard to the decisions of the Supreme Court in the cases of Welwyn and Fidler, the authority were not prevented in law from pursuing this part of its case.” The inspector concluded: “The nature of the works undertaken suggest to me that from the onset the internal building was positively designed to be concealed for the necessary period and that the appellants had a much different end result in mind for the
buildings… Whilst it appears to me that the appellants have not lied or told falsehoods to get their way, they have embarked on a complex, well thought-out and interlinked series of actions over time to deliberately conceal their intentions... On this basis, I find that the appellant’s conduct and actions have been to deliberately mislead the Authority and amount to positive deception. “I conclude on this ground that there is significant doubt over the continuous use of the barn as a single dwelling over the relevant period to the extent that the provisions of s171(B)(2) of the act have not been demonstrated to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities. “Further, as the appellants’ actions have sought to deliberately deceive the authority in a positive way, they should not be able to benefit from the protection of s171B (2) in any event.” It therefore appears to be the case that you are not obliged to first pursue a planning enforcement order application to the Magistrates’ Court in cases concerning deliberate concealment and can argue your case before an inspector on appeal. It will, of course, save time in having to explain the intricacies of planning law to the magistrates. Steven Bell is a solicitor) at nplaw – www.nplaw.co.uk
Skaters celebrate continuation of skateboarding on London's South Bank Southbank Centre and Long Live Southbank have withdrawn their respective legal actions in relation to the undercroft connected to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London’s Southbank Centre. A planning obligation has now been entered into which will result in the undercroft remaining open for public use by skateboarders, BMX riders and the like. Long Live Southbank had applied to register the undercroft as a town or village green. Lambeth Council refused to validate the application on the basis that “trigger events” were engaged restricting the right to apply to register land. Long Live Southbank brought judicial review proceedings against that refusal, arguing that the council’s application of the trigger events went beyond parliament’s intention. When the case was first heard in March, Mrs Justice Lang invited the secretary of state to intervene to explain the meaning of and justification for the statutory amendments that introduced the trigger events. The Open Spaces Society had already been granted permission to intervene. The judicial review claim has now been withdrawn.
City of London planning committee issues new naming guidelines The City of London has changed the name of the Heron Tower to 110 Bishopsgate, ending plans to rename it Salesforce Tower. American company Salesforce.com had acquired naming rights to the building as part of an expanded tenancy agreement, but the plans were met with criticism from tenants and observers alike. The City of London’s Planning and Transportation Committee has now confirmed that Salesforce, which occupies 18 per cent of the building, “will not be sufficiently dominant to justify an authorised building name”. The committee further decided that naming and numbering guidelines will see name changes restricted to a tenant that is the “dominant building occupier today and is likely to remain so for a reasonable time into the future”, further noting that building names should relate to the site owner, building use, local history or geography. The Heron Tower was first named after Heron International, its developers and owners.
Cheshire East Council to mount High Court challenge over housing scheme Cheshire East Council is to mount a High Court challenge to a planning inspector's decision to uphold an appeal by Richborough Estates over proposals for a 170-home scheme at Moorfields, Willaston. The authority believes there are grounds to justify a challenge to the decision by inspector Alan Boyland to grant planning consent to the builders and overturn the original refusal by the council. It will argue the inspector failed to understand, interpret or apply the correct approach in four areas of planning policy and housing need in relation to the site.
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Career { D E V E L O P M E N T C LOCAL PLANNING: COMPILING AN EVIDENCE BASE
Without a local plan, an authority can lose control of development in its area. The evidence to support local planning policy has to be watertight – but what is it and how do you put it together?
S
ince local plans were introduced by the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in 2010, just 56 per cent of England’s local authorities have adopted one. Most have yet to be examined against the NPPF; to date, just 49 out of 336 local planning authorities have a local plan that has been found sound at inspection. Compiling the evidence on which the plan is based requires a systematic and rigorous approach to data collection and presentation. It’s one of the biggest tasks a local authority planner can carry out – without it, the plan is open to challenge. c Minerals c Sustainable development c Hazards and threats
What’s in a plan? Local plans are dealt with in paragraphs 150-182 of the NPPF, which states that the plan should be “based on adequate, up-to-date and relevant evidence about the economic, social and environmental characteristics and prospects of the area”. The evidence that provides the foundation of the policies outlined in a local plan should include assessments of: c Housing, including affordable c c c c c c c
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housing Land availability The commercial environment Physical and social infrastructure Defence and security The natural and historic environments Public health Landscape character
It should also illustrate how the authority is fulfilling its duty to co-operate with neighbouring authorities. n Read paragraphs 150-182 of the NPPF on the Planning Practice Guidance website: www.bit. ly/1xdvxAF
“COMPILING THE EVIDENCE ON WHICH THE PLAN IS BASED REQUIRES A SYSTEMATIC AND RIGOROUS APPROACH TO DATA COLLECTION AND PRESENTATION”
What do you submit? The Planning Inspectorate’s ‘soundness checklist’ recommends submitting references to: c A development plan document c Documents prepared as part of plan preparation c Reports to cabinet c Technical studies c Documents used in community involvement.
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l n Download the checklist from the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) website: www.bit.ly/ Y5qGCp
The inspection The local plan will be examined by an independent inspector who will judge whether it fulfils legal and procedural requirements, and the duty to co-operate. The inspector will also determine whether the plan is ‘sound’ – that is: c Positively prepared c Justified c Effective c Consistent with national policy
l The dangers of not having a satisfactory local plan (1) Decisions can be taken out of the authority’s hands;
(2) Development could get consent in
areas not wanted by the authority; and
(3) Less of a legal basis on which to argue the case for development/nondevelopment in an area.
+ Tackling the process The Planning Advisory Service (PAS) recommends putting into place effective management arrangements to ensure that “clear objectives and expectations are established, responsibilities are clear and transparent, risks are identified and minimised and time spent and costs are reduced”. n PAS provides a downloadable project management tool: www.bit.ly/ZcP9XK
The need for strong evidence Peter Wilks, director of Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners, will be chairing the RTPI training event ‘Preparing an effective evidence base’ in London on 15 October. The NPPF requires local plans to make “every effort” to identify and then meet the housing, business and other development needs of an area, and respond positively to wider opportunities for growth. It is often overlooked how much more rigorous this requirement is than the equivalent policy provisions that underpinned previous development plans. The changes to the planning system have led to more detailed evidence at the local level with more scrutiny at local plan examinations, an increased need for crossboundary co-operation and upward pressure, particularly on housing numbers. The response to this challenging policy and complex sub-regional arrangements must be high quality and objective evidence on the need for development, which should consider factors that will shape how each locality responds. The key questions facing LPAs remain: how much development, where, and how does it all fit together?
‘Soundness’ Local plan targets for employment growth, housing, retail, leisure and the host of supporting infrastructure must meet the NPPF tests of soundness: positively prepared, justified, effective and consistent with national policy. It is imperative that LPAs clearly evidence the steps taken to identifying and meeting development needs in their area, and demonstrate that there is consistency between the assumptions adopted for different land use sectors. The Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) provides limited information on how to identify linkages between Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMAs), Strategic Land Availability Assessments (SLAAs) and Economic Needs Assessments, as recommended in the Taylor Review. In reality, there are common drivers of the need for jobs, homes, shops and services, including population change and economic growth. Too often, evidence in SHMAs, town centre and retail studies, employment land reviews and infrastructure assessments has not been considered together. Under localism, inconsistency is now a greater area of risk to the soundness of development plans. Councils should therefore consider whether there is scope to bring some elements of the evidence base together – for example, employment and town centre studies. Evidence base studies should adopt a common set of underlying assumptions to guide plan preparation. A more integrated approach:
• Provides consistency; • Minimises risks of contradiction; • Aligns development needs across different uses and growth scenarios; • Provides an integrated platform for decisionmaking within the Local Plan; and • Provides a succinct and proportionate evidence base.
A common pitfall Another common pitfall is the conflation of policy and ‘supply-side’ factors within the ‘demand-side’ objective assessment of need, which is contrary to the PPG. This can include the adoption of arguments against specific levels of development based on environmental viability and infrastructure capacity constraints. Having established need, further evidence may be provided to demonstrate why the full need cannot be met and why an alternative policy approach has been adopted reflecting relevant environmental constraints. The problems experienced in a number of withdrawn plans reveal these and a number of other common weaknesses. Other important issues to remember include:
• Transparent presentation of input assumptions and outputs;
• Avoid artificial suppressions, such as migration;
• Assess the social, economic and other • • • •
consequences of adopting targets below that are required to meet objectively assessed need: Lack of evidence and consistency of approach to assessing needs across functional market areas that may straddle local authorities; Testing key assumptions to understand implications of alternative scenarios; Reality-checking forecasts, including those provided by commercial analysts; and Avoid ‘black box’ number-crunching-only analysis.
A sound evidence base should draw different strands and approaches together into various pictures of future needs, which support and test policy aims and take account of local authority objectives.
l PETER WILKS Peter Wilks has worked on a wide range of development projects for public and private sector clients
Get trained n Peter Wilks will be chairing a full-day training event supported by the RTPI in London on 15 October. ‘Preparing an effective evidence base’ will go through the key elements of plan-making: www.bit.ly/1vfQaIt n PAS provides training in project management support for local plans: www.bit.ly/ZcP9XK n PAS is also providing local plan leadership training for councillors in October and November 2014: www.bit.ly/1uG7LZl
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Plan ahead P
Send feedback to editorial@theplanner.co.uk Tweet us @The Planner_RTPI
Our hands in our destiny It may be the year of the RTPI’s centenary, but 2014’s Young Planners’ Conference is looking to the future “We realised it’s the centenary and asked ‘What does that mean?’ We’re looking back to what we’ve achieved and where we’ve come from, but we also wanted to project forward,” says Tristan Dewhurst, graduate planner at GVA in Bristol. “We’re keeping it to the key issues we thought were important, such as housing and infrastructure. We’ll also be looking at our planning systems and processes themselves. They are all things that will shape our immediate and long-term future.” Over its two days, ‘Future Challenges: Finding A Planning Balance”, the RTPI Young Planners’ Conference in late October will invite delegates to attend plenary sessions on some of the biggest issues in contemporary planning: • Housing and population
growth; • The challenge of
replacing and upgrading infrastructure;
“IT’S NOT SO DOMINATED BY THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY LEADERS IN PLANNING, BUT LOOKS TO THOSE WHO ARE GOING TO BE TAKING THE PROFESSION FORWARD IN YEARS TO COME”
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Tristan Dewhurst: Tris “We’’ keeping it “We “We’re to the key issues we thought were important, such as housing and infrastructure.
• The environmental
impact of development and coping with climate change; and • The need to reassess our planning systems and ensure that they are fit for purpose. There will also be time for reflection on the RTPI’s centenary, as young planner of the year Zoe Green leads discussion on the history and achievements of the planning profession over the past 100 years. Other speakers will include Dr Hugh Ellis, head of policy at the Town and Country Planning Association, Jackie Sadek of UK Regeneration, and David Cowans, Wolfson Economic Prize judge and head of Places for People. But the event will be kicked off by George Ferguson, awardwinning architect and the first elected mayor of host city Bristol. Ferguson, a co-founder of the Academy of Urbanism, will be giving an overview of the projects contributing to something of an urban renaissance in the city. These range from the massive regeneration of the
Temple Quarter to Bristol’s forthcoming role as Europe’s green capital, by way of the Bristol Pound and a £35 million investment in cycling infrastructure. The location of the conference is ideal, says Dewhurst, a member of the South West Young Planners’ organising committee. The city is a “test bed of new ideas” – and delegates will be able to see some of them first-hand through the study tours that close the event on Saturday, 25 October. Unlike the classic study tour, these will be going to projects that are not necessarily completed. “We wanted to give ours a different lilt, so we’ll
be looking at the Redcliffe Neighbourhood Plan, for example,” explains Dewhurst. But getting to grips with the big issues in planning is not the only reason to attend the conference. As an event specifically for under-35s and those who have been in practice for less than 10 years, the Young Planner’s Conference throws the future of the profession into the spotlight. “For anyone working in the built environment or planning, the advantage of coming is being with likeminded, switched-on young planners who want to engage in an informed and thorough debate about the future of planning and the places we live in,” says Dewhurst. “It’s not so dominated by those who are already leaders in planning, but looks to those who are going to be taking the profession forward in years to come.” There’s another plus point, too. “It enables a lot of people who are early in their career to get involved in quite a major conference and to engage in substantial professional development and debate on cutting-edge issues. “It’s why it’s been so successful. It’s always a sell-out event.”
YOUNG PLANNERS’ CONFERENCE 2014
Where? M-Shed, Bristol When? Friday and Saturday, 24-25 October Theme: Future Challenges: Finding A Planning Balance Find out more: www.bit.ly/1vWSMyq
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LISTINGS Talks, conferences, training, masterclasses – everything you need to keep on top of the latest thinking and developments in the planning world.
YORKSHIRE 6 November – Northern Futures Summit Office of the Deputy Prime Minister hosted event looking at how to create a strong economic core in the North of England. Venue: Leeds, venue TBC Details: www.bit. ly/1yu68o3 13 November – Annual planning law update Annual update on significant and relevant developments in legislation and important appeal and court decisions. Venue: Leeds College of Music, Leeds, LS2 7PD Details: www.bit. ly/1d5cmQa 20 November – Rebirth of Leeds Riverside: by accident or design Yorkshire’s Greatest Planning Achievements: the 1990s. Examining the role of the Leeds Urban Design Guide on the changing shape of the riverside, this seminar and study tour will focus on past impressions. Venue: Civic Hall, Leeds LS1 1UR Details: www.bit. ly/1rn18MM
NORTH EAST 5 November – Planning for waste and energy – more problems than answers? Is it possible to strategically plan for such schemes when the issues arising are often so site-specific? Views from local authority teams and developers. Venue: Watson Burton LLP, Newcastle upon Tyne NE99 1YQ, Details: www.bit. ly/191VMzE 11 November – Urban Design (with the Landscape Institute) Free evening event focusing on urban design, in collaboration with the Landscape Institute.
Venue: University of Newcastle, Planning Studio, NE1 7RU Details: www.bit. ly/1B6mYFj
NORTH WEST 4 November – Urban design What makes good design, how does the detail affect the outcome, and what is the value of good design? The day will explore these issues. Venue: Gateley, Manchester Details: www.bit. ly/1euPlTx 11 November – Leading with impact Two-day workshop to support you as an effective and confident manager/ team leader in your organisation. Venue: Arup, 3 Piccadilly Place, Manchester Details: www.bit. ly/1pwpbYz 19 November – Infrastructure Planning Seminar providing a timely opportunity to update those concerned with Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects. Venue: Pinsent Masons, Manchester Details: www.bit. ly/1f0lyqB
EAST MIDLANDS 23 October – Working with neighbourhood plan groups Discussion on neighbourhood plans and working with groups preparing them. Opportunities for volunteering with Planning Aid England. Free to Young Planners in East Midlands. Venue: The Vat and Fiddle, Queensbridge Road, Nottingham Details: www.bit. ly/1rjRNnG 7 November – A vibrant core city Debate held in conjunction
DON’T MISS Future Local – NALC’s Larger Councils Conference 2014 NALC’s Larger Councils’ Conference and Exhibition 2014 ‘Future Local’ is a one-day conference looking at how larger local (parish and town) councils will look at the future in terms of putting communities in control of local assets, delivering local services and influencing decision-making and priorities. Opportunities to learn, share and network. The plenary speaker is the Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP. • Workshop themes include: • Our Place! Programme; • Neighbourhood planning; • General power of competence; • Community cohesion; and • Sharing practice and informing NALC’s work. Date: 3 December Venue: Galleon Suites, Royal National Hotel, London WC1H ODG Details: www.bit.ly/1sXAirk
with regional universities, local MPs and built environment professionals. Key speakers include Jane Urquhart from Nottingham council, and RTPI president Cath Ranson. Venue: Nottingham Trent University, NG1 4BU Details: www.bit. ly/1sXtJVM 14 November – Delivering major strategic growth A debate held in conjunction with the regional university, politicians and built environment professionals. Venue: University of Northampton, St Georges Avenue NN2 6JD Details www.bit. ly/1CgkbvK
WEST MIDLANDS 13 November – Functional landscapes: integration of green infrastructure in urban design What green infrastructure can do and how it can be integrated into development for economic, social and environmental benefit. Venue: MADE Offices, 7 Newhall St, Birmingham B3 1RU Details: www.bit. ly/1dt8M0B
EAST OF ENGLAND 7 November – East of England planning law update Keeping members up to date with legal
changes. Confirmed speakers include: Stephen Tromans QC of Thirty Nine Essex Street; Trudi Elliott chief executive of the RTPI. Venue: Howard Theatre at Downing College, Cambridge Details: www.bit. ly/1g5BWSZ
SOUTH EAST
Update on planning law, enforcement and other issues facing development management staff. The session will include a workshop to consider issues in greater depth. Venue: Bristol BS2 0ZX Details: www.bit. ly/1cNdqWZ
LONDON
23 October – Planning for administrators An insight into the planning system for administrators working for consultants or within planning departments.. Venue: Tunbridge Wells Council Chambers, Kent TN1 1RS Details: www.bit. ly/19RVr0r
SCOTLAND 11 November – Regeneration of Fort William Town Centre Free event providing a brief history of regeneration in Fort William, detailing the innovative Town Centre Action Events and what the future holds for the town. Venue: The Chamber, Lochaber House, Fort William PH33 6EL Details: www.bit. ly/1mso8JP
SOUTH WEST 5 November – Development management sponsored by Burges Salmon
09 October – Putting the place into workplace transforming the City of London Evening seminar hosted by Peter Rees of the Bartlett School. Venue: London, TBC Details: www.bit. ly/1pgnZoT 30 October – Delivering infill development Morning roundtable as part of Future of London's London 2050 programme. looking at spatial and practical aspects of growth. Venue: Arup, 8 Fitzroy Street, London,W1T 4BQ Details: www.bit. ly/1BgAma1 26 November – Surface tenstion: Underground London's impact on the world above Half day conference looking at how underground infrastrucutre projects interact with the urban realm above. Venue: Bishopsgate Institute, London EC2M 4QH Details: www.bit. ly/1v9jHVT
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NEWS
RTPI { What lies ahead for London? MUCH OF THE WORLD AGREES THAT LONDON IS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL CITY IN THE WORLD. BUT HOW WILL PLANNERS COPE WITH THE CHALLENGES ITS SEEMINGLY INEXORABLE GROWTH BRINGS? BY TOM VENABLES MRTPI, DIRECTOR OF DESIGN AND PLANNING AT AECOM During the 100 years since the RTPI’s founding, London has responded to immense challenges and changes – from inner-city slums, urban sprawl, and the rise of the motorcar to postwar rebuilding and depopulation to the more recent rejuvenation of the city. Professional planners have played an important role in shaping the city. This has included the creation of garden cities and garden suburbs such as Hampstead and Brentham, and continued with Abercrombie’s ambitious 1944 Greater London Plan. This reinforced the green belt and contained London’s urban area while delivering motorways, airports and new towns. More recently, successive initiatives such as the London Docklands Development Corporation, the 2012 Olympics, and the Greater London Authority’s (GLA ) London Plans have catalysed many regeneration projects that are currently underway.
London – a victim of its own success? Beyond 2014 London continues to face a number of serious challenges, many of which are due in part to the capital’s global success. London’s population is heading for an all-time high, set to breach its 1939 peak of 8.6 million. It is by far the largest city in Western Europe, with a population larger than Athens and Berlin combined. It accounts for 13 per cent of the UK’s population, around 22 per cent of its GDP and, in the words of one pundit, “combines the functions of Los Angeles, Washington, DC and New York”. These trends are set to continue – the GLA forecasts that London’s population will breach 10 million by 2030, while generating a third of UK GDP growth in the next five years. London’s global pre-eminence is also its biggest challenge. In particular, the process of accommodating 100,000 new residents a year,
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RTPI news pages are edited by Tino Hernandez at the RTPI, 41 Botolph Lane, London EC3R 8DL
placing massive demands on energy, water, waste and transport infrastructure, while London’s houses already cost, on average, 7.5 times a person’s annual income.
Planning more with less Energy and space are unlikely to increase in plentitude in the years to come; planning in London will need to be efficient with both. This does not necessitate a tight-fisted approach to urban quality; on the contrary, it means that it will be ever more important to ensure that highquality, well thought-out urban design is at the heart of London’s planning future. Similarly, infrastructure investment, such as the £15.4 billion investment in Crossrail, must address the requirements of London’s future growth, while maintaining the city’s quality of life. The GLA has begun the response with its recently published draft 2050 Infrastructure Plan, which has led to extensive debate and thought through mainstream and social media. A range of questions is posed by this approach – in particular, does a London-specific plan go far enough? Should London’s growth be considered beyond its boundaries, as Abercrombie’s plan did 70 years ago? How can the population be accommodated and sufficient housing be provided to ensure the city’s ongoing competiveness? Are a green belt review and multiple garden cities the answer to the current housing deficit? And how can London remain globally economically competitive, while not undermining economic growth in other parts of the UK? Added to this, the coming decades will see planners having to respond to unknown implications of climate change, sea-level rise and increasing scarcity of natural resources. The answers to these questions are unlikely to be straightforward and in many cases a selfcontained solution may not even exist. While planners should avoid oversimplification, it is important to bear in mind Einstein’s maxim that “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction”. Throughout the year RTPI London has been exploring a range of issues affecting the future development of London as part of our Centenary Series. n RTPI London’s Future City Summit takes place on Thursday 23 October at the Siemens Crystal, London E16 1GB. Details can be found at: https:// futurecity2014.eventbrite.co.uk
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Editorial E: rtpinews@rtpi.org.uk
RTPI (switchboard) T: 020 7929 9494 F: 020 7929 9490
Registered charity no. 262865 Registered charity in Scotland SCO37841
RTPI SHORTS
Tristan Dewhurst Graduate planner GVA BRISTOL
(1) What do you currently do? I work for GVA’s planning, development and regeneration team in Bristol as a graduate planner, principally covering south-west England, and occasionally Wales. I’m fortunate in that the role has proved to be incredibly diverse, and I have been able to support and lead on a surprisingly wide range of development projects for a variety of clients. (2) If I wasn’t in planning, I’d probably be… There are probably many jobs that I would also be happy to be doing, though one that would fulfil a childhood dream would be as a film special effects specialist. I imagine there are few things more satisfying than crafting a beautiful model and then obliterating it. It’s that same satisfaction from seeing the tide wash over your lovingly made sandcastle! (3) What has been your biggest career challenge to date? I’d still say that making the first career shift, and trying to break into the profession. I graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s in ancient history and as a non-cognate graduate it was incredibly hard to get the attention of employers in the built environment, even just for work experience. When I started my master’s in planning in 2010, it seemed that planning jobs were difficult to find and being cut. Entry-level positions were incredibly thin on the ground, and I rank the challenge of hunting for permanent jobs while maintaining a positive attitude on my life and profession one of the most challenging periods in my career to date. (4) What attracted you to the profession? I think I always wanted to be a planner – I just didn’t know how to articulate it. Planners have a fascinating role in understanding, interpreting and shaping the places and communities that we all live in, but many people see just a bureaucratic process, if they know anything about it at all. We could be much better as a profession and as professionals at communicating what we really do. (5) What would you like to achieve by the end of your career? I’d like to have planned and built my own house. That’s a pretty common dream, but few people get to do it. I would like to make that a more accessible option for ordinary people who aren’t super-rich (perhaps the sort of people who likely wouldn’t end up on Grand Designs). (6) If you could change one thing about the planning profession, what would it be? It might be idealistic, but if I had to change one thing I would make planning less adversarial. It affects all sides of the profession, and we should really all look at ourselves and consider if we are blocking constructive and collaborative discussions by our attitudes.
BECOME A LEARNING PARTNER RTPI Learning Partner status is a mark of excellence for employers who are committed to supporting the professional development of their planning staff. A number of employers, from large planning or mixed-discipline consultancies to local authorities, small consultancies, government agencies and more have become Learning Partners. Using the special logo on recruitment materials provides a clear demonstration of the organisation’s commitment to professional development for their employees. Cat Goumal, lead for Lifelong Learning at the RTPI, says, “Learning Partner
status is an opportunity to demonstrate how you are delivering best practice for your employees.” To become a Learning Partner, your organisation needs to submit evidence such as appraisal forms, learning and development policy and graduate scheme to show it meets each of four key commitments: promoting professional development activity; identifying, monitoring and reviewing professional development activity; supporting professional development activity; and embracing diversity and equal opportunities. Congratulations to GVA and Gerald Eve, who are the latest organisations to become RTPI Learning Partners.
n For more information about becoming a Learning Partner contact learningpartners@rtpi.org.uk
RTPI PLUS
ER MEMBFITS BENE
RTPI Plus is an exclusive package of discounts and benefits for RTPI members which is available to Chartered Members, Fellows, Legal Members, Legal Associates and retired members in those classes, and can help you save a large proportion of your membership subscription. You can save on everyday purchases, with between 5 per cent and 15 per cent cashback at retailers including Sainsbury’s, ASDA, B&Q, Debenhams, House of Fraser, Ernest Jones and more, as well as benefiting from 20 per cent off your current home insurance renewal premium. With RTPI Plus you can save an average of 30 per cent on car servicing and repairs (compared with the prices charged by main dealers and franchised garages), and 20 per cent on the cost of your next MOT. These exclusive discounts made available through the RTPI, in association with member benefits company Parliament Hill Ltd, will help you make savings in all areas of your life. Terms and conditions apply to all benefits. See website for further details. n You can access your RTPI Plus benefits at http:// bit.ly/1kD0jZv
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NEWS
RTPI { Building up resources for the future
CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, ANDREW TAYLOR, EXPLAINS THE CHANGES TO MEMBERSHIP FEES FROM JANUARY The core fee for chartered members will be £290 from January 2015. The new rate is still considerably lower than most chartered members were paying in 2009. I am very pleased that the Board of Trustees has held the core rate steady – with no increases for five years. We did this because we recognised how important it was to support members during a particularly challenging time. We also decided to resist automatic yearly inflationary increases, in contrast, for example, to some sister institutes who have implemented increases since 2012. A key part of the strategy to support the pegging of members’ rates has been the way in which the institute has itself made very significant savings in recent years, as well as considerable efforts to diversify income streams. Savings by the institute to its cost base have amounted to more than £500k in this period. One of our key themes during the centenary year has been to look to the future as much as to the rich heritage of our past. Our members’ survey, completed by as many as one in four of you, reinforced the message that members have big aspirations for their professional institute. In the coming years we need to ensure, therefore, that the resources are available to support the work required to deliver these aspirations across England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland and internationally. It’s a rightly ambitious agenda, based on our core principles, and we need to
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-> Completed our members’ survey, reinforcing the message that members have big aspirations for their professional institute
fund it properly. Members are keen, for example, for us to continue to increase our influence by growing our policy and research work, and to extend our international reach. They want us to do more to support members to achieve chartered status. We recently took the decision to provide free membership to students on RTPI-accredited courses. We have legacy programmes that will continue after the centenary year. This has led us to conclude that we need to make a moderate increase in the subscriptions fees for next year. The way we calculate all members’ fees is as a percentage of the core fee for chartered members. It is worth remembering that three years ago we undertook a comprehensive review of RTPI’s subscription structure and fees to address historic anomalies in what members were paying and to achieve a fairer, simpler and more transparent fees model. Transitional arrangements put in place for members as we moved to the new framework have now come to an end. We explained at the time that some members would experience some initial increase but over the lifetime of their membership they would be broadly neutral. The RTPI holds a unique position in relation to planning as a professional membership body, a charity and a learned institute. In 2015 we face another very busy year of engagement with ministers, civil servants and stakeholders, with elections planned for the whole of the UK and Ireland over the next 18 months. We will also be developing further The Planner magazine and looking to introduce new services to members. At the heart of everything we do is ensure that members receive value for money and that we offer the right type of support to members in the most effective way possible. It is certainly not the intention to propose a return to annual increases and it is hoped that, assuming no unexpected financial challenges, the increase will avoid regular small increments over the next couple of years. I was struck looking at our first-ever accounts, published in 1915, that we took in the grand total of £153 in members’ fees – but had a balance on the year of £29. One of our biggest single activities was organising dinners. We have come a very long way indeed from those early pioneering days. Our founding fathers could perhaps never have dreamt of the way the institute would develop, the influence it would have and the way in which it would support members throughout the entirety of their careers. n To see a full list of fees for 2015 http://www.rtpi.org.uk/35570.aspx
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STEP CHANGE
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AWAR
RTPI members discuss their big career-changing decisions
FREE STUDENT MEMBERSHIP Student membership of the RTPI is now free for all new students on courses accredited by the institute. This is a saving of £150 for students over a three-year undergraduate course. Before the start of the 2014-15 academic year, student membership was free only for students in the final year of an accredited course. The RTPI’s president, Cath Ranson, said: “I am particularly delighted in this centenary year to welcome all students on accredited planning courses to invite them to join the institute from the start of the 2014-15 academic year. “This decision will bring mutual benefit to students and the RTPI. We have a lot to offer students through our networks, volunteering opportunities, engagement in public policy and the wide range of knowledge we make available about planning. And I am sure we will benefit from the input and enthusiasm of greater numbers of student members.”
“IT GIVES ME A BUZZ TO SEE THE STUDENTS PROGRESS INTO STARTING UP THEIR OWN CONSULTANCIES”
Adam Sheppard Senior Lecturer UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND UWE
CONDUCT AND DISCIPLINE PANEL DECISIONS A consultant member has received a reprimand for failing to ensure that his written terms of engagement had been agreed with the client, and failing to act with competence and integrity in terms of the work carried out and failing to keep the client informed. Another consultant member has been warned for his intemperate use of language contained within a letter written in response to a letter of objection. A consultant member has been warned for allowing a conflict of duty to arise in undertaking private work whilst still employed with another consultancy, and for canvassing for work from clients of his former employer. Finally, Mr David Parker, consultant member, has been warned as to his future conduct for failing to be insured as a town planner for a period of nine months, in breach of the Code of Professional Conduct. n Sandra Whitehead, RTPI Complaints Investigator sawhitehead@rtpi.org.uk
I was a development control officer in the public sector for seven years, transferring into academia in 2007. I now lead and manage a master’s course, delivered by a consortium of universities that offer a distance learning study option for those seeking a change, professional accreditation, or to achieve a higher level in their knowledge. I took geography and urban studies at the University of South Wales, and a master’s in city and regional planning at Cardiff University. I was torn between teaching or going into practice. On completing the master’s course, I went into public practice and enjoyed it enormously. It was satisfying being able to influence better outcomes and positive change in local communities. I miss working in practice and with the people in that process, but I volunteer with Planning Aid England and support student projects to help me keep connected with practice and contacts in the industry. The academic world does allow an open, flexible and free working environment, but that was a big culture change for me when I joined UWE. Although I could leave the job in the office to an extent working in the public sector, students are engaging with their studies all hours and need the support outside of core working hours. In practice, I sometimes felt limited to the final stages and confined by process; here I can be more holistic and free. The most satisfying part of my job is to see students’ progression, seeing someone develop and want to specialise. The graduation ceremony epitomises the positivity of their achievements. I also hear from ex-students about their progression in the field; it gives me a buzz to see the students progress into starting up their own consultancies and into senior roles in relatively short spaces of time. I tell my students to get experience in all aspects of planning practice as it develops a well-rounded and expert practitioner. I am now seeking to develop research and consultancy practice at UWE Bristol to complement my teaching career.
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ADVERTISEMENTS
Recruitment { Pembrokeshire Coast National Park
Senior Planner
More than just a stunning landscape More than just a Planning role
Head of Development Management £34,894 to £40,254 pa This is Britain’s only true coastal national park – a place where rugged cliffs give way to sandy beaches, and wooded estuaries lead up to wild inland hills. It’s a place that includes rare habitats as well as thriving communities. Understandably, we face a huge variety of planning challenges. And this is why we need a passionate planner and manager to lead our development management service. This is a role that calls for strategic vision: you’ll need to take a broader view of legal, political and socio-economic implications, and manage a quality planning service. You’ll keep up to date with external developments and steer how we develop too. Most of all, you’ll act as a source of inspiration, displaying the presence and ease of communication that will encourage your team to deliver results and fully engage with the needs of communities and stakeholders. We welcome interest from applicants wanting to work flexibly/ reduced hours or who are looking to develop into a senior role. To find out more, please visit www.pembrokeshirecoast.org.uk Closing date 23rd October 2014 (applications on our standard form, no cvs)
Savills is looking to recruit a talented Senior Planner to join its largest planning team outside of London, in Wimborne, near Bournemouth. Savills is a market leading property services company, with one of the largest planning teams in the UK. The Wimborne based Planning Team is involved with a variety of planning work nationwide, dealing with interesting and often high-profile projects. Applicants should have at least two years post MRTPI experience, and should be highly motivated and commerciallyminded, in order to provide the highest standards of service to clients. The chosen candidate will join an established and highly capable team with a nationwide client base and will work on a range of projects from strategic land promotion and planning appraisals to innovative renewable energy, infrastructure, education, and housing schemes - many involving the submission of major planning applications, some with EIA. The successful candidate will thus have the opportunity to gain experience on a wide range of significant development projects, with opportunities for career progression. The position is based in a fantastic location, which benefits from proximity to Wimborne town centre, Bournemouth and Poole, the New Forest and Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. Details of the competitive salary package are available upon application, commensurate with experience and skills.
For an informal discussion please contact: Cliff Lane - 01202 856 901 Please send a CV and covering letter to: Linda Gilbert - Lgilbert@savills.com Closing Date: 27 October 2014
savills.co.uk/planning
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Bracknell Forest is one of six Unitary Authorities in the county of Berkshire, which encompasses Bracknell and a number of smaller towns and villages set within attractive wooded countryside and partly covered by Green Belt. We are home to a range of large companies including Dell, Waitrose, Cable and Wireless and Hewlett Packard as well as the RMA Sandhurst. We have excellent transport connections by rail and road, a wide range of leisure facilities, highly performing schools and with the redevelopment of Bracknell Town Centre underway it will become an even more attractive place in which to live and work. Being such an attractive area we are facing growth pressures and have an ambitious plan to deliver jobs, homes, schools and leisure facilities over the coming decade. To help facilitate growth we are recruiting to three positions in our Development Management Section.
Principal Planning Officer (2 Posts) £37,237 - £41,709 p.a.
Senior Planning Officer (Enforcement) £31,721 - £36,345 p.a.
We are looking to appoint experienced planners who can demonstrate skills and experience in handling major residential and commercial development proposals as well as defending decisions at public inquiry. One of the posts will be within our Development Management Team and the other within our Strategic Sites Delivery Team.
Responsible for supervising two enforcement officers and undertaking the full range of planning enforcement activities you should possess a degree and preferably have previous experience in enforcing planning regulations . The role will require collaborative working with other service areas of the Council to ensure the delivery of high quality enforcement outcomes.
For full details of these posts and to apply please visit http://www.bracknell-forest.gov.uk/jobsandcareers Close date: Sunday 26 October. Interviews week commencing 3 November 2014
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ADVERTISEMENTS
Senior Planner/Planning Manager, Winchester PegasusLife is a specialist developer, on a mission to re-invent retirement housing. Employing the best award-winning architects, engineers, interior and landscape designers, as well as thought-leaders in the field, the company is developing exemplar communities in desirable locations throughout Britain and Ireland. Our expanding Design and Planning team are looking to recruit a top quality planning professional and experienced Planning Manager to help us to achieve our ambitions and change the way people see the retirement property market. They will be at the forefront of our development programme, advising, guiding and influencing key decision makers.
Our requirements: •
RTPI qualified (or working towards)
•
Previous planning experience
•
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We offer a starting salary of up to £40k per annum salary and a competitive benefits package. If you would like to work with us in changing the sector, please send your CV and covering letter to Julie Heather, PegasusLife, Royal Court, Church Green, Kings Worthy, Winchester, SO23 7TW or jheather@pegasuslife.co.uk As an equal opportunities employer PegasusLife welcomes applications from all sectors of the community.
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Cardiff Council
OM Development Mgt (Strategic Place Making) Ref. ST50232221 OM2
£43,002 - £51,945
As Capital of Wales, Cardiff is being transformed into the most liveable city in UK, with a great quality of life, international attractions in the millennium centre, stadium and Cardiff bay and the economic dynamo for the whole city region. In addition, it is becoming one of the fastest growing major Cities in the UK, with 40,000 new homes, world class new settlements and a landmark in place making and quality. We are looking for a planner who has the ambition and ability to lead this change and who can drive the transformation of the planning service into world class customer focused performance. As the strategic planning and place making operational manager you will lead in delivering a UK best performing planning service. You will have experience of delivering quality performance whilst also having a clear focus on customer satisfaction, and a strong place making agenda. Anyone wanting to have an informal conversation regarding the post, please contact Phil Williams, Head of Planning on (029) 2023 30827. This vacancy is suitable for post share. We welcome applications in both English and Welsh. This post is subject to a workforce package which means that the salary quoted will be reduced by 2.7% for 2014/15 and is currently due to end on 31st March 2015. Closing date: Thursday 23rd October 2014 Promoting Equality, Valuing Diversity
Apply online at www.cardiff.gov.uk/jobs
Cyngor Caerdydd
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Rheolwr Gweithredol Rheoli Datblygu (Creu Lleoedd Strategol) Cyfeirnod:ST50232221 RhG2 £43,002 - £51,945 Fel Prifddinas Cymru, mae Caerdydd yn cael ei thrawsnewid i fod yn un o’r dinasoedd mwyaf hawdd i fyw ynddi yn y DU, gydag ansawdd bywyd gwych, atyniadau rhyngwladol yng nghanolfan y mileniwm, stadiwm y mileniwm a Bae Caerdydd a hwb economaidd ar gyfer y rhanbarth dinesig cyfan. Yn ogystal, mae’n dod yn un o’r Dinasoedd mawr sy’n tyfu gyflymaf yn y DU, gyda 40,000 o gartrefi newydd, aneddiadau newydd o’r radd flaenaf a thirnod mewn creu lleoedd ac ansawdd. Rydym yn chwilio am gynllunydd sydd â’r uchelgais a’r gallu i arwain y newid hwn ac sy’n gallu llywio trawsnewidiad y gwasanaeth cynllunio i berfformiad o’r radd flaenaf sy’n canolbwyntio ar gwsmeriaid. Fel rheolwr gweithredol cynllunio a chreu lleoedd strategol, byddwch yn arwain gwasanaeth cynllunio sy’n perfformio orau yn y DU. Bydd gennych brofiad o sicrhau perfformiad o ansawdd tra’n cadw ffocws clir ar foddhad cwsmeriaid, ac agenda creu lleoedd gadarn. Gall unrhyw un sydd am gael sgwrs anffurfiol am y swydd gysylltu â Phil Williams, Pennaeth Cynllunio ar (029) 2023 30827. Mae’r swydd hon yn addas i'w rhannu. Croesewir ceisiadau yn Gymraeg a Saesneg. Mae’r swydd hon yn amodol ar becyn gweithlu sy’n golygu y caiff y cyflog a nodir ei ostwng gan 2.7% ar gyfer 2014/15, a rhagwelir y bydd y trefniant hwnnw yn dod i ben ar 31 Mawrth 2015. Dyddiad cau: Dydd Llun, 23 Hydref 2014 Hyrwyddo Cydraddoldeb, Rhoi Gwerth ar Amrywiaeth
Ymgeisiwch ar-lein ar www.caerdydd.gov.uk/swyddi
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INSIGHT
Plan B P
RT P I : 1 0 0 Y E A R S
PLANNING – THE OLDEST PROFESSION? It may be 100 years since the founding of the RTPI and the establishment of planning as a distinct profession, but an unusual find at an historic site in Wiltshire confirms the view that planning is one of the oldest human practices. When translated by ancient language experts, the stone tablet revealed the following:
{
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The RTPI Nathaniel Litchfield Centenary Lecture 2014 Tues 18 November 2014 Darwin Theatre, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT This year the lecture, in our centenary year, will be given by Professor Tony Travers. The debate on who and how we are governed is taking the political centre stage not only in Scotland but also in Irish, Welsh and English cities and areas. Professor Travers will discuss future trends in city and county governance and how those might develop and give an expert insight in what they might mean for citizens. Professor Travers is director of LSE London, a research centre at the London School of Economics. He is also a professor in the LSE’s Government Department. He has published a number of books on cities and government, including Failure in British Government The Politics of the Poll Tax (with David Butler and Andrew Adonis), Paying for Health, Education and Housing How does the Centre Pull the Purse Strings (with Howard Glennerster and John Hills) and The Politics of London: Governing the Ungovernable City.
The Annual Lecture is a thought-provoking event which aims to make a positive contribution to the debate around spatial planning in a national and international context. The lecture, given in memory of Nat Lichfield, draws an audience of around two hundred students and professionals from across the planning and related professions. Previous speakers have included Patsy Healey and Mitchell Silver - who was then Chief Planning and Economic Development Officer in the City of Raleigh, North Carolina. Last year’s lecture was delivered by Lord Heseltine. We expect tickets for the lecture to sell very quickly. £10 (inc VAT) £8 (inc VAT) concessions 20 free places available to students. The lecture is once again generously supported by Dalia Lichfield.
To book please go to http://rtpilecture2014.eventbrite.co.uk
Professor Travers regularly broadcasts and writes for the national press, including The Guardian, The Evening Standard, The Independent, the Financial Times and The Times. The lecture will begin at 7pm and will be followed by a drinks reception.
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• Highways and •transport Highwaysinfrastructure and transport town infrastructure • Commons, •and Commons, town village greens and village • Minerals andgreens waste Minerals and waste • •EIA/SEA EIA/SEA • •Rights of way • Rights of way
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