The Planner - April 2015

APRIL 2015 ELECTION 2015: WHAT DEVELOPERS WANT // p.22 • HEATHROW AND GATWICK IN DOGFIGHT FOR AIRPORT EXPANSION // p.26 • HAS CHRISTCHURCH LOST AN OPPORTUNITY TO MODERNISE? // p.30 • HOW TO ASSESS DEVELOPMENTAL VIABILITY // p.40

T H E B U S I N ES E S S M O N T H LY FFO O R P L A N N I N G P R O F EESS S IIO O N A LS LS

PLANNER

THE

How a life of service has prepared Melanie Leech for “grown-up conversations” as the new chief of the British Property Federation

CIVIL SERVICE

p1_cover_apr.indd 1

16/03/2015 11:11

We will be celebrating the very best planning projects at our 2015 Awards Ceremony on 6 July at the Shaw Theatre, Pullman London St Pancras.

To book your ticket, please visit: rtpi.org.uk/awardsforplanningexcellence

p02_PLNApr15.indd 2

12/03/2015 16:34

CONTENTS

PLANNER 07 18

THE

APRIL

20 15

“WE HAVE TO BE REALISTIC ABOUT THE FACT THAT WE ARE RESOURCING AN INDEPENDENT SYSTEM RATHER THAN PUTTING IN SOMEBODY TO RUBBER STAMP OUR PROJECT"

NEWS

6 Think tank: a garden village for every English council

7 Tidal lagoon could power Wales

8 What the parties’ planning policies promise 9 Report calls for a green belt review

OPINION

10 Green Alliance: Three-step fix for planning system

12 Chris Shepley: Pickles’ egg-sucking lectures are in the worst possible taste

11 Housing boost for Derry as plan for 1,500 dwellings gets go-ahead

16 Andrew Beharrell: Zen and the art of viability assessment 16 Lesley Sheldrake: Affordable housing DIY 17 David Tittle: How can we make design review work for all?

17 David Cowans: Rethinking housing infrastructure

QUOTE UNQUOTE

“THE THIRD CLEAR FAILURE IS THE FAILURE TO REGARD HOME BUILDING AS A NATIONAL AND LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE PRIORITY IN THE FACE OF A HOUSING CRISIS” ANDREW ADONIS, WRITER AND LABOUR PEER

p.03_contents.indd 3

13

COV E R I M AG E | PE T E R S E A R L E

FEATURES

26

INSIGHT

18 New BPF boss Melanie Leech aims for a long partnership between government and the property industry, says David Blackman

38 Legal landscape: Opinion, blogs, and news from the legal side of planning

22 What should the incoming government’s priorities be in the built environment? Simon Wicks asks developers

42 Plan Ahead – our pick of upcoming events for the planning profession and beyond

26 Heathrow and Gatwick are slugging out a war for airport expansion in the South-East. Huw Morris reports 30 Christchurch has risen from the rubble of February 2011’s earthquake with unprecedented building activity, says Herpreet Kaur Grewal

22

40 Career development: Understanding viability

30

44 RTPI round-up: News and interviews from the institute 50 Plan B: Nine steps to hipster heaven

AP R IL 2 01 5 / THE PLA NNER

3

13/03/2015 15:56

From

£195

The New Politics for Planning

+VAT

7 July 2015 • London

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

Why attend?

Chambers Leading Firm: Real Estate, Planning

Understand the new politics for planningg following the UK general elections Hear from the best industry speakers from m across the world Gain new insights from a choice of special interest sessions Enjoy excellent networking opportunities

Headline sponsor:

Associate sponsor:

To book call 020 3773 5580 or visit theplanningconvention.co.uk

Call 0344 880 8000 or visit www.djblaw.co.uk

RTPI Conferences and the Planning Convention are managed by Kaplan Hawksmere on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute

BE WISE WHEN YOU ADVERTISE The Planner is the official magazine of the RTPI. As a brand, we off er you true access to the key decision makers in the industry as the authentic voice of the Royal Town Planning Institute through our print magazine and our website,www.theplanner.co.uk.

your advert will reach

We guarantee

20,000+ RTPI members monthly.

4

C O N TA C T If you want to reach the valuable audience, please contact: lee-anne.walsh@redactive.co.uk or call 020 7324 2753

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p04_PLNApr15.indd 4

12/03/2015 15:35

PLAN UPFRONT

Leaderr Nice ideas, shame about the lack of political nous – Where once I could make a relaxed selection from a limited number of musical choices, each dictated entirely by my proximity to record collection and playback equipment, I can now access pretty much the entire world’s artistic output from a chilly Herne Hill station platform.

Where once I would wait with everyone else for broadcast of a particular piece of ‘water-cooler moment’ TV once a week, I can now call up most of the past months’ output from that same rail platform. All of this on a device smaller than a pack of cards.

And now we’re entering the age of the internet-enabled watch, a device portending an era of personal physical performance measurement right down to a potentially unending series of results, previous records and subsequent trends analysis.

Martin Read So why, when we can theoretically access every piece of policy and precedent in the same, almost instantaneous way that we can summon up The Rolling Stones, do politicians not recognise how it can be best be put to use to progress previously intractable issues?

Later this issue you’ll read an exasperated Chris Shepley railing against what he sees as a lack of respect shown to the planning profession by Eric Pickles

in the recently published DCLG consultation paper, Building More Homes On Brownfield Land. He wonders how the production and management of a ‘standardised open data set’ (to show all relevant land) can possibly be achieved by local authorities long since stripped of spare capacity.

It’s more than a technology issue, of course. But a relaxed attitude to organisations’ ability to make IT stuff just ‘happen’ doesn’t help.

And though it’s tempting to see Shepley’s example as further marginalisation of the profession by a disconnected political élite,

“IT’S POSSIBLE THAT THIS IS JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE GOVERNMENT PUTTING A SUGGESTED PLAN OF ACTION ‘OUT THERE’ AND TRUSTING IN THE MARKET TO DELIVER”

the truth is almost certainly more simplistic – if no less alarming.

Because it’s quite possible that this is just another example of the government putting a suggested plan of action ‘out there’ and trusting in the market to deliver on it, no matter the political, administrative and capability obstacles. I’ve lost count of government initiatives at best slowed if not entirely derailed by a lack of centrally conceived detail to support their plans.

The results are thus less than stellar, resulting in the inevitable repackaging of the same basic concept by a government of different political hue at some stage in the future.

The election is coming.

So just for once it would be nice to hear – indeed, see – a manifesto pledge that detailed in full the cost of implication, one for which those affected have had a hand in calculating. Seems reasonable to me. After all, we have the technology.

CONTACTS Redactive Publishing Ltd 17 Britton Street, London EC1M 5TP 020 7880 6200

Picture editor Claire Echavarry

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Consultant creative director Mark Parry

Ryan.hadden@redactive.co.uk £120 – UK £175 – Overseas For bulk copies please email for details.

A DV E RT I S I N G & M A R K E T I N G EDITORIAL

Senior sales executive Lee-Anne Walsh – 020 7324 2753

Tel: 020 7324 2736 editorial@theplanner.co.uk

Recruitment sales John Seaman — 020 7880 8541 Sabmitar Bal – 020 7880 7665

Editor Martin Read martin.read@theplanner.co.uk

PRODUCT ION

Consultant editor Huw Morris Features editor Simon Wicks simon.wicks@theplanner.co.uk

Production manager Jane Easterman Senior production executive Aysha Miah PUBLISHING

Reporter Laura Edgar laura.edgar@theplanner.co.uk

Publishing director Joanna Marsh

Sub-editor Deborah Shrewsbury

ISSN 2053-7581

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.

RT P I C O N TA C T S membership@rtpi.org.uk 020 7929 9462 Education education@rtpi.org.uk 020 7929 9451 Planning Aid Advice Line advice@planningaid.rtpi.org.uk 0330 929 9451 41 Botolph Lane London EC3R 8DL Media enquiries Tino Hernandez tino.hernandez@rtpi.org.uk 020 7929 8182 The Planner is produced using paper that is elemental chlorine free and is sourced from sustainable managed forest.

AP R IL 2 015 / THE PLA NNER

p.05_Leader.indd 5

5

16/03/2015 11:10

NEWS

Analysis { HOUSING CRISIS

Think tank: a garden village for every English council

By Laura Edgar

“Over one million new Garden Villages homes could be built over Empowering localism to solve the housing crisis the next decade if each of the 353 councils in England built just one garden village of 3,000 new homes.”

That’s the conclusion of a recent report, Garden Villages: Empowering Localism To Solve The Housing Crisis.

The report, by think tank Policy Exchange, emphasises the 100,000 to 150,000 shortfall in homes being built in England every year, as well as highlighting problems with the current planning system.

In Garden Villages, author Lord Matthew Taylor – who advised the last Labour government and the coalition on planning policy – explains that current development is built around existing communities that value the green space built on, inciting local opposition.

As a result, land values are high. “Development land in scarce supply has enormous value – as soon as it is earmarked for development it acquires huge value.”

This leads developers to build at a higher density, and at lower quality.

Garden Villages argues “that many small new ‘garden communities’ are needed (as well as some larger ones) if we are to scratch the surface of the housing problem in a locally responsive way reflecting the principles of localism.”

Local authorities, it proposes, should be allowed to use the New Towns Act to create garden villages that are financially viable, increasing “the choice local authorities have about where new housing is built”, empowering them to work within “the grains of localism”.

Furthermore, each new community would need to be identifiable as separate from neighbouring communities – a community in its own right.

Garden Villages proposes two models, including expenditure, costs, revenues and income: >ŽƌĚ DĂƩŚĞǁ dĂLJůŽƌ ĚŝƚĞĚ ďLJ ŚƌŝƐƚŽƉŚĞƌ tĂůŬĞƌ

n Garden Villages: Empowering Localism To Solve The Housing Crisis: www.bit.ly/1EnoLZF (pdf)

6

l PROP O S E D

MODELS

1,500 homes

5,000 homes

Primary school

Secondary school

Sports hub

Two primary schools

Local centre

Same facilities smaller model

Household recycling facilities

Employment and recreational space

Would attract café/small shops/post office

Landscaped areas

Some live/work opportunities Function in relation to nearby communities which has facilities including hospital healthcare and large retail shopping

Although unlikely to attract national retailers, would be more a self­ sustaining community than smaller model.

Expenditure & costs: ­£268m

Expenditure & costs: ­£902m

Revenues & income: +£32m

Revenues & income: + £100m

Is this, then, a viable contribution to alleviating the housing crisis?

Speaking to The Planner, Vicky Fowler, partner in planning and environment at Berwin Leighton Paisner, said garden villages were perhaps “more beneficial than garden cities because they are easier to plan for and deliver as less infrastructure is needed, lowering the cost.

“However, while I think they are a viable contribution to alleviating the “WHILE GARDEN housing crisis, they are not a VILLAGES ARE BEING quick fix.”

DRIVEN AT A LOCAL Various considerations LEVEL, I THINK IT have to be taken into account IS IMPORTANT THAT in establishing the local planTHEY ARE GIVEN ning policy support, including THE SAME SUPPORT formulating options and

BY GOVERNMENT AS issues for alternative locaGARDEN CITIES” tions for the development VICKY FOWLER, BLP and consultation on the

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p6_7_news.indd 6

13/03/2015 15:57

PLAN UPFRONT

1,800­2,800 MW capacity

4­6

TW/h [terawatts per hour]

90

turbines included in plans

2017

– expected submission of planning application

Neighbourhood plans to get £22m

Tidal lagoon could power Wales Tidal Lagoon Power has submitted its Environment Impact Assessment scoping report for a tidal lagoon between Newport and Cardiff that could provide electricity to every home in Wales for 120 years.

The Environmental Impact Assessment seeks comment on the survey work that will support the planning application for the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project.

Site allocation and feasibility for Cardiff Tidal Lagoon, which follows in the wake of the company’s Swansea Tidal Bay Lagoon application (decision

expected in June), began in 2011.

Mark Shorrock, Tidal Lagoon chief executive, said: “We will build on the template established for the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon – applying the expertise and learning, scaling the UK supply chain and turbine assembly plant, leveraging the institutional investor partnerships we have developed – to deliver a Cardiff Tidal Lagoon capable of working in harmony with nature to supply around 1.5 million UK homes, now and for generations to come, with affordable, reliable, low-carbon electricity.”

same, and that process can take several years before developers can get on site, if planning permission is granted.

She added: “What struck me is how schemes akin to garden villages have been accepted by communities such as Northstowe and the other new settlements in Cambridgeshire such as Trumpington Meadow. These schemes have gone through, or are going through, without major challenges and with general support of the local community.”

On the other hand, Jaimie Ferguson, director and head of design at Turley, asked: “Are garden villages anything more than another rose-tinted rebrand of the issues?”

Speaking to The Planner, he said: “I fear any solution which starts ‘if every...’ is doomed to failure as of course the nature of localism means that ‘every...’ will not necessarily act in the same way and nor should it. Many factors affect where people want to live and by extension where developers look to build and so a blanket approach is unlikely to work.”

Ferguson explained the more pressing concern is the failure to release land. “Any process to identify sites could also inadvertently hinder this existing market activity.”

But he concluded: “If we are to deliver the homes this country needs then we will need garden cities, villages, towns and hamlets as well as new towns, urban renewal, densification and all things in between.”

Communities setting up neighbourhood plans will be able to apply for a slice of a £22.5 million support fund, said housing minister Brandon Lewis.

This support programme, which will run until 2018, will also provide community groups with “technical assistance and expert advice to support new neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood development orders, throughout the process”, said the government.

“From the very beginning we’ve been clear that we wanted to give power back from Whitehall to local communities and with six million people living in areas producing neighbourhood plans the success of our reforms is clear,” said Lewis.

“Now I want to keep up the momentum, and encourage more areas to come forward, and this programme for grant applications will do just that. It will also support lots more areas and enable local people to take control over neighbourhood planning.”

Ann Skippers, of Ann Skippers Planning,told The Planner that she welcomed the direct support and funding.

“As well as helping with practical matters such as printing costs, the package will encourage and enable communities to call on professional planning support when some additional or specialist expertise is needed, helping with those groups with more difficult or technical parts of planmaking and reassuring communities that their plans are of the highest possible quality.”

Levy plan penalises owners of undeveloped Irish housing sites Ireland’s finance minister Michael Noonan has launched a public consultation on plans to introduce a vacant site levy on owners of residential-zoned land that is not being developed.

The annual levy is expected to amount to 3 per cent of the value of the land, rising to 6 per cent over time, which would become payable if the site was identified as a priority for development but remained unused..

The Department of Finance reckons there are some 17,000 hectares of undeveloped residential land that could provide 400,000 homes across the country.

The move came as regulations came into force to bring

hundreds of plots of land under the scope of the existing Derelict Sites Act – allowing local authorities to force landowners to remedy dangerous buildings or clean up sites.

Counties affected by the regulations are Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Galway, Kerry, Kilkenny, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow.

The Department of the Environment said that some of these urban areas were being ‘restated’ following changes to the local government system, but some had been added at the request of local authorities.

AP R IL 2 01 5 / THE PLA NNER

p6_7_news.indd 7

7

13/03/2015 15:57

NEWS

Analysis { GENERAL ELECTION 2015

What the parties’ planning policies promise Laura Edgar With just a few weeks to go until the general election, The Planner has compiled a fact-file with the help of the RTPI’s online election resource and the party election manifestos, made up of what the parties have to say on various planning topics. ]HOUSING:

PLAID CYMRU: Introduce Rent Now – Buy Later scheme to help those on low incomes.

Homebuy scheme – people would be able to share the cost of buying a house with a social landlord. Stricter rent controls.

GREEN PARTY: Committed to building 500,000 social rented homes by 2020 by increasing the social housing budget from £1.5 billion a year to £6 billion a year by 2017. Housing should promote community life. Aims to minimise the effect of housing on environment.

SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY: Opposes the bedroom tax. Provides support from the Scottish Government to contribute to the building of new homes.

CONSERVATIVES: Starter Homes Initiative – 100,000 homes for first-time buyers under 40, doubled to 200,000 if the party wins the election. Make 10,000 affordable homes available below market rent.

Schemes in place: Build to Rent, New Homes Bonus, Help to Buy, Right to Buy. LABOUR: Build at least 200,000 homes a year by 2020. Build more affordable

8

homes by prioritising capital investment in housing. Give local first-time buyers priority on new homes. Hand local community powers to get homes built where they want them.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: Target of building 300,000 homes a year – within one year have a plan in place on how to achieve this. Help social housing providers and councils build more affordable homes to rent, with central government investment.

Suspend Right to Buy. Work with local authorities to pilot techniques for capturing increase in land value. ] G R E E N B E LT

UKIP: The party will protect the green belt.

CONSERVATIVES: Would protect the green belt. In a written statement to Parliament, December 2014, Brandon Lewis said: “The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is clear that most types of new building are inappropriate in green belt and by definition, harmful to it.”

LABOUR: Emma Reynolds, shadow housing minister said Labour would permit building on green belt to meet its housing targets. ]BROWNFIELD

UKIP: Change rules in NPPF to make it easier to build on brownfield rather than greenfield – central government would list nationally available brownfield sites for development and issue low interest bonds

to enable decontamination.

CONSERVATIVES: Brownfield land developers exempt from Community Infrastructure Levy.

LABOUR: Update NPPF to establish brownfield-first policy. ]LOCAL PLANS

CONSERVATIVES: Local people should have the power to engage in “genuine local planning through collaborative democracy”.

LABOUR: Considering including neighbourhood plans in local plans.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: Local authorities would need to allocate land to meet 15 years’ housing need in local plans. ]GARDEN CITIES

CONSERVATIVES: Published garden city prospectus in 2014 – invited local authorities to express their interest. Said councils should be considering new communities of at least 15,000 homes.

LABOUR: Ed Miliband, speaking at the Labour Party Conference in September 2014, said: “We will build a new generation of towns, garden cities and suburbs, creating over half-a-million homes.”

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: Publish proposals for 10 garden cities in England, including between Oxford and Cambridge. ]ENERGY/CLIMATE CHANGE

UKIP: Supports diverse energy market including coal, nuclear, shale gas, geothermal, tidal, solar and conventional gas and oil – no new subsidies for wind farms and solar energy.

PLAID CYMRU: Would negotiate with next government that all functions in water and energy generation are devolved.

Aims to make Wales self-sufficient in renewable energy by 2030.

GREEN PARTY: By investing in renewable energy and reducing of fossil fuels, build a stable and sustainable society that protects the planet from climate change.

SNP: Would invest heavily in renewable sector, particularly wind farms. Opposes nuclear power stations. Committed to developing new renewable technologies and has invested £10 million Saltire prize in marine technology.

CONSERVATIVES: Committed to alleviating flooding threat.

LABOUR: Set a legal target for decarbonising

TH E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p8_9_news.indd 8

13/03/2015 16:40

PLAN UPFRONT

27.5m

– projected number of households by 2037

210,000 – average growth of households a year

electricity by 2030. Bring the off-grid energy sector under the remit of the regulator.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: Local plans would be required to provide sufficient green and blue water spaces in urban areas to mitigate heat island effect. ] T R A N S P O R T/ I N F R A S T R U C T U R E

UKIP: Would scrap HS2, opposes tolls and would let existing contracts expire.

PLAID CYMRU: Invest in green transport infrastructure. Increase spending on integrated public transport to 65 per cent of public transport budget by the end of the next assembly term.

CONSERVATIVES: Have already announced Roads Investment Strategy worth £15 billion. Support HS3 proposal.

LABOUR: Devolve regional transport decision-making. Give city and county regions London-style powers to regulate bus services.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: Say a massive programme is needed to upgrade transport network including HS2, Crossrail 2, electrification of lines, reopening of smaller branch lines and bus routes. Decarbonise road transport with electric vehicles.

RTPI: Planning in the next Parliament The RTPI has published 10 proposals for planning in the next Parliament.

This is the top-level list; explanations for each point are on the RTPI website.

(1) Stabilise the planning system

to deliver housing, jobs and community wellbeing in a sustainable way.

(2) Invest in local planning for a growing and sustainable economy.

(3) Plan to solve the housing crisis within a generation.

(4) Reward local authorities that plan together.

(5) Coordinate policy by focusing on places.

(6) Provide one-stop shops for individuals and small businesses.

(7) Use land held by the public sector for new housing development.

(8) Let the public know who owns the land.

(9) Fund more transport infrastructure by measuring its real benefits.

(10) Improve government policy by evaluating its impact. n Planning in the next Parliament: www.bit.ly/1AHyqpW (pdf)

Household numbers to increase by 5.2m, says government Projected housing figures released by the government reveal that the number of households in England is set to increase to 27.5 million by 2037, prompting Nexus Planning to say the next government’s top priority must be “creating more homes”.

n 2012-based Household Projections: England, 2012-2037 (pdf) www.bit.ly/1EU7wiR

Report calls for a green belt review Local authorities in London should, says a new report, review the rules that protect the green belt around the city and use some of it to help alleviate the housing crisis.

The Green Belt: A Place For Londoners?, has been co-authored by London First, Quod planning consultancy, and Professor Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics. It explains that although brownfield sites should be the first option for development, many are costly to develop and are poorly connected.

The report says the starting point for a green belt review should be to consider n The Green Belt: A Place For Londoners? only the areas that are near existing transport (pdf), www.bit.ly/1JLboJr networks and “are of poor environmental or civic value” and could address London’s housing need by delivering “high-quality, welldesigned” residential development “that incorporates truly accessible green space”.

Baroness Jo Valentine, CEO of London First, said: “London must continue to protect its valuable green spaces, but the reality is the green belt is misunderstood. Parts of it are unloved and of no environmental or civic value, yet can be easily reached by public transport. These are the parts of the green belt that councils should be looking at.”

27.6% 22% of London is covered by buildings, roads, paths and railways

I M AG E S | A L A M Y / I STO C K

p8_9_news.indd 9

In 2012-based Household Projections: England, 2012-2037, released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, it is predicted that the number of households in England is set to rise by 5.2 million over a 25-year period.

Dominick Veasey, associate at Nexus Planning, explained that the projected increase households in England means “creating more homes must remain a priority for any government following the general election”.

He added: “With the construction of new houses in England hovering at around 140,000 a year, this leaves a shortfall of 70,000 homes a year.

“The facts speak for themselves; we urgently need a change in the planning system so that we can deliver more homes, including a debate about the function and purpose of the green belt around our key cities. The green belt was originally introduced to prevent the sprawl of cities.

However, we are increasingly finding that it is no longer functioning as it was intended when it was created in the late 1930s.”

Housing minister Brandon Lewis has repeatedly insisted that the green belt is not up for discussion, and developers and local authorities must prioritise building on brownfield land.

of all land within London’s boundary is green belt

13%

of London’s green belt is environmentally protected land

2%

of London green belt land has been built on

AP R IL 2 01 5 / THE PLA NNER

9

13/03/2015 16:41

NEWS

Analysis { INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING

Green Alliance: three-step fix for planning system

By Laura Edgar “The current infrastructure planning system is failing.” That is the conclusion of a recent think tank report.

In Opening Up Infrastructure Planning, Green Alliance explains that the public feels shut out of infrastructure planning, resulting in protest and delays.

The report uses recent examples of controversy regarding energy and transport schemes to explain “the root of the problem is differing assumption about why we need infrastructure”.

Citing HS2, the proposed third runway at Heathrow airport and fracking as examples, Opening Up Infrastructure Planning states: “Preventing public challenge in one forum is likely to force it “WE MAKE THE elsewhere.”

CASE THAT PUBLIC Report author Amy Mount, ENGAGEMENT IS senior policy adviser at Green CRITICAL TO FINDING Alliance, explains that the COMMON GROUND government’s approach to BETWEEN DIFFERENT fracking “has proceeded on the STAKEHOLDERS basis that public resistance to AND MAKING technology is simply due to INFRASTRUCTURE ignorance”. Although George DELIVERY Osborne has made £5 million SUCCESSFUL IN THE available to provide evidence UK” ­ REPORT on fracking, money won’t address issues of mistrust, she added.

The public currently can only have a say on national infrastructure planning during the consultation period for National Policy Statements, but “quietly asking people to comment on pages of dry, wordy documents barely counts as engagement”.

But the report does concede that despite UK infrastructure ranking 28th in the world, 46 per cent of people asked in a Confederation of British Industry survey said they were satisfied with national infrastructure. This is perhaps because there “is a perception that the short-term disruption caused by new infrastructure is not worth the potential future benefits”.

Green Alliance director Matthew Spencer said: “We can’t tackle the environmental and economic challenges of the UK without new infrastructure, but the current system of planning is broken.

Protest will continue to be the biggest barrier to new energy and

10

Opening u infrastruc p planning ture Th

e need fo engagemen r better public t

“The current infrastructure planning system is failing,” says Green Alliance

transport projects unless the public are given a meaningful say in what the local and national infrastructure needs are.”

In response, the think tank has set out three ways to make sure the public is better engaged in infrastructure planning.

(1) A national strategic plan, supported by a new civil society advisory council, should be created. It will: c Look forward to the next 15-20 years and be monitored and reviewed so the strategy remains up to date; c Cover all infrastructure sectors; and c Be informed by recommendations of a civil society advisory council.

(2) Spatial planning should be carried out at city and county level.

This would be informed and tested by local public dialogues. c As powers are devolved, expect to see more combined authorities take shape and form infrastructure plans informed by local dialogue.

Speaking to The Planner, Mount explained: “Combined authority level is ideal for dialogue with the public about what sorts of infrastructure would be appropriate locally and the best places to site it. And it’s important that these conversations feed into the national planning process.”

(3) Establish Citizen Voice, an independent body to support a new civil society advisory council and help cities and counties to run local infrastructure dialogues. c Citizen Voice would work with the civil society advisory council that would provide insight into which outcomes are most valued by the local people they represent or work with; and c It would as an impartial facilitator on identifying need and strategic direction.

Mount said: “Citizen Voice would be funded nationally, and would be a valuable resource to cash-strapped local authorities, working with them to ensure that discussions are as rich and inclusive as possible and going beyond the usual suspects.”

Commenting on the recommendations, Mount said: “It’s essential that the UK has a strategic approach to infrastructure planning at both national and combined authority levels, so that decisions about specific projects are taken with this broader context in mind. A national infrastructure strategy must be long term, supported by strong evidence, and take into account demand-side along with supply-side options.”

RTPI head of policy Richard Blyth said the institute will be “looking at the report from Green Alliance and its contribution to the important debate on national infrastructure planning”.

“We have made a number of our own proposals for infrastructure planning,” he added. n Opening up infrastructure planning pdf: www.bit.ly/1E7RC2d

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p10_11_news.indd 10

13/03/2015 16:41

PLAN UPFRONT

Housing boost for Derry as plan for 1,500 dwellings gets go-ahead Northern Ireland Environment minister Mark H Durkan has approved planning permission for about 1,500 new homes at seven separate sites at the city of Derry, backed by the local authority.

The largest proposal was an outline application for 1,400 homes on lands to

Irish planning applications were up and housing starts on the rise in 2014 There has been a slowdown in house construction in Ireland in the early part of this year, following significant increases in residential planning applications and project starts last year.

Latest data from the independent planning research company Link2Plans shows that planning applications rose by 12 per cent and project starts were up by

the north of Skeoge Road. The go-ahead for 88 much-needed social housing units at Skeoge Link Road for Fold Housing Association has also been given.

A decision on one scheme – for 87 dwellings at Tullyalley Road West, part of the Ivymead housing development) – has been deferred.

Durkan said: “I am particularly pleased that planners have given a green light to the important development at Skeoge, which will provide 1,400 much-needed new homes.

“This was a complex planning application and I am delighted that we have finally got it over the line.”

The successful schemes represent a mix of social and private housing provision with a variety of house types in various locations including Skeoge Lands, Lenamore Road and Drumahoe.

30 per cent last year.

Much of the increase in activity happened in the first quarter of 2014, ahead of the introduction of new building regulations. c “Despite the slowdown in growth in the second half of the year, 2014 was a very positive year for the residential construction sector in Ireland,” said Danny O’Shea, the managing director of Link2Plans. c “This recovery in the sector, which began in the middle of 2013, is being driven by activity in Dublin and Cork which, combined, accounted for 42 per cent of all planning applications and 35 per cent of commencements in 2014. c “The positive sentiment is now beginning to radiate across the entire country, with 15 counties recording a rise in the number of planning applications when compared with the same period in 2013,” he added.

But although confidence remains strong, Link2Plans forecasts a tougher time for the residential market in 2015.

Mixed news in Scottish performance report Scottish communities secretary Alex Neil (above) says planning authorities need to continue to speed up major planning application decisions.

The Annual Report of Planning Performance, published by the Scottish Government, revealed that in 2013 to 2014 there was, overall, a reduction in the time it took to make a decision. However, Neil said, there are still challenges in processing major applications.

The communities secretary has explained that the report demonstrates an ‘open for business’ approach to planning, focusing on project management and pre-application discussions to engage with applicants early on the process.

According to the report, performances across different developments – and the country – vary.

Neil said: “The average decision time for major developments in 2013/14 was as low as seven weeks in one authority, but there were still a number of long-running, unresolved applications slowing performance. These types of cases must be reduced so that effort and resource can focus on dealing with applications that will contribute to a strong economy. I expect to see sustained improvements.”

Speeding up the planning system was, Neil added, his overall focus.

Image courtesy of the Scottish Government

I M A G E S : I S T O C K / PA

p10_11_news.indd 11

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

11

13/03/2015 16:41

CHRIS SHEPLEY

O Opinion Pickles’ egg-sucking lectures are in the worst possible taste That thing about teaching Grandma to suck eggs.

The World Wide Web seems unusually bereft of convincing explanations for it. I know various grandmas but none of them is educated, so far as I know, in such practices, though what happens in the privacy of their own homes is obviously none of my business.

But it is what is happening to us. And Mr Pickles’ lectures about the importance of brownfield land take this year’s award*.

Lots of other things have angered me recently. At random: the ignorance of strategic planning; the office-to-residential policy, which flies in the face of everything everyone sensible understands; the unwillingness to take a proper lead in tackling the housing problem; the general disdain for facts and evidence. Add your own gripe. But I hate being told to do something that you and I’ve been enthusiastically doing for years, and furthermore being told that otherwise some dreadful penalty will ensue.

Briefly, in my case, I worked in Greater Manchester, and while George Osborne was at Norland Place Independent School for boys aged 4-8, we produced a structure plan.

We based the whole shooting match (like many others) on the idea of developing in the inner city and using brownfield land. We backed this up with a new green belt and various infrastructure interventions. This was not popular with everyone, but I

12

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p12_13_shepley_quoteunquote.indd 12

“IN HIS LATEST ‘WHAT­WAS­LOCALISM­ ALL­ABOUT?’ INITIATIVE, MR PICKLES AGAIN PLANS TO TELL COUNCILS WHAT TO DO” think it was right; it remains an effective planning policy.

Then I went to Plymouth, where the use of brownfield land was severely hampered by the fact that the government owned most of it. We opened up some of the non-Ministry of Defence land by using government grants of various kinds, building bits of access road, and tidying the place up; and we even reclaimed some from the sea. The MoD behaved like a medieval king trying to hold on to Calais, but Michael

Heseltine forced them to release a few fragments.

We did this without having to be threatened. In those days ministers like Heseltine, and the very fine John Gummer, worked with the grain to implement brownfield policies, and planners were in the forefront of that. Of course we (and they) also understood some of the difficulties of land assembly, land value, remediation, valuable habitats, and so on; and to be fair the consultation paper does nod in that direction. Various vehicles were established to tackle these problems; and the private sector, having been sceptical initially, eventually followed the public sector investment with heavy investment of its own.

But in his latest “what-waslocalism-all-about?” initiative, Mr Pickles again plans to tell councils what to do. Those

who fail to plan for the development of brownfield will be put into ‘special measures’ unless permission is in place for housing (via LDOs) on more than 90 per cent of suitable brownfield land by 2020 (and 50 per cent by 2017). This is, of course, replete with the definitional problems customary in recent consultations. They are also required to produce, and annually update, a ‘standardised open data set’, listing all the relevant land.

Useful, probably, but quite who is going to do that given the conspicuous absence of actual people in planning departments is not mentioned.

There’s barely a planner who doesn’t have more knowledge about this in his or her little finger than any minister. There’s barely a soul in our industry who does not want to see brownfield land developed. Would it not make a bit more sense for us to work together on it, rather than have to endure yet more aggression, suffer still more threats, and worry about yet more tasks that are likely to lie beyond the shrinking resources of local government?

*CLG consultation paper, Building More Homes On Brownfield Land, January 2015

Chris Shepley is the principal of Chris Shepley Planning and former Chief Planning Inspector

I L L U S T R AT I O N | O I V I N D H O V L A N D

13/03/2015 16:42

Quote unquote FROM THE WEB AND THE RTPI

“When local people are involved, when they have a real say, they are more likely to welcome new homes because they are designed for the area” BRANDON LEWIS, PLANNING MINISTER, SPEAKING AT THE PARLIAMENTARY LAUNCH OF THE CIVIC VOICE MANIFESTO, LOCALISM FOR REAL

“The emphasis on a five-year [housing] supply encourages piecemeal development rather than longer-term visionary community building”

“Humanity doesn’t need electronic communication to survive. But it does need the rest of the planet” PROFESSOR ANDREW BALMFORD, LEAD CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER FOR A STUDY ON THE BENEFITS OF PROTECTED LAND

“I am really concerned that permitted development has extended to where it has. I think we should be giving this power back to local communities” ROBERTA BLACKMAN WOOD, SHADOW PLANNING MINISTER, SPEAKING AT THE PARLIAMENTARY LAUNCH OF THE CIVIC VOICE MANIFESTO, LOCALISM FOR REAL

POLICY EXCHANGE REPORT, GARDEN VILLAGES: EMPOWERING LOCALISM TO SOLVE THE HOUSING CRISIS

“The third t clear failure of recent decades d is the failure ure tto o rega regard g home building as an overriding national on nal and local infrastructure priority, inf in the face of an es escalating housing crisis”

“People think of London as the epicentre of concrete in the UK, but even in the capital green land outstrips land that is built on by a factor of more than twoto-one” PAUL CHESHIRE, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY AT LSE

ANDREW ADONIS, WRITER, FORMER TRANSPORT MINISTER AND LABOUR PEER I M A G E S | I S T O C K / PA

p12_13_shepley_quoteunquote.indd 13

AP R IL 2 0 1 5 / THE PLA NNER

13

13/03/2015 16:42

CORRESPONDENCE

I Inbox

YOUR NEWS, VIEWS AND QUESTIONS F E E D B ACK

Daniel Scharf — The Superhighway story (March, The Planner) looks at a number of incremental transport improvements, including Michael Fry’s explanation of the part variable speed limits play in reducing congestion.

It is disappointing to see yet another partial analysis of the role that speed plays on the transport system. There is an urgent need for systemic change, starting with a cut in the national speed limit that could be done immediately and at no public cost.

The virtuous circle put into play would include cutting both the number of accidents where differential speeds are a contributory factor, and their severity and costs. A major cause of congestion would be reduced and traffic would flow more smoothly.

Carbon and NOx emissions from cars would fall and lowcarbon modes of bus, train and electric vehicles would all be more attractive. Engine and tyre noise would be reduced, as would the wear on vehicles. Cars designed for a lower maximum speed would be more efficient and less polluting at the lower speeds now required in urban areas.

Now that the Treasury can see the inevitable fall in fuel duty because of electric vehicles there should be no reason for government to resist the speed limit reduction recommended by the Environmental Audit Select Committee (Reducing Carbon Emissions from Transport 2005/6) based not just on the substantially lower emissions, but also the powerful message that would

14

be sent to the public that the government is concerned about climate change.

Daniel Scharf MRTPI

Gary Stephens — Planning committees – you either love them or hate them depending on the decisions they make. But with diminishing public resources and the need for speed in decision-making, isn’t it time their role was reviewed?

Most people would accept that proposals that have significant effects on a community should be determined by elected representatives. But too often, committee agendas are overloaded with developments that might only affect a few properties. Not only does it slow decisionmaking, it costs taxpayers money in the preparation of committee meetings, and it costs applicants to pay agents to sit through committees.

It also dilutes the limited time available to the elected member to read, understand and debate the report, and decide on major proposals.

The decision about which applications are determined by committee should not be a political one. It should be driven by resources and quality decision-making.

I should not be allowed to waste public resources because I know four people who can write a letter of objection for me, or because I know my councillor will not want to lose my vote in May. What about a national scheme whereby all minor and householder developments, variation of conditions, and reserved matters are delegated to officers? To accord with

localism, councils should be allowed discretion as to what major developments are delegated to officers having regard to the character of their area. But the local scheme of delegation should be fully justified, costed, consulted on, and widely published.

Gary Stephens, planning director, Marrons Planning

Simon Dobbs — In all the discussions in The Planner, in the press at large, or in political agendas, I find no reference to a National Physical Development Plan.

If I search online for National Physical Planning I get links to issues of obesity! We have a National Infrastructure Plans and Strategic Economic Plans but no National Structure Plan to tie them all together.

The NPPF opens with:

“There are three dimensions to sustainable development: economic, social and environmental” – no specific mention of national physical development plan here either.

Why? We are obsessed with limiting governmental powers in favour of localism and with the ethics of the free market. But even Adam Smith promoted the idea of the state stepping in where private enterprise fails, as it does on many national development issues. If localism is the buzzword then, in a global world, Britain is ‘local’.

May I ask that The Planner, as the RTPI’s voice, should promote national physical development planning as an urgent issue?

Simon Dobbs

An interesting suggestion, and one we’ll look into – Ed.)

ON THE WEB @ThePlanner_RTPI The Planner Think Tank group on LinkedIn is live – and we’re keen to invite you in.

We’re always happy to receive your emails, or even physical letters (getting actual post is such an exciting novelty these days) – but The Planner’s Think Tank group is where we engage with you ahead of, during and after publication of news and features. We also use the

group to conduct surveys, elicit response to topical questions and amplify debates. If you’re in the RTPI’s own group, you’ll probably see us asking the odd question there as well.

So, please visit us and join the group at The Planner Think Tank. See you online.

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p14_Correspond.indd 14

13/03/2015 16:43

p15_PLNApr15.indd 2

13/03/2015 16:01

B E S T O F T H E B LO G S

O Opinion

1

Andrew Beharrell is a senior partner at architectural practice Pollard Thomas Edwards

I have just j returned from the Himala Himalayas. Exposure to different cultures puts in perspective how we do things at home. I’m sure Nepal has a planning system, but there’s little evidence of development control in action. But in Bhutan each new building must be designed in the traditional style.

We’ve evolved a complex system – especially in my field of residential and mixed-use regeneration in London and the South-East.

The NPPF, the Red Tape Challenge and the Housing Standard Review cut through some confusing and contradictory rules and processes, but there’s a lot left to do.

Top of my list is reform of the way that affordable housing is procured through s.106 obligations. I remember when the idea entered local planning policies in the 1990s with a typical call for 15 per cent social housing on schemes of 25 homes or more.

But targets crept up, thresholds were reduced and the cost per home to the developer increased as grant levels fell. In 2004 Mr Livingstone introduced his 50 per cent target and, soon after, global recession made it unthinkable, except for heavily subsidised developments.

Enter the viability assessment to save the day by providing a balanced and transparent way to establish the true potential of each project to deliver affordable homes and other public benefits.

Lesley Sheldrake is a planning officer working in planning management at Birmingham City Council

Affordable housing DIY

Zen and the art of viability assessment

It’s not working! Pollard Thomas Edwards deals with about 20 big applications a year, each one an ‘exception’ requiring a viability assessment and specialists appointed to argue the case for both sides.

We often see delays of a year, while fees, interest costs and frustrations mount.

The 2012 RICS Guidance promised to bring clarity – it has not.

Land prices are distorted and hard to call because bidders must guess how future viability negotiations will fall out. If they factor in full policy compliance they stand no chance of securing sites, and discretionary vendors will withdraw from the market.

This fuels mistrust between developers, planning officers, councillors and the public, who suspect that the truth is being hidden behind confidentiality agreements. Planning committees are refusing to believe the conclusions of their advisers.

We need calm analysis of how the system is working and a review of the way ahead. Viability assessment is probably inevitable for complex developments delivering alternative benefit, but in principle I’d welcome a return to fixed non-negotiable targets for most applications. Targets would need to be location-specific, reviewed regularly and set at a realistic level: 15 per cent of something is better than 50 per cent of nothing.

“WE NEED CALM ANALYSIS OF HOW THE SYSTEM IS WORKING AND A REVIEW OF THE WAY FORWARD”

16

2 BLOG

BLOG

Birming Birmingham has a severe shortage of a affordable homes. This is due to falling housing delivery rates and changes to national planning policy. Those changes have led developers to seek removal or reduction of previously agreed affordable housing obligations and to pursue ‘prior approval’ change of use schemes, which provide market but not affordable homes.

To try to redress the balance councils have to take the initiative and start building public housing again. In 2009 Birmingham decided to do just that after the introduction of government financial freedoms.

Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust (BMHT) was launched to: • Deliver more affordable homes; • Help to boost job opportunities; and • Kick-start regeneration schemes.

BMHT initially sought to develop 124 homes for rent on four sites. Timely use of funding was paramount so the council set up its core team of dedicated officers from planning management, urban design, landscape, housing regeneration and highways to rigorously assess proposed schemes.

This identified constraints at an early stage and provided subsequent efficiencies in following the process through from design until completion of

the development. Detailed permission was sought up front; an essential part of the process that allowed homes to be constructed to bespoke designs as soon as possible by the council’s development partner.

With reductions in grant funding, most sites now provide a mix of tenures to help viability. A financial model has been developed by BMHT that allows the developer to ‘build now and pay later’ to cut risks and upfront costs.

BMHT schemes have now provided 702 homes for rent and 614 dwellings for sale on 35 sites across the city.

The model has also been used on several larger stalled regeneration schemes where master plans include sites for retail/community facilities and open space focusing on placemaking.

Related ‘development agreements’ ensure that other benefits are provided, including apprenticeships and contributions for the Building Birmingham Scholarship to help train planners and urban designers of the future.

BMHT has led the council to provide affordable homes for five years and it continues to do so. The integrated design, planning and delivery process has also ensured that the council can make a robust and timely contribution to provision of new affordable homes.

“BMHT SCHEMES HAVE NOW PROVIDED 702 HOMES FOR RENT AND 614 DWELLINGS FOR SALE ON 35 SITES ACROSS THE CITY”

T H E PL AN N E R A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p16_17_blogs.indd 16

13/03/2015 16:43

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

3

David Tittle is chief executive of MADE, providing design review services to the Midlands, and chair of the Design Network, England’s leading source of independent design advice

David Cowans is chief executive of Places For People, one of the UK’s largest development, regeneration, and property and leisure management companies

Rethinking housing infrastructure

How can we make design review work for all?

I am a big b fan of design review.

Hardly a surprise when my job is to promote and deliver it. But I’m also its biggest critic because I can see how tricky it is to make design review meaningful and effective for all parties.

Despite clear NPPF guidance, planners are often reluctant to force developers down the review route unless the development is seen as a trophy project or one that could have controversial impacts. But that can mean a late review for designs that have already had a lot of time and money invested.

At MADE and the wider Design Network, we try to reverse the reputation of design review as antagonistic and alienating.

We have looked to develop a process that works alongside rather than against developers, becoming part of the process early on to make it profitable for design teams, rather than requiring hurried amendments to documents that are halfway to being submitted for planning.

The key is to build design review into the process of design development alongside pre-application discussions and community engagement.

We were overjoyed with the Farrell Review’s recommendations for harnessing the civic pride, energy and expertise of local professionals and channelling it into PLACE reviews and

4 BLOG

BLOG

other initiatives. We are fully on board with the idea of a broad multidisciplinary process that looks beyond the red line to review the wider location. We believe that, managed effectively, this could both ensure genuine community engagement and produce results that have lasting benefits for all.

MADE is a charity. While our income from design review and other services helps keep us afloat, our connections in the industry mean we can find professionals willing to give time to working with communities and young people from poor areas, giving them opportunities, training and access to the built environment professions. It has been a rewarding stream of our work and shows the passion people have for their hometowns.

The more we can make design review and place review locally owned and part of local industry-led design initiatives, the more it will be accepted by all parties and the more effective it will become.

That doesn’t mean panels becoming parochial. The Design Network can always bring national expertise to the table when a detached outsider’s view is needed, but we believe that should be alongside local professionals who understand the issues of a specific community.

This will deliver a review process to benefit all parties.

“WE TRY TO REVERSE THE REPUTATION OF DESIGN REVIEW AS ANTAGONISTIC AND ALIENATING”

Talk abo about housing and you have to talk about infrastructure. As obvious as that sounds, many objections to new housing schemes are often centred on the fear that the surrounding roads won’t cope, schools will be over-subscribed and there won’t be enough facilities to cater for additional residents.

In some cases such fears are justified. To overcome this we need infrastructure to go hand in hand with housing.

That means moving it further up the planning and scheme delivery agenda.

High-quality housing isn’t just about design and architecture, it’s about creating neighbourhoods. New homes have to be supported by facilities that make people’s lives easier and more fulfilling, helping to attract and retain people and investment that will make communities, villages and towns prosper.

This requires change. We need to recast planning policy so that infrastructure provision forms a key part of the permission. Any plans for new housing developments must include a range of services and facilities to help that development thrive and make it attractive to existing communities. And those benefits need to be tabled and debated right at the start of the process, helping to engage more people and overcome objections to new development.

Any form of planning gain must be specific to a particular scheme. That way, local people can see what infrastructure is being proposed for their area from the start. This would offer a more effective incentive than just the possibility of new homes, as well as a transparent mechanism for delivering infrastructure and responding to residents’ concerns.

If we strengthen the connection between homes and infrastructure large-scale housing could then be considered as ‘nationally significant’ in the same way as large developments in the transport, waste and water sectors. Housing could then be added to the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project process and determined by PINS rather than local councils.

Limited investment has been a major block to financing new developments and settlements, but there are signs that this is changing, with institutions such as Legal & General announcing new investments to help solve the UK’s housing and infrastructure crisis.

Changes to the planning system won’t happen overnight, but we will strive for it. Marrying infrastructure with new housing, stimulating investment and giving more people a voice could result in changes that will benefit existing communities and future generations.

“LARGE­SCALE HOUSING SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ‘NATIONALLY SIGNIFICANT’ ”

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p16_17_blogs.indd 17

17

13/03/2015 16:43

INTERVIEW MELANIE LEECH

THE

BEAT GOES ON B

eing a beat bobby is a far cry from the boardrooms of the UK’s largest property companies. But that is exactly the career trajectory of Melanie Leech, the new chief executive of the British Property Federation.

Leech’s first job was as a constable with the Metropolitan Police at the Paddington Green high security station in West London.

She had always wanted to join the police force, motivated by a mix of motives – a desire for a job in the outdoors and to help people.

“Those threads of public service and making a difference to people’s lives run through my career – it’s partly why I am here,” she says when we meet at the BPF’s offices in London’s West End, barely a month after taking the helm of the organisation.

She’s just about to head off on the Eurostar to Cannes for Mipim, the biggest show in the commercial property calendar, where she will have a crash course in the industry’s excesses. When we meet, Leech is candid that she “doesn’t know that much about” property.

Like her predecessor Liz Peace, Leech has been chosen for her Whitehall-savvy rather than intimate knowledge of the property scene.

FORMER CONSTABLE AND NEW BRITISH PROPERTY FEDERATION CEO MELANIE LEECH IS AIMING FOR A LONG­TERM PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND THE PROPERTY INDUSTRY, AS DAVID BLACKMAN REPORTS

PHOTOGRAPHY | PETER SEARLE

18

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p18_21_interview_leech.indd 18

13/03/2015 16:44

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p18_21_interview_leech.indd 19

19

13/03/2015 16:44

INTERVIEW MELANIE LEECH

After four years service in the Met, the Oxford maths graduate handed in her badge to join the civil service. Over the next two decades, punctuated by three years running the Association of Police Authorities, she ”WE ALL moved around Whitehall, taking roles at HM UNDERSTAND THE Customs and Excise and the Office of the Rail BIG PICTURE. Regulator along the way.

THERE’S HUGE The closest she got to the property industry PRESSURE ON was a four-year spell at the Department for PUBLIC FUNDS Culture, Media and Sport, where she advised AND I DON’T on development of arts venues, including the SEE THAT GOING South Bank Centre. After leaving the Cabinet AWAY; WE HAVE Office in 2005, where she was director of TO BE REALISTIC communications, Leech became direcABOUT THAT” tor-general of the Food and Drink Federation, which she oversaw for nine years.

She’s got big shoes to fill at the BPF. Since taking over as the federation’s first chief executive in 2002, Peace had transformed the organisation.

Peace, a fellow former civil servant, increased the federation’s profile and boosted its influence within the corridors of power.

Leech is a softer-spoken character than Peace. But it would be rash to confuse this with meekness. She had to develop a tough hide while at the FDA, where she dealt with the fallout from the horsemeat scandal, which was sparked by the discovery that food manufacturers had supplied major supermarkets with adulterated products.

She’s not into picking fights with the government or local councils though. And happily for planners, her only experience of the profession was a good one.

As the owner of a listed building in a conservation area, she recently needed to obtain permission for a new front door, an extension and a

C V

HIG HL IG HT S

ME L A NI E LE EC H Born: London, 28 May 1962 Education: Graduated from Oxford University with an honours degree in mathematics

remodelled interior. “It all worked very smoothly,” she says.

The development of a long-term partnership between government and the industry underpins the BPF’s manifesto for May’s general election, which has just been published.

Reassuringly for planners, this vision isn’t just about cash. Leech says it is “also about place making of the spaces in which we all live and work and have our leisure time.”

On specific planning policy areas, the manifesto calls for reform of the community infrastructure levy (CIL). The BPF wants CIL contributions to be more tightly tailored for large and complex schemes.

She says: “We want it to work in the way that we think it was intended to, which was to incentivise investment in the infrastructure that wraps around the buildings we create.”

The big picture But Leech suggests that the last thing that the industry wants to do is to go back to the drawing board on the CIL. “In general, we have had a lot of change and want to make what is there work better,” she says.

Rather, she wants an end to what the property world sees as a siphoning off of CIL revenues by councils for projects that are unrelated to the development generating the cash. However, unlike in years past, the BPF understands how badly planning authorities are crying out for cash. A well-resourced planning system is top of the list of the six key conditions identified by the BPF for allowing the property industry to deliver.

“We all understand the big picture. There’s huge pressure on public funds and I don’t see that going away; we have to be realistic about that.”

So given this funding squeeze on from central government, should councils prioritise planning

Timeline: 1984

2015

1984­88 1988­01 2001­04 2004­05 05­2014 2015 Police Constable in the Metropolitan Police Service

20

Joined the civil service – HM Customs & Excise; Cabinet Office; Department for Culture, Media and Sport; and Office of the Rail Regulator

Chief executive, Association of Police Authorities

Director of communication, Cabinet Office

Director general, Food and Drink Federation

Chief executive, British Property Federation

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p18_21_interview_leech.indd 20

13/03/2015 16:44

at a corporate level to help deliver future growth?

“Part of the message for local authorities is that you have to resource these things if you are going to get the benefits. I know that’s tough and there are lots of other competing priorities,” she says. “However, if building and regeneration are priorities, you have to resource the ability of the system to get those projects to market,” she adds, pointing to Manchester city centre as an example of what a well-resourced planning department has been able to deliver.

“FUNDS ARE DIMINISHING FROM GOVERNMENT SO WE HAVE TO LOOK AT ALTERNATIVE MEANS OF FINANCE”

More financial devolutions Of course, councils can easily turn around and complain that they only keep a fraction of the additional revenues that this kind of forward planning can deliver owing to the centralisation of the council finance system.

Leech can see local government’s case. Even though the landlords that make up the BPF were at the forefront of lobbying to centralise local government taxation in the 1980s, she clearly believes that this experiment has run its course.

“We would support more financial devolution to local government – the more local control local leaders have to deliver the better.”

As a first step to this, the BPF manifesto says all councils should be able to set up tax increment finance schemes, under which authorities keep additional business rate revenue generated as a result of infrastructure development. Leech suggests developers are willing to help planning departments.

“Funds are diminishing from government so we have to look at alternative means of finance. We are prepared to have a grown-up conversation about what you do about that.”

This could involve developers providing upfront to local authority planning departments some of the potential value likely to be generated by a development.

As a seasoned public servant, Leech is sensitive to the probity issues thrown up by any perception that developers could buy planning permissions. “(There) needs to be a shared understanding of how the process of managing that is going to be resourced,” she says. “We have to be realistic about the fact that we are resourcing an independent system rather than putting in somebody to rubber stamp our project.”

One area that the BPF manifesto is silent on, though, is the future of the green belt, which an increasing number of development industry voices believe is past its sell-by date. Leech says the BPF is primarily focused on getting brownfield sites back into use rather than building on virgin land.

“There are plenty of brownfield sites crying out to be developed and that should be our priority.

They are blots on the landscape, frankly, that need to be cleaned up. The question is how you get the right framework with local government that makes that commercial development possible and incentivises the kind of development that local authorities want to see.”

But this isn’t an excuse to duck the debate on the future of the green belt. She says: “We know there is a desperate shortage of housing and it (the green belt) is a very mixed bag – it’s not just trees and open space. There’s scope to have a grown-up conversation about the green belt without concreting over every blade of grass.”

But much of Leech’s talk about partnership could be stymied if May’s general election fails to deliver a strong governments.

“Property, in common with most business sectors, will least welcome uncertainty. We want a stable government that is able to set a framework and stick with it, not changing its mind and chasing new initiatives.”

Leech is diplomatic when asked to name her favourite building, not wishing to single out any of her members’ developments. Instead, she opts for Warwick Castle.

However, she relaxes her guard when quizzed on what kind of development she would like to see under her tenure at the BPF. She namechecks the regeneration of Battersea power station, which she must pass most days on the train in from her home in West Sussex.

“I’ve come at the right time to see Battersea mature and grow. I hope my tenure will be marked by watching that go from where it is now to being a vibrant community. It will be very exciting to watch.”

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p18_21_interview_leech.indd 21

21

13/03/2015 16:44

D E V E LO P E R S

W

e spend our time canvassing planners for their views on the planning system and housing, but what about the people who build and manage the environment we live in?

Property developers, housing associations, surveyors and the bodies that represent them have a particular view of planning and the degree to which it enables them to go about their business – or not.

We asked influential figures in property what they would change about the planning system post election, and what the priorities for the incoming government should be in relation to housing and the built environment.

This is what they told us. You can read our interviewees’ opinions in full on The Planner website at http://tinyurl.com/letusbuild

I L L U S T R AT I O N S | A N D R E A M A N Z AT I

HOW DOES THE PROPERTY INDUSTRY FEEL THE PLANNING SYSTEM SHOULD CHANGE IN THE WAKE OF MAY’S GENERAL ELECTION? WHAT SHOULD THE INCOMING GOVERNMENT’S PRIORITIES BE IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT? SIMON WICKS ASKS THE QUESTIONS

LET US

22

BUI D T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p22_25_construction.indd 22

16/03/2015 11:12

1 Philip Barnes n PHILIP BARNES IS GROUP LAND AND PLANNING DIRECTOR FOR BARRATT DEVELOPMENTS, ONE OF THE LARGEST RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT COMPANIES IN THE UK

“We’re held back by the complexity of the local planning process and the lack of resources in local authority planning departments” CHANGES : “It would be good to see mandatory requirements to get local plans approved. Neighbourhood plans are being produced more quickly than local plans. But there’s a potential problem with neighbourhood plans, in that they don’t have a policy background.

“We’re held back by the complexity of the local planning process and lack of resources in planning departments.

There’s less certainty in terms of which and when sites will be delivered where there’s no plan. We want to build more houses. With a recovering market and land supply we can. If there’s a plan it’s easy to send our guys out to purchase land allocated for development.”

PRIORITIES : “A key priority for the

incoming government is to get more resources into local council planning departments. We would also like to see a dedicated housing delivery minister sitting in Cabinet.

“We’d like to see a return to red line applications, whereby the general principle of planning permission can be achieved with less detail than we have to provide at the moment. I would support the idea of designating housing as national infrastructure, but only for major schemes.

“It would be good if a new government would have a good look at how we’re going to plan for housing market delivery where the housing market area crosses local authority boundaries – particularly around our cities.”

Rachel Fisher n RACHEL FISHER IS HEAD OF POLICY DELIVERING GREAT HOMES AT THE NATIONAL HOUSING FEDERATION, THE NATIONAL BODY FOR HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS

2

“We want an understanding that housing has to be linked to infrastructure and economic development” CHANGES: “We want an emphasis on land

release and assembly. We need to focus on delivery and make the planning system work rather than another overhaul.

“We’re talking about local land strategies – giving groups of local authorities more power to identify land for release. We need political will at a local level about housing – using the planning system and related functions of a local authority, and private partners and other stakeholders to deliver regeneration. It’s about political leadership and professional confidence.

“We want an understanding that housing has to be linked to infrastructure and economic development, as nationally significant infrastructure.

Instead, we have a situation where everybody believes housing is critically important to the economy but it’s a local issue for local people.”

PRIORITIES : “We need more houses

in rural areas, but the conflation of green belt and green field is problematic. Local councillors have a responsibility to communities in the long term.

“Housing associations could do more house building, and the government can do more to enable it. We’d like to see a streamlining of public investment that drives into affordable housing. It’s about making funding fit places, rather than places fit funding.”

AP R IL 2 0 1 5 / THE PLA NNER

p22_25_construction.indd 23

23

16/03/2015 11:12

D E V E LO P E R S

3 Marc Vlessing n MARC VLESSING IS CO FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF POCKET, A SPECIALIST PROVIDER OF ‘INTERMEDIATE’ HOUSING FOR SALE

“Localism is an extremely good idea for the moment you have given up any notion of national direction in terms of planning” CHANGES : “I would give a higher priority to intermediate housing within the NPPF. By ‘intermediate’, we mean housing delivered to market at discount and bound in perpetuity to deliver itself at that intermediate point.

“You could list under ‘affordable’ housing all the various shades of affordable and intermediate housing – for example, discounted market sales housing, shared ownership, affordable rented. It’s not one-size-fits-all.”

PRIORITIES : “The system isn’t well set

up for land value capture. Although the development market is racing ahead, the government is harvesting lower Section 106 affordable housing numbers than five years ago. And it’s anomalous that we are building major infrastructure in areas of the green belt where by virtue of it being green belt we are not able to capture the value of the land.

“Localism is an extremely good idea for the moment you have given up any notion of national direction in terms of planning. Then by all means turn yourself over to the vagaries of the neighbourhood plan. But anybody who has a sense of optimism can’t accept that the neighbourhood plan is going to rule what’s built. One of the planning system’s key responsibilities is to create connective tissue between the 10-15year national requirements of national government and the short-term ‘Nimby’ tendencies of local government.”

24

Andrew Whitaker n ANDREW WHITAKER IS THE PLANNING DIRECTOR OF THE HOME BUILDERS FEDERATION HBF

4

“Our local plan and our plan-led system is perfectly adequate. We just need to apply it properly” CHANGES : “The NPPF has been successful in changing attitudes towards positive planning. But the problem with the election is that people think change is inevitable, and are waiting before making big decisions.

“We’d like to see a commitment to the overarching policy of positive planning.

The whole thrust of the NNPF was to move away from a default ‘No’. Starting from a position of wanting to say ‘Yes’ is to embrace change and development more. The urgency is acute because planning is about long-term vision. But we’ve fallen into the trap of focusing too much on a five-year housing land supply.

“We’re trying to push people to plan properly for the longer term. This means you need to find more land, allocate more land, and grant planning permission.

What you want to deliver to everybody in the development industry and the public is certainty. Our local plan and our planled system is perfectly adequate. We just need to apply it properly.”

PRIORITIES : “We’re seeing an increase

in housing output and plans coming forward. The new government should take stock of what’s worked, rather than trying to change things for the sake of it.

“We need to continue to see housing output rise to meet need and to make sure councils identify and meet those numbers. We [developers and planners] are in the same field, working together.”

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p22_25_construction.indd 24

16/03/2015 11:12

5 Jeremy Blackburn n JEREMY BLACKBURN IS HEAD OF UK POLICY FOR RICS, THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF CHARTERED SURVEYORS

“It’s about taking a business plan approach to infrastructure across the country” CHANGES : “We have four key

suggestions: Committing to retaining and fully embracing the NPPF; a new category of amberfield land, where you have brownfield, low-quality green belt and greenfield that’s allocated within local plans and ready to go; the adoption of local plans should be made compulsory; and more resources for planning departments.

“That comes down to public budgets and where councils have to make efficiencies. But it’s also thinking more imaginatively. We have surveyors saying they are not meeting enough planners on the ground. That needs to change.”

PRIORITIES : “[We need] a coherent

plan for freeing up all the housing delivery mechanisms across all the tenures rather than a big focus on firsttime buyers and owner-occupation.

We’re at a tipping point in the balance between owning and renting. There’s also a deficit in social and rentable housing. Solutions could include greater borrowing powers for councils, and empowering housing associations and community vehicles to deliver housing.

“We support a commission to plan and prioritise national infrastructure.

The national infrastructure plan has relatively small projects sitting next to the upgrade of all major ports. We’d separate it out, with smaller schemes at the front, according to the bang for buck they can deliver. At the same time, we’d start on the big projects at the opposite end. It’s a business plan approach.”

What’s the RTPI view?

“The RTPI has published 10 key proposals in Planning In The Next Parliament in advance of the UK general election,” says RTPI president Janet Askew. “These have been selected from an extensive policy and research work programme conducted by the institute over the past 18 months.

“Overall, the programme produced a number of policy papers and the Planning Horizons series, which recommended policy solutions and thought leadership on a range of pressing challenges for both planning and the conditions in which planning operates.

“Our 10 proposals include a call on the next government to deliver a stable and properly resourced planning system, commit to ending the housing crisis within a generation, and to reward local authorities that plan together with financial incentives. We

have been clear about where the existing issues are and what can be done to address them.

“We hope that planners will use this document to engage with local Parliamentary candidates to argue the case for planning, solutions for which can be carried forward into the next Parliament, irrespective of the outcome of the election.” n See pages 8-9 for analysis. n Download Planning In The Next Parliament: www.bit.ly/1AHyqpW (pdf)

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p22_25_construction.indd 25

25

16/03/2015 11:12

H E AT H R O W A I R P O R T

HEATHROW AND GATWICK ARE SLUGGING OUT A HUGE WAR FOR AIRPORT EXPANSION IN THE SOUTH足EAST. WITH THE AIRPORTS COMMISSION SET TO REPORT SOON, HUW MORRIS LOOKS AT THE LATEST STATE OF PLAY

BATTLE FOR THE SKIES 26

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p26_29_airports.indd 26

13/03/2015 16:45

T

his is a tale of two airports, two fierce rivalries and one major decision that has been put off for 50 years, but will reverberate for decades to come.

Heathrow, the UK’s biggest airport, is full and falling behind its rivals. It needs to expand, but so does Gatwick. Both are awaiting a decision by the Airports Commission, set up by the government in 2012 to consider the demand for extra airport capacity and how this can be met in the short, medium and long term.

The commission acknowledges a need for one additional runway in the southeast of England by 2030, with all of London’s main airports forecast to be full by the mid-2020s. The cost of doing nothing is significant; the commission estimates this impact to be £18-20 billion to users and providers of airport infrastructure

H E AT H R O W IN NUMBERS

73.4m The number of passengers who travelled through Heathrow in 2014

185

The number of destinations served by Heathrow

HEATHROW

n Heathrow was recently overtaken by Dubai as the world’s busiest airport.

For the past decade it has been operating at 98 per cent of its capacity within a current limit of 480,000 flights a year, with a plane landing or taking off every 45 seconds. The airport is trying to add new routes to growing markets in China and South America, which are increasingly vital to the UK economy, but it is struggling to cope with demand and is now losing out to rivals in France, Germany and the Middle East.

There are two options for expanding Heathrow.

The first, advocated

by Heathrow Airport Ltd, involves a new 3,500-metre runway to the north-west of the airport’s existing runways. This would cost £15.6 billion and accommodate 260,000

30% The proportion of passengers who were business travellers

N

flights a year. Under this proposal the village of Harmondsworth, which has a population of around 850, would have to be demolished. The taxpayer would be asked to stump up £1.2 billion for a 600-metre, 14-lane tunnel to replace a section of the M25. Heathrow also plans to introduce congestion charging should expansion go ahead, and a £550 million compensation fund for those affected by noise.

The second proposal, the ‘Heathrow Hub’, is estimated to cost around £7 billion. This option involves extending the existing northern runway by around 6,000 metres and operating it as two separate runways to be used for both take-offs and landings. The original proposal suggested diverting or bridging over the M25, with a new railway station on the Great Western Main

1,290 Daily average number of flights

201,000

line linked to Crossrail.

Much of the parish of Colnbrook with Poyle, which has a population of around 6,200, would be demolished, affecting 720 properties and eight listed buildings. This option also opens the way to a future extension of the southern runway, although this is likely to face significant engineering challenges posed by the Wraysbury Reservoir.

A revised proposal unveiled in May 2014 suggested remodelling the road network around Heathrow without shutting down the M25 or tunnelling and bridging over it. This would involve a much-reduced compulsory purchase of fewer than 250 properties.

Heathrow believes that the north-west runway could start in 2020 and be ready by 2026, although critics argue that neither option could be viable before 2030.

80

The number of passengers passing through the The number of airlines airport each day operating from Heathrow

A P R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p26_29_airports.indd 27

27

13/03/2015 16:45

H E AT H R O W A I R P O R T

“The commission has given some indication of its thinking and said plans for new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick will cost substantially more than the bidders had originally estimated”

GATWICK

n A substantial part of Gatwick’s case for expansion is that it is not Heathrow. The UK does not just need a new runway but two worldclass airports, it contends.

Other global cities such as New York, Paris and Tokyo spread capacity through a network of airports rather than rely on one mega-hub to serve all of their air travel demands.

Building a new runway in the South-East would allow about 200,000 extra flights a year into the country, but if those flights land at Heathrow, one airport will control

28

most of the air traffic in and out of the UK, it argues.

Gatwick’s proposal involves building a second runway of at least 3,000 metres. The cost would be considerably cheaper at £7.8 billion.

Expansion at Gatwick would fly the UK to 440 global destinations, deliver £90 billion to the economy and around 120,000 new jobs. It will also boost regeneration of a wide area of South London and support growth of the capital eastwards. A new runway could be operational by 2025 provided it secures planning permission by May 2020.

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p26_29_airports.indd 28

Significantly fewer people would be affected by noise – 12,500 compared with more than 755,000 at Heathrow. A new runway at Heathrow would see 320,000 additional people affected by noise – a second runway at Gatwick would affect fewer than 5 per cent of the households affected by Heathrow today. Air around Heathrow breaches EU air quality rules – Gatwick is and will still be well within such rules with a second runway. A new Gatwick runway would mean extra air traffic was directed over a less populated area, limiting the impact of noise.

and £30-45 billion to the wider economy.

It has rejected an idea championed by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, for a four-runway island airport in the Thames Estuary. The £50 billion price tag, the likely huge disruption to the economy around Heathrow as well as the serious risk of bird strike to planes using the airport were key factors.

The commission is due to make its final recommendation this summer. Having begun with 58 options in 2012 to expand airport capacity, it has whittled this down to three – two at Heathrow and one at Gatwick (see boxes). Consultation on these options has been enormous, with the commission receiving more than 50,000 responses.

The commission has given some indication of its thinking and said plans for new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick will cost substantially more than the bidders had originally estimated. In Gatwick’s case this could be £2 billion more than suggested whereas the two separate plans to expand Heathrow could cost £3-4 billion more.

The commission is busying itself with an Everest of technical detail covering strategic fit, economy, surface access, the environment, people, cost, viability and delivery. It is adamant that it has yet to take a view on which proposal strikes the most effective balance between assessment criteria.

Nevertheless, the commission has indicated that Gatwick’s plan for a second runway is the quietest and easiest to deliver, but expanding Heathrow is seen as more likely to secure a major boost to the economy and create more jobs.

Commission chair Sir Howard Davies describes the three options for expansion as “an interesting choice of airport model” and acknowledges that “the tricky bit” is considering how the world is going to look in 10 years’ time.

But an even thornier issue lies ahead.

I M A G E S | B A A / J A S O N H AW K E S

13/03/2015 16:45

London’s other airports at a glance

The commission cannot solve the politics behind any decision. The coalition government cancelled the previous Labour administration’s decision to expand Heathrow at least in part because of fears of antagonising voters in marginal constituencies to the west of London. Cabinet members such as Justine Greening, Philip Hammond and Vince Cable have spoken out against expansion in the past.

The Liberal Democrats are against any new runways unless another one is closed elsewhere. Boris Johnson, standing in the safe seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip at this year’s general election, is set to be one of Heathrow’s neighbouring MPs, and has described a third runway as “a disaster for hundreds of thousands of people living under new flight paths, who currently have no idea of the peril”.

In the last government, Ed Miliband was prepared to resign as energy secretary over plans to expand Heathrow, although his thinking is thought to have changed recently. Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has said Labour will set up a National Infrastructure Commission to “stop kicking big decisions into the long grass” and is thought to be open-minded about expansion at either Heathrow or Gatwick.

Although it has major backing from the business community, Heathrow expansion has failed to attract political support because of huge controversy surrounding its social and environmental effects. Gatwick says that even if the commission recommends Heathrow, there would be dithering for a decade before construction started, leading to a high risk of extensive delays and cost overruns, with a runway unlikely to be delivered before 2030.

That aside, a third option remains in the air. With Heathrow at full capacity and Gatwick at its limit by 2020, the commission may recommend expansion at both. In any of these scenarios though, the key question will be whether the next government will press ahead with expansion at all.

LONDON CITY:

n Operating at around 94 per cent of capacity, it submitted plans last year to double the number of passengers by 2030 to six million by extending the runway and terminal, and building aircraft parking stands.

n Operating at roughly half its capacity, it would like to expand from 12 million to 18 million passengers a year by remodelling its terminal and building a parallel taxi runway.

SOUTHEND:

n It completed a larger passenger terminal last year, allowing it to grow to one million passengers a year.

STANSTED:

n Currently operates at 56 per cent of capacity.

Competing schemes HEATHROW A I R P O R T LT D Proposal: A 3,500metre runway to the north-west to the airport Extra flights: 260,000 a year Disruption: Compulsory purchase of 750 homes Cost: £15.6 billion to be privately funded and £1.2 billion in government support for transport improvements Completion date: 2025 What the Airports Commission says: The commission believes this proposal will involve the compulsory purchase of 783 homes. It says the proposal will cost £18.6 billion plus £5.7 billion of transport improvements and agrees with the scheduled completion date.

I M AG E S | A L A M Y / BA A

p26_29_airports.indd 29

LUTON:

HEATHROW HUB

GATWICK

Proposal: Extend the existing northern runway to 6,000 metres and separate it with a 650-metre buffer zone into two runways

Proposal: A new 3,000-metre runway south of the existing runway

Extra flights: 220,000 a year

Disruption: Compulsory purchase of 168 homes

Extra flights: 260,000 a year

Disruption: Compulsory purchase of 246 homes

Cost: £7.8 billion

Cost: £12 billion

Completion date: 2025

Completion date: 2023 What the Airports Commission says: The commission believes this proposal will mean the compulsory purchase of 242 homes. It puts the proposal’s costs at £13.5 billion, plus either £6.3 billion or £2.1-4.1 billion in additional transport costs depending on which schemes are chosen. It does not comment on the proposal’s completion date.

What the Airports Commission says: The commission thinks this proposal could accommodate 280,000 extra flights a year and says 168 homes would need to be compulsorily purchased. It puts the price tag at £9.3 billion plus £787 million in transport costs. It agrees with the scheduled completion date.

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

29

13/03/2015 16:46

CHRISTCHURCH EARTHQUAKE

SHINY NEW

CI T Y

A thriving Christchurch has arisen from the rubble of February 2011’s earthquake, with unprecedented building activity, strong economic growth, low unemployment and an influx of people from abroad – but how much scope is there to modernise rather than revert? Herpreet Kaur Grewal reports

T

he Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand cost Amanda Fuller three fingers on her right hand.

Fuller worked in probate for Perpetual Trust on the first floor of the Pyne Gould Corporation building and was there on February 22 in 2011, the day the magnitude 6.3 quake struck.

“It was four minutes to lunch and I was updating my will,” she told New Zealand newspaper The Oamaru Mail only weeks after the disaster. Then the quake began.

At first it wasn’t too bad and she assumed it was simply another aftershock. “All of a sudden it got very violent and I crouched down behind my desk.”

The ceiling crashed down on top of her – a concrete block landing on her right hand, pinning her in place. When the shaking stopped, Fuller was in the dark and was trapped amid smashed concrete and broken glass, with her hand stuck fast. When rescuers lifted off the concrete block, she saw three fingers fall off her hand that could not be reattached.

This is one of hundreds of accounts describing the moment that the earthquake in Christchurch hit in February 2011. The Pyne Gould building came to symbolise Christchurch’s darkest hour – a once-solid office block, which crumpled and concertinaed to the ground, taking 18 lives with it. The Canterbury Television (CTV) building fared even worse; it collapsed within minutes, killing 115 people inside. Tragically, the disaster exposed some real design and engineering problems precipitating a strengthening of building codes and a rethink of how the city is planned and designed.

But the most immediate concern in the days and weeks after the earthquake when people had been rescued and evacuated from the central city was continued safety. Because of the extent of damage to the city’s central business district (CBD) the area was cordoned off along the four avenues surrounding it – Bealey Avenue, Fitzgerald Avenue, Moorhouse Avenue and Rolleston Avenue and the government called a state of emergency in the

30

city. At the time, Warwick Isaacs, head of the Christchurch Central Development Unit (CCDU), said: “Between these four avenues, there is in excess of 1,000 buildings being demolished… the landscape is almost back to Ground Zero.”

City of ruins Murray Sinclair, Christchurch City Council’s Manager Civil Defence and Emergency Management, headed a team that had the job of assessing which buildings were safe and which were not.

“I think 80 per cent of the buildings in the CBD had been demolished,” he says. “Engineers went in to assess the conditions of the buildings and gave them a rating. If given a green placard rating, it meant it was OK, but still needed to be checked out. An amber placard rating meant you couldn’t go in without an engineer and you couldn’t occupy it. Red meant it was too dangerous to go in,” says Sinclair.

He says his team also worked with the businesses to make all of these assessments and to retrieve all their essential requirements so they could relocate successfully. But he concedes that the council had not been able to adequately help all of those in need.

“We could have probably done better working with the business sectors, looking after and trying to find alternative accom-

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p30_33_Christchurch.indd 30

13/03/2015 16:46

modation for them. We were relying on most businesses having continuity planning in place, but many didn’t. There was even a protest as a way of saying they were not being able to operate in the CBD, so they broke through the cordon. They weren’t militant, but it was a gesture to say [to us that] more needed to be done.”

Doughnut city

Ground Zero: In the city’s central business district more than 1,000 buildings were demolished

“AN AMBER PLACARD RATING MEANT YOU COULDN’T GO IN WITHOUT AN ENGINEER AND YOU COULDN’T OCCUPY IT. RED MEANT IT WAS TOO DANGEROUS TO GO IN”

I M A G E S | R E X / G E T T Y / I S T O C K / PA

p30_33_Christchurch.indd 31

Many businesses started to relocate themselves in the suburbs, resulting in what some refer to as a ‘doughnut city’ – with businesses located on the periphery but with an empty centre.

“A lot of people have located there and won’t come back,” says Nicholas Dawe, work group manager for facilities management at Opus, a property asset management company in New Zealand. “It was a no-win situation; the companies couldn’t afford to wait and the government couldn’t make decisions. The central business district was in limbo while they came up with another central city plan.”

But the effect has led to a partial revitalisation of the suburbs that may not have otherwise been prioritised. For example, a local businessman, Alasdair Cassels, built the Tannery, a boutique-shopping emporium on the banks of the Heathcote River in Woolston, in October 2013. Located near a gelatine factory, it has given industrial Woolston an appeal it did not previously have. It houses 50 ‘boutique’ businesses, many of which were previously dotted over the CBD. A spokeswoman for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), set up by the central government post-quake, told The Planner: ‘We know that some businesses won’t return from the suburbs as it simply suits them better to remain there.”

Also, global real estate company Colliers International reports that 22,790 square metres of office space have been completed in the Christchurch CBD post-2011 – 88 per cent of which has been leased.

AP R IL 2 0 1 5 / THE PLA NNER

31

13/03/2015 16:46

CHRISTCHURCH EARTHQUAKE

Bealey y Ave ve e

ia tor Vic

H

St

Tce Park

Av e Ave p pe per rpe rp arp a Har

Salisbury y St

Peterborough g St

Hagley Park Deans Ave e

Kilmore St Cranmer Square

1 Chester St

6

9

7

Armagh g St

9

1

13

2

Gloucester St

14 Latimer Square

C

D

Cambridge g Tce

8 6 B

Ric cart on Ave

Worcester St

Hereford St

G 16

16

Cashel St

11

16

16

E

3

12

d or xf

e Tc

5

10

O

11

15

11

11

1

H ig h

15 St

Tuam St

15 Saint Asaph p Stt

ey gle Ha

e Av

Ferr rry yR d

4

F

M

h

Barbadoes Stt

Colombo St

The 12 per cent vacancy rate compares with around 8.2 per cent in Auckland’s CBD and 11.4 per cent in Wellington.

The CERA spokeswoman adds: “The hospitality industry is a good example of this, with the numbers of restaurants, cafĂŠs and bars in the central city back at pre-quake numbers. Businesses are already returning to the central city and the city is thriving, with unprecedented building activity, very strong economic growth and low unemployment attracting workers from around New Zealand and the world.â€?

CERA was set up to take over the management of earthquake recovery from the city council. It has the statutory power to make planning decisions without going through normal procedures. It is due to disband next year. “CERA has a statutory role to ensure public safety,â€? says its spokeswoman. “Decisions around repair, restoration or demolition of heritage buildings rest with the owners and the insurers.â€? But often owners will accept insurance, as restoration is too expensive for them to aord.

Under sections 38 and 39 of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act, CERA has the authority to require urgent work to be done on a building where an emergency has caused or is likely to cause loss of life or injury, damage to property or the environment, or danger to any works or an adjoining property. This was the case

Durham St

Montreal St

g a St ntig Antigu An

Stewart St

Wallace St

Selwyn y St

Madras St

Manchester St

32

Fitzgerald g Ave

Rolleston Ave e

A

A

with many historic buildings after the earthquakes.

But others remain unconvinced. Coralie Winn, co-founder and director of vacant space initiative Gap Filler, ponders whether the government’s slow approach was one that slowly pushed residents out of their own city – and from planning its future. “The context is that for two-and-a-half years there was a military cordon at the centre of Christchurch. No one could go in unless you had a pass. So the citizens of Christchurch could not go into their own city, because they were told it was for health and safety reasons. I think that’s partly true but it’s far easier for things to be done when citizens aren’t watching. And slowly people lost their connection with their city.�

The Anglican cathedral in the city centre’s Cathedral Square – described by some as the “jewel in the crown of Christchurch’s renowned Victorian Gothic architecture� – is still locked in such a battle. It had its spire and part of its tower destroyed, with the remaining structure severely damaged. There has been a tug of war between residents and the Anglican Diocese to demolish it completely, but a campaign to restore it exists.

A transitional cathedral built nearby by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban for $6 million has come to be known as an icon of Christchurch’s rebuild (See picture, p.30.) It is made of cardboard, local wood, and steel, with a polished concrete oor (under which runs a heat piping system) and a polycarbonate roof. It is built to comfortably exceed the country’s building code stipulations on quake-prooďŹ ng, “making it very safeâ€?. But not everyone accepts it.

Sandra Shaw, a volunteer with the Restore the Cathedral group, says: “I don’t like the cardboard cathedral. I object to the fact that it was built with money that was taken from the insurance

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p30_33_Christchurch.indd 32

13/03/2015 16:47

n The Pyne Gould office building, where 18 died, came to symbolise the tragedy

p (below left) The ravaged Christchurch Cathedral

money that belongs to the cathedral in Cathedral Square… it’s a personal thing but I know a lot of people feel the same. I don’t like it, I don’t like the design and I will never step foot in it,” Shaw says. “They didn’t consult the community at all.”

Richard Hayman, architect and associate principal at architecture and design practice Jasmax has been heavily involved in the rebuild of the city. Jasmax designed a major modern office building, 151 Cambridge Terrace, which Hayman says is a ‘poster child’ of the rebuild, as well as other developments. The Terrace, which Hayman describes as “quite important for the life of the inner city”, consists of a multi-use development made up of bars, restaurants – but now, also offices. “It never used to have offices,” says Hayman. “So it’s much more mixed-use now.”

Flamboyant local businessman and property developer Antony Gough owns the site. Commercial developers were the quickest to act, says Hayman – the public developments took far longer.

An ‘Accessible City’ New strengthened building codes have required more thought from developers.

John Meeker, senior urban regeneration adviser at the city council, told The Planner: “Private developers have had a significant learning curve to understand the new technologies available to achieve code compliance and then work through the costs involved. As the techniques have been explored and tested, experience and confidence has grown. Ground stability is the key in Christchurch as it was created on an area of drained swampland – beds of cobbles and gravels overlain by alluvial deposits.

By means of example of the implications of the changing code requirements, on one scheme, 17 tonnes of steel reinforcing came out of the foundation rubble of a 1960s building when it was cleared. The new building will incorporate nearly 160 tonnes to support a broadly similar structure."

The Christchurch Central Recovery Plan (CCRP) was created to outline the future development of central Christchurch. It incorporates a spatial blueprint plan developed by a professional consortium working with the CERA’s Christchurch Central Development Unit (CCDU) and was released to the public on 30 July 2012. Its ‘anchor projects’ include a convention centre, a health precinct, a justice and emergency services precinct, an arts precinct, a central library, a new stadium, a cricket oval and a sports facility (see map). Jasmax is involved with the bus interchange, which forms the transport part of the plan called ‘An Accessible City’.

“Some of the anchor projects are still out to bid,” says Hayman. Jasmax is also involved in building a science centre for the University of Canterbury and then there is a demand for new schools, which Jasmax is designing.

“As a result of the demographic change from the earthquake, the east side of the city was much harder hit than the west… and there was an exodus of people out to the outliers,” says Hayman. “But also within the city, there was a depopulation of the city because I M AG E S | COR B I S / I STO C K

p30_33_Christchurch.indd 33

the government brought in a residential red zone… that covered 5,000 to 7,000 houses – which are slowly being removed – and the red-zoned sites resemble a ghost town. As a result the Ministry of Education has thought of merging in schools or closing them.

In other cases, needing to build new ones to respond to growth.”

After the quakes, construction companies sought skilled trades people to help rebuild the city. Government figures released in 2013 show a net inflow of international migrants to the Canterbury region since the second half of 2012. In the last six months of 2013, 4,000 people moved there, an average of 25 people a day.

Dawe says: “Canterbury wasn’t very diverse. It was too cold for the Pacific Islanders so we never got as many as you’d see if you were on the North Island. Canterbrians are a very insular society.

Canterbury is 40 years behind the UK. There’s a very conservative, narrow mindset… One thing the earthquakes have done is bring in a lot of professional people from other countries to dilute that.”

The quakes also impelled businesses to share facilities – this pooling of resources helped to feed a sense of community spirit that emerged post-quake. An IT hub, the Enterprise Precinct and Innovation Campus (Epic), set up in the city centre to house 17 companies displaced by the earthquake symbolises this spirit.

While longer-term projects have been mulled over, the city council and community bodies are working to temporarily activate vacant sites within Christchurch through a variety of creative projects. One such example is Gap Filler, which was actually set up in response to the 2010 quakes. Gap Filler has been responsible for many temporary facilities within the city. Many have been amenity-based projects such as a dance floor on the corner of Gloucester and Columbo Streets.

Winn says: “We lost a lot of dance studios and dance space in the earthquake so we created a dance floor with coin-operated lighting and sound… It was an experiment to see as to how people would use public space and it has been really well used and a success.”

Better infrastructure While the government’s plan of a shiny new city starts to become a reality, there is also a sense of regret that far more could have been done. Anthony Van Meer, property services manager for Opus, says: “While the plans guarantee a new and modern city, some of those working in Christchurch feel an opportunity has been lost. We had an opportunity with the right thinking to make us the most modern city in the world like Singapore, but unfortunately we don’t have that thinking. So we are going to be building back the same old, same old.”

Dawe adds: “The chance to put in better public transportation infrastructure is the biggest opportunity lost – we’re not really doing it. Yes, there are a few cycleways, but we didn’t bite the bullet and say let’s have light rail or let’s have dedicated transportation corridor… it was too expensive and too hard and no one had the initiative to think more long term… We’re a small town really, but in 50 or 100 years we might be a million and no one thought that far ahead. It could have been one of the most future-proofed cities. A city so modern you don’t have to drive your car in it.”

But there’s still hope. CERA’s spokeswoman says all future public transport options for Christchurch are to be considered in a study led by local government body Environment Canterbury.

“It is important to note that the design of the wide green spaces that link the CBD to the rest of the city are so designed that a future government or local democracy may well consider using it for a light rail system.”

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

33

13/03/2015 16:47

INSIGHT

DiF { D

DECISIONS IN FOCUS

Decisions in Focus is where we put the spotlight on some of the more significant planning appeals and court cases of the last month – alongside your comments. If you’d like to contribute your insights and analyses to future issues of The Planner, email DiF at editorial@theplanner.co.uk Oxfordshire County Council argued that the inspector had misinterpreted the ‘necessity’ test

CIL PAYMENTS

High Court finds against Oxfordshire on s106 financial test (1 SUMMARY Oxfordshire County Council

34

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p34_37_dif.indd 34

has been unsuccessful in its High Court challenge to have a planning inspector’s decision quashed. In the case the inspector had found that some financial contributions in a section 106 agreement due before start of development complied with the tests in regulation 122 of the Community Infrastructure

Levy Regulation 2010 (CIL Regulations). It was unnecessary for those obligations to be monitored, so the monitoring and administration fee sought did not comply with the CIL regulations and could not be charged.

(2 CASE DETAILS In 2013, Cala Management

Limited had applied to Cherwell District Council for planning permission for 26 residential units at a site in Adderbury, Oxfordshire, but this was refused.

One reason for refusal was that in the absence of a satisfactory planning obligation, Cherwell District Council could not be satisfied that necessary infrastructure

I M AG E S | A L A M Y

13/03/2015 16:48

would be provided.

The developer – Cala – appealed against the refusal.

During the course of the appeal it was agreed that this issue could be resolved by entering into a section 106 agreement.

In July 2014 the agreement was set which required the developer to make contributions towards various infrastructure costs, including a contribution of £3,750 in respect of the council’s monitoring and administration costs, which was in line with a standardised fee scale. The agreement also included a ‘blue pencil clause’, which enabled the planning inspector to strike out contributions that did not meet the tests for planning obligations set out at regulation 122 of the CIL regulations.

In September 2014, the planning inspector decided that some financial contributions due before start of development complied with the regulation 122 tests, however, he found it unnecessary for those obligations to be monitored, so the monitoring and administration fee sought did not comply with the regulations and could not be charged.

Oxfordshire County Council applied to the High Court to quash this decision, submitting that the inspector had misinterpreted the ‘necessity’ test and had made an irrational decision in finding that while the planning obligations were necessary, monitoring of the obligations was not.

The secretary of state argued that the monitoring of planning obligations was part of the county council’s statutory function in its

capacity as local planning authority, and a monitoring and administration fee should therefore only be imposed in exceptional circumstances.

(3 CONCLUSION REACHED The High Court upheld the inspector’s decision. The High Court ruled that there was nothing in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the Planning Act 2008, the CIL Regulations, the National Planning Policy Framework or National Planning Practice Guidance to suggest that councils could or should recover administration and monitoring costs as part of obligations. A council’s role as a local planning authority is to administer, monitor and enforce obligations. If enforcement action proved necessary, the obligation provided for those costs to be recouped.

(4 ANALYSIS [1] OLIVER MARTIN This judgment will affect councils used to routinely recovering the costs of administering and monitoring obligations from developers. However, whilst the court ruled that standardised monitoring fees would be caught by and fall foul of the statutory ‘necessity’ test, it conceded that monitoring fees could still be recoverable in exceptional circumstances, such as a nationally significant piece of transport infrastructure. The onus will be on councils to justify how any such circumstances comply with regulation 122 and why the fee level sought is reasonable.

GREEN BELT

Inspector backs council’s stance on marina development (1 SUMMARY A planning inspector has backed Nottinghamshire County Council’s decision not to approve a large new marina development at Ratcliffe-on-Soar because of the damage it would do to the green belt.

(2 CASE DETAILS Red Hill Marine Ltd had appealed to the Planning Inspectorate in March 2013 on the grounds of non-determination of its application for a 553-berth leisure marina, ancillary buildings and 244-space car park on a 20-hectare green belt site near East Midlands Parkway Station. The proposal, initially submitted in April 2012, included the excavation of 860,000 tonnes of material, including 500,000 tonnes of sand and gravel.

The details requested were in response to significant objections to the proposals by Rushcliffe Borough Council, Natural England, English Heritage, the Environment Agency and East Midlands Airport.

However, only information relating to Rushcliffe Borough Council’s objection – on the grounds that it was an inappropriate development for the green belt – was supplied. None of the other information was provided before the developer lodged an appeal with the Planning Inspectorate on the grounds of non-determination.

In May 2013, the county council’s planning committee supported the position taken by planning officers and unanimously supported the recommendation that, had the planning application in its current form been considered by the committee, it would have been rejected on the grounds of insufficient information.

(3 CONCLUSION REACHED Planning inspector John Woolcock dismissed the appeal and refused to

The 20 ha green belt site is near the East Midlands Parkway Station – and Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station

OLIVER MARTIN is head of planning at Irwin Mitchell.

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p34_37_dif.indd 35

35

13/03/2015 16:48

INSIGHT

DiF { D grant planning permission.

He concluded that the proposal would result in an unacceptable environmental impact, would conflict with the development plan and that national policy concerning the green belt weighs heavily against allowing the appeal.

Councillor John Wilkinson, chairman of the planning and licensing committee at Nottinghamshire County Council, said: “I welcome the decision of the inspector.

This is the right outcome and justifies the council’s position with regard to this application.

“Our consultation on the application led to significant objections from a number of bodies which clearly required a response from the applicant. Quite rightly, our officers wanted to give the developer every opportunity to respond and provide supporting information that addressed the issues raised.

“It was surprising and disappointing, therefore, that the applicant chose to refer the application to the Planning Inspectorate on the grounds of nondetermination when a decision was only being held up by them providing insufficient information.”

Appeal Ref: APP/ L3055/A/13/2194755

NATIONAL PLANNING POLICY FRAMEWORK

Nursery and car park allowed on appeal (1 SUMMARY The erection of a Class D1 nursery, car park and

36

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p34_37_dif.indd 36

DECISIONS IN FOCUS

associated development including demolition of a section of the former railway viaduct fronting Viaduct Road in Broadheath, Altrincham, Cheshire, has been allowed on appeal.

The appeal was brought by Selbourne Group Ltd against the decision of Trafford Borough Council.

(2 CASE DETAILS The main issues in this case were the effect of the proposal on the character and amenity of the area, its effect on the living conditions of nearby residents, whether parking provision would be adequate, and whether the air quality experienced by future occupants of the building would be acceptable.

Inspector Nicholas Taylor concluded that the proposal would provide adequate parking provision, complying with the sustainable transport objectives of CS Policy L4 and section 4 of the framework,

and the functionality aspects of Policy L7, together with SPD3.

The consideration was the potentially harmful effects of poor air quality on young children using the gardens at the front of the building, which would be adjacent to a busy main road. However, said inspector Taylor, no technical evidence has been put forward to support the concern. On the contrary, the council’s pollution and licensing officers confirm that the scheme does not fall within the criteria for requesting an air quality assessment.

(3 CONCLUSION REACHED Trafford Borough Council’s newly adopted Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) came into effect in July 2014, after the application was determined. In its appeal statement, the council confirms that the proposal would not generate a CIL contribution and

The inspector said there was no technical evidence to support Trafford Borough Council’s worries about air quality in the area

that it does not now seek a financial contribution through a s106 agreement.

(The council referred to a revised Supplementary Planning Document SPD1: Planning Obligations and a requirement for all development to contribute on an appropriate scale to green infrastructure, through on-site enhancements.)

Inspector Taylor concluded that although the council acknowledged a lack of detailed information and expressed concern as to how such a contribution could be provided, it had not made a convincing case that such details could not be satisfactorily addressed by the condition, which it has suggested, requiring submission of a landscaping scheme.

Appeal Ref: APP/ Q4245/A/14/2223290

I M AG E | I STO C K

13/03/2015 16:48

ADVERTISEMENTS

} Consultants border archaeology

archaeology & built heritage

info@borderarchaeology.com |

leeds

|

borderarchaeology.com

leom ins t e r

|

london

Savills Planning Masterplanning & Urban Design

|

milton keynes

+44 (0) 1568 610101 |

newport

|

w i n c h e s te r

Specialists in all aspects of Masterplanning and the Urban Design process.

Planning for nature

Peter Frankum Head of Urban Design pfrankum@savills.com +44 (0) 7870 999 519

Based in London, Norwich, Lewes and Edinburgh

Expert ecology advice from the specialists

*VU[HJ[ `V\Y ULHYLZ[ VMÄ JL enquiries@ecologyconsultancy.co.uk

Masterplanning and Urban Design are one part of our full range of planning consultancy services

Experience and quality that make a difference

savills.co.uk

www.ecologyconsultancy.co.uk

Savills-RESETS.indd 2

Environmental Planning

12/03/2015 10:19

Planning our sustainable future

Environmental Assessment

Birmingham Bristol Derby Exeter Glasgow London Warrington

Landscape Assessment Green Infrastructure Planning Masterplanning & Urban Design Genesis Centre, Birchwood, Warrington, WA3 7BH 01925 844 004 tep@tep.uk.com www.tep.uk.com

Landscape Design & Management Historic Environment & Archaeology Ecology & BREEAM Arboriculture

Offices in Warrington, Milton Keynes, Gateshead, London & Kent

PLANNING DESIGN ENVIRONMENT

br is t ol

Web Design • Intranets • Databases

INSPIRED MEDIA.co.uk t: 01245 349962 e: info@inspiredmedia.co.uk T O A D V E R T I S E I N T H I S S EC T I O N : Contact:

Paul White t: +44 (0) 20 7121 2612 paul.white@atkinsglobal.com

Plan Design Enable

www.atkinsglobal.com/urbanplanning

Contact Lee-Anne : lee-anne.walsh@redactive.co.uk 020 7324 2753

}

AP R IL 2 0 1 5 / THE PLA NNER

PLANNER MarketplaceApr15.indd 37

37

13/03/2015 11:12

INSIGHT

LLegal landscape LAW REFORM FOR A NEW PARLIAMENT The planning system needs to secure the right result, in a manner acceptable to applicants and the public, taking no more cost and time than are necessary That is what those who work in the system seek to do, yet a combination of well-intentioned reform and centralism has often conspired against it. A deluge of national guidance, overloaded local lists of planning documents and a national government desire to micro-manage were increasing brakes on getting things done in the Noughties.

Progress has been made more recently. There has been a recognition that because the internet makes it easy to publish thoughts, it does not mean that the government should do so.

The hacking back of policy and guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework and Planning Practice Guidance makes planning policy comprehensible to councillors and the public for the first time in decades.

Localism is emerging from the ‘We’re free, so what do we do now?’ phase to local communities having to make the tough decisions about their environment. There has been a steady, and mostly low-profile, programme of legislative reform from the Department of Communities and Local Government: cutting back requirements for documentation with

38

Richard Harwood OBE QC planning application; reforming appeal procedures; overhauling non-planning consents.

The programme of reform needs to continue into the next Parliament. Legislation in particular remains too

“COMPULSORY PURCHASE AND COMPENSATION LAW MANAGED TO SKIP THE 20TH CENTURY AND NOW NEEDS TO GO FROM THE 1840S TO THE 2010S”

complex. There are three areas of legislative reform that are required: • Compulsory purchase and compensation law managed to skip the 20th century and now needs to go from the 1840s to the 2010s. Economic growth and fairness to claimants, including reducing the impact on displaced businesses, require removal of the archaic and the anomalous. Government should build on the Law Commission’s work to fullscale bills.

• Planning legislation needs to be decluttered. A blue pencil should be put through

those provisions that make life more complicated than it need be.

• The law on ancient monuments is, frankly, historic. It needs an overhaul.

At present the setting of a scheduled monument has less protection than that of a grade II listed building.

Broader policy issues arise in two other sectors. The first are various emergency measures that have been introduced to try to bring forward development with the minimum of delay or resurrect stalled schemes.

There needs to be a debate as to whether these should be continued, expanded upon or left as temporary responses to the 2008 financial crisis.

The second is the Community Infrastructure Levy, which is still staggering into life across most of the country seven years after the Planning Act 2008 and shows all the signs of collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Every tweak and exception made to it undermines the utility of the exercise. Its predecessors – the development charge, betterment levy and the development land tax – were ultimately put out of everyone’s misery.

The difficulties facing the development industry have mainly been financial – finding funders and buyers – and recreating their capacity following the job cuts of 2008 to 2009, but an overloaded planning system does not help. Reform needs to continue to enable decisions to be taken in the public interest, as speedily as is realistic and with fairness to all involved.

RICHARD HARWOOD Richard Harwood is a planning barrister at 39 Essex Chambers

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p38_39_LegalLandscape.indd 38

13/03/2015 16:51

LATEST POSTS FROM THEPLANNER.CO.UK/BLOGS

B LO G S Occupants of allotments at Farm Terrace, Watford, are mobilising for a third skirmish in a battle with the council to stop the site being redeveloped

A lot Moore trouble on the horizon Dr Romola Parish

– Moore v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2014] EWHC 3592 The recent rumblings on the subject of allotments exemplify all too clearly the incommensurables at issue in the planning world.

In November 2014, the High Court quashed the decision of Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, to allow allotments at Farm Terrace, Watford, to be appropriated by Watford Borough Council and incorporated into a regeneration scheme involving a hospital, housing, playing fields and community open space. The judicial review of Pickles’ decision was brought by three allotment holders under s.8 Allotments Act 1925.

It succeeded by a spade’s-breadth on the ground that changes to the scheme to provide additional houses, which were not located on the allotment land, would have affected the decision on whether the scheme was viable without the allotments.

The allotment site was not, therefore, “surplus to requirements”, a criterion that must be met pursuant to s.8 Allotments Act. This was a significant and material piece of information that Pickles was not aware of and had not therefore taken into account in making his decision.

While this case was not a judicial review of a planning decision, it represents one of the strategies employed by defenders of green space (be it allotments, town or village greens, or rights of way) in the face of development and highlights the difficult balancing of uncommon values and needs in planning decisions.

It also illustrates how such decisions, with their very different and significant financial and emotional, as well as social, impacts turn on such fine grist inserted into the millstones of the planning process.

The government’s Allotment Disposal Guidance was reissued in January 2014. It opens with a resounding statement in support of allotments and clarifies the scope of criteria to be considered; waiting lists must now be taken into account, for example. But safeguards can be breached where development is in the public interest. In the eyes of users, longstanding allotments are not adequately replaced by an equivalent green footprint comprising other forms of community gardens or community green-space incorporated into the design of development schemes. The allotment holders themselves are encouraged in the guidance to consider their Community Rights powers under the Localism Act 2011 – to apply to run the allotment service themselves instead of the council, or to apply to list the allotment as an Asset of Community Value (ACV), thereby gaining

an opportunity to bid for the asset in the event of any disposal of it.

This is neighbourhood planning in action, but it is not foolproof. An ACV listing doesn’t protect it against a compulsory purchase order, or stop a planning application being made in respect of a site. But the requirements under s.8 Allotments Act would still need to be met for any disposal of change of use.

The government clearly holds contrasting views on the subject of allotments and green space generally. Local authorities are at liberty to introduce local green space designations to protect such areas, but are under no compunction to do so.

Faced with the need to deliver homes and other development and the apparent lack of certainty in the sanctity of green belt, the survival of established allotments would appear to remain at risk of protection by means of only very narrow technical judicial decisions.

Watford Council has now applied for a third time to build on the Farm Terrace allotments, resolute in their view that the land is necessary to alleviate an acute shortage of housing and need for redevelopment of its hospital facilities.

So much for the government’s policy of ‘Giving people power over what happens in their neighbourhood’.

The rumbles in the allotment jungle are not over yet.

Dr Romola Parish is a senior associate in planning and environment at Travers Smith LLP

L E G I S L AT I O N S H O R T S High Court dismisses challenge to Shell Centre redevelopment Communities secretary Eric Pickles has been supported by the High Court over his decision to allow the redevelopment of the 3.5-hectare Shell Centre site on London’s South Bank.

Mr Justice Collins dismissed a claim by local activist George Turner, who said that the planning inspector reporting to Pickles had made errors of law in coming to his conclusions.

In 2012, plans were submitted to Lambeth Council by Braeburn Estates, a joint venture between Canary Wharf Group and Qatari Diar Group. The development, at the base of the 27-storey Shell Tower, was to be of mixed use. In 2013, Pickles called in the scheme to consider its design and potential threat to the World Heritage site at Westminster.

In granting permission for the scheme, Pickles accepted the recommendation of inspector John Braithwaite, at the inquiry in late 2013.

Turner argued that Braithwaite had failed properly to consider the viability of the proposed scheme in coming to his recommendation.

But Mr Justice Collins said Braithwaite had appropriately exercised his judgment in deciding that the loss of light under the proposal was acceptable and that no heritage asset would be harmed.

Brodies’ expert: culture change needed on new Scottish homes More must be done to meet rising demand for new homes in Scotland, according to Neil Collar, head of planning at Brodies. In a white paper, Delivery Of Housing Land, Collar cites solutions including: encouraging local authorities to speed up the system for costing infrastructure upgrades; introducing simplified planning zones for approved housing sites; and cutting red tape that holds up planning decisions.

“The planning system needs to make up its mind: less scrutiny/more speed at the plan-making stage, or at the application stage? For example, consideration could be given to creating a simplified planning zone-style idea, to cut bureaucracy for housing sites already approved in the plan,” said Collar.

“Councillors need to lead from the front, make what are sometimes hard or unpopular decisions…

The planning system is based on exercise of judgment, so planners need to be confident and get on with making decisions.”

High Court scraps conservation area plan Designation by a London borough of a conservation area has been quashed because of poor consultation.

The High Court has moved to quash Hounslow’s decision to designate as a conservation area the land surrounding a pub threatened with demolition. The court ruled that consultations held by the council did not meet the standards required by law.

Mrs Justice Lang said the council’s seven-day consultation notice had not included sufficient reasons for the designation to allow those consulted to properly consider and respond to the plans.

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p38_39_LegalLandscape.indd 39

39

13/03/2015 16:51

INSIGHT

Career { D E V E L O P M E N T C UNDERSTANDING VIABILITY

Viability assessments forms one of the most important – and difficult – elements of a planner’s job. Simon Wicks looks at some of the key issues to keep in mind

V

iability – the determination whether development is economically worthwhile – has become a central plank of planning under the NPPF. The criteria by which viability is measured will vary according to the purpose of undertaking the assessment; and different actors within the property industry use different models for assessing viability.

It can be complex. What looks viable to a local authority may not be considered so by a developer.

Sometimes viability may be contingent on public sector action, such as preparing former industrial sites for development. At times viability assessments can seem little better than guesswork, and they can provoke debate and delay. But they do give all parties something with which to negotiate, so planners must understand how they work, the language that surrounds them, and how to commission an assessment.

Gilian McInnes (GM), principal consultant for the Planning Advisory service (PAS), has helped to guide The Planner through issues surrounding viability.

[1] What do we mean

by ‘viability’?

GM: “The basic definition is that when you take account of all the costs of undertaking development and all the value of the development, it’s viable if the value is greater than the costs.

“There are several places where you can get a definition of viability, not 40

least in the NPPF [Paragraph 173] and the Planning Practice Guidance. But the definition in Sir John Harman’s 2012 Viability Testing Local Plans report for the Local Housing Delivery Group is the one that I would pick.”

From Viability Testing Local Plans – Advice for planning practitioners: “An individual development can be said to be viable if, after taking account of all costs, including central and local government policy and regulatory costs and the cost and availability of development finance, the scheme provides a competitive return to the developer to ensure that development takes place and generates a land value sufficient to persuade the land owner to sell the land for the development proposed.”

[2] Why do viability calculations matter?

Viability assessments underpin local plans, as well as specific site plans.

They also determine the level of

community contributions associated with development.

GM: “The one thing that everybody working in planning or development shares is the purpose of considering viability. You are writing a plan that will achieve your aims. Or you are producing a development that will achieve the aims of your plan.

“Developers do not undertake development for the public good.

There may be a spin-off to the public good. But actually they are doing it to make a profit for their shareholders.

Profit is directly related to taking a risk. A viability assessment helps you to understand at what point there is enough potential profit to make the risk worthwhile.

“A scheme such as affordable housing that’s been bought up as one block by a registered provider is not as risky as building for sale on the open market. In this case, there are other costs and risks to be borne by the developer, such as marketing and the cost of finance. The profit margin in a pre-sold affordable housing development would be less, but it’s guaranteed.”

From the NPPF, paragraph 173:

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p40_41_career_dev.indd 40

13/03/2015 16:51

“Pursuing sustainable development requires careful attention to viability and costs in plan-making and decision-taking. Plans should be deliverable.

Therefore, the sites and the scale of development identified in the plan should not be subject to such a scale of obligations and policy burdens that their ability to be developed viably is threatened.”

[3] What are the major

considerations for planners?

GM: “Every developer and house builder has a different model – and local authorities can’t take into account every one.

“For example, some developers build fully on cash, and their calculations reflect that. Others are borrowing heftily. You have to build in finance costs, too.

“It’s incredibly important that local authorities actually look at what’s required in the NPPF in terms of whether it is site-specific planning, plan-making or CIL to make sure what they are looking at is going to give a competitive return. Use the wording in the guidance and have consultants that use the Harman approach to viability.

“You must take into account the full costs of the development, such as affordable housing, design and the impact of national policy requirements. You must also work out the value of the land. The land owner must be given a competitive return, but without the planning permission the land has limited value – particularly greenfield. If it’s not greenfield, look at existing use value to make your calculation and add a portion. It’s not an exact model. But it’s important to focus on today’s costs and today’s values. Try not to guess the market.”

From RICS Professional Guidance – Financial viability in planning: “Any uplift from current use value to residual land value that arises when

planning permission is granted should be able to meet the cost of planning obligations while ensuring an appropriate site value for the land owner and a market risk adjusted return to the developer in delivering that project. The return to the land owner will be in the form of a land value in excess of current use value, but it would be inappropriate to assume an uplift based on set percentages.”

[4] What are the key

concepts that planners need to get to grips with?

GM: “Planners don’t need to be able to do a viability assessment themselves, but they do need to understand the issues related to it.

“It’s a language. Are you talking net or are you talking gross? Are you talking gross value? Is it cost or is it value? So it is the language and what that language means.

“You need to be able to understand all the inputs. The arguments are about those inputs. The best thing to do is try to come to agreement on as many of these as you can, so you can then identify the areas where you still disagree.”

From the PAS guidance: It is important for planners to understand: • The language and approach of developers; • The criteria that developers use to assess proposals; • Risk and return for different types of developer and investors; • Capital and revenue appraisals; • ‘Yield’; • Financing development – working capital, investment finance and gearing; • Residual valuations; • Viability appraisals and models; • The impact of planning interventions on viability; and • How to commission more appropriate and useful viability assessments.

[5] What are the areas

where planners commonly fall down?

GM: “Confidence. The nature of the planner is that they would want more certainty than a developer. It’s that feeling of ‘Yes, I’m confident that I can argue my case’.

“There’s a view that viability is a science. But it’s a set of assumptions on assumptions on assumptions. A local authority’s viability assessment and a developer’s could be hundreds of thousands of pounds apart. That’s why you then go into each individual input.

“It’s about getting that knowledge so that you have the confidence to discuss viability on a level with the development industry.”

[6] What’s the consequence of more planners understanding viability better?

“It would make submissions better. It would make planners able to explain to councillors and communities better what’s happened with certain proposals. It would potentially result in more delivery of associated infrastructure – or if it didn’t, people would understand why. Overall, it would lead to better decisions.”

to learn about l Where viability n PAS viability guidance http://www.pas.gov.uk/viability n PAS free viability training for local authorities http://www.pas.gov.uk/events n Planning Practice Guidance – viability http://bit.ly/1MmyB2l n Viability Testing Local Plans – Advice for planning practitioners http://bit.ly/18uo71U (PDF) n NPPF http://bit.ly/1gGu8KY (PDF) n RICS Professional Guidance – Financial viability in planning http://bit.ly/1E0Ompt (PDF)

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p40_41_career_dev.indd 41

41

13/03/2015 16:51

INSIGHT

Plan ahead P Under control There’s a lot more to development management than enforcing the rules.

The Art of Development Management will explore the practice of development control in May “Development management always used to be the Cinderella of planning,” says Steve France, former chairman and active member of the RTPI’s North East branch.

He cites his own case by way of example. “I spent 12 years in strategic planning and then got the option to do development management for two years.”

He didn’t anticipate staying longer in the world of rules and their enforcement.

“But I did it for more than 25.”

Those years saw him rise to leadership of Sunderland City Council’s development management team, where France helped to turn the section into a model development control service.

He no longer practices, but his interest in a discipline at the coalface of planning remains undimmed. “It’s the means by which the forward plans are put into effect and the visions achieved,” says France.

“You can see things happening. In strategic

“DEVELOPMENT CONTROL CREATES ALMOST IMMEDIATE IMPACTS. ON A DAY­ TO­DAY BASIS YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. NO TWO DAYS ARE THE SAME” 42

De Development management – “a bulwark against disarray in the built environment”

planning, you’re planning for five to 15 years ahead, and you never get to see the end of some of the things you do.”

But development control has almost immediate impacts.

“On a day-to-day basis you never know what’s going to happen,” he continues. “No two days are the same in development management.”

Development management is not just about the implementation of vision; it’s also about the maintenance of what we think of as desirable places. It’s a bulwark against disarray in the built environment.

“The number of times you go to other places and find yourself asking ‘Who the Hell gave permission for that?’,” he observes. “But no one did, because there’s no need to get permission as they don't have a development control system.”

The quest for order may be a driving force for development control planners, but it’s as important for them to keep up with new thinking in placemaking and planning practice as it is for strategic planners to keep track of the rules. As France puts it: “Nowadays we aim to build communities.”

Hence The Art Of Development Management, a full-day event in Middlesbrough in May, organised by France. With

Send feedback to editorial@theplanner.co.uk Tweet us @The Planner_RTPI

six speakers from different backgrounds, it will be a day of exploring approaches to development management and trends in the field – from implementing design codes to managing office-to-residential developments.

“I wanted something a little more wide-ranging than planning law and legislation,” he says. “We want people to bring their experiences to the event and I’d like them to feel they’ve got something out of the day that they’re going to use in their day-to-day work and in their offices.

“Continuing professional development is there not

to just help individuals but to improve the system of planning. There’s always room for improvement.”

And there’s always a need to adapt to change – without being over-zealous with the rules. “When I started, the Encyclopedia Of Planning Law And Practice was three volumes,” France recalls. “Now it’s something like nine.

“You need to know where to find information. Then it’s a case of interpreting that and trying to put it into practice and not to be too dogmatic about it. I always tried to take a commonsense approach to development management.”

The speakers Peter Nesbit, principal associate of Eversheds International in Newcastle: Planning case law review (with special reference to office-to-residential appeals).

Ernie Vickers, development control manager at Middlesbrough Borough Council: How Middlesbrough manages development.

Martin Hutchings, Planning Advisory Service improvement manager: Performance management with the new planning quality framework.

Sandra Manson, director of Signet Planning in Newcastle: Development management: A private sector perspective.

Colin Haylock, former President of the RTPI, principal of Haylock Planning and Design: Design codes and their implementation.

John Bradley, licensing and enforcement team leader for Gateshead Council: Current issues in enforcement.

A D E V E LO P I N G A R T

What: The Art of Development Management Where: Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art When: Monday, May 11 2015, 10-4pm Find out more and book: www.bit.ly/1DdzROC

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p42_43_event_listings.indd 42

13/03/2015 16:52

DIARY

LISTINGS Talks, conferences, training, master classes – everything you need to keep on top of the latest thinking and developments in the planning world.

EAST OF ENGLAND 28 April – Mind the gap between national and local issues & plans: the roles of strategic planning This event seeks to provide different perspectives on this challenge. Delegates will hear about: local authorities that share services and are moving towards merging to plan for more rational areas and for more efficiency; about the role of LEPs; the private sector’s views; and about the duty to co-operate and how it is working.

Venue: Pavilion Room, Hughes Hall College, Cambridge Details: www.bit. ly/184VAjf 28 April – Consultation techniques This session will focus on new techniques to secure the most effective engagement with the community, local authority and applicants. It will look at how consultation can be used to the greater benefit to all parties, and how it can secure a high-quality, locally endorsed scheme (takes place following the strategic planning seminar).

Venue: Pavilion Room, Hughes Hall College Details: www.bit. ly/1FDhhC8

NORTH EAST 15 April – Demystifying water management in planning This examines how water resources (marine, fluvial and ground) are to be managed in light of concerns about climate change and the implications for development. A mustattend for planners and engineers in both public and private sectors.

Venue: Centre for Life, Times Square, Newcastle upon Tyne Details: www.bit. ly/16YG4Vx

EAST MIDLANDS 15 April – Planning regulations & procedures A seminar for technical and support staff in planning in both private practice and local authorities. Topics include validation of applications, review of permitted development rights and prior notifications, matters associated with CIL, enforcement and appeals.

Venue: New Walk Museum, Leicester Details: www.bit. ly/1LJPthw

LONDON 16 April – Sustainable buildings Following the Housing Standards Review, a re-assessment of what constitutes a sustainable building/development.

This one-day master-class is for those wanting to be updated on government policy as well as gaining a full understanding of the issues behind sustainability in the built environment.

Venue: The Hatton (etc Venues), 51-53 Hatton Garden, London Details: www.bit. ly/17Bi77p 21 April – Persuasion & influencing skills Understanding the essentials of influence and the principles of persuasion. Go into talks with greater confidence and build a reputation as a persuasive and influential professional.

For policy planners and officers, team leaders and managers, development control managers, planning consultants, ‘non-project’ managers and specialists and project team members new to the role.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1FYYhBr 23 April – Local plans: plan and deliver This workshop will review

DON’T MISS Rebuilding Britain. Planning for a better future Oxford Brookes Planning Department hosts another in their series of annual lectures, this year delivered by Hugh Ellis, head of planning at the TCPA, on the topic ‘Rebuilding Britain. Planning for a Better Future’.

Inspired by the book of the same title Hugh co-authored in 2014, this lecture will discuss how Britain can organise itself, not just for survival but to build a fairer and more sustainable society, as well as the ways that planning, both morally and practically, can help to meet key challenges of the 21st century.

Ellis joined the TCPA as chief planner in March 2009, where he is responsible for the association’s work on climate change and planning reform. Before this, Hugh had been planning adviser to Friends of the Earth and held a teaching and research post at the University of Sheffield.

Date: 29 April Venue: JHB Lecture Theatre, John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane site, Oxford Details: www.bit.ly/1G0qQib

how practice is developing using case studies from planning authorities. It will provide an update and basis for going forward for local planners, planning consultants, members of community bodies, councillors, members of LSPs, developers and land owners.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1DuBTMY

and work alongside a Local Enterprise Partnership.

Plus an update on the latest market trends and political thinking.

Venue: Eversheds, Eversheds House, 70 Great Bridgewater Street, Manchester Details: www.bit. ly/1E05KzL

29 April – Introduction to sustainability appraisal (strategic environmental assessment) How to fulfil the legal requirements of SEA and SA, and how to use the SEA/SA processes to help improve plans.

A linked masterclass – ‘Current issues in SEA/ SA’ – provides more in-depth understanding of how recent planning changes affect SEA/SA practice. For planners (land use, transport, minerals, waste), consultants and sustainability officers.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1MXSD4u

29 April – Moving forward against the housing crisis This conference considers government schemes, the ‘Right to buy/Help to buy’ initiative and the role of planning to find more local solutions to the housing problem, plus the impact of welfare reform.

Venue: Sheffield Hallam University Details: www.bit. ly/1DykiDT

NORTH WEST 22 April – Growing the economy Planning’s role in growing the economy and promoting sustainable development. From understanding forecasts, need and demand through to identifying and assessing available land, the course will consider how to best engage with businesses

YORKSHIRE

WEST MIDLANDS 22 April – Planning for the historic environment This seminar led by English Heritage, plus guest speakers from the historic environment sector, considers key issues for the historic environment in 2015, including an update on the role of the new body Historic England. It will focus on how to prepare site allocations documents and masterplans, and ends with a practical workshop.

Venue: The Bond Company, 180-182 Fazeley Street, Birmingham, West Midlands

Details: www.bit. ly/1zL2wcJ

SOUTH WEST 24 April – Planning to deliver homes A review of the latest position on planning for housing, including the five-year housing supply. It highlights initiatives some planning authorities are pursuing to drive delivery of housing, including affordable homes.

Venue: Plymouth University, Plymouth Details: www.bit. ly/1BZVlDq

NORTHERN IRELAND 23 April – RTPI NI Annual Dinner RTPI Northern Ireland’s Annual Dinner celebrates planning in Northern Ireland over 40 years.

Venue: Belfast City Hall, Belfast BT1 5GS Details: www.bit. ly/1ETu2rW

SOUTH EAST 30 April – Food and Planning This considers the extent to which key elements in the production, processing and distribution of local food should be taken into account in plan-making and decision-taking.

Venue: Reading Town Hall, Blagrave Street, Reading Details: www.bit. ly/1wubBeo

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p42_43_event_listings.indd 43

43

13/03/2015 16:52

NEWS

RTPI {

RTPI news pages are edited

by Tino Hernandez at the RTPI, 41 Botolph Lane, London EC3R 8DL

Landmark planning bill in Wales shaped

by RTPI Cymru

AT A GLANCE

Planning (Wales) Bill 2014 The landmark Planning (Wales) Bill 2014 is set to reframe the relationship What: A bill to strengthen the plan-led between planning and the community. approach to planning, including the The Welsh Government has made it clear production of strategic development plans, allow for pre-application that it wants communities to benefit consultation, provide for nationally from a more streamlined system that significant projects to be determined delivers homes, jobs and infrastructure.

by Welsh ministers, reform the RTPI Cymru has welcomed the bill development management system to streamline procedures, improve as a positive step towards delivering a enforcement and appeal procedures. planning system that is in tune with the needs and context of Wales, is as Who: Llywodraeth Cymru/Welsh straightforward as possible, and delivers Government on the sustainable development duty.

When: Introduced October 2014 During the committee process we have contributed to the staggering Current stage: Bill is at Stage 2 begun 42 recommendations made by the 11 February – consideration of the bill Environment and Sustainability, and by committee and amendments tabled Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Next steps: Stage 2 consideration in Committees. This doesn’t necessarily committee then plenary consideration indicate a bill littered with flaws; instead, of amendments it reflects the committee’s understanding of the value and importance of the planning system. The bill has passed its first stage, and the minister tabled subsequent amendments on 11 February to address some of the recommendations.

A few areas of objection relate to democratic accountability and the Welsh language, and the committee agrees that these could be improved.

Improvements could also be made in relation to Strategic Development 44

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p44_47_RTPI_news.indd 44

Plan Panels, the National Development Framework (NDF) and by giving further consideration to the Welsh language.

We support the idea of a NDF and feel it is currently a missing part of the system. But if the NDF becomes part of the development plan once approved, then the level of scrutiny and public consultation should reflect that. The NDF should be evidence-based, deliverable, and validated, otherwise it risks becoming a weakness.

On Strategic Development Panels (SDPs), we have argued that the bill should clearly address the appointment of non-LPA members of economic, environmental and social partners on the panels, so that there is an equal balance across all three sectors. The committee recommends removing voting rights from non-elected members. How panel members are appointed is important and for those other than LPA nominees, a process mirroring that for public appointments in Wales would seem appropriate, open and transparent and consistent with the Nolan principles. Transparency in selecting panel members will be important to maintain trust and buy-in from communities, local authorities and businesses. This model would encourage a focus on competencies rather than a focus on the inclusion of specific bodies.

The committee has made a number of recommendations about the Welsh language.

A careful balance needs to be struck between enabling the language to continue to thrive and being realistic about what the planning system can deliver. It can be considered more widely through supporting rural communities to adapt to change. This does not inhibit growth, but rather it will ensure that growth is proportionately phased.

We are encouraged by the committee’s recognition of the need to dovetail different policy and legislative regimes, such as natural resource planning, transport, marine planning and the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill, which could otherwise run the risk of countering each other.

We will continue to be involved with the bill’s evolution. It is critical that we get this legislation right. We have briefed members in Wales and Assembly Members, and will be promoting our views to contribute to developing the bill. RTPI Cymru is in a unique position to guide its progress as we can draw on the knowledge and experience of our 1,100 members across Wales in addition to our links across the UK and Ireland.

Roisin Willmott, director of RTPI Cymru and Northern Ireland For details visit the RTPI Cymru, Planning (Wales) Bill page on our website

I M AG E | G E T T Y

13/03/2015 16:52

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

Gordon Adams Head of Planning BATTERSEA POWER STATION DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

(1) What do you currently do?

My role involves overseeing the delivery of the Power Station master plan through the planning process.

(2) If I wasn’t in planning, I’d probably be…

I’ve never actually contemplated that! One of the best aspects of the planning profession is that you are amongst it, where the action is, so probably something with similar excitement. I’ve been surrounded by politics all my life so, if not planning, I probably would have pursued that.

(3) What has been your biggest career challenge to date?

Managing the redevelopment of London Bridge Station, which involved trying to satisfy multiple parties (which a town planner soon learns you can never do). There was a need to balance the requirement for an efficient functioning transport interchange with the heritage implications of significantly altering one of the world’s oldest train stations. Having got it through planning, we then fought and won a judicial review challenge.

(4) What attracted you to the profession?

I can still remember the moment I decided I wanted to pursue a town planning career. In a shop front in my hometown in Australia the council had five options for the town bypass and I was fascinated how the urban landscape could be changed through development.

(5) What is the best thing about your job?

Having the opportunity to influence good development. It is exciting being part of a project at its inception, negotiating with all the parties, solving problems to get an amazing project and say to people “I helped deliver that”. I get a kick seeing buildings come out of the ground. The best thing about my current job is that it is the world’s best planning job – it is a privilege to work on the iconic Battersea Power Station. I still have to pinch myself every day. Our shareholders are passionately committed to its restoration and have supported us in appointing world-class architects; the quality of design going into all our buildings is beyond exceptional.

BOOK YOUR TICKET NOW – RTPI AWARDS FOR PLANNING EXCELLENCE

BOOK! NOW

Join 450 planning and built environment professionals on Monday 6 July at the networking event of the year as the RTPI celebrates and rewards outstanding achievement in planning over the past year.

Chaired by Nick Raynsford, the Awards for Planning Excellence highlight exceptional examples of the best planning projects, strategies and processes, individuals and teams that help make great places, and celebrate the contribution that planners and planning make to society.

Record numbers of entrants to the 14 categories from the UK and Ireland mean that this year’s awards will be more exciting and fiercely contested than ever. The overall winning project will be awarded the prestigious Silver Jubilee Cup. Kevin Murray, founder and chairman of the Academy of Urbanism will host the one-hour awards ceremony at the Pullman Hotel, London St Pancras from 6pm. The RTPI and our sponsors invite you to drinks and canapés following the ceremony in the Noble Suite at the Pullman Hotel, offering an evening of high-quality networking that is not to be missed. n To book your ticket (£40 + VAT, group discounts available) go to www.rtpi.org.uk/awards n Details of all the finalists are available on the RTPI’s website. n The RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence 2015 are sponsored by AECOM and supported by The Planner, Perkins Slade, Planning Aid England, GVA and the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

(6) What do you like to do away from work?

I don’t understand the question.

(7) If you could change one thing about the planning profession, what would it be?

The planning system is flexible in terms of being able to negotiate the right outcome for a development, but the community infrastructure levy (CIL) has eroded that flexibility. Large, complex schemes need bespoke solutions and CIL is a blunt instrument – whilst it makes sense for small or medium projects, the system may be improved if there was the option at a certain threshold to be able to tick the ‘negotiate’ box.

Last year’s winner of the Silver Jubilee Cup was Glasgow City Council for its Central Govan Action Plan

AP R IL 2 0 1 5 / THE PLA NNER

p44_47_RTPI_news.indd 45

45

13/03/2015 16:52

NEWS

RTPI { RTPI International – window on the world PETER GERAGHTY, RTPI INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIR, EXPLAINS ITS ROLE IN THE WORLD OF PLANNING More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and this is expected to reach 70 per cent by 2030. The population of the UK is expected to increase 46 per cent by 2060. At the same time, the average population in the UK is becoming older. By 2061 more than a quarter of the UK population will be aged 65 or over. Whilst these are often considered global challenges, many of the resulting impacts will be felt most acutely at the local level.

These global trends and the international responses to them are as pertinent to UK planners as they are to planners practising throughout the world. The sharing of best practice and experiential learning across the profession is important in this respect.

Eugenie L Birch, chair of the World Urban Campaign, who is the keynote speaker at the Royal Town Planning Institute’s (RTPI) Planning Convention in London on 7 July 2015, will discuss these issues as well as the potential implications for British planners.

The RTPI has 23,000 members with 1,100 based in 82 nations outside the UK and Ireland. This is why the RTPI considers it important to play a full role in the international practice of planning. One of the means of achieving this is through the RTPI’s International Committee.

The RTPI’s international goals of advocacy, capacity building and communication are achieved through networking; including through its partnership with the Global Planners Network, membership of the European Council of Spatial Planners and the Commonwealth Association of Planners. The RTPI is also a supporter of the World Urban Forum. Part of the work of the International Committee is to assist in developing and engendering strong external relationships with sister institutes such as the American Planning Association, Canadian Institute of Planners and the Planning Institute of Australia.

Sharing information The International Committee prepares a work programme annually. It has already overseen the publication of The World Wide Value Of Planning *, which makes the case for the importance of planning internationally and celebrates the good that planners do around the world. Work is continuing on

46

a guide to working overseas in planning and the committee is eager to hear of experiences that our members have in this area or any advice that could be incorporated in the final document.

The RTPI is a gateway to information about planning in other nations. We share news regularly through our International Development Network Bulletin. The International Committee contributes to this bulletin.

There is a wealth of international planning practice and we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to share best practice and disseminate knowledge. In England the potential of garden cities is being considered, however, India is promoting 100 smart cities throughout the country and by 2025 China intends to build 10 cities each the size of New York. Across Africa new cities are being planned in Kenya, South Africa and Ghana.

Many of these projects will have inputs from UK planning practices, engage UK professional planners or borrow from the UK tradition and experience of planning. In Europe there is a rapidly changing agenda that will have highly significant impacts on the UK. For this reason there is a specific session being held at the planning convention in July. It will provide an overview of the governance challenges that planning faces in Europe, and the implications for practice of the new 2015 EU Presidency’s focus on spatial planning.

Planners have a spatial perspective that transcends local, regional, national and international boundaries and positions us in the vanguard of finding positive solutions to global issues. Planners need to be proactive, celebrate our profession and be proud of our achievements.

This is why greater worldwide sharing on common issues, best practice and achievements is important.

Planning is an international profession and the committee is proud to be a part of promoting this.

n * tinyurl.com/WorldWideValue

T H E PL AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p44_47_RTPI_news.indd 46

13/03/2015 16:53

STEP CHANGE

“AS ONE OF EIGHT PLANNERS, I SIT IN A MIXED­USE, CROSS­ DISCIPLINE STUDIO”

HELP US TO CREATE THE NEXT WAVE OF FUTURE PLANNERS More than 150 RTPI members have registered as volunteer ambassadors on the first phase of the Future Planners programme, which aims to raise awareness of and foster interest in planning with school students aged 11-18. A third of these ambassadors have visited classrooms and spoken to students. The RTPI has been able to reach schools as far afield as Orkney, and in the Welsh language.

This year is phase two of the campaign. We want to extend and broaden our vision for RTPI Careers and Professional Development by harnessing member strengths. Are you proud of planning and able to help inspire new planners into the profession?

We are looking for ambassadors for a range of roles: primary and secondary school visits, help with piloting new learning materials, careers champions and visiting local careers fairs or universities. The programme is open to all planning students, graduate trainees, Young Planners and MRTPI members. For more information and to sign up online: n rtpi.org.uk/futureplanners

RTPI PLUS

Y MONE G SAVIN

Did you know that as a member of the RTPI you have access to RTPI Plus, an exclusive portfolio containing money-saving discounts, designed to support you both personally and professionally. There’s no sign-up process – you are automatically eligible to access these benefits by virtue of your membership. The latest new benefits include: Great savings on a wide range of Apple products including iPad, iPod, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Apple TV, Apple branded accessories and more*.

17 per cent off Worldwide Attraction Tickets!

Onlineticketstore.co.uk is the online specialist for attractions, excursions, theatre tickets and experiences all over the world. Whether it’s a week at Disney World, a dinner cruise in Dubai or a day trip in Rome, you can enjoy hassle-free booking 24/7, with the option to book online or by phone*. n Visit RTPI Plus via www.rtpi.co.uk *Terms and conditions apply to all benefits.

See website for details. Offers subject to change without notice. Apple – annual purchase limits apply, iPhone is not discounted. RTPI Plus is managed on behalf of RTPI by Parliament Hill Ltd.

Mike Harris MRTPI Senior Town Planner STRIDE TREGLOWN LIMITED, BRISTOL I started my planning career at the Planning Inspectorate (PINS), supporting inspectors on local and regional plan examinations. As my first ‘proper’ planning job, this introduced me to a wide range of planning issues and was a rare opportunity to work directly with inspectors.

During 2010 I moved within PINS to deal with Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP). The role was effectively one of ‘National’ Planning Authority Development Management Officer, handling a range of cases including offshore wind and transport projects. Being more outward-facing, the role taught me a lot about engaging with stakeholders, including the public and statutory agencies. It was a challenging role during a time of significant legislative change, often politically motivated.

In November 2012 I decided to shift my career to the private sector, albeit remaining within the NSIP field, taking up a role with SLR. My role involved a combination of technical assessment, project promotion and business development. I made the move because I wanted to gain experience of project development and delivery.

Moving from the public sector was a significant step change, in large part because of the differing culture, but also the move from a decisionmaking style role to one of project promotion.

In 2014 I joined Stride Treglown because I wanted to be part of an architecture and design practice and be involved in general planning, rather than major infrastructure. The move has been incredibly positive and rewarding. As one of eight planners, I sit in a mixed-use, cross-discipline studio with architects, urban designers and landscape architects, currently working across the housing, education, and healthcare sectors. In a given week I might be sat in on a design team meeting for a new hospital, be promoting a residential site through the local plan process, undertaking business development or preparing bids for new work.

The move has provided the opportunity to work in a practice that has a genuine belief in the delivery of quality places, something which is hugely rewarding. Following my first role at PINS, it is the work I am doing with Strides that I ultimately sought. Progressing through roles at PINS and then to the private sector was right for me, and I would encourage all planners to think about their motivations and find an authority or practice that best suits them.

AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

p44_47_RTPI_news.indd 47

47

13/03/2015 16:53

ADVERTISEMENTS

Recruitment {

WE CAN HELP YOU FIND YOUR PERFECT JOB • Jobs by email • CV upload • Tailored searches

theplanner.co.uk/jobs

OR YOUR PERFEC T CANDIDATE Access to job seekers: • Print • Online • Email

C O N TA C T www.theplanner.co.uk/jobs Contact the recruitment team on 020 7880 7665 or email sabmitar.bal@redactive.co.uk

48

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

PLANNER RECR Apr15.indd 48

16/03/2015 12:48

ADVERTISEMENTS

Shepway is where the hills of the North Downs meet the sea.

It is where you can get a train under the sea, enjoy an evening meal in France and still be back in time to watch the News at 10.

It is where traditional architecture rubs shoulders with contemporary design.

It is less than an hour away from London on High Speed 1 and house prices are among the lowest in the South East.

In addition there are a number of exciting redevelopment plans ahead including for our seafront.

If you fancy living here and being a part of the exciting changes ahead, perhaps you’d like to come and work for us.

We’re looking for a:

Planning Policy Team Leader • •

Salary - £37,445 to £43,053 (Grade H) per annum plus car allowance Hours – 37 per week (flexible working)

We are based in Folkestone, Kent, cover a district of 140 square miles and serve a population of 108,000. You’ll share our ambitions to support regeneration and sustainable development as well as preserve and enhance our district’s heritage. In September 2013 the Council adopted the Shepway Core Strategy Local Plan and is now in the process of developing further planning policy documents to support the delivery of the Shepway Corporate Plan 2013-18.

You’ll work within our Planning Policy Team within Planning Services and have specific responsibility for managing the planning policy team and will be expected to take a leading role in the delivery of key planning policy documents including the Shepway Places and Policies Local Plan and the Shepway Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Charging Schedule.

For an informal discussion please call David Shore, Planning Policy Manager on 01303 853459 or Chris Lewis, Head of Planning on 01303 853456.

The closing date for completed application forms is 12pm on 9th April 2015.

Interviews will be held on 23rd April 2015.

To apply please visit the Jobs & Vacancies page of our website: www.shepway.gov.uk Please return your application at recruitment@shepway.gov.uk or HR Services, Shepway District Council, Civic Centre, Castle Hill Avenue, Folkestone, Kent, CT20 2QY

Shepway HPH.indd 1

13/03/2015 15:09

PLAN YOUR NEXT MOVE

on the move • • • •

See latest job listings Create job alerts by email Save and email jobs from mobile Apply for jobs by saving your CV to your profile • Keep track of your activity

» Go to www.theplanner.co.uk/jobs AP R IL 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

PLANNER RECR Apr15.indd 49

49

16/03/2015 12:48

INSIGHT

Plan B STEPS TO HIPSTER HEAVEN Economist Douglas McWilliams – chair of the Centre for Economic and Business Research (and a bit of a naughty boy, as the tabloids discovered) – has analysed the hipster phenomenon and its economic impact.

In The Flat White Economy, McWilliams argues that the hipster approach to living and working contributed an impressive 7.6 per cent to the UK’s GDP in 2012.

Citing Shoreditch as an area revived by hipsterism, the crack-smoking professor reckons that by 2025, young men and women with beards and tattoos will contribute a remarkable 15.8 per cent to our national wealth.

Given that the ‘flat white economy’ is so avowedly lo-fi, we reckon there’s an opportunity here for towns and cities to revive their flagging fortunes without shelling out. Here’s the Plan B Guide to Hipsterising Your High Street – and saving the world, natch.

Congratulations. Your high street is now authentically hipster.

You’re welcome.

50

T H E P L AN N E R \ A P R I L 2 0 1 5

p50_Plan B.indd 50

I M AG E S | I STO C K / G E T T Y

[1] Strip all furniture and partitions from vacant offices and market them as ‘creativity zones’ for ‘authentic artisans’.

[2] Set up mobile coffee carts on all street corners, serving locally roasted single-origin coffee from your twin town Trujilo in Venezuela.

[3] Stack some shipping containers in the town square as ‘pop-up’ retail outlets. Make one a bike park.

[4] Convert town centre offices into studio flats for young bearded urbanites. Pack them in, two to a room if possible. Densification in urban centres promotes creative synergy.

[5] Insist all local charity shops rebrand as vintage clothing stores.

[6] Encourage creativity with a ‘making’ space on the pavement outside Sainsbury’s every Saturday morning.

Here, ‘makers’ can create ‘artisanal artefacts’ with rubbish that would otherwise go to landfill.

[7] Employ people to wander the town centre attaching ‘Authentic’ labels to any objects they like.

[8] Ban cars. Actually ban all motor vehicles. The only mode of transport allowed is a fixed-gear bike.

[9] Facilitate beard propagation by offering rent discounts on a sliding scale determined by length of beard.

BEWARE LAIRY FAIRIES An outbreak of fairy doors in Somerset woods is thought to be behind a DCLG consultation that seeks to amend 2012’s Planning Policy for Fairy Woodlands.

Speaking to the BBC, Wayford Woodlands trustee Steve Acreman conceded that the proliferation of fancy fairy doors attached to trees was becoming a problem.

“We’ve got little doors everywhere,” said Acreman. “We’re not anti-fairies, but it’s in danger of getting out of control.”

He went on: “We had a complete fairy fairground arrive, but we rejected that planning proposal.” 1 Amid talk of evicting fairies from the overpopulated site, the DCLG has proposed amendments that aim to: (1) Redefine the terms “fairy”, “elf” and “pixie” to exclude those not living on approved fairy sites.

(2) Limit use of enchantment in British woodland. Spells cannot be cast within 500m of swimming pools and pergolas.

(3) Downgrade the weight of a lack of an up-to-date five-year supply of deliverable fairy sites.

(4) Remove the need for councils to “plan to meet fairy site needs in full”

where “a large-scale unauthorised site has significantly increased”.

“The proposals would ensure that the planning system applies fairly and equally to the fairy and non-fairy communities; we are concerned about ‘free for all’ development damaging our green belt and sensitive areas,” a DCLG spokesperson said.

“All we are doing is creating a fairer system for everyone, including former fairies, who are free to have their housing needs assessed in the same way as the rest of the community.

Councils will still seek to provide sites with fencing and CCTV for fairies who choose to maintain their traditional way of life.”2 A spokesman for the Woodland Trust said: “You’re taking the mickey, aren’t you? Do you want a smack round the chops?”

“Do you?”

1 He actually said this. For real. He did.

2 The DCLG said a lot of this. About gypsies.

n Got something for Plan B? Tweet us - @ThePlanner_RTPI 13/03/2015 16:53

From

ÂŁ195

The New Politics for Planning

+VAT

7 July 2015 • London

Why attend?

Understand the new politics for planning following the UK general elections Hear from the best industry speakers from across the world Gain new insights from a choice of special interest sessions Learn the latest in planning from a range of free study tours

Headline sponsor:

Associate sponsor:

Enjoy excellent networking opportunities

Programme now live online!

To book call 020 3773 5580 or visit theplanningconvention.co.uk RTPI Conferences and the Planning Convention are managed by Kaplan Hawksmere on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute

p51_PLNApr15.indd 2

12/03/2015 12:31

Are you proud of planning and proud of planners?

Share it with the world.

Post or tweet a great initiative, award, project or plan. facebook.com/ProudofPlanning #proudofplanning #proudofplanners

p52_PLNApr15.indd 2

12/03/2015 12:32