The Planner August 2018 by The Planner

AUGUST 2018 A MINERAL DIMENSION TO THE HOUSING CRISIS // p.4 • RETHINKING COUNTY LINES // p.6 • PLOTTING THE PATH TO RESILIENCE: THE 2018 RTPI PLANNING CONVENTION, // p.18 • FUTURE PLANNERS ON PLANNING’S FUTURE // p.32

T H E B U S I N ES S M O N T H LY FO R P L A N N I N G P R O F ES S IO N A LS

NEW BUILD 2018 RTPI PLANNING CONVENTION: THREE WAYS TO TACKLE THE UK’S HOUSING CRISIS

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CONTENTS

AU GU ST

09 NEWS 4 Are we digging enough to build 300,000 homes? 6 The county role in delivering housing 8 PINS rates its performance as ‘unacceptable’ 9 New soundscape planning guidance promised in Wales 10 Homes for Scotland calls for better-resourced planning system

20 18

“IT’S ESSENTIAL TO MAKE CLIMATE CHANGE ‘FEEL REAL’, RATHER THAN DISCUSSING IT AS AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT”

30 OPINION

14 Chris Shepley: Don’t get mugged off – for planning professionals the only way is ethics 16 Adam Ross: Developers and planning authorities must embrace shared experience to deliver 16 Olafiyin Taiwo: Our cities are failing children – let’s change the way we plan 17 Euan Durston: Overlapping uses will shape the future city 17 Emma Goodings: Garden communities – not just a buzzword

15 QUOTE UNQUOTE

“PLANNING POWERS ARE NOT ENOUGH. PUBLIC SUPPORT IS CRUCIAL TO MEETING THIS HOUSING CHALLENGE” UNLOCKING HOUSING:INVIGORATING LOCAL,COMMUNITIES THROUGH PLACEMAKING, A REPORT BY THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSULTANCY AND ENGINEERING

COV E R | R IC H A R D G L E E D

FEATURES

INSIGHT

18 This year’s Planning Convention was united on the profession’s need to reclaim its leadership role

32 Tech landscape: Five young planners took convention delegates on a whistle-stop tour of virtual reality, drones, blockchain and more…

20 Three convention speakers offer their approaches to tackling the housing crisis 26 Lord Kerslake’s state of the nation keynote speech on the UK’s housing crisis and how we can achieve better placemaking 34 Nations & Regions: The North West

38 Cases & decisions: Development decisions, round-up and analysis 42 Legal Landscape: Opinions, blogs and news from the legal side of planning 44 RTPI round-up: News and interviews from the institute 50 Plan B: Planning ministers have a lot in common with TV’s Doctor Who – more than you’d think

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NEWS

Report { MINERAL PLANNING

Are we digging enough to build 300,000 homes? By Laura Edgar The 2017 Autumn Budget committed the government to delivering 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s. And those homes will need to be supported by infrastructure including schools and GP surgeries, new roads and other amenities. The government also has several large infrastructure projects planned, including HS2. It’s a big ask, given that in the 2016/17 ﬁnancial year just over 217,000 homes were built, and not enough have been built to meet demand for decades. Moreover, as an audience member at the recent County Councils Network conference asked – are we digging enough to meet the government’s 300,000-home a year target? Do we have enough resources, materials and people, to deliver all of this? CALCULATING NEED

Philip Dash MRTPI, senior planner at Essex County Council, said the target has created a number of issues for planners, “but only in a few minds in select planning offices would the first thought have been whether we are providing sufficient minerals to fulfil that pledge”. Dash told The Planner that the Essex Minerals Local Plan was adopted in 2014, for the period to 2029. “The plan meets its target – but is it the right target?” Before the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was published in 2012, the Managed Aggregate Supply System (MASS) calculated the amount of aggregate required nationally for development, which was then apportioned by regional Aggregate

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Working Parties (AWP) to mineral as most local authorities are planning for planning authorities (MPAs) in their area. housing and employment growth.” Frances Wilkinson MRTPI, principal Taking that to the local level, Dash consultant at Wood Plc, explained referenced central government’s that the national guidelines giving September 2017 assessment of local an indication of the total amount of housing need, saying this suggests that aggregate provision each AWP area the next 10 years of housing provision for should aim to provide is out of date. Essex is 60,739 homes. Published in 2009, it is based on pre“Therefore, there is the potential recession information and assumptions, that an uplift of 50 per cent in housing which extend to 2020. completions will need to be delivered on Dash and Wilkinson noted that there the basis of a new mineral calculation are currently no plans to update these that results in a 28 per cent reduction figures. Despite this, Dash added, both on provision. This doesn’t factor in the the 2012 and revised NPPF documents infrastructure that would be required to state that MPAs should take “account support these additional homes.” of published national and sub-national guidelines on future provision”. A L A C K O F S U P P LY A N D Both require mineral provision to be RESERVES based on “a rolling average of 10 years’ Dash explained how it has been sales data”. Wilkinson estimated that 4.5 million said the 10-year average tonnes of construction “THE (MINERAL) in most areas “is still materials, including INDUSTRY falling” because it takes aggregates, are required to NEEDS TO KNOW into account the recession build Sizewell C – which WHAT FUTURE years, while Dash said alone is four times the DEMAND IS, SO this means a 28 per cent average of the last 10 years’ IT CAN PUT THE reduction in mineral aggregate sales in Suffolk. NECESSARY TIMELY provision in Essex. Given that the link INVESTMENT Wilkinson said: “For between mineral provision INTO INCREASING those local aggregate and economic growth is PRODUCTION assessments [prepared “so well defined”, said CAPACITY” annually by MPAs] that Dash, it is surprising that – MARK NORTH rely just on the 10-year minerals planning has not sales average, there is received the same level of potentially an issue of attention as the housing under-provision, especially and growth agenda.

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PLAN UPFRONT Natural slate rooﬁng tiles are in short supply

“Instead, the recent consultation on the NPPF asks whether references to minerals planning should be removed from the NPPF and placed in standalone guidance.” This breaks the link between mineral extraction and housing delivery, and “ignores the fact that land-use planning has a strong role to play in avoiding the sterilisation of mineral-bearing land and ensuring that non-mineral development isn’t located in such a way as to compromise the working and processing of mineral”. Both Wilkinson and Mark North, director of planning at the Mineral Products Association (MPA), pointed to the MPA’s Profile of the UK Mineral Products Industry 2018 Edition, which found that for every 100 tonnes of gravel and sand used, just 60 tonnes are being replace through new permissions, “which has resulted in significant decline in permitted reserves of sand and gravel over the last 15 years”. James Harris, policy and networks manager at the RTPI, said: “Mineral supply is essential to building the homes and infrastructure that the country needs. We firmly believe that the government should retain mineral planning policy within the body of the NPPF and not move it outside.” National policy needs to set out the need to ensure a sufficient supply of aggregates, said Harris. "More detailed policy on minerals and waste, and better resourcing for planning departments,

are also required if we want to identify and protect sites for future mineral extraction.” OTHER ISSUES

"MORE DETAILED POLICY ON MINERALS AND WASTE, AND BETTER RESOURCING FOR PLANNING DEPARTMENTS, ARE ALSO REQUIRED IF WE WANT TO IDENTIFY AND PROTECT SITES" JAMES HARRIS

North told The Planner that the problem is as acute for infrastructure planning, with just 25 per cent of total aggregate demand for housing. There is no visibility in the government’s infrastructure plans on material demand, he said. There should be a supply order as part of the scheme’s planning so that the minerals industry and county councils know how much they need to plan for with new investment increasing in line. Lack of supply inevitably leads to delays, and following the recession some quarries are just getting back up to speed while others have closed. Is there an issue with production capacity? “If a quarry’s processing plant has a maximum output of 300,000 tonnes per annum, that is the tonnage the quarry will deliver,” said North. “If there is a signiﬁcant increase in demand, for a large infrastructure project like HS2, for example, you have a further problem. That is why the industry needs to know what future demand is, so it can put the necessary timely investment into increasing production capacity.

BRICK BY BRICK

A spokesperson for Ibstock Brick, a manufacturer of clay bricks and concrete product, noted the reports of an imbalance between brick demand and supply. The government’s plans for 300,000 homes a year mean that the industry is experiencing “strong demand”. The firm is currently producing more than 850 million bricks a year, and to meet market demand it has “ensured that ongoing investment is at the heart of [its] business strategy”. Its new Eclipse factory recently opened in Leicestershire, which the firm hopes will enable it to deliver an additional 100 million bricks a year – “equivalent to 10,000 to 15,000 new homes”. “It is well timed to support the growth in housing and means less bricks will need to be imported from the EU.” Ibstock Brick “reserves will last in excess of 60 years”. Rachel Appleyard, roofing product manager at Forticrete, which supplies construction materials including roof tiles, said material specification is a key issue as the speed of build is important in achieving the government’s target. Housebuilders should be encouraged to use materials that make the process quicker and more cost effective, and there are alternatives available, she said. For example, a shortage in natural slate for roof tiles should mean concrete tiles are promoted as the obvious alternative to speed up the process, and “thereby make a valuable contribution to the government’s ambitious housing target”. While investment might have been made in increasing the number of bricks and tiles available as the construction, planning, minerals and housebuilding industries look to build the homes needed, overall mineral capacity for housebuilding and infrastructure projects falls far short of what is needed. Dash believes that nationally consistent data sources are required to provide a transparent basis for planning the steady and adequate supply of minerals. “Let’s plan based on the future, rather than harking back to the past.”

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NEWS

COUNTY PLANNING

The county role in delivering housing By Laura Edgar Two recent reports have advocated that county councils should have a larger role in planning and housing delivery in order to address regional and national housing shortages. Launched at a County Councils Network (CCN) conference in June, the reports make the case for improving the current and proposed approach to strategic planning, and highlight the work county councils and county unitary authorities are doing to deliver high-quality homes and communities, in addition to their mineral and waste planning responsibilities. County Councils & Strategic Planning: A Review of Current and Emerging Practice, by Catriona Riddell Associates, recommends that the county council role in planning, regardless of whether on a statutory basis or not, should be acknowledged by the government in any funding decisions to support local planmaking. The government should also explore additional opportunities to build

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local government funding is “rapidly decreasing”. n Surrey County Council has entered

into a joint venture with Places for People to develop more than 2,000 homes it its ﬁrst phase, across 32-council-owned sites. n In April 2018, Hertfordshire County

“THERE IS AN ABSENCE OF TOOLS TO ENABLE PLANNING AT A STRATEGIC SCALE IN TWOTIER COUNTY AREAS” – PETER FRENCH the essential strategic planning capacity and skills needed to deliver eﬀective strategic planning. Catriona Riddell MRTPI said that the research “demonstrates clearly that we need to move away from planning by numbers to place-based strategic planning and that, in two-tier areas, the counties have a signiﬁcant role to play alongside the local planning authorities”. Building for the Future: The Role of County Councils in Meeting Housing Need, by the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), enumerates a number of case studies highlighting how counties are working to deliver housing, and as the CCN noted, also generating revenue at a time when

Council and Morgan Sindall Investments agreed a joint venture to deliver about 500 new properties in the region. The council has also set up a property company with the intention to build 6,000 homes with a £2 billion gross development value. n The Norse Group is a holding company

owned by Norfolk County Council. It has three divisions, including NorseCare. The county council’s portfolio of residential care homes and housing with care schemes was transferred to NorseCare. Since 2011, NorseCare has also opened a number of new residential care homes. The county council has an ageing population and is aiming to ensure that it remains independent. n A county unitary authority

with responsibility for housing, Northumberland County Council is working with communities to fund community-led housing through I M AG E S | G E T T Y / S H U T T E RSTO C K

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PLAN UPFRONT

Section 106 grants and government grant. The report calls for the government to provide a clearly deﬁned role for county councils in the strategic planning process.

What counties say While some counties are working to deliver housing, Peter French, senior policy oﬃcer leading on housing and planning at the CCN, told The Planner that there are barriers holding county councils back from doing more. “Many of our members believe that a lack of skills and capacity within their authority was a barrier to delivery, with a lack of infrastructure delivery following a close second.” Agreeing with Riddell’s report, French said proper strategic planning that takes into account homes, infrastructure and jobs is needed to deliver housing. “With the Duty to Cooperate having largely failed, there is an absence of tools to enable planning at a strategic scale in two-tier county areas.” He noted that while the government intends to strengthen this through the Statement of Common Ground, the CCN “does not think the latest planning reforms go far enough to promote cross-boundary, strategic work at greater scales”. Speaking to The Planner, Victoria Hills MRTPI, chief executive at the RTPI, said: “We need to see strategic planning everywhere and it may not always be possible to wait for legislation to enable this.” “Where there are minor legislative and bureaucratic bottlenecks, she continued, “the government should remove these as soon as possible, especially where this can be done without primary legislation”. The county representative is monitoring the Oxfordshire housing deal to see how the strategic work develops as the county council, district councils, the private sector, housing associations and infrastructure ﬁrms look to deliver on scale. It believes this deal could provide a blueprint for other county areas in future. French insisted that county councils should not be overlooked as key partners that could help to solve the housing crisis.

Kit Malthouse is appointed housing minister Dominic Raab, who has been housing and planning minister since January, has been appointed Brexit secretary, following the resignation of David Davis. Kit Malthouse, MP for North West Hampshire, replaces Raab as housing minister. Davis announced his resignation late on 8 July, saying he could not remain the Brexit secretary because he no longer believed in the plan for the UK’s future relations with the EU, which the Cabinet gave support to on 6 July. Raab, a lawyer before becoming an MP in 2010, campaigned to leave the European Union. He will now take over the day-to-day negotiations with the EU’s Michel Barnier. Housing minister for only six months, Raab’s stint is the shortest since the Conservatives won the 2010 general election, being one month less than his predecessor Alok Sharma.

The eighth housing minister Elected to Parliament in May 2015, Malthouse has served as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for Work and Pensions since January 2018. Up until then, he served on the Treasury Committee from October 2016. He

supported Brexit. Malthouse entered politics in 1998, when he became a member of Westminster City Council, where he served as deputy leader and cabinet member for ﬁnance within three years. In May 2008 he was elected to the London Assembly for the seat of West Central. The then Mayor of London Boris Johnson appointed Malthouse as his deputy mayor for policing. Victoria Hills MRTPI, chief executive at the RTPI, said: “Malthouse’s experience in local government will be invaluable to understanding the pressures and priorities facing local authority planning departments as they work to ensure that enough houses are built to the best standards in the right places ” The institute has written to Malthouse and requested a meeting at his earliest convenience. The June 2018 edition of The Planner featured an article titled ‘Is leadership continuity undermining government rhetoric on housing?’ For some it was a worry, but others said that as long as each new minister’s priorities are aligned with their predecessor’s and reﬂective of the government’s agenda, “one need not be too concerned”. Kit Malthouse is the new housing minister

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NEWS

News { PINS rates its performance as ‘unacceptable’

Target

100%

2016/17

2017/18

2016/17

2017/18

2016/17

2017/18

2016/17

Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects Appeals with written representations

2016/17

Appeals with hearing 2017/18

2016/17 (DecMarch N/A)

2017/18 (DecMarch)

2016/17 (AprNov)

2017/18 (AprNov)

Target for all

2016/17

n The Planning Inspectorate Annual Report and Accounts 2017/18, including full statistics, can be found here: bit.ly/planner0818-pins

England

2017/18

The Planning Inspectorate (PINS) has described its own performance in England as mixed, and for many customers 60% “unacceptable”, as it publishes its annual report showing that it failed to meet some of its planning and enforcement appeal decision targets. 40% The organisation’s report notes that its performance in England during 2017/18 improved compared with 2016/17, and for some customers, performance was within target. But for many clients, the 20% inspectorate acknowledged that its performance was “unacceptable, and fell short of the level of service we seek to provide”. 0% PINS attributes its performance to the cumulative impact of a number of factors including a 13 per cent increase in casework 100% relating to kiosks and challenges recruiting suﬃcient inspector resources. Sarah Richards MRTPI, chief executive at PINS, said: “We are 80% continuing to change and adapt to improve the time it takes to determine appeals and meet our customers’ expectations. Changing our processes and IT systems takes time and we must do this 60% without jeopardising our delivery of quality decisions in an open, fair, and impartial manner. 40% “A key foundation of our Transformation programme is ensuring our customers receive the service they deserve and to ensure our processes support the government’s objective to build the homes 20% and infrastructure the country needs.”

2017/18

Target for all others

80%

Wales

Enforcement appeals with written representations Enforcement appeals with hearings

Appeal Court ruling dashes hopes of decision-making for key NI projects An Appeal Court ruling has dashed hopes that senior civil servants in Northern Ireland can determine planning applications in the absence of Stormont ministers. This latest judgment has exacerbated concern about the fate of many regionally signiﬁcant projects including the northsouth interconnector overhead power line scheme and highlighted fears that key infrastructure proposals are now increasingly in limbo. The ruling has also intensiﬁed calls for the UK Government to intervene. In May a High Court judge ruled

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that the permanent secretary in the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) had no authority to determine a controversial energy-from-waste project earmarked for a site at Hightown Quarry, Mallusk, on the edge of Belfast. In this latest judgment, the Court of Appeal said only the full Northern Ireland Executive could authorise the proposals. The appeal case was fast-tracked owing to its relevance to Northern Ireland for wider decision-making in the absence of a functioning power-sharing executive. The DfI issued a holding statement that said: “The department is carefully

considering the judgment by the Court of Appeal.” RTPI Northern Ireland director Roisin Willmott FRTPI said: “This situation has highlighted the urgent need to restore a functioning executive in Northern Ireland. The current situation means that investors and communities both ﬁnd themselves in a vacuum. “If Stormont is not to be restored in the very short term, then a process for making these decisions must be agreed. Northern Ireland needs to make investment decisions and retain public conﬁdence in the planning system.” I M AG E S | I STO C K / S H U T T E RSTO C K

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PLAN UPFRONT

Ireland opens new urban regeneration fund

Welsh ministers propose to outlaw fracking for shale gas Welsh Government proposals to refuse support for any new licensing of petroleum extraction in Wales, including fracking for shale gas, have been published for consultation. Welsh ministers will take over responsibility for licensing onshore petroleum extraction from the UK Oil & Gas Authority (OGA) in October because of the Wales Act 2017. Known as Petroleum Exploration Development Licences (PEDLs) from 1996, there are 14 currently in Wales, however, the last PEDL licences in Wales were awarded in 2008. A PEDL gives the licence holder exclusive rights to exploit petroleum within the licensed area subject to the requirement to obtain all other necessary regulatory consents applicable to drilling operations, which can include planning consent and environmental permitting. The consultation document notes that there is no oil or gas extraction on a large industrial scale happening onshore anywhere in the UK at present. Ministers pointed out that there had been no recent exploratory drilling in Wales; planning applications were overwhelmingly for coal bed methane (CBM) as opposed to shale gas, and potential developments slated for the early 2020s would only result in an estimated 11-13 CBM production boreholes. “The evidence suggested that there is limited economic benefit to Wales from supporting petroleum extraction – many of the drilling jobs are highly mobile in nature and the economic benefits are transitory – nor are there immediate financial benefits to communities from petroleum extraction. “We do not believe that the evidence, alongside the analysis, presents a compelling case that the benefits of petroleum extraction outweigh our commitment to sustainably manage our natural resources. “Therefore, our future proposed policy for petroleum (oil or gas) extraction is [that] we will not undertake any new petroleum licensing in Wales, or support applications for hydraulic fracturing petroleum licence consents.” n The consultation can found on the Welsh Government website: bit.ly/planner0818-wales

The Irish Government has launched its urban regeneration fund, which is designed to drive the rejuvenation of strategic and underused areas in Ireland’s ﬁve cities and largest towns. In total, €100 million will be available for expenditure in 2019, with €550 million to be allocated up to the end of 2022. The fund will operate on a competitive, bid-based Exchequer grant basis. Proposals will be required to prove that they are: o innovative and transformational urban regeneration projects; o public sector-led and with the option of community and/or private sector partners; o matched by at least 25 per cent direct funding from other public and/or private sources; o involve a minimum bid of €2 million; o a catalyst for development that wouldn’t otherwise occur; and; o likely to leverage more public and private sector investment. Housing and planning minister Eoghan Murphy said: “This fund is about backing better and more coordinated planning for future generations in a way that meets the needs of our growing population and economy more sustainably, by reimagining and turning around the all-too-frequent sight of empty or run-down or poorly used areas in the centres of our cities and larger towns. “With this fund, we can now choose a better way to live and work and enjoy leisure time and go for real quality of life.”

Masterplan submitted to redevelop former Fife paper mill into homes Plans to build a major housing development to transform the old Tullis Russell Paper Mill site between Glenrothes and Markinch have been submitted to Fife Council. The planning permission in principle application lodged by Barton Willmore on behalf of Advance Construction (GD) Ltd centres on a residential-led, mixed-use masterplan for a range of uses including up to 850 homes – 10 per cent of which would be aﬀordable. Plans for the 52-hectare site also include retail and leisure facilities, business space, industrial units, a care home and an extension to the Riverside Park, which will connect the new development to Glenrothes town centre. Barton Willmore planning director Colin Lavety said: “The application we have submitted aims to breathe new life back into what is an important landmark historically for the town of Glenrothes. Our focus has been to deliver alternative but complementary uses to the existing town centre, alongside a mix of high-quality homes within easy walking distance of schools, jobs, shops, leisure facilities, parkland and public transport.”

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NEWS

News { New soundscape planning guidance promised in Wales

Half of UK power ‘should be from renewable sources’

The Welsh Government has promised more planning guidance on air and soundscape quality as it starts consulting on its latest noise action plan. It has committed to a detailed review of Technical Advice Note 11, which deals with noise. This TAN will be replaced with new guidance addressing air quality and soundscape. The draft plan aligns noise and soundscape policy in Wales with the cross-cutting framework established by the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. It encourages greater integration between noise and air quality management activities by public bodies. Environment minister Hannah Blythyn said: “Over the coming years, I expect public bodies in Wales to start thinking less in terms of pure noise mitigation and more in terms of creating healthier soundscapes for our communities. “In addition, wherever air and noise pollution are both present and their sources are the same or related, they should be considered together rather than as separate problems.” The plan stresses that revisions to Planning Policy Wales (PPW) introduce the idea of soundscapes into policy, recognising the positive role that they play in creating a sense of place, rather than just as a form of pollution. The latest noise blueprint also for the ﬁrst time makes the ‘agent of change’ principle explicit.

Urban infrastructure planning needs to be integrated with housing, and half of the UK’s power should be provided by renewables by 2025, says the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC). The National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA) sets out a longterm vision for “high-quality, good value, sustainable economic infrastructure for the UK” and how to achieve it. The NIA recommends that metro mayors and other city leaders should develop integrated strategies for transport, jobs and housing. “Housing and infrastructure should be planned together: new housing requires new infrastructure. These integrated strategies should be backed up by stable, substantial, devolved funding. And for the cities that face the most severe capacity constraints, and with the most potential for growth, there should be additional funding to support major upgrade programmes.” “The commission’s modelling has shown that a highly renewable generation mix is a low-cost option for the energy system. The cost would be comparable to building further nuclear power plants after Hinkley Point C, and cheaper than implementing carbon capture and storage with the existing system.” The NIC says the electricity system should be running oﬀ at least 50 per cent renewable generation by 2030. No more nuclear power stations should be supported by the government before 2025. n The Planner’s full report on the NIA: bit.ly/planner0818-power

Housing completions decline in March quarter – stats The latest government statistics suggest that 38,160 new homes in England were completed in the March 2018 quarter – 9 per cent lower than the previous quarter and 4 per cent lower than the same quarter in 2017. new homes in England

38,160

were completed in the March 2018 quarter

Other statistics in the report include: o 160,470 homes were completed between March 2017 and March 2018 – 8 per cent more than the year to March 2017. o 39,350 estimated new dwelling starts in the March 2018 quarter, 5 per cent less than the December 2017 quarter. o From March 2017 to March 2018, 157,480 new-build homes were started – a decline of 3 per cent compared with the previous year.

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o In Q4 2017/18 (January to March 2018), councils sold an estimated 2,722 dwellings under the Right to Buy scheme, down 18 per cent from 3,313 sold in the same quarter a year earlier. o Councils received around £224.9 million from these sales, 17 per cent lower than than the the previous same quarter less than the £271.9 million received for quarter in 2017 this quarter a year earlier. o In Q4 2017/18, 1,534 replacement homes were started on site or acquired.

n The releases can be found on the UK Government website: House building; new build dwellings, England: March Quarter 2018 (pdf): bit.ly/planner0818-builds n Right to Buy Sales in England: January to March 2017-18 (pdf): wbit.ly/planner0818-rtb

I M AG E S | I STO C K

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LEADER COMMENT

Opinion onn Land value: capturing hearts and minds – From the value of planning one month to the value of land capture this; not for the first time the way in which planners communicate, and indeed at what stage and to whom, has been put under the microscope. At an enjoyably sparky RTPI Planning Convention back in June, professor Tony Crook chaired what was billed as a land value masterclass. There was never going to be sufficient time to cover this particularly elastic topic, but what did come out of the session was broad agreement that land value capture mechanisms would continue to vary dramatically across the UK; and that all this capturing, indeed the definition of what constitutes betterment in the first place, will not become any easier any time soon. What did become clear is that communicating the deployment of land value mechanisms at the

Martin Read beginning of projects should be something that is woven into conversations with communities. The Scottish Land Commission’s head of policy & research, Shona Glenn, has had much to say on the topic in these pages as well as on stage at the convention. Having spent time researching the history of land value capture across the UK, Glenn suggests that the best way to make audiences appreciative of any discussion about accessing

the value associated with planning permission for the public beneﬁt is to talk about it in broader terms in the language of placemaking rather than revenue raising. It’s a potentially critical distinction. Glenn wonders whether, “instead of asking how we capture the value of land (from someone else) maybe we should be asking how we deliver sustainable communities in places that people want to live and at prices they can aﬀord?” That, she argues, is something that everyone, regardless of political persuasion or constituency, can get behind. (Glenn and the Scottish Land

“COMMUNICATING THE DEPLOYMENT OF LAND VALUE MECHANISMS AT THE BEGINNING OF PROJECTS SHOULD BE WOVEN IN TO CONVERSATIONS WITH COMMUNITIES AND BUSINESSES”

Commission are working at Heriot-Watt University, evaluating previous attempts to capture land value and focusing on exploring different models for funding enabling infrastructure.) Glenn also speaks of the need for public authorities to become more invested in a wider placemaking role, having the kind of longterm vision that involves a more strategic approach to investment in infrastructure. The way that land value capture is designed in from the beginning has the potential to significantly change a project’s financing formula, adding more depth to the debate about those projects’ ultimate impact. Where this already happens successfully, speakers at the convention spoke of it as the result of a clearly articulated vision brought to life through well-resourced teams of planners, economists, accounts, lawyers, financial experts and investment experts – all, of course, working in collaboration with local communities.

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YOUR NEWS, VIEWS AND QUESTIONS

T W I T T E R

This month we’re showcasing some of The Planner’s activity on Twitter during last month’s RTPI Planning Convention. If you’re not already doing so, we invite you to follow us (see details, bottom right) “Within this context the need for sustainable #talent #pipeline #planners # apprenticeships is even more pressing if we’re to increase supply.” RTPI CEO Victoria Hills on the news that PINS has used its annual report to describe its own performance as ‘unacceptable’

“I remember my top suggestion from the careers computer was ‘Florist’. I know nothing about flowers.” Rob Krzyszowski MRTPI, spatial planning manager at Brent Council, responds to Chris Jesson’s article in last month’s edition of The Planner about choosing a career in the profession

“My original careers talk suggested being a prison officer…” Graham Stallwood MRTPI, chair of the RTPI’s Board of Trustees, responds on the same topic

“The whole task of tenanting ground floor commercial specs has to be rethought as an aspect of long-term economic development based on interlinked urban spaces ‘curated’ by landlords, business groups, government, planners, creative ‘lokals’ over the long term.” Thom Young Architects

“Astonishing. We have a shortage of planners and a housing crisis. Yet the @IFAteched thinks it knows more about what makes a planner than the world’s leading professional planning institute and the employers who designed the planning apprenticeship.” Graham Stallwood responds bullishly to news that the institute’s appeal to have the Institute for Apprenticeships’ decision not to approve the Level 7 Chartered Town Planner Apprentice Standards has been rejected

“Scotland doesn’t get everything right (yet) – but the continuity of ministers in housing, finance and planning has certainly helped our successes in affordable housing completions Planner Derek Guillaumefils responds to our piece about the seemingly constant revolving door policy for planning ministers in England

“Fascinating presentation on virtual reality at #PlanCon18. As a statutory consultee reviewing sites I’m sometimes not familiar with it and it cannot come soon enough. For irate locals though, I wonder if it will

ease their fears of development or make matters worse?” Tom Clarke, national planning adviser for the Theatres Trust, was one of many who enjoyed the Planning Convention’s closing session on emerging technologies

“Sustainable development and implementation definitely require sustainable leadership and policies.” Jun Huang, partner in Wei Yang & Partners, makes the obvious connection

MRTPI on the need for more joined-up thinking when coordinating infrastructure and development objectives

“A well-timed reboot on the potential of planners to collaborate and deliver [more] if we abandon comfort zones and invest in planning. Need more home builders present next year! Good to see Tom Barclay from @WheatleyHousing on the platform for the discussion on housing delivery.”

“How many planning ministers have we had since 2010? Isn’t it eight or something crazy like that?”

Tammy Swift-Adams, director of planning at Homes for Scotland, enjoyed the housing session at the RTPI Planning Convention

Journalist Serena Ralston can’t quite believe it either

“Lots of talk already of multi-disciplinary teams, diversity in its broadest sense, working across professional boundaries and these teams being greater than the sum of their parts. Wasn’t that always the way? How did some forget?”

”Place-planning (the planning bit of placemaking) needs to be one of the sharpest tools in the spatial planning toolkit. At the moment it’s all too often blunt and buried at the bottom of the box.” A neat garden shed analogy from plan-making consultancy @thinkopenplan

“Main takeaway from the #Plancon18 infrastructure breakout was the need for better understanding of each other between planners and infrastructure providers – and more strategic thinking about how to enable future energy needs from infrastructure providers by communicating with local planners.”

Graham Stallwood on the key takeaways from the Planning Convention

You can follow us for all the latest planning news, debate and discussion @ThePlannerRTPI. You can also follow @ThePlannerJobs for the oﬃcial jobs feed of the RTPI and the latest appointments and careers advice.

Strategic planner Chris Poulton

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CHRIS SHEPLEY

O Opinion Don’t get mugged off – for planning professionals the only way is ethics Entirely fictitious conversation no 1: “Are you enjoying being Chief Planner, young man?” asked Councillor Warbler, kindly. He knew that the pay was poor, but he also knew that paying off the mortgage was imperative. (Younger readers in the London area should ask their parents what a mortgage is). Dave replied from behind a tottering pile of applications that, yes indeed, he was loving every moment and could barely wait to get to the office every morning at five o’clock. “Good,” said the councillor. “But I see you have in mind recommending approval to this application for housing which is in a marginal ward, not that that’s relevant at all of course, and which no fewer than 400 people have objected to. I was wondering if, since you like the job so much, you might see your way to having another look at it?” Dave said he’d thought hard about it but as the land was allocated in the local plan, there was quite a bit of affordable housing, a new primary school, and a worldclass design by a renowned architect, he found it tricky to find reasons to suggest turning it down. He mentioned the RTPI Code of Conduct. Warbler bristled. “That’s an old-fashioned view,” he said. “Experts are out of date. You’re behaving like some civil servant telling a minister there are some problems attendant upon Brexit. Enemies of the people. I’d think long and hard, laddie, if I were you…” Entirely fictitious conversation no 2: “Is your firm enjoying

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working for me, my dear?” asked Charlie Wagtail, property developer extraordinaire (his description). He knew his lucrative work helped keep her small firm afloat. Carol replied from behind a small pile of invoices that, yes, indeed she was. “Good. Only I gather that you don’t think this bit of land is suitable for housing. It cost me a lot of money, not that that’s relevant, but I wonder whether, since you like the job so much, you might have another look at it?” Carol said she’d thought hard about it but as it was in the green belt and nowhere near a road or anything else, this was tricky. She mentioned the RTPI Code of Conduct. Wagtail bristled (I think you can work out the next bit…). Somewhat less fictional conclusions:

“THESE DILEMMAS HAVE WORSENED, ESPECIALLY IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR” These are hardly new issues. But I think these dilemmas have worsened, especially in the public sector. I know from my own experience that giving professional advice to ministers that does not accord with their views is hard (I’ve tried it). In local government the pressure on planners to give the advice that members want, rather than to stick to their professional views, has increased. As a result several inﬂuential respondents to the Raynsford consultation argue that planning should be removed from democratic control entirely.

This is not a conclusion I would support, obviously. But a Met Office Amber warning has been issued, so watch out for high pressure, especially over the South East, and spits and spots of dodgy decisions that might deepen as time goes by, with the likelihood of thunder if the temperature continues to rise. As a reminder (superfluous, I’m sure), planners should “exercise fearlessly and impartially their independent professional judgement” and “not make or subscribe to any statements or reports which are contrary to their own bona fide professional opinions”. These have always been basic requirements and I never had difficulty in complying with them; but councillors like Warbler are less tolerant now. Planning is not simple and inconsequential; it’s not Love Island. Integrity and professionalism are complex, and those who are not getting their own way find it convenient to undermine them. Even judges who apply the law rigorously are trolled in the papers and online. But the only way is ethics.

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

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Quote unquote FROM THE RTPI AND THE WEB

“Planning powers are not enough. Public support is crucial to meeting this housing challenge. challenge.” UN N LOCKING HOUSING: IN N VIGORATING LOCAL CO O MMUNITIES THROUGH L ACEMAKING,, A REPORT BY PL AS S SOCIATION FOR CO O NSULTANCY AND EN N GINEERING

“The industry has long bemoaned the turnstile approach to this crucial role but the pace of change is quickening” BRIAN BERRY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE FEDERATION MASTER BUILDERS, ON THE NEW HOUSING MI MINISTER

“MPs who backed this climate-wrecking new runway will be harshly judged by history.” OLIVER HAYES, CLIMATE CAMPAIGNER AT FRIENDS OF THE EARTH, ON MPS BACKING HEATHROW EXPANSION

“When it is as easy to buy a serviced plot as itt is to go into a Ford dealership and buy a motor car then we will solve the housing crisis.” RICHARD BACON MP, CHAIR OF THE NATIONAL CUSTOM SELF BUILD ASSOCIATION RIGHT TO BUILD TASKFORCE, PUTS HIS CASE AT THE RTPI CONVENTION

“The intention was to make silly jokes – but b it’s morphed mo into this thing where thin people feel peo inspired... to ins go into urban planning p and a policy.” JJONATHAN MARTY OF NEW Y YORK UNIVERSITY, C CO FOUNDER OF THE N NUMTOTS URBANISM MEME G GROUP ON FACEBOOK

I M AG E S | I STO C K

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

O Opinion

Adam Ross is executive director at Nexus Planning’s Thames Valley oﬃce

Developers and planning authorities must embrace shared experience to deliver

While most m of all new housing is delivered by the private sector, it is delivere of course local authorities that grant planning permission. To successfully navigate the process, private sector developers and consultants have to understand and respond to the issues facing the public sector. It is equally important that local authorities understand the pressures faced by private sector developers. As the housing crisis persists, it is vital that the public and private sectors work positively together. So it is encouraging to see schemes such as Public Practice, which recently announced its first cohort of private sector professionals to boost local authority capacity and expertise in London and the South East, coming to the fore. The benefits of having private sector experience in local authorities are numerous. For one, private sector planners often work simultaneously across multiple local authority areas, identifying good and bad practice across the country. Local authority staff, while developing a deep understanding of the area in which they work, can struggle to obtain this wider perspective. Greater private sector planning experience in the public sector would ensure that a strong understanding of the private sector, including its overarching priorities and best practice, could be spread more widely. The opposite is also

undoubtedly true. Having worked for Portsmouth City Council, I know a large number of private sector planners started work in the public sector. Quite rightly, this public sector experience is generally seen as a benefit, giving staff an appreciation of the issues affecting local authorities and assisting in navigating the process. But for various reasons it is far less common for private sector planners to move to local authorities. Consequently, local councils frequently have less of a chance to benefit from private sector understanding. This can lead to unfounded scepticism about developers’ motives and an assumption that they are usually looking to deliver the bare minimum. While there are always commercial considerations, from my experience developers simply want to secure planning permission in an amicable and timely way. However, a lack of trust and understanding does nothing to encourage these positive outcomes, making initiatives such as Public Practice so important. Successful outcomes are vital nationally, and notably so in areas where development needs are greatest, such as London and the South East. Indeed, the demands for new housing, employment and other uses in the Thames Valley sub-region are highly significant. Delivering them, and so enabling the area to fully realise its opportunities, is essential.

“IT IS VITAL THAT THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS WORK POSITIVELY TOGETHER”

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Olaﬁyin Taiwo is a senior planning policy oﬃcer with Be First Regeneration Limited and Co-founder of Life Brooks International

Our cities are failing children – let’s change the way we plan

In 2007 the United Nations Population Fund estimated that Populat by 2030 some 60 per cent of the world’s city-dwellers would be under 18. Current UN estimates are that 30 per cent of the total global population is under 19. Even though they are a significant proportion of the urban population, the interests of young people are continually overlooked. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that road traffic injuries are the leading causes of death for 15-19-yearolds, and globally the second leading cause for those aged one to 14. In 2016 the OECD estimated that the number of overweight children under five to be 41 million globally and this was predicted to increase steadily until 2030. WHO also says youth violence in cities has become the fifth leading cause of death in young people. Residential instability caused by limited availability of affordable housing has been linked to absenteeism and frequent school changes. Poor infrastructure and declining provision for nonmotorised transport have led to increasing concerns about road safety, personal security, local congestion and air quality. Land use policy has changed neighbourhood parks, playgrounds and sport courts to housing units while youth centres shut their

doors because of financial stress. Urban planning plays a key role in creating an environment that consistently improves the quality of life of young people. According to UN-Habitat, children and young people can be viewed as assets and influential actors in the design and implementation of sustainable urban development and resilient cities. We know that engagement with the physical and spatial environment is critical to cognitive, social and emotional development. We know also that interactions outside the classroom provide the chances to interpret and relate to what is taught in the classroom. How children and young people relate to their physical environment should influence how cities are planned. Perhaps the complex and multifaceted nature of urban challenges is beyond the scope of urban planning. Perhaps designing cities that consider the needs of the young requires recognition that the prevailing challenges cannot be resolved by a single sector independently. Perhaps we need to recognise that this requires a multi-sectoral approach that pulls together the expertise of public, private and non-profit actors, while urban planners play a role of convener, partner, mediator, facilitator.

“EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE A SIGNIFICANT PROPORTION OF THE URBAN POPULATION, THE INTERESTS OF YOUNG PEOPLE ARE CONTINUALLY OVERLOOKED”

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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

Euan Durston is a senior associate with architecture practice Weston Williamson and Partners

Overlapping uses will shape the future city

The Res Resolution Foundation has reported that up to a third of young people will live in private rented accommodation all their lives. Forty per cent of millennials were living in rented housing at 30 and 1.8 million families with children now rent privately. This ‘third sector’ cannot aﬀord the ‘aspirational’ oﬀer of private developers, yet don’t qualify for social housing. The housing crisis is more than a numbers game; we need new typologies for which our planning system is not equipped. Our core policies emerged when urban populations were falling and slum clearance was replacing older stock at lower densities. These policies – regulating privacy and proximity, amenity space, daylight and the appropriate mix of uses – bar the innovation we need to explore higherdensity living. We are now more concentrated in urban areas and households may comprise families with grown-up children or elderly relatives requiring healthcare at home. Now more active in retirement, we are more aspirational about the accommodation we seek when downsizing. Younger households often comprise friends sharing. The ‘co-housing’ movement, ‘micro-homes’ and Community Land Trusts have responded with new models, relying on creativity to overcome policy constraints. The ‘sharing economy’ they

4 BLOG

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Emma Goodings MRTPI is head of economic development & planning policy at Braintree District Council * This responds to a blog in July’s issue by Cause, a group campaigning against garden communities in North Essex

Garden communities – not just a buzzword

promote challenges what is public and what is private. Policies aimed at generating ‘unit mix’ through an outdated ‘room-count’ model become irrelevant, as amenities may be shared across households. Planning use classes promote the ‘de-mixing’ of our cities into residential, employment, manufacturing and leisure zones and make us reliant on congested transport systems. Instead, we need to encourage the overlapping of uses – in space and time – to support the civilised city of the future. Aﬀordable workspaces, housing and maker/service spaces could coexist within a 24-hour use cycle. Proactive planning could deliver sustainability by reducing car ownership and the demands on transport infrastructure, and support district heating and oﬀ-grid energy solutions that go beyond tokenism. But policy reform is essential. The emerging PRS sector, founded on long-term stewardship and investment across a diverse portfolio, could meet the challenges of high-density living and ‘Generation Rent’ with new residential typologies and the mixed-use economy. It could move us away from policy approaches that skew development to shortterm gains at the point of consent and base housing policies on the demands of the electoral cycle. We need to jettison our obsession with home ownership and embrace renting as a positive choice.

“WE NEED TO ENCOURAGE THE OVERLAPPING OF USES – IN SPACE AND TIME – TO SUPPORT THE CIVILISED CITY OF THE FUTURE”

In North Essex E the term ‘garden communities’ is not the latest commun convenient buzzword to get a conve standard housing development through. The councils are committed to delivering the true principles of garden communities with homes where current and future generations want to live, work and play. North Essex is naturally beautiful, with vibrant communities. But we face big challenges. Our economy is performing below the regional average, which means many people must travel out of the area for work. Our road and rail systems are overloaded. Homes are unaﬀordable for most. Put simply, we don’t have enough of the right sorts of homes in the right places. We believe it is not sustainable to keep adding large housing developments to the edges of our urban areas. Often small market towns and villages with limited capacity, these historic cores are incapable of dealing with unlimited population increases. Schools and GP surgeries are often in old buildings or constrained sites, and changes to the road networks and public transport routes are limited. Green spaces come increasingly under pressure, and distance and ease of access to the countryside becomes more diﬃcult as towns become larger.

That is why Braintree District, Colchester Borough and Tendring District Councils, along with Essex County Council, are proposing three new garden communities of 43,000 homes. These communities will unlock funding for road and rail improvements, new schools and health facilities, as well as creating business opportunities and jobs for now and the future. Long-term deliverability and viability are two areas that the councils are working on. Clearly the scale of the proposals creates economies of scale, and innovative use of land value capture, one of the key principles of the Garden Communities Charter, is key to the success of delivering the necessary infrastructure. The largest of the new communities of up to 24,000 homes could take 40 years or more to be fully built. So, having a long-term, but ﬂexible plan is key – one that is able to accommodate changing economic and social conditions. The recent changes to the New Towns Act enabling the creation of ‘locally led' New Town Development Corporations could be a signiﬁcant opportunity and is something we are exploring. Garden communities on this scale are bold. Planning isn’t just about taking the safe option and it shouldn’t just be a housing numbers game.

“PLANNING ISN’T JUST ABOUT TAKING THE SAFE OPTION AND IT SHOULDN’T JUST BE A HOUSING NUMBERS GAME”

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PATHS TO RESILIENCE Planning needs to reclaim its leadership role – and attract a wider range of young people into its ranks – if it is to help shape a nation that can face the future with confidence “It’s imperative that not only is planning properly resourced but it needs to be part of that senior decision-making function in local authorities,” contended Victoria Hills, the chief executive of the RTPI. “It’s about being at the top table.” Unfortunately, as RTPI research unveiled at the 2018 convention revealed, “planning is absent from the top table of 83 per cent of councils in the UK”. Yet planning is a statutory function, and planners have a key role to play in providing the platform for delivery of the places, services and infrastructure that a resilient society needs. So why isn’t it seated at “the top table”? And why does planning struggle to recruit and retain staff at local authority level? If the profession isn’t resilient, how can it deliver the resilience that the UK needs? Thus the theme of ‘Resilient planning for our future’ was explored through two avenues: the resilience of the profession itself; and the resilience that planning can gift to the communities, regions and nations which it serves. If there was a common thread between the two, it was leadership. Throughout the day, speakers called for planning to lead thinking and delivery of national priorities. Sessions were shaped around these themes: housing, infrastructure, climate change adaptation, the impacts of technology. They also encompassed the mechanisms through which these challenges can be addressed more effectively – land value capture, regional devolution, measuring the value of planning itself. Despite the RTPI’s leadership research, there was optimism that planning could

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and should grasp these threads to weave them together. Indeed, there was a sense underpinning the conference of a profession actively seeking to insert itself into critical debates. “Planning oﬀers the vital spatial solution to so many of our challenges,” said John Acres, the RTPI president. And its proﬁle had been raised, he insisted. “We no longer hear about planning being the enemy of enterprise. It’s now seen more as the catalyst for change.” Lord Kerslake, president of the local

“WE NEED IN THIS COUNTRY A LONGTERM ECONOMIC PLAN TO… MOVE THE UK FROM A LOWPERFORMING ECONOMY TO A HIGHPERFORMING ECONOMY” government association and former head of the civil service, highlighted our relative malaise as a nation and called for a remedy. “We need in this country a long-term economic plan to… move the UK from a low-performing economy to a high-performing economy.” Spatial planning, would be a vital component of this. England’s chief planner, Steve Quartermain emphasised that senior ﬁgures in government appreciated the role of planning in delivering national policy goals, particularly for housing. But he was more than aware of the challenges that planning faced in raising

its proﬁle more generally and in attracting a talented, ambitious and diverse cohort of young people to its ranks. How is this to be done? “I’ve been doing a lot of work trying to promote the profession in the civil service, and to increase diversity of planners within the civil service. I think that’s something I need to address directly,” said Quartermain. Others stressed the need for planning to promote itself more clearly and widely. As private sector planner Abraham Laker revealed while discussing the resilience of the planning profession, his friends think he’s an architect. His parents had wanted him to be an accountant or a lawyer. Who wants to be a planner? Who even knows what planning is? “Planning is a great profession, “ said Quartermain. “We [chief planners] need to carry that message into local authorities, into the private sector – that planning is a good thing to do and it can be done well.” A more resilient profession is possible, as is a more resilient nation. But planning is not simply going to be given a role in this. If anything came out of the convention it was that planning must argue for its place at the top table. It must demonstrate its capability, push for resources, assert its value. “Planners are custodians,” said Hills in the midst of a busy day. “We need to take back our rightful place in that custodian role.”

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Register your interest for Convention 2019 To register your interest for the 2019 Planning Convention and to receive notiďŹ cation when bookings open please email conferences@rtpi.org.uk

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New build Three speakers, three approaches to tackling the housing crisis…

Session title: Housing the nation Speakers: Tom Barclay, group director of property and development, Wheatley Group; Helen Gordon, chief executive, Grainger; Richard Bacon, MP for South Norfolk

Chair: Stephen Kinsella, executive director for land, Homes England “The housing market is broken” - a common refrain echoing throughout the various nations and planning systems of the British Isles. In England alone we’re told there is a need for 300,000 homes a year, but we’re building barely half that. The government has thrown various sticks and carrots at the problem and, while numbers are improving and it does, after all, take time for policy to transmute into bricks and mortar, we are still well of the pace. Is the problem embedded in the form the market itself has taken, where the

dominant model features large housebuilders building homes for sale on the open market and a proportion available at an aﬀordable rate? Perhaps entirely new models are required. Certainly that seemed to be the view of Stephen Kinsella, executive director of land for Homes England, who introduced the convention’s discussion of housing delivery with an implied challenge. “The major housebuilders see things right across the country in a way that other people cannot,” he insisted. In consequence there is “a recognition that the established order of the major housebuilders buildings homes for private and aﬀordable only is not feasible for the future. “Young people are renting long term,” he continued. “People are much more interested in quality of design and placemaking. They [the big housebuilders] need to recognise they just cannot build in the same way… We cannot just do what we

have always done.” What are the alternatives? Homes England is itself committed to delivering 50,000 homes on its 8,000 hectares of land and, among other things, is buying diﬃcult sites and investing in smaller housebuilders. But a single agency does not have the capacity to transform the housing market, whichever UK nation they serve. Should we be supporting entirely diﬀerent housebuilding models?

A RETURN TO SOCIAL – One option is a renaissance in social housebuilding by local authorities and housing associations. But they need the powers and resources to drive this. The Scottish government has already committed, unveiling in 2015 plans to

deliver 35,000 homes for social rent, and 15,000 in other aﬀordable tenures, by 2021. More Homes Scotland, its ﬂagship housebuilding initiative, stresses housing as a social infrastructure priority and has increased social housing subsidies, pushed city deals and created support packages for the private rented sector. Scotland also funds its own Help to Buy and open market shared equity schemes, and local authorities have strategic housing powers. In the year

WHAT THEY SAID

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AT A GLANCE

(1) Growth in the private rented sector could prove to be a signiﬁcant tool in tackling the UK's housing crisis

(2) There is steadily rising demand for self-build – and only a dysfunctional market is preventing further growth

(3) People are open to fresh ways of solving the housing crisis, but the political leadership required can be found lacking

not going to help the housing cause.

WHAT THEY SAID

A FUTURE IN RENTAL to June 2017, local authorities built 1,244 homes; housing associations completed 2,464 homes. Wheatley Group, with some 82,000 homes in ownership and management, is Scotland’s biggest affordable housing provider and the largest social housing provider in the UK. Director of property and development Tom Barclay observed that despite moves towards accelerated development of social and affordable housing, there are caveats and challenges for planning. In particular, the “global fight for talent”, stimulated at least in part by the phenomenal concentration of global wealth in the built environment.

PHOTOGRAPHY | RICHARD GLEED

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If talent follows the money, the sheer lack of cash in UK local authorities can stem the ﬂow of social housebuilding in areas of the market where it is really needed. “Planning is estimated to have something like 0.4 per cent of revenues of local authorities in Scotland on average,” said Barclay. This is both cause and consequence of a draining away of planning’s corporate inﬂuence within authorities. Fewer planners means fewer in leadership positions. “Loss of jobs means loss of corporate memory,” he said. Despite grounds for optimism in the moves that are afoot to expand social housebuilding in Scotland, a leaching of leadership, experience and capability is

– PRS (private rented sector) housing at scale would seem poised to ﬁll some substantial gaps in the UK housing market(s); it could also revolutionise the way we think about ‘home’. Yet the UK’s rental sector, poorly structured and poorly regulated, is a hurdle. “In the US, Canada, Germany, France, etc., they will have great quality homes for rent,” said Helen Gordon, chief executive of PRS developer Grainger Plc. “In the UK we have an obsession about home ownership – and one reason for that is that we have a poor rental sector.” The UK sector, she noted, is dominated by “mom and pop” landlords owning 10 properties or fewer. Short leases prevail; quality of accommodation varies wildly and rent is often

unreachably high; most homes for rent are not purpose-built. Support for a more professional private rented sector could be transformational – not least because, said Gordon, some 36 per cent of the 4.7 million households in the rental sector are families. Homemaking in the UK rental sector is still seen as a temporary fix for people either saving for their own home or who simply cannot afford to buy one. Yet purpose-built and professionally managed PRS developments can, according to Gordon, deliver the kind of benefits volume housebuilders struggle with: chiefly, PRS can bring more homes to market more quickly and, she argued, build more sustainable communities more quickly. The rationale for this argument is that build-out rates for open market housing are contingent on sales. Sales are contingent

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on people saving the deposit and stamp duty, often in an overheated market. On average, it takes a young Londoner 15 years to do this, and seven years in Leeds and other UK cities. PRS, on the other hand, requires much smaller deposits and tenants can move in more or less immediately – particularly if rents reflect local wages. If this speed of access is supported by communitybuilding initiatives, such as longer leases, shared facilities and, in blocks, a concierge service, then turnover is reduced. This is to the benefit of investors who, said Gordon, “take a long-term stake in the community. “We have to make that sale many times over the period of its [the property’s] life. Our investment in community and design has to be significantly different from that of a housebuilder.” Gordon cited a PwC report that found demand for 7.2 million rental homes by 2025. The sector is growing with, she claimed, “£30 billion of capital willing to enter this sector if we get the right environments”. But those environments seem still to be few and far between. Yes, it’s a new (ish) sector in the UK, its relatively few players only now beginning to make inroads into the market. However, Grainger, although the UK’s largest residential landlord, owns just 8,500 units. The barrier, according to Gordon, is in the very different economics of PRS

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and traditional housebuilding, and the capacity of policy to support both simultaneously. “Housebuilders can often outbid us on the land because their profit structures are different,” she said, later telling The Planner: “The planning system should recognise and treat build to rent and private for sale differently, particularly in terms of viability and section 106 calculations.” The current draft of the NPPF, awaiting formal publication as The Planner went to press, “does that”, Gordon noted.

DO IT YOURSELF – There is yet another approach to housebuilding that is potentially more aﬀordable, more varied, more personal and less corporate. With the right framework in place, building one’s own home can be eminently aﬀordable. It’s not without support. Under the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, local authorities must maintain a register of people and groups interested in

“THE REALITY OF SELFBUILD IS NOT THE FLAMBOYANT ‘RUBBER TYRES AND LAMBSWOOL’ OF GRAND DESIGNS, BUT SOMETHING MORE PROSAIC AND CONVENTIONAL”

WHAT THEY SAID

obtaining serviced plots of land on which to build their own homes. Chapter 2 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 placed a further duty on local authorities to make land available to meet demand. These are the ﬁrst steps on a journey that Richard Bacon MP hopes will bring the UK to the same level as many other nations. Bacon, MP for South Norfolk, introduced the private members bill that became the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act. Bacon’s case for self-build was based on a number of telling points: • 67-75 per cent of UK adults are unlikely to or would prefer not to buy the product of volume housebuilders. (“They make a product that 2/3 of the market don’t want.”) • Even though 80 per cent of people don’t know about the self-build registers, 33,000 have still put their names down thus far. • 53 per cent of adults would like to build their own home (some 25 per cent of these would be happy to do so as part of a group). • In Germany, France and Italy, some 60 per cent of homes are self-built. Even in the USA and Canada the proportion is 40 per cent.

world to build your own home,” said Bacon. “Selfbuilt housing is completely normal everywhere. Except here.” Why not? Again the finger was pointed at a dysfunctional market where housebuilders operating at scale can outbid other entities for land. But, Bacon asserted, this does not necessarily result in homes that are affordable or of the type people actually want. Self-build, on the other hand, can achieve this. On a serviced plot (which costs £10-15,000 to create, according to Bacon), building one’s own home need not cost more than £200,000. The reality of self-build is not the flamboyant “rubber tyres and lambswool” of Grand Designs, but something more conventional. But that doesn’t mean dull: Bacon’s whistle-stop tour of self-built homes across the world displayed an impressive variety of forms, colours and materials. (Inappropriate designs can be managed out through local design guidelines.) Self-build is also a boost to SME builders

“It’s normal across the

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“THE ESTABLISHED ORDER OF THE MAJOR HOUSEBUILDERS BUILDINGS HOMES FOR PRIVATE AND AFFORDABLE ONLY IS NOT FEASIBLE FOR THE FUTURE” since commissioners are unlikely to do their own building work. A separation of skills is necessary for self-build to ﬂourish, argued Bacon. “[We need to] separate the business of placemaking from the business of homemaking. Placemaking – they are the things that planning should deal with. The making of homes can be done by lots of people. We should have a market for serviced plots where a variety of players can come together.” What’s needed to stimulate this market? Among other actions, the MP mentioned: • more certainty through the planning system; • greater support from the ﬁnancial system; • councils facilitating land acquisition and preparation; • ‘council champions’, and more political leadership generally. Calling for a “much more muscular approach from local authorities and government”, Bacon

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concluded: “When it is as easy to buy a serviced plot as it is to go into a Ford dealership and buy a motor car, then we will solve the housing crisis.”

TO SUM UP… – There is demand for alternative approaches, and potential investment too – but not necessarily the political leadership that can make a signiﬁcant diﬀerence. Yet. Planning policy itself may need to adapt to ‘disruptive’ approaches to the market. Interventions in the land market may be necessary. Local authorities have a critical role to play – through local planning, but also land acquisition and disposal, and through funding that stimulates alternative markets. Partnerships between public, private and third sectors – and in the case of custom-build, individuals – will be necessary. More than anything, we may need to provide UK citizens with an alternative concept of development. “If we want to make development a good word, then we have to have good development,” said Bacon. “[That means] making great places for people to live that are well designed, well built, well connected, well served in terms of facilities, well run and environmentally sensitive.”

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The numbers game Session title: Workshop: Capturing the value of planning Speakers: Keiron Hyams MRTPI, associate, Arup; David Brown MRTPI, associate, Arup; Judith Jones, head of planning, Merthyr Tydﬁl Borough Council Chair: Roisin Willmott FRTPI, director of RTPI Cymru and Northern Ireland

Is there way of measuring and presenting the value that planning adds to communities so as to persuade corporate strategists to invest more in planning and its outcomes? A new tool commissioned by the RTPI, created by Arup and tested in Wales, may do just that. Essentially a spreadsheet behind which sits

algorithms – or “ready reckoners” – adapted to local conditions, it records and monetises “defensible” outcomes that can be directly linked to planning. Linked to “indicator themes” (economy, environment, housing, infrastructure, well-being) these range from land value uplift to welfare outcomes. This produces a ﬁgure

that can, said Arup’s Kieron Hyams MRTPI, start a discussion about resourcing and provide an annual performance benchmark. “LPAs have lost more than half their money in the last 7-8 years,” he told the convention audience. “When you look to their corporate strategy, most of these things [strategic aims] are to do with planning. It’s perverse that the planning is cut, therefore.” For Wales, the calculated value of planning was £3.5 billion, obtained after receiving data from 16 local authorities. Judith Jones, head of planning for Merthyr Tydﬁl, found the tool “very easy to use”.

“You get something very worthwhile out of it in terms of the dashboard [which shows at-a-glance data] that you can use in committee reports… I see this as a practical tool that would provoke discussion.” Roisin Willmott FRTPI concurred, remarked that at least part of the tool’s value was in demonstrating the reach of planning into many area of a local authority’s service delivery – and in reinforcing the role of planning alongside other functions as an instrument for delivering “quality of place for all”.

Value proposition Speakers: Shona Glenn, head of policy & research, Scottish Land Commission; Thomas Aubrey, policy network & founder, credit capital advisory – Centre for Progressive Policy; Julian Ware, senior principal, Transport for London Session Title: Land Value masterclass – what is the best way to capture and share land value uplift? Chair: Prof. Tony Crook CBE FRPTI, emeritus professor of town & regional planning, University of Sheﬃeld

There are no easy answers, but this was a valuable contribution to the increasingly active land value capture debate, with panellists agreeing that the sheer variety of measurable betterment – from the impact of infrastructure improvements to wider societal change – makes 24

developing common approaches difficult. Tony Crook illustrated how national schemes of land value captured from 1947 onwards have actually raised very little, and it was Shona Glenn who was keen to label land value as more concept than specific policy; different mechanisms would be

appropriate for diﬀerent scenarios, and a focus on just one would likely lead to missed, more eﬀective opportunities. But, said Glenn, while the focus on land value is rooted in terms of fairness, injustice and entitlement – positions likely to put developers and house owners on the defensive, creating a confrontational system. Instead, the conversation should be a more rounded one about placemaking rather than revenue raising; of using land value as a tool to fund necessary infrastructure. (“If you start the conversation from there it becomes about need, not entitlement", said Glenn.

AT A GLANCE

(1) A focus on place-making rather than revenue raising can make the land value conversation more appealing

(2) Successful land value capture mechanisms are unlikely to ﬁt neat, repeatable templates

(3) France, Germany and the Netherlands have good examples of how land value capture can work

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A resilient profession Session title: Workshop: Building a resilient profession Speakers: Emma Langmaid MRTPI, director, Prospero Planning, Abraham Laker MRPTI, associate director, RPS Built & Natural Environment, Adele Maher MRTPI, strategic planning manager, London Borough of Tower Hamlets Rapporteur: Andrew Close MRTPI, head of careers, education and professional development

We hear a lot about planners, making the environment, communities, town, cities and homes resilient. But how do we make the planning profession resilient? Emma Langmaid, who chairs Women in Planning South Wales, talked about increasing the proﬁle of women in the profession, and empowering them. Women in Planning, she

said, was set up for this reason – to provide women planners with an informal and informative networking group, to make sure that their achievements are known and rewarded, and it now has branches across the UK. She urged women to put themselves forward to speak at events, saying that it inspires other women to feel they could do it, too.

A resilient profession isn’t just gender diverse, it is ethnically diverse, but as Abraham Laker pointed out, the RTPI survey showed that just 7.42 per cent of the profession is from a BAME background. He said his secondary school focused on traditional subjects like maths and English. It was a substitute teacher who introduced him to town planning. There is also a cultural disconnect of what planning is, said Laker. His friends think he is an architect while his parents wanted him to be a lawyer, a doctor or an accountant. Planning, he insisted, is a good job, and it needs to be promoted. Working for a diverse

council with a diverse population, Adele Maher said the people that represent the people should reflect the people in order for both the community and the profession to be resilient. Not only that, but with 3,700 planning applications submitted last year alone, her council has to consider its retention rates. With budget going down and workloads increasing, “it is important to invest in staff”. In summary, the takeaways for a resilient profession: An ethnic and gender diverse work force that reflects the people, that is supported and invested in, and then go ahead and shout about it.

Right people, right places Session title: PINS and MHCLG – Where are we now? Speakers: Mark Southgate MRTPI, director of major applications, PINS: Simon Gallagher, director of planning, MHCLG; Lucy Hargreaves, town planner, MHCLG Chair: Paul Shadarevian QC, Cornerstone Barristers

Recruitment is a challenge for planning. How does the Planning Inspectorate recruit more inspectors? How does that affect availability of senior planners elsewhere? What is the MHCLG doing to attract new planners? The breakfast briefing kicked off a recurrent theme. Mark Southgate MRTPI, of the Planning Inspectorate, PHOTOGRAPHY | RICHARD GLEED

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said PINS had wanted to recruit 30 new inspectors in 2017/18, but employed just 19. With a bulging workload, the pressure could be overwhelming. A second recruitment wave had attracted 40 more inspectors. However, “When we recruit we tend to create a problem elsewhere in the system.” Simon Gallagher of

the MHCLG echoed the point. “There’s a ﬁnite resource,” he said. Where are new planners coming from? Southgate wondered why students gave strong ratings to planning courses but didn’t enter the profession. PINS is working on a graduate planners scheme, he said. The ministry, too, is playing its part in supporting the RTPI’s planning apprenticeship. But the Institute for Apprenticeships had not recognised the RTPI’s assessment capacity. “We’re going to have serious words with the IFA,” said Gallagher. “If we are going to have apprenticeships they

need to be really serious and properly assessed. Steve Quartermain [chief planner] is doing some work on that.” From the audience Graham Stallwood MRTPI, director of planning for Kensington, suggested that secondment between the public and private sectors develops more versatile planners. Gallagher said the profession needed planners with varied skills if it was to inﬂuence government – “policy planners who know how to work Whitehall. People who can understand procurement and contract management, ﬁnance and viability”. AU G U S T 2 0 1 8 / THE PLA NNER

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Crossing the bridge to better placemaking The fall in social housing due to the Right to Buy shows ‘one for one’ isn’t working Keynote address: The state of the nation Speaker: Lord Kerslake

You won’t be surprised to hear that Brexit talk dominates Westminster. Lord Bob Kerslake told the audience that is what he is doing every week, declaring Brexit one of those issues that is “both deadly and deadly dull”. Britain faces this, and many other challenges – a lack of housing and changing technologies for example – and to have a resilient Britain through those challenges, “we need a resilient planning system”. On the housing crisis, Kerslake said, echoing the thoughts of many, that all the players need to be on the pitch in order to build the government’s housing target of 300,000 homes a year.

Housing associations need to do their bit and local authorities must be allowed to borrow to build. Of those new homes, at least a quarter, if not a third, need to be either social or genuinely aﬀordable for rent. “We have to reverse the decline in numbers of social houses that we have as a consequence of the Right to Buy. One for one hasn’t worked.” There needs to be a “conscious strategy” that is about proportion as well as the type of home built. This would require funding, more government investment. He advised the government to “wind down” investment going into Help to Buy – not completely – and put more investment into social housing. Moving on to housing quality, Kerslake said: “We will not carry the public with us on this journey unless we are good at getting quality homes and great places. If we simply focus on the numbers there will be a reaction in the bulk from local people. Too much of what we’re building now does not measure up to the contest.” The dynamic must change, he said.

Thought must be given to hard and soft infrastructure; and capabilities in placemaking and the use of interdisciplinary placemaking teams must be developed. For Kerslake, the training planners have had puts them in the “ideal” position to lead cross-disciplinary placemaking teams. Speaking about the economy and productivity, he said Britain is facing wage stagnation; huge, growing geographic disparities; and changes in technology and the way it is used in manufacturing.

“TOO MUCH OF WHAT WE’RE BUILDING NOW DOES NOT MEASURE UP TO THE CONTEST”

“We need in this country a long-term economic plan to respond to these challenges and move the UK from a low-performing economy to a high-performing economy.” Perhaps spatial planning might help, of which Kerslake is an advocate. He noted that Scotland has “moved on” this, and it is something that England “lacks”. While in favour of devolution, he said it could “only really work if you have a national spatial context in which to work”. To tackle all the issues Britain is facing, “to build public trust in the essential developments that are happening, to ensure that these developments are genuinely sustainable… we need eﬀective planning”.

WHAT THEY SAID

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The art of the devolution deal The economic disparity between urban and rural living Session title: Maximising the value of devolution deals through planning Speakers: Councilllor Rosemarie Harris, leader, Powys Council; Jane Healey Brown FRTPI, associate director of planning, policy and economics, Arup Chair: Sarah Elliott MRTPI, director, AECOM

“There’s a cost to rurality that’s not understood – the cost to local authorities of delivering services; the cost for local living in the area; accessing services,” observed Rosemarie Harris, leader of Powys Council. “I would hope that there will be more support post-Brexit from both governments [Wales and UK].” The form this support will take in Powys will be determined by a joint growth deal with neighbouring Ceredigion. We may think of such

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deals in a city context, but rural need is equally great. Powys covers a quarter of Wales but has a population of just 135,000. There are a mere two miles of dual carriageway. “There is no district general hospital and no higher education provision. Public transport is extremely diﬃcult. The cost of delivering services to a sparse (and ageing) population is astronomical.” She added: “The wages in mid-Wales are the lowest in the UK. There is a great deal of hidden poverty in rural areas. Many young people are leaving for education and jobs and they just don’t return.” Yet, asserted Harris, Powys is a beautiful county with clean air, open space and dramatic vistas. But its desirability as a place to stay in or move to is threatened by the absence of social and economic infrastructure. A growth deal could kickstart a revival there. Its aim, said Harris, is “to become a rural powerhouse for Wales”. It’s an ambitious vision, in which planning will be integrally involved in knitting together the strands of public and private interests and investments. “Planning and a growth deal are about creating sustainable places – the right development in the right place, ensuring the well-being of communities. “Planning and

development plans will obviously need to support and enable a growth deal.” But, Harris said, plans “won’t provide all the answers. We will still need to work with other partners to develop the best we can for the area”. Speaking from a city perspective, Jane Healey Brown FRTPI wondered how devolution in UK cities compares with their international counterparts. Globally, she noted, most people now live in cities. “Cities dominate our economies; 85 per cent of GDP is generated by cities.” They are engines of innovation, centres of extensive commercial, creative, social and technological networks. Politically, too, cities show leadership where national government fails. “Even in the UK, mayors in Liverpool and Greater Manchester are trying to resolve real issues from a city perspective,” said Healey Brown. “As planners we need to be able to understand this shift of politics, this shift of power.” But the powers of UK mayors are relatively weak. London, for example, has “a woefully small number of sources of funding. It’s inﬂuence that counts – the ‘soft’ power on which relationships are built”. “Future economic growth is dependent on knowledge

AT A GLANCE

(1) Rural areas need regional growth deals as well as cities

(2) With limited powers, metro mayors need to use inﬂuence to lead

(3) Regional devolution may be creating a spatial plan by stealth

and innovation. Innovation occurs through collaboration, within cities and between cities. Planners are very good at collaborating.” Healey Brown continued: “Devolution begins to enable and empower that [collaboration] to happen. But at the moment this is much more dependent on influence than on the devolved powers themselves.” Planners, too, she concluded “also need to step up and look at how we can influence as well”. Where does the patchwork of devolutionary growth deals in the UK leave us? “Are we effectively creating a national spatial plan for the UK by stealth?” asked AECOM’s Sarah Elliott. “We have a national infrastructure plan, and environment strategy – should we stop planning by stealth and start planning in earnest?”

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Ready. Set. Go. Session title: Workshop: Planning for major sporting events Speakers: Emmanuel de la Masselière, founder, e.co; Forbes Barron MRTPI, head of planning, Glasgow City Council; Craig Rowbottom MRTI, development planning manager, Birmingham City Council Chair: Richard Blyth FRTPI, head of policy, RTPI

Olympic Games can be crippling. Is there a better way to host them, while securing ‘legacy’? Emmanuel de la Masselière, involved in regeneration of Paris suburbs hosting the 2024 athletes’ village, said Paris itself would have a modest budget compared with London and Beijing. The city would use existing sites and infrastructure. Much expenditure would be linked to regeneration of

northern suburbs and a related metro link. “Adapt the event to your city and not your city to the event,” he advised. Yet, “Why do we need the Olympics to regenerate something?” he asked. De la Masselière distinguished Olympics from the more modest Commonwealth Games. Glasgow, in 2014, was delivered for ‘just’ £543 million through “maximising” use of

existing venues and using the Games to drive planned regeneration. Its athletes’ village provided 700 new homes, Forbes Barron MRTPI explained. New venues had a long-term plan – the Hydro is now one of the UK’s leading music venues. There was one small sour note. “Our expectations of health were not achieved.” Health is a concern for Birmingham, 2022 Commonwealth Games host. It, too, has a minimalist approach, upgrading one venue (the Alexandra Stadium), and building one. Its built environment legacy will be

Shape and deliver Session title: Ask the chief planners Speakers: Niall Cussen, chief planner, Ireland; Neil Hemington MRTPI, chief planner, Wales; Alistair Beggs MRTPI, chief planner, Northern Ireland; John McNairney MRTPI, chief planner, Scotland; Steve Quartermain MRTPI, chief planner, England Chair: Victoria Hills MRTPI, chief executive, RTPI

If planners are to lead the shaping and delivery of policy, they must be “willing to step out of our comfort zones” and “grapple with the big issues”, said Ireland’s chief planner Niall Cussen. In Ireland, planning was ﬁrmly “back in the 28

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ascendancy”, but this could not be taken for granted. So, too, in Wales, where planning was driving a national spatial strategy, said Neil Hemington MRTPI. The challenge here was to ensure that planning remained locally relevant, to ensure

that national initiatives were grounded in people’s lives. “It’s a real challenge for the profession to think in terms of placemaking and how to deliver the multiple benefits of multiple outcomes.” In Scotland, the emerging revised National Planning Framework explicitly focused on strengthening community engagement, while ensuring that communities were aware of their potential influence. “It’s not been about knocking planning,” said John McNairney MRTPI, “but how planning can move into a more effective space. It’s

“an exemplar residential neighbourhood” at Perry Barr, the suburb hosting the athlete’s village. “But how do you create a modern town centre given the uncertainty about retail? What type of place are we creating?” asked Craig Rowbottom MRTPI. “It could be higher density, with a mix of homes. We could have cycling infrastructure and reduce the dominance of the 1960s highways layout. We could have train station redevelopment and a bus interchange. “There’s a lot of challenges here. But planners do have the skills to address these.”

about empowering planning to deliver great places.” Northern Ireland, however, faces an absence of leadership with the suspension of the national executive, and the Brexit threat to its open border with Ireland. “It’s going to have massive impact in terns of our planning policy,” acknowledged Alistair Beggs MRTPI. England’s chief planner Steve Quartermain MRTPI said that planning was being seen as a tool in delivering government policy aims. “It’s clear that the new secretary of state has been put in to focus on supply. Plans should deliver. They are not blueprints; they are supposed to be implementation documents.”

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A powerful argument Session title Workshop: The Infrastructure Debate – sponsored by National Grid Speakers: Kam Liddar, Asset Protection Oﬃcer, National Grid; David Edmondson MRTPI, Strategic Developments Manager, Cornwall Council

What do planners need to know about the nation’s energy pipeline infrastructure? National Grid, and indeed all infrastructure providers and utility companies, should be seen as principal stakeholders in the process of preparation, alteration and review of plans and strategies, especially when these directly aﬀect their assets. Kam Liddar explained how all interested parties needed to know how to locate National Grid’s assets. The company owns and operates 7,600km of high-pressure gas pipeline, 600 above-ground installations and – for pushing all that gas around – 24 compressor stations. (The gas that these pipelines distributes provides more than three times the energy provided by electricity.) And the pipelines are painstakingly maintained. National Grid engineers ﬂy the entire route every two weeks to check its condition from above, and the route is also line-walked every four years. David Edmondson said he thought more could be done

by local authorities in general to involve National Grid and other infrastructure providers in planning performance agreements to make sure they become part of the conversation from the start. Edmondson described Cornwall’s love aﬀair with solar energy as over – “but

“THE PLANNING SYSTEM IS TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING BUT THERE’S SO MUCH ENERGY CAN’T BE CONNECTED TO THE GRID”

we did have a huge gold rush down in Cornwall. The issue came when Western Power said there was no more capacity to connect new solar farms to the network.” Discussion turned to the concerns from many delegates that technological innovation was leading to a disconnect between potential exporters of energy back to the grid and the engineers who could make such things happen. The UK energy landscape, it was agreed, was experiencing a period of rapid change with a surge in energy generated from distributed and renewable sources as well as innovations in smart grid and battery storage technology. (“The planning system is trying to do the

AT A GLANCE

(1) National Grid needs more notiﬁcation about projects than you might imagine

(2) There is a disconnect between potential local energy generators and those who can facilitate their connection to the grid

(3) Planning for electric vehicle demand is incredibly diﬃcult

right thing but there’s so much energy can’t be connected to the grid.”) And what of the apparently imminent electric vehicle revolution? How to calculate likely vehicle volumes and the associated need for service stations? These remain tough questions to answer. The session ended with agreement that more needs to be done to enable infrastructure to be planned and funded in advance of growth. This may require changes to the regulatory, planning and ﬁnancial frameworks that govern utilities. The RTPI explained that it is commissioning research to explore how integrated infrastructure planning can better support sustainable growth. A good thing, too, according to one delegate. “We have a real crisis in national infrastructure – and I don't think that today we’ve been talking enough about it.” AU G U S T 2 0 1 8 / THE PLA NNER

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Climate change: keeping it real Session title: Workshop: Integrating climate resilience into planning Speakers: Liz Parkes, deputy director of climate change and business services, Environment Agency; Dan Stone, project manager, Centre for Sustainable Energy; Alister Scott, professor of environmental geography, Northumbria University Chair: Dr Murray Simpson, director of climate, resilience and sustainability, Wood Plc

How can planners can address the seemingly insurmountable threat of climate change? Are there local solutions to be unearthed that would meet this global challenge? It’s essential to make climate change “feel real”, rather than discussing it as an abstract concept, stressed Liz Parkes, a climate scientist and human geographer. Yes, be sensitive, but we should also mark the old adage of

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“never waste a good crisis” by using real events to illustrate the impacts – and opportunities – of climate change. Climate change must be “woven into decisionmaking”, Parkes continued, not approached as an add-on or a one-oﬀ, because it is happening all the time. Assumptions must be kept under review and a pathway approach employed to prepare for decision-making in the face of adversity. Above all, cooperation within and across borders is required to tackle the threat. “We may be an island,” said Parkes, “but we are better and stronger in collaboration.” Dan Stone extolled the power of neighbourhood plans to address climate change impacts. Our response to climate change tends to come from either national government or individually, he explained, leaving a gap at civic level. Neighbourhood plans are the best opportunity to discuss how global events impact local communities,

“OUR RESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE TENDS TO COME FROM EITHER NATIONAL GOVERNMENT OR INDIVIDUALLY, LEAVING A GAP AT CIVIC LEVEL" and mitigate against them. Stone cited the Frome neighbourhood plan, which considered how the town could prepare for “global shocks” like energy prices by addressing local issues such as car dependency. Finally, planning professor Alister Scott talked about the need to start with the evidence when addressing climate change, rather than working backwards from policy. This

approach is more effective at developing crucial coordinated partnerships. Taking questions at the end of the session, Scott warned against the “fear factor”. He didn’t disagree with an audience member’s suggestion that “the world is dying”, he warned that doom and gloom switches people off and makes positive change more difficult – like Brexit.

AT A GLANCE

(1) Make climate change “feel real” rather than an abstract concept

(2) Use neighbourhood plans to provide a local response to climate change

(3) Look at the evidence

PHOTOGRAPHY | RICHARD GLEED

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Visualisations for a positive outcome

NPA

Visuals

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npavisuals.co.uk

17/07/2018 15:03

Tech { L A N D S C A P E RETAIL REFORM -

FUTURE PLANNERS, FUTURE PLANNING WHAT ARE THE TECH AND TOOLS THAT COULD TRANSFORM PLANNING IN THE FUTURE? IN A SERIES OF SEVENMINUTE SPEED PRESENTATIONS, FIVE YOUNG PLANNERS TOOK CONVENTION DELEGATES ON A WHISTLESTOP TOUR OF VIRTUAL REALITY, DRONES, BLOCKCHAIN AND MORE

Technology is having a profound impact on the way we shop – and this has knockon effects for planning, argued Hollie Barton. Over a period of less than a decade, technology has transformed every stage of the shopping process. Online, artificial intelligence is used to inform automated recommendations; robotic logistics systems then prepare your order, which may soon be delivered by drone. Even if you visit the shop in person, there’s a good chance that social media and digital marketing had a hand in your decision. Using the outdoor clothing brand The North Face as an example, Barton explained how retailers are using data science to analyse geographical shopping trends, then using the findings to support decisions on everything from stock levels to store layouts. Despite the growth of online shopping, Barton continued, some aspects of the physical shopping experience – like combining a shopping trip with a meal out – remain irreplaceable, for now. TAKEAWAY

BIG CLAIMS FOR BIG DATA Much has been said and written about the power of ‘big data’, and how it can underpin more proactive approaches to planning. But using quantitative data for planning is not as new as it might seem, Cleo Che Tsun Au explained, describing how the Victorian doctor John Snow took a ‘datadriven’ approach to the cholera epidemic in 19th century London. By creating a dot map of cholera cases, Snow was able to identify a contaminated water pump as the source of a cholera outbreak. Au also challenged the axiom that big data is ‘the oil of the 21st century’. Unlike fossil fuels, he pointed out, data is inﬁnite. This has huge potential

ramifications for our privacy, he explained, leading to calls for “a new set of rules” to govern how data is used. He went on to describe how data had informed his undergraduate dissertation, which explored how demographic distribution in cities can influence the provision of public bike share docking stations in different locations. By harnessing this kind of data, he explained, planners can work proactively to plan more resilient and accessible environments. TAKEAWAY

Big data can provide an evidence base for all areas of planning. Cleo Che Tsun Au is an undergraduate at Cardiﬀ University

Planning must adapt to keep our high streets competitive Hollie Barton is a planner with NJL Consulting

VIRTUAL POSSIBILITIES Virtual reality (VR) has multiple potential applications for planners, and could transform the way we design the built environment and engage with communities, explained Alison Broderick. VR, she explained, uses a headset and other controllers to create ‘an immersive experience in a diﬀerent world’. Its closely related sister technology, augmented reality (AR), works by superimposing virtual objects onto our

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existing surroundings. Although it was originally used in the world of computer gaming, innovators are harnessing the power of VR in other areas, including product design, healthcare – and planning. The key benefit of VR, explained Broderick, is the time and money saved from being able to ‘travel’ somewhere without leaving your desk. She touched on various potential applications for planners, including the ability to visualise buildings in different weather conditions, highlighting ‘invisible’ parts of buildings, and working collaboratively online. The interactivity of VR can engage diverse groups much more effectively than traditional plans, she added, which can be difficult to interpret even for trained planners. This makes it a worthy investment, despite the expense. TAKEAWAY

VR has the power to democratise the planning process. Alison Broderick is a senior planner with Savills

THE POWER OF THE CROWD -Ross O’Cellaigh used case studies to illustrate the power of crowdsourcing and its application in three key areas of planning: mapping, transport and housing. The ﬁrst case study focused on Baraka, a town in DR Congo. Until 2014, it had remained unmapped aside from a single main road. Following a campaign by The Guardian, a team of nearly 200 volunteers using open-source mapping technology mapped 70 per cent of the city in a single session. A similar approach was used in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, which until recently had a decentralised public transport system with no set timetables or fares and no network map. As part of a project

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coordinated by the University of Nairobi, students rode every route, recording their journeys with a smartphone app. This data was used to create the ﬁrst map of the network. Crowdsourcing has also been used to tackle the homelessness problem in Ireland. After the 2008 recession, the country was left with swathes of vacant newly built houses. To address this, a crowdsourcing platform was developed to allow people to mark vacant properties on a digital map, which can then be refurbished to provide shelter for the homeless. As these examples show, O’Cellaigh explained, crowdsourcing is an entirely new way to improve cities, ensuring that they are developed “from the bottom up”.

cryptocurrencies. In the property and planning industries, which remain largely paper-based, land ownership, due diligence, lease completion and asset management could all be streamlined and secured on the blockchain. If you’re struggling to get your head around the technology, Raftery suggested, focus on blockchain’s potential uses, not the maths that underpins it. TAKEAWAY

Look beyond Bitcoin to see the full power of blockchain. Ross Raftery is a senior planner with Deloitte Real Estate

TAKEAWAY

Crowdsourcing can help empower the public to improve towns and cities. Ross O’Cellaigh is an urban planner with Dar Al-Handasah (Shair and Partners)

BUILDING BLOCKS “People want to put everything on the blockchain,” said Ross Raftery. It’s not a universal solution, but it does have transformative potential for planners. Blockchain was created as a way to decentralise the banking industry after the ﬁnancial crisis, explained Raftery. It used cryptography to create a distributed system with “trust built in”, where everyone has a tamperproof record of the data in question. It’s immutable, globally accessible, and works in near-real time. Its most famous manifestation might be Bitcoin, Raftery observed, but blockchain is more than just

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LANDSCAPE

Nations & Regions focus { Well-placed powerhouse North West England is a geographically diverse, linear region stretching from the Solway Firth and Scottish border to the Cheshire plain. In the north, the Lake District National Park is home to England’s tallest mountain (Scafell Pike) and its largest (Windermere), highest (Broad Crag) and deepest (Wast Water) lakes. A mix of rural and urban landscape, two large conurbations, centred on Liverpool and Manchester, occupy much of the south of the region, and form a western anchor of the Northern Powerhouse. As historic centres of UK manufacturing, both retain strong pockets of engineering and advanced manufacturing excellence, which are also evident in the smaller towns of Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria. Liverpool and Manchester have also

FACTFILE 2018 2018 2018

seen the growth of financial and business services. Perhaps the most visible change in recent years has been the growth of logistics, partly linked to online retail, with ‘big shed’ parks expanding rapidly on the region’s motorways and associated with key ports and airports. Development pressures can vary, and the region does contain some settlements and neighbourhoods of housing market failure. But the overall trend is of high demand for housing, mainly in the south of the region and, as easily deliverable brownfield sites are taken up, increasing pressure for greenfield development. Although less prevalent than in the South, garden communities, or large new suburbs generally, are being considered in several edge-of-settlement locations such as Warrington.

Area: 5,469 square miles Population: 7,258,600 Major population centres: Manchester: 510,746. Greater Manchester (LEP): 2,798,800 Liverpool: 552,267. Liverpool City Region (LEP): 1,544,400 Warrington (largest Cheshire town): 168,456 Blackpool (largest Lancashire town): 147,663 Carlisle (largest Cumbria town): 75,306 Bolton (largest Greater Manchester town): 194,189. Birkenhead (largest Merseyside town): 142,968. Counties: Cheshire (Unitary), Lancashire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester (Unitary), Merseyside (Unitary)

PLANWATCH

Much activity across this region, particularly the high-proﬁle Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, a joint plan for Greater Manchester’s 10 local authorities driven by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and its elected mayor. A second draft is being developed, to be published this October. Also notable is the John Lennon Airport masterplan, which sets out development and growth until 2050 via a long-term vision for LJLA with more investment proposals for the airport and

its surrounding landholdings. The North Cheshire Garden Village, to be near Handforth in Cheshire East, is one of 14 new garden villages that secured government support in 2017. The scheme for 1,650 homes includes schools, health facilities, nurseries, community centres, play areas and sports facilities along with businesses. The Cheshire East Local Plan includes 14ha of land south of the village proposed for safeguarding and development after 2030.

Parliamentary constituencies: 75 (Labour 54, Conservative 20, Liberal Democrat 1) Planning authorities: 39 local government districts in north-west England. 15 metropolitan districts in Greater Manchester & Merseyside, 18 nonmetropolitan districts within Cumbria & Lancashire, and six non-metropolitan districts that are unitary authorities. Also Lake District National Park.

IN THE PIPELINE

1. Walney Extension Oﬀshore Wind Farm The world’s largest oﬀshore wind farm, consisting of 207 turbines installed in two phases, Walney I and Walney II. It delivers 659MW, enough to power 590,000 homes. Completion is expected by late 2018. n bit.ly/planner0818-walney

2. Liverpool Waters A major waterfront redevelopment north of Albert Dock, as reported in July’s issue of The Planner. The

scheme will deliver two million sq m of residential, business and leisure space within ﬁve new neighbourhoods. n bit.ly/planner0818-liverpool

3. St John’s Manchester A redevelopment of the old Granada TV Studios and Coronation Street set, comprising 320 hotel bedrooms, 56,000 sq m of workspace, 24,000 sq m of retail and 5 ha of public realm. Plans include ‘The Tower’, which at 52 storeys will be Manchester’s tallest building. n bit.ly/planner0818-stjohns

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The North West INSIGHT: SUBURBAN REGENERATION

Jane Healey Brown FRTPI is head of planning for Arup in Manchester There’s been no lack of city centre regeneration, says Jane Healey Brown, “But one of the things that’s not really happened is more suburban regeneration.” Many town centres, hit by a blend of internet shopping, out-of-town retail and poor trading conditions., are “quite tired, dated and ripe for renewal”, with vacancy rates high. How to restore vibrancy to our suburban centres? One suggestion is to “think about changing the nature of town centres and get more housing in”. After all, “they are generally sustainable locations, with community facilities, retail, hubs for public transport”. One demographic in particular could benefit from such ‘suburban densification’. “We’ve got an ageing population which is looking to have that social integration… I’ve had conversations with people saying they would love to move closer to the town centre. But they need a different type of accommodation than what is typically available.” A range of typologies could

bring people back into suburban centres. In so doing, town centre densification should catalyse reuse of vacant buildings and plots; public realm improvement; economic activity; and a shift of development focus from green belt to areas well-served by social and physical infrastructure. Though not the only path to regeneration, housing will almost certainly have to be a component. It’s under way in many parts of London, and the North West is beginning to make strides. Healey Brown cites Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s Town Centre Challenge, and Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotherham’s Town Centre Fund. Both invite local authorities to submit plans for regeneration. Metro mayors have limited powers, but their ability to influence is key. “At the moment you are completely reliant on cooperation and demonstrating investment,”says Healey Brown, adding: People invest if you show leadership and vision.” Twitter: @HealeyBrown

RECENT SUCCESSES

1. University of Cumbria Ambleside Campus Winner of the 2017 North West RTPI Award for Planning Excellence in Collaboration, this project saw the University of Cumbria and Lake District NPA redeveloping elements of this previously underused campus. Works include new student accommodation. n bit.ly/planner0818-ambleside

2. MediaCityUK An 81-hectare mixed-use development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford and Trafford, MediaCityUK followed the BBC’s

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decision to move jobs to Manchester in 2004-2006. ITV joined them, relocating the Coronation Street set. They’re joined by residential, office and retail space. n bit.ly/planner0818-mediacityuk

3. Mersey Gateway Bridge This 1.4 mile-long, six-lane toll bridge over the Mersey between Runcorn and Widnes was designed to relieve congestion on the Silver Jubilee Bridge. It supports 4,640 new jobs through direct employment and investment. n bit.ly/planner0818-gateway

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LANDSCAPE

The North West COMING UP

Manchester city centre

1. Housing in the North West 5th September, Manchester Objectively Assessed Needs and the impact of local plans coming online will be among the topics discussed. bit.ly/planner0818-housing

2. Development Management Update 17 October, Carlisle A round-up of matters pertinent to the determination of planning applications within the English planning system. bit.ly/planner0818-nwupdate

3. Planning Law Update 5th November, Carlisle A general catch-up on developments, including the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s proposals for allocating land and speeding up the granting of permission for new housing, as well as investigating the means of funding and providing the infrastructure needed by existing and new communities.

Carlisle Cathedral in Cumbria

bit.ly/planner0818-lawupdate

SIGNPOSTS n Regional co-ordinator: Beverley Watson n Regional web address: www.rtpi.org.uk/the-rtpi-near-you/rtpinorth-west/ n Annual review: www.rtpi.org.uk/media/2888415/ areviewoftheyear2017.pdf n North West Young Planners: www.rtpi.org.uk/the-rtpi-near-you/rtpinorth-west/young-planners-in-the-northwest and on Facebook - www.facebook.com/ groups/159975700790686/ n Email address: beverley.watson@rtpi.org.uk n Social media: Twitter - @RTPINW

The Urbis building in Manchester

Liverpool city centre

NEXT MONTH:

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Working in...

ADVERTISER CONTENT

The North West

5 REASONS TO LIVE AND WORK IN THE NORTH WEST

Mixing large and dynamic cities with beautiful countryside and coast, the North West is a perfect blend of environments. Its cities, particularly Liverpool and Manchester, are vibrant and characterful. Beyond them, the region is characterised by rugged country, picturesque towns and villages, and miles of spectacular coastline.

Music and culture are abundant across the North West. Both Liverpool and Manchester are globally known for their music scenes, and also theatre, art and dance. But there’s so much more: across the North West comedy, food fashion and even simply going out all have a distinctively Northern twist.

At least one of three National Parks (Lake District, Peak District, Yorkshire Dales) can be reached within an hour from anywhere in the North West. Once there, the possibilities are endless – walking, running, climbing, canoeing, cycling, naturewatching, photography – they oﬀer some of the best outdoor experiences in the UK.

With devolved city regions and the development of the panregional Northern Powerhouse, the North West is gaining conﬁdence. Regeneration is spreading from cities into towns and suburban areas. Road and rail upgrades are mooted for better connections and travel times. There’s no shortage of opportunities for planners.

The North West is far more economically robust than just 20 years ago. Its mixed economy of services and high-grade manufacturing offers a solid base for jobs and growth. Business, financial and professional services provide close to a million jobs; energy, from renewables to nuclear, is a key industry and the region is also home to a flourishing creative and digital sector.

Planner Jobs has an average of jobs posted every month!

280 The PERFECT PLACE to find the latest town planning vacancies Planner Jobs is the official jobs board for the Royal Town Planning Institute

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

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C&D { C

CASES &DECISIONS

Brokenshire blocks 2,000 homes at Wisley Airﬁeld The housing secretary has refused plans for a new settlement in Surrey because of harm to the green belt, publishing his decision during the council’s local plan inquiry against the advice of the local MP.

The appeal concerned Wisley Airfield, a 1,900 metre airstrip on green belt land near Ockham, Surrey, built during the Second World War. Since flying at the site ceased in 1973 there have been several proposals for its use, including a plan for a large composting facility that was approved in 2010 but never built. In 2014, the appeal scheme was first submitted, proposing 2,068 homes, sheltered accommodation, gypsy pitches, two schools, and sport, health and community facilities, plush improved access to the A3. Two years later, the council dismissed the application, despite allocating the site for development in the latest revision of its emerging local plan (ELP) draft, published a week earlier. The subsequent appeal was recovered by the secretary of state. He published his decision despite representations from local MP Anne Milton and others, urging him to delay publication until the public

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LOCATION: Ockham AUTHORITY: Guildford Borough Council

INSPECTOR: Clive Hughes PROCEDURE: Recovered appeal DECISION: Dismissed REFERENCE: APP/ Y3615/W/16/3159894

inquiry for the still-emerging local plan was over. The latest draft of the ELP proposes removing the site from the green belt and allocating it for “mixed-use

development of about 2,000 homes”. Responding to criticism from green belt campaigners, the council said it has “no other option” but to build on the green belt, which covers 89 per cent of the borough, to meet housing need. But Brokenshire afforded little weight to the emerging plan, noting that its examination was not yet complete. The scheme would therefore cause “very considerable harm” to the green belt, he found. Noting the council’s housing land supply of only 2.35 years, Brokenshire afforded significant weight to the delivery of more than 2,000 homes that the scheme

would bring (40 per cent of which would be aﬀordable). However, he also noted, it would also have a “severe impact” on the strategic road network between Ockham and the M25. He also found that extensive landscaping could not “disguise the basic fact that a new settlement in a rural area would inevitably harm its character”. Concluding, Brokenshire ruled that although there is a “pressing need” for housing in the area, “the scale of the requirement has not yet been fully tested in the local plan”. Deciding that the scheme’s harm to the green belt outweighed its beneﬁts, he dismissed the appeal.

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These are just a few of the 40 or so appeal reports that we post each month on our website: www.theplanner.co.uk/decisions

601 homes approved on green belt land in North Lanarkshire A reporter has approved 601 homes on green belt land in the Scottish Lowlands, ruling that the local housing shortfall should be addressed at once rather than waiting two years for the adoption of a new local plan.

£685m green energy facility turned down by Welsh planning secretary Lesley Griffiths has upheld an inspector’s recommendation to refuse plans for a green energy facility on the site of a former Royal Navy depot in Pembrokeshire, citing landscape and ecological harm. The appeal concerned the derelict former Royal Navy depot near Milford Haven. The appellant, Cyprus-based energy firm Egnedol, submitted plans for a large-scale £685 million green energy facility, which it said would be “an international standard-bearer for cutting-edge clean energy technology”. The scheme included a 50 megawatt biomass converter, an aquaculture facility including fish and prawn farms, algae and cheese production units, and ancillary research facilities. In his report, inspector Clive Neild found that the appellant’s landscape impact assessment underestimated the visual impact of two greenhouse units proposed as part of the scheme. Their construction would require a “cut-and-fill” technique that would “radically alter the landform”, he noted. Turning to the scheme’s impact on the local road network, Neild noted that although most of the construction equipment required would be delivered by barge, future operational staff would nonetheless increase road traffic to the site. The resulting risk to highway safety “cannot be discounted”, he ruled. Neild also found shortcomings in the appellant’s ecological data, particularly about the nearby Pembrokeshire Marine special area of conservation (SAC). After additional information submitted by the appellant failed to fully address these LOCATION: Milford Haven concerns, he ruled that it was not possible to discount AUTHORITY: Pembrokeshire likely harm to the SAC. Council After the decision was recovered, energy, planning INSPECTOR: Clive Neild and rural affairs secretary Lesley Griffiths agreed PROCEDURE: Recovered appeal with the inspector’s advice to reject the application, DECISION: Dismissed noting that Welsh ministers cannot grant permission REFERENCE: qA1314827 without certainty that the integrity of SACs would be preserved. The appeal was dismissed.

The appeal concerned 70 hectares of farmland in Overtown, a village in North Lanarkshire. The appellant sought permission to build up to 601 homes on the site. The council said the scheme would cause unacceptable erosion of the green belt, resulting in the coalescence of Overtown and nearby Gowkthrapple. Reporter David Buylla disagreed, ﬁnding “no extant sense of visual separation” between the two. The site also partly lies in a designated area of great landscape value (AGLV). Despite acknowledging that developing the homes, even in a “sensitive manner”, would introduce a sense of suburban encroachment, Buylla said the harm would be localised. The plan would “address a large component” of the council’s housing shortfall by concentrating development on a single large site, said Buylla, but they would not all be built within ﬁve years. Allowing the appeal could therefore “prejudge” the adoption of the council’s proposed new development plan, which

LOCATION: Overtown AUTHORITY: North Lanarkshire Council

INSPECTOR: David Buylla PROCEDURE: Recovered appeal DECISION: Allowed REFERENCE: PPA3202092

would otherwise be the preferred method for planning housing delivery. But noting that the plan was still at least two years from adoption, Buylla ruled that waiting for it to resolve the area’s housing shortfall was a “very much less attractive option” than it would have been if the plan’s adoption had been imminent, and so he advised approval. The Scottish ministers indicated that they would grant permission subject to an acceptable unilateral undertaking. Final permission was granted on 13 June.

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LANDSCAPE

C&D { C Roman remains prevent recovered 2,600-home Swindon scheme

LOCATION: Swindon AUTHORITY: Swindon Borough Council INSPECTOR: Diane Lewis PROCEDURE: Recovered appeal DECISION: Dismissed REFERENCE: APP/ U3935/W/16/3154437

The secretary of state’s decision concerned two planning applications that would form an urban extension to the east of Swindon: the “masterplan scheme” of 2,600 homes and associated infrastructure; and the “phase one scheme”, which proposed an initial 200 homes at the southern part of the site. During the appeal process, the appellant amended the plans, describing the changes as “modest”. After assessing both plans, inspector Diane Lewis disagreed, ﬁnding the

Privately funded Bognor Regis regeneration scheme approved A large-scale, mixeduse regeneration project in Bognor Regis inspired by Sir Richard Hotham has been approved, after an inspector found the plans represented “design excellence”.

Known as the Sir Richard Hotham Project, after the 18th century politician who played a key role in developing the town into a seaside resort, the scheme proposed a radical regeneration of a central part of the Bognor Regis seafront. Under the proposals, the performing arts hub known as the Regis Centre would be

changes “suﬃciently material that consultation would be essential”. Brokenshire agreed that “very considerable changes” had been made inappropriately, calling the appellant’s approach “contrary to procedural guidance”. He judged the appeal on the basis of the original plans. The council did not object to the principle of homes on the site, citing both its housing land supply of under 2.5 years and the allocation of the site for housing in its local plan.

The main issue was the scheme’s impact on Durocornovium, a Roman settlement and scheduled monument to the north of the appeal site. Brokenshire acknowledged that the scheme had no “direct physical impact” on the monument, but agreed with Lewis that the proximity of the residential development would have an “undue urbanising eﬀect”. Concluding that the scheme’s public beneﬁts did not outweigh this harm, he dismissed the appeal.

redeveloped to provide 6,000 square metres of commercial space, a 64-bedroom hotel and 192 ﬂats, 30 per cent of which would be aﬀordable. The existing Esplanade Theatre would make way for a 200-cover restaurant and a relocated skate park. A new 1,100-seat theatre and 48-bedroom hotel would replace the existing car park. The council voted 11 to 1 to refuse it, citing unsuitable design and unacceptable loss of parking. At the hearing, inspector Gibbons considered the scheme’s “excellent design” in detail. The proposed materials would “match and complement the local context”, he found, and the appearance of the buildings would be of “high quality”. On parking, Gibbons noted that the scheme would in fact increase the provision of public parking by 20 per cent. He dismissed council concerns

about the availability of public spaces, noting that these could be dealt with by a condition. He called the scheme’s housing provision “a very signiﬁcant positive”, in light of the council’s housing land shortfall. He also noted the wider beneﬁts of the £80 million of investment it would generate. Drawing these factors together, he allowed the appeal.

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

The housing secretary has rejected a major urban extension because of harm to the setting of an ancient Roman settlement, ruling that the appellant’s late amendments to the plan had breached planning rules.

LOCATION: Bognor Regis AUTHORITY: Arun District Council INSPECTOR: L Gibbons PROCEDURE: Hearing DECISION: Allowed REFERENCE: APP/ C3810/W/17/3178817

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DECISIONS DIGEST{

SUBSCRIBE to our appeals digest:

https://subs.theplanner. co.uk/register

390home scheme will have ‘extremely limited’ impact on cathedral The housing secretary has approved plans for homes on the edge of Ripon, despite National Trust opposition to the scheme’s impact on the setting of the grade-I listed Ripon Cathedral. bit.ly/planner0818-ripon

Oil and gas exploration approved in Yorkshire green belt

‘Optical illusion’ mural harmful to listed building

An exploratory well to investigate hydrocarbon reserves in South Yorkshire’s green belt has been granted temporary permission, after an inspector attached ‘great weight’ to government policy on mineral extraction. bit.ly/planner0818-oil

Retrospective permission for a mural painted on a grade II listed building in Weymouth has been refused after an inspector ruled that its “illusory eﬀect” detracted from the building’s architectural signiﬁcance. bit.ly/planner0818-illusion

Asking price of rural worker’s dwelling ‘out of reach’

Retail conversion of red phone box would harm setting of V&A

An inspector has removed a 1981 condition limiting the occupancy of a country home near Bristol to rural workers, ruling that the property’s £1.1 million price meant it was “out of reach” for most people eligible to live there. bit.ly/planner0818-bristol

An inspector has refused plans to convert an “iconic” red telephone box outside London’s Victoria and Albert museum into a “refreshments kiosk”, ﬁnding unacceptable harm to the area’s important heritage assets. bit.ly/planner0818-museum

Brokenshire approves Croydon school with ‘rooftop play deck’ The housing secretary has approved plans for a new 630-place primary school in Croydon, ruling that the proposed “rooftop play deck”and indoor games area made the scheme acceptable. bit.ly/planner0818-playdeck

Conversion refused after er appeal building collapsess An inspector has refused permission to convert a poultry ultry shed into a home on procedural dural grounds, after ﬁnding the building had collapsed on her visit to the site. bit.ly/planner-0818-poultry ry

Council cites brownfield aspect of affordable housing WMS

An inspector has refused 10 flats in Reading for failing to make an affordable housing contribution, after the council asserted that the ministerial statement on affordable housing should not apply to schemes on private garden land. bit.ly/ planner0818-brownfield

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An inspector has approved plans for 39 homes on green belt land near Guildford, Surrey, ruling that the scheme’s beneﬁt of “facilitating” the restoration of a listed farmhouse on the site amounted to very special circumstances. bit.ly/planner0818-guildford

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39home scheme allowed to ‘facilitate’ listed building restoration

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INSIGHT

LLegal landscape LONDON’S HOUSING MARKET – MEETING HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS Last month, the last of three major residential developments at Old Oak Common was approved, kick-starting construction at London’s biggest Opportunity Area and the UK’s largest regeneration scheme. Rising to 22 storeys, the buildings on either side of Scrubs Lane will act as gateway developments to the wider Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) area and will showcase the OPDC’s ambition to make the area into a new residential and commercial centre. Despite the aspirations of the OPDC for the area to provide 25,000 new homes, the sites’ locations adjacent to or near heritage assets – the Grand Union Canal, the grade I registered Kensal Green Cemetery, and a new OPDC conservation area – led to significant caution in the initial vision with a focus on the area’s ‘sensitive edges’. This resulted in initial feedback showing a preference towards buildings of less than half their eventual height. However, the final consents – the product of intense and productive discussion with the OPDC – show a very different, ambitious vision of the area. If the capital’s housing crisis is to be solved we

James Kon need to revisit policy and re-examine areas that are habitually considered unable to accommodate the impact of tall buildings (such as sensitive edges). Certainly we need to change the narrative that any impact to a designated heritage asset is negative – the NPPF focuses on harm to the signiﬁcance of an asset, not harm to the asset itself. There is a risk that strict devotion to the preservation of heritage assets at all costs will, to an extent, prevent much-needed development. This is particularly true in opportunity areas and other sites designated for highdensity redevelopment – while of course heritage assets should be protected, if proposals on these sites

“THERE IS A RISK THAT STRICT DEVOTION TO THE PRESERVATION OF HERITAGE ASSETS AT ALL COSTS WILL… PREVENT MUCHNEEDED DEVELOPMENT”

are deemed inappropriate in principle, where then would it be possible to have tall buildings? We should also think carefully about the impact of political ambition on longterm regeneration areas. Not only is there a huge cost for the infrastructure to support these developments (and the scope for negotiating developer contributions is being slowly eliminated by CIL), a real push towards a 50 per cent affordable requirement on top of these can have a significant effect on the viability of early stage schemes. This mismatch of expectations causes divergence and delays in the planning arena. For inspiration, we can look to the recent renaissance of Manchester, the UK’s fastest-growing metropolis. Manchester’s ‘tower boom’ shows no signs of slowing, with the recent drive for upwards development in Manchester hailed as the city’s second industrial revolution. From the city centre to Salford, there are currently four skyscrapers with a height of

over 100 metres, a further seven of a similar height under construction, and many more in the planning pipeline. While these developments have been informed and influenced by neighbouring heritage assets and sensitive edges, the chance to improve the wider areas by maximising density has been boldly taken – proving that building high can still positively engage with and enhance the surrounding, historic features and context of a place. Arguably, Manchester still needs a broader range of housing development to appeal to its varied demographic, and we await the new draft of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, which will give an idea of whether mayor Andy Burnham intends to follow Sadiq Khan’s lead in terms of affordable housing. Nonetheless, London has suffered far too long from a narrow approach to planning, which creates additional barriers and obstacles to building. The draft London Plan’s removal of the density matrix is perhaps the first step towards tackling this. However, following Manchester’s lead, we need to be unafraid of harnessing the opportunities and benefits of sustainably designed tall buildings to meet London’s ambitious housing delivery targets. In this way, the heightened expectations of London’s policymakers, decisiontakers, developers and residents can be met. James Kon is a legal associate of the RTPI and a senior associate at Asserson, the law firm that navigated the planning application process for all three schemes at Scrubs Lane, Old Oak Common

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B LO G S Green social housing recently built with a 3D printer by French engineers might point a way to saving costs and environmental damage – but how quickly can planners get up to speed on this innovation?

LEG I S L AT I O N S H O R T S Arlingham landowner guilty of breaches

Innovation and planning: can the planning system adapt to 3D printed houses? Nicola Gooch There has been a lot of discussion recently about new methods of construction, from modular, factory-led methods of construction to temporary homes made out of repurposed shipping containers. However, according to the BBC (see link below), France has just raised the bar – by completing (and occupying) the first 3D-printed home. The government seems to be in favour of innovative methods of construction as possible solution to the current housing crisis, with nods to encouraging the sector in the last few housing consultations. James Brokenshire, the current Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, even devoted a section of his latest policy exchange speech to modern methods of construction. The real question, however, is whether the planning system, in its current form, is ready for this level of innovation – and, if not, how quickly it will be able to adapt. From personal experience, on a number of projects that colleagues and I have been involved with, it seems that being the first ‘proof of concept’ scheme through the planning system is far from easy. Council officers and statutory consultees, who are already underresourced and overworked, have to be convinced of the safety, durability and wisdom of approving novel materials or concepts with which they are unfamiliar. Inevitably, this takes time. Quite a significant amount of it in fact, and ironically, it can take much longer for these schemes (some of which could be built out remarkably quickly) to get through to planning committee. Assuming that you can get all of the statutory consultees and the council officers on board, you then need to persuade the committee itself – which can be tricky in a three-minute speaking slot. Particularly if you need to explain the intricacies of construction materials, a new design concept, or the longevity of a 3D-printed home. Finally, there is the hurdle of the ‘standard’ conditions, policies or planning obligations – all of which may need to be individually adapted to a scheme which is far from standard. Given the almost universal acknowledgement that council planning departments are already overstretched and under-resourced – it is difficult to see how they can be expected to adapt to or embrace these innovations without further investment. It takes time to understand new technologies, materials and their implications. In the current system, time is one luxury the average planning officer does not appear to have. “A family in France has become the first in the world to move into a 3D-printed house. The four-bedroom property is a prototype for bigger projects aiming to make housebuilding quicker and cheaper. The team now believe they could print the same house again in only 33 hours.” – bit.ly/planner0818-3D Nicola Gooch is a senior associate – planning at Irwin Mitchell LLP

A landowner has been found guilty of breaching a planning enforcement notice to take down two buildings that were built without permission at his farm in Arlingham. Cheltenham Magistrates Court heard that a concrete office building and a large metal barn were built on what had been green field land with permission from Stroud District Council. A repair business for large lorries was being run from the site, while a paint spraying enterprise was being operated from inside a building on the site too. In court in July, David Turner, owner of Lower Milton End Farm, denied the breach. Residents’ concerns expressed in 2014 about large lorries that were negotiating narrow lanes leading to the farm had led to a council probe. The farm has permission for mixed agricultural use and bus storage, but not for the repair and paint spraying business, the office or metal barn. In 2016, the council issued a planning enforcement notice requiring Turner to take down the buildings and cease the lorry repairs and paint spraying operations. The court found Turner guilty of breaching the notice. He was fined £1,760, and ordered to pay costs of £4,220.90.

Council sees oﬀ challenge to local plan A Planning Court judge has dismissed a developer’s legal challenge to Epping Forest District Council’s decision to approve its local plan and submit the document to the communities secretary for independent examination. A site owned by claimant CK Properties (Theydon Bois) had been allocated for homes in the draft local plan for consultation in October 2016, but was excluded from the draft local plan approved by the council last December. The developer advanced four grounds of challenge: failure to comply with adopted Statement of Community Involvement; failure to make proposed submission documents available in accordance with regulation 19; that the decision made in December was based on an incomplete evidence, and was procedurally unfair. Mr Justice Supperstone rejected all four grounds, saying: “I consider that it is highly likely that the outcome for the claimant would not have been substantially diﬀerent if the conduct complained of had not occurred.”

High Court quashes village green registration The High Court has given what is reported to be the first ruling on a ‘trigger event’ for the purposes of town and village green registration. The case of Cooper Estates Strategic Land Ltd and Wiltshire Council concerned the council’s decision, as the registration authority under the Commons Act 2006, to register land at Royal Wootton Bassett as a village green. The court heard the 380 square-metre triangle of land of near Vowley View and Highfold, “had appeared to be an amenity space in an establishing area of housing, or at least was so until the fencing and gate, which had been installed by the claimant in 2006, was locked in 2015”. The landowner said the bid to register the land was not valid as policies CP1 and CP2 of Wiltshire Core Strategy 2015, which identified the land for potential development, provided a ‘trigger event’ under s.15C of the act. The council, it added, acted unfairly in failing to arrange for a public inquiry to investigate the issues before deciding whether to accept the application for registration. David Elvin QC upheld the first claim, but rejected the second, He ordered the site to be deleted from the register.

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NEWS

RTPI {

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

How one local planning team demonstrates impact to councillors The new Value of Planning toolkit – developed by RTPI Cymru and Welsh Government – is a tool to capture the economic, social and environmental value of planning delivered by local authorities in Wales. Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council was one of the councils that trialled the toolkit. Here, Judith Jones MRTPI, its head of planning and countryside, explains its benefits. In taking part in the pilot exercise, I had the opportunity to test a tool that helps promote the value of planning to a range of stakeholders. This is particularly important in times of budget pressure to evidence the investment and resources required for a robust planning system that delivers social, economic and environmental benefits and creates the places where people want to live and work.

Calculating the value generated by planners The tool and its ‘Value Dashboard’ allows users to calculate the value generated by planners in a range of ways, including developers’ contributions to public infrastructure and projects, recreational benefits as a result of open spaces, and land value uplift. The pilot gave me the chance to influence what infographics would be useful and how the information would be presented in terms of format and layout to get the attention of the reader. In so doing, it was important the costs (in terms of staff and consultants) were clearly shown so that these were balanced against the benefits. In testing the tool, it became apparent that it would be useful to build flexibility into certain fields, such as land value or number of dwellings in a given area, so local data could be used in place of the ‘all Wales average’ to make the output more locally distinctive, producing a true local value of planning.

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Adding value: council’s planners have been at the heart of Merthyr Tydﬁl town centre transformation

Easy and quick to use The tool is very easy and relatively quick to use. The survey data (number of applications, permissions, Local Development Plan designations etc.) can be inputted in little over an hour using your planning application data and local development plan base data. Compared with other measures of the planning system, this provides a more valuable and useable output for the amount of time invested. It provides key headlines in snapshot form captured on an A4 ‘dashboard’, which can be inserted into performance reports and committee reports. We’ve also used it for staﬀ and senior management brieﬁngs to demonstrate the value of planning.

Showing planners’ impact to councillors One of the main ways I will be using the tools is to show councillors the impact and beneﬁt of the diﬃcult decisions they have made during the year. The outputs achieved from their decisions to invest in the planning service (rather than other areas of the council), or decisions taken

on major or contentious decisions. The tool conveys how the granting of planning permission increases land values and provides an insight, not previously portrayed in this way into the economic and social benefits that planning delivers. The dashboard gives an easy-to-read summary of what has been delivered over the year and the financial value planning created. This includes the number of applications received and the permissions granted, which provides an indication of the investment planned for the area. Similarly, infographics in the toolkit highlight completed developments, including the type of development, to give an insight into the amount of investment that has taken place. The level of Community Infrastructure Levy and S106 contributions received along with the categories of spend are also shown. ‘Dashboard B’ is an editable version of the tool that allows you to provide commentary with more detail or highlight key areas that you might be delivering in your council’s corporate plan. In times of austerity the tool is particularly useful in showing how planning contributes to the well-being goals in Wales and in so doing both promotes the value of planning and justifies the need for planning departments to be adequately resourced so the council can meet its duties under the act.

Proving planning’s ‘widest’ impact It also gives you the ability to focus on the contributions made through some of the ‘wider indicators’ such as the health benefits of affordable housing provision and the amount of enforcement activity in the area. In using the tool it is important that you are confident about the figures and data used and that you can explain it, as the ‘total value of planning’ figure is intended to engage interest and discussion. n More information about the toolkit can be found here: bit.ly/planner0818-merthyr

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Editorial E: rtpinews@rtpi.org.uk

RTPI (switchboard) T: 020 7929 9494

Registered charity no. 262865 Registered charity in Scotland SCO37841

3 POINT PLAN Planners explain how they would change the Scottish planning system

Catherine Wood BSc (Hons) MRTPI Dip Surv STRATEGIC PLANNING & LAND DIRECTOR, GLADMAN DEVELOPMENTS LTD The time, money and resources spent disagreeing over the methodology for calculating five-year HLS figures between LAs and developers has been significant since SPP came into force in 2014. SPP requires at least a five-year supply of effective housing at all times. Calculations vary, which significantly alters overall supply levels. Publication by the government of the compounded rather than annualised method is needed, the method supported in recent LDP examinations and appeals. New housing is opposed by many communities, negatively viewed and often reported on by politicians as ‘bad’ development, yet affordable targets are high. The face and acceptance of new housing has to change – it brings economic prosperity and long-term sustainability. If housing were to be considered infrastructure, i.e. an essential requirement, the need may be more easily met politically. Green belt is not an environmental designation but is used frequently as a reason to prevent new housing development. A national land classification could be established to grade the value of all land.

COMMITTEE PRIORITIES: RTPI SOUTH WEST Chair Suzanne D’Arcy MRTPI outlines the RTPI South West region’s three priorities for the next 6-12 months: To continue to support the professional needs of our planners with a wider choice of CPD opportunities To celebrate great planning achievements with the RTPI South West Awards for Planning Excellence To support the RTPI South West commissioned research into smart energy systems and the implications for the planning system RTPI South West provides a range of services for members in the region. As well as oﬀering aﬀordable seminars and events for professional development, we arrange social events, keep you up to date through newsletters and provide local information and networking opportunities. For 2018 we have been working to diversify the CPD opportunities for our members including the introduction of a multi choice CPD Day in May, site visits and more discussion/panel sessions.

1 Issue one definitive method for calculating fiveyear housing land supply across Scotland

2 Housing to become recognised as national infrastructure

3 Introduce a graded land use classification across Scotland to stop ‘green belt’ being used as an inhibitor to development

POSITION POINTS

ACCELERATING HOUSING DELIVERY The County Councils’ Network (CCN) report County Councils & Strategic Planning: A Review of Current & Emerging Practice calls for a reintroduction of strategic planning to closer align planning and infrastructure and to accelerate housing delivery. The RTPI thinks eﬀective strategic planning should be locally designed, encompass the full range of policies – not just housing – and be driven by strong incentives from central government. The institute wants to see strategic planning everywhere and it may not always be possible to wait for legislation to enable this. The RTPI agrees with the CCN that where there are minor legislative and bureaucratic bottlenecks, the government should remove these as soon as possible, especially where this can be done without primary legislation. n Read the full report: bit.ly/planner0818-ccn

LETWIN REVIEW: REPORT ON BUILD OUT RATE PUBLISHED The RTPI welcomes the publication of the draft analysis by the Letwin review of build out. In particular, we support the conclusion that a much greater variety of tenure and of types of home is needed on large sites. We have been saying this in our #16Ways campaign to solve the housing crisis and our work on getting councils building shows one way in which variety could be achieved. The RTPI is working with the Right to Build Task Force on increasing the variety of tenures through custom/self build. The RTPI agrees with the review that simply turning from large sites to small sites would not solve the build-out problem. The RTPI has indicated that the proposals in the NPPF regarding small sites are not sufficiently flexible to be effective. Large sites are important in ensuring infrastructure provision. n More information: bit.ly/planner0818-letwin

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NEWS

RTPI { RT PIWNNI IN TIEON : PY L&ANPNRIAC N GTIC E PLA NEAC GM TH EOR N E M B R S REFORM A N D LEG I S L ATI ON I N FOCUS

What can we learn from Singapore’s planning ‘laboratory’? TOM KENNY, RTPI ACTING DEPUTY HEAD OF POLICY AND RESEARCH

In this issue’s fascinating editorial, Me Kam Ng describes her discovery of “an active laboratory of planning theories and practices” in Singapore, describing the city-state as “the most loyal disciple of Ebenezer Howard”. She finds strong, proactive, long-term planning combining with creative placemaking from citizens, and both deep respect for planning theories and a desire to put them into practice. Greg Oulahen’s paper considers climate change adaptation in Canada, identifying five main barriers, including leadership deficits, insufficient financial and staff capacity, and poor collaboration. The paper highlights the ability of planners to address “complex issues that manifest at different spatial and temporal scales”. Yet it also points out this ability is limited where municipalities are given insufficient resources, or where there is inadequate coordination across government. In the comment section, John Pendlebury considers the mobilisation of narratives about heritage in the debate on Brexit.

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The city-state of Singapore

He describes how right-wing commentators can understand heritage in relation to a ‘mythic past’, how liberal discourse aims to create national identity based on diversity, and how neoliberal economics sees heritage as an economic good. The comment describes how each of these impacts the heritage sector. Other articles cover governance in Dutch planning, different understandings of democratic planning politics, the NHS Healthy Towns programme, and the Tea Party movement in the United States of America.

RTPI board game ‘fantastic addition’ to classroom, say teachers Place Makers – the RTPI’s free secondary school resource for pupils over 14 – is being tested in classes in the UK and Ireland.

So what do teachers think so far? “The Place Making resource is a fantastic addition to help the students discuss and debate the sustainability issues from different points of view. My hope is that students take what they learn with them in to the future and think about the issues of sustainability when a new development is taking place in the areas around where they live.” – Teacher, Bristol “I will be using the RTPI Place Makers pack in the summer term. It will prepare students for the requirements of the new GCSE and A-level courses and bring a fresh and modern approach to the subject as well as promote the route into geographical careers such as town planning.” – Teacher, Warwickshire “This fits exactly with several aspects of the Scottish geography curriculum as well as emphasising map skills and interpretation. I am very excited to see the resource and how we can use it in a classroom.” – Teacher, Clackmannanshire “I support nine schools as part of the London Legacy Development Corporation ‘closing the skills gap’ initiative. The planning process and legislation form a major part of this qualification at all levels and the game will really bring learning to life for them.” – Teacher, college in East London n Find out more here: bit.ly/planner0818-placemakers

n Planning Theory and Practice (volume 19, issue 3) is out now: rtpi.org.uk/ptp-subs

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RTPI Y ACTIVIT E PIPELIN

Current RTPI work – what the Institute is doing and how you can help us NEW RTPI TRAINING COURSE ON SUSTAINABILITY APPRAISAL ANNOUNCED Introduction to Sustainability Appraisal (Strategic Environmental Assessment) will take place in London on 30 October. This introductory masterclass explains how to fulﬁl the legal requirements of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Sustainability Appraisal (SA), and how to use the SEA/SA processes to improve plans. Book now: bit.ly/planner0818-sea

HELP THE RTPI TO INFLUENCE THE CONSERVATIVE AND LABOUR PARTIES AT PARTY CONFERENCES The Institute is running five events at this year’s nationwide party conferences. The fringe events offer the Institute an opportunity to maintain its high profile with politicians and stakeholders and discuss policy with politicians away from Westminster. This year’s events with the British Property Federation and Countryside are considering the role of devolution and infrastructure to deliver housing. The events are part of the RTPI’s ongoing engagement with policy-makers. More information on how to get involved: bit.ly/planner0818-parties

INDEPENDENT CONSULTANTS: SAVE THE DATE TO ‘MAKE A DIFFERENCE’ Following the success of last year’s inaugural Independent Consultants’ Networks Annual Conference in Oxford, the network moves proceedings north to the beautiful city of York this year. Expect another jam-packed line-up with speakers such as David Waterhouse from MHCLG looking at the new NPPF and Graham Gover evaluating the scope of S73 applications alongside a planning law update from Richard Wald of 39 Essex Chambers. Networking drinks will be held the night before the conference, plus this year there will be an additional walking tour for interested delegates. Do not miss the most important planning event in the calendar for sole traders. The conference will be held at Kings Manor on 15 November. For more information contact icn@rtpi.org.uk

SECURE YOUR TICKETS FOR THE RTPI YOUNG PLANNERS’ CONFERENCE Tickets are selling fast for the Young Planners’ Conference and Gala Dinner, which are being held in Nottingham on 2-3 November. More than 200 young planners across the UK will hear from a variety of speakers on the topic ‘Celebrating Planning for the Greater Good: how the profession responds to issues that aﬀect places and makes them better’. This year, the RTPI East Midlands Young Planners have produced the programme which includes a number of engaging ‘crash courses’ on topics including ﬁve year housing supply and calculating housing needs, planning for an ageing population, the new NPPF and what this means for ancient woodland and skills needed in public inquiries. Don’t miss the gala networking dinner on 2 November at the Blotts Country Club. www.rtpi.org.uk/ypc2018 and follow the discussion on Twitter #YPConf2018

RTPI NEWS

MEMBER DEATHS It is with great regret that we announced the deaths of the following members. We oﬀer our condolences to their families and colleagues. Philip Stevens William Ward Richard Colwell David Robins Peter Swinson John Jackson Robert Sutton Katherine Pailing Philip Browning David Lloyd Graham Boardman Harvey Pritchard Raja Mohd Ali Bin Raja Osman John Warren

South East Wales Scotland South West Scotland East England East Midlands South West North West East England Yorkshire Yorkshire Overseas Yorkshire

COUNCILS NEED MORE POWERS AND RESOURCES TO TACKLE UNAUTHORISED DEVELOPMENT Complexity and cost are preventing councils from tackling unauthorised developments in England, says a network of planning enforcement experts. Budget cuts – disproportionately focused on planning enforcement teams – have resulted in councils being unable to take necessary enforcement action on unauthorised developments and encampments, in particular traveller sites. This is “undermining public confidence in the planning enforcement system”, says the network of experts. The Royal Town Planning Institute’s National Association of Planning Enforcement (RTPI NAPE) has outlined a range of concerns in its response to a government consultation on unauthorised traveller sites. It says a now-closed government fund set up to provide funding for councils taking out injunctions – an order granted by a court to immediately stop unauthorised development – wasn’t used enough because of the excessive amount of paperwork required to access it. And budget cuts mean there is also a shortage of enforcement officers and a lack of expertise in how to use the range of powers available to them. RTPI NAPE chair Neil Whittaker MRTPI said: “Planning enforcement officers play a critical role in maintaining the integrity of the planning system by ensuring decisions made are upheld. Enforcement teams have been among the hardest-hit by years of budget cuts, making it increasingly difficult to do this important work. On top of this, PINS – the government agency responsible for ruling on enforcement appeals – is very slow. Some of us are waiting up to 57 weeks for a decision on an appeal and this making it very difficult for officers to do their jobs.” Read more: bit.ly/planner0818-nape

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