The Planner September 2018

SEPTEMBER 2018 NPPF 2.0: CAN IT DELIVER THE CHANGES NEEDED? // p.4 • WHY SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL FOR HOUSING // p.22 • SPATIAL PLANNING AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NATION’S HEALTH // p.26 • GAME THEORY AND URBAN PLANNING // 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

MASTER WORK DAVID RUDLIN ON THE CRAFT AND IMPORTANCE OF MASTERPLANNING

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THIS MONTH ON

SEPTEMBER

09 NEWS 4 Will the revised NPPF deliver?

8 The planning system is failing to protect Scotland’s heritage, says National Trust 9 Housing secretary publishes paper to improve social housing on signs 10 Sturgeon off £1.3bn deal for Edinburgh and southeast region

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OPINION

114 Chris Shepley: An a appeal on behalf of d distressed planner ge gentlefolk – please give ge generously 16 A Ashley Hayden: Is sust sustainable transport a myt myth?

16 Ta Tabitha Knowles: Aerod Aerodrome safeguarding is not fit for purpose 17 Rach Rachel White: ‘Sustain ‘Sustainable transport’?

It isn’t e electric vehicles 17 John A Acres: Can we put a valu value on landscape – and the planning that enhances iit?

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“THIS IS MEANT TTO BE BRITAIN, THE GREAT HOME­OWNING DEMOCRACY, BUT WE NOW HAVE LOWER RATES OF OWNER­ OCCUPATION FOR THE UNDER­40S, THAN FRANCE AND GERMANY” BORIS JOHNSON, FORMER FOREIGN SECRETARY

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FEATURES 18 David Rudlin discusses master developers, land value capture and the demise of design sensibility in planning 22 How suburbia can contribute to supplying the housing the nation needs. By Riëtte Oosthuizen 26 Hugh Barton asks whether the spatial planning decisions we make are bad for our health 34 Nations & Regions: The South East

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NEWS

Report { NATIONAL PLANNING POLICY FRAMEWORK

Will the revised NPPF deliver?

By Huw Morris When it finally came, many wondered what all the fuss had been about.

The draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) inspired huge interest when it was unveiled in March, with more than 29,000 responses to its consultation, and the government holding 10 regional engagement events and around 40 individual meetings.

After all that, Barton Willmore senior partner Mark Sitch MRTPI summed up the prevailing mood on the revised framework’s publication in July. “Disappointingly, there has been minimal change following consultation on the draft NPPF,” he says. “The industry – from local authorities, interested parties to developers – provided substantial feedback and it was expected to see some of this translated into the final revised NPPF. There are, however, no big surprises and no real changes.”

The NPPF’s focus remains firmly on housing. Disappointment aside, there is plenty within the document for the planning and development community to chew over – design, the housing delivery test, small sites, build to rent and social housing. But the perennial issue of whether planning has the resources to cope with the new regime remains.

DESIGN QUALITY

The revised framework places significant emphasis on design, with high-quality buildings and places seen as fundamental to the planning process.

The new NPPF particularly stresses high-quality design for new homes.

Housing and communities secretary James Brokenshire says local authorities

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should “have the confidence and engagement between applicants, tools” to refuse applications when communities, local planning authorities development does not prioritise design and other interests throughout the quality or complement its surroundings. process.”

The new framework reflects the Planning authorities should also emerging findings of Sir Oliver Letwin’s ensure that the quality of approved review of housing delivery and aims to development is “not materially give communities a greater say in the diminished between permission and design of developments. Councils are completion”, especially through the encouraged to make use of “innovative materials used. visual tools” and allow residents to see “I am clear that quantity must never schemes before they are built. compromise the quality of what is built, Adopted neighbourhood plans should and this is reflected in the new rules,” “demonstrate clear local leadership” says Brokenshire. in design quality and reflect “the HOUSING DELIVERY TEST AND STANDARD community’s expectations on how new development will visually contribute METHODOLOGY to their area”. Local authorities should apply design policies “in Paragraph 11 of the the most appropriate way NPPF introduces a new “I AM CLEAR in their area, recognising presumption in favour of that they are well placed to THAT QUANTITY sustainable development, MUST NEVER know their area’s unique which references a COMPROMISE THE character and setting”. housing delivery test to QUALITY OF WHAT The framework says: apply from November IS BUILT” – JAMES 2018.

“Being clear about design BROKENSHIRE expectations, and how The test will measure these will be tested, is the number of homes essential for achieving created against local this. So too is effective housing need and

I M AG E S | I STO C K

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PLAN UPFRONT

“PLANNERS’ SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE AND PROFESSIONALISM WILL BE KEY TO REALISING [THE NPPF’S] ASPIRATIONS” – VICTORIA HILLS

penalise authorities that under-deliver against various thresholds over a three-year period. This includes applying the presumption in favour of sustainable development where delivery is below 75 per cent of the housing requirement from 2020.

Local authorities failing to demonstrate a five-year housing land supply or not meeting delivery targets will trigger the presumption in favour of sustainable development for housing applications.

“It places greater responsibility on local authorities to deliver target housing numbers and includes sanctions on councils failing to meet housebuilding targets in their local plans; effectively rendering its adopted local plan policies as out of date and triggering the paragraph 11 presumption in favour of development,” says Shoosmiths planning partner Tim Willis.

Matt Thomson, head of planning at the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), believes that the new test will result in almost all local plans becoming out of date within two years.

“It is a speculative developers’ charter and will lead to the death of the planled system,” he says. “Without a local plan, councils and communities have little control over the location and type of developments that take place.”

Local authorities also have major grumbles about the new policy.

“It is hugely disappointing that the government has not listened to our concerns about nationally set housing targets, and will introduce a delivery test that punishes communities for homes not built by private developers,” says Local Government Association (LGA) chairman Lord Porter.

The standardised methodology for assessing housing needed has not been significantly amended, however, the government will consider “adjusting” the method after the household projections are released in September 2018.

SMALL SITES

The revised framework expects planning authorities to accommodate

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Report { VICTORIA HILLS MRTPI, CHIEF EXECUTIVE AT THE RTPI “We were pleased that so many RTPI members (around 200 actively engaged in the consultation process. They should take credit for some of the improvements we have seen, particularly in making some policies more implementable, like on small sites, and also the reintroduction of the reference to the Climate Change Act 2008. The strength of the revisions lie in fine-tuning and clarification – such as the presumption in favour of development, which members have asked for.

“However, questions over strategic alignment between sections of the framework still remain, e.g. transport and housing.

Planners’ skills, knowledge and professionalism will be key to realising its aspirations and we’ll continue to engage with the government in areas our members feel more needs to be done to improve the planning system.”

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at least 10 per cent of their housing requirement on “small and medium sites” – up to one hectare through brownfield land registers and development plans. Previously, the figure was 20 per cent. The 10 per cent target may not be achievable in all circumstances, the framework acknowledges, stating that relevant plan policies should detail “strong reasons” for not hitting the target.

“This is a relatively large change and is probably to provide more flexibility in the identification of these sites, both in terms of number and size,” says TLT head of planning and partner Katherine Evans MRTPI. “Another notable revision of the NPPF is that paragraph 69 reflects the change to small and medium-sized sites in the requirement for neighbourhood planning groups to consider opportunities to allocate this size of site. This broadens the scope for development opportunities.”

rent, must be firing on all cylinders,” says the British Property Federation’s (BPF) real estate policy director Ian Fletcher.

“Local authorities across the country must understand the sector’s benefits including its commitment to offering family-friendly tenancies, such as for three years, to those customers who want or need security.”

BUILD TO RENT SOCIAL RENT

As part of the government’s drive for a greater mix of tenures, build to rent Here there is something of a U-turn, is recognised as its own asset class with “social rent’ retained within the with local authority plans and policies government’s definition of affordable needing to reflect demand for such housing. Affordable housing is now property alongside social rent and defined as homes where "the rent is set private ownership. in accordance with the government’s Build to rent schemes will count rent policy for social rent or affordable towards the affordable housing rent, or is at least 20 per cent below allocation for an area. This allows build local market rents". to rent sites to provide The maximum annual new affordable private household income of eligible rent homes.

“IT [THE HOUSING buyers of starter homes “With a target – £80,000, or £90,000 in DELIVERY TEST] of 1.5 million new IS A SPECULATIVE London – has now been homes by 2022, the removed and left as a matter DEVELOPERS’ government has rightly for secondary legislation.

CHARTER AND acknowledged that While cautiously WILL LEAD TO THE all housing tenures, welcoming the move, DEATH OF THE including both homes PLAN­LED SYSTEM” National Housing Federation for sale and build to (NHF) head of policy James – MATT THOMSON I M A G E | A P S /A L A M Y / C R O W N C O P Y R I G H T

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PLAN UPFRONT

OTHER KEY POINTS IN THE NPPF • On the green belt, the final guidance is mostly unchanged from the draft published in March.

Local authorities are urged to “exhaust all other reasonable options for development” before considering altering a green belt boundary. It stresses that “considerable evidence” would be needed to alter any such boundary. Where it is necessary to release green belt land for development, plans should give “first consideration” to land that has been previously developed and is well served by public transport.

• Strategic policies will need to be reviewed at least every five years where housing need changes significantly.

Prestwich noted that the government describes other types of housing as affordable, including starter homes. “But these are unlikely to be of any help to struggling renters or homeless families,” he added. “The government needs to focus its support and investment in social housing."

“THERE ARE NO BIG SURPRISES AND NO REAL CHANGES” – MARK SITCH

AND FINALLY…

For all the revised framework’s reforms, one major problem remains – resources for planning.

“We must recognise the significant pressure the new NPPF requirements will put on local authority planning teams,” says RTPI president John Acres. “It is imperative that chief executives, council leaders and politicians resource planning departments sufficiently, particularly as they will now be held more accountable under the housing delivery test and are expected to carry out more regular reviews of their plans.”

This point was also made by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), with its president, Ben Derbyshire, urging “the government to give planners the resources, tools and power to raise the bar of quality design in the system”.

Resources aside, the sense of disappointment is palpable.

“After all the cries to ‘free the NPPF’, with a couple of exceptions the new policy looks on the surface to be fairly similar to the draft released earlier in the year, not to mention the old one,” says Rapleys partner Jason Lowes MRTPI. “The success of the NPPF will only be clear as it is implemented and how far it goes to helping meet the government’s housing delivery ambitions in the long term – and it is hoped that we don’t look back in a few years with hindsight and regard this as a real missed opportunity.”

• Large-scale development must be well designed and located, and backed by infrastructure. The supply of large numbers of new homes “can often be best achieved” through new settlements and “significant extensions” to towns and villages.

The final framework reinserts a reference to garden city principles omitted from the draft. The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) said this was an important “starting point for unlocking a new generation of highly sustainable places that meet housing, employment and quality-of-life needs while promoting innovation”.

• Local authorities and applicants should consider Planning Performance Agreements for particularly large and complex schemes.

• Diversification is key to the long-term vitality and viability of town centres, enabling them to “respond to rapid changes in the retail and leisure industries”. Policies should clarify “the range of uses permitted in such locations, as part of a positive strategy for the future of each centre”.

• When the impact of proposed development on a designated heritage asset is assessed, great weight should be given to the asset’s conservation “irrespective of whether any potential harm amounts to substantial harm, total loss or less than substantial harm to its significance”.

• Unlike its predecessor, the revised framework says planning policies should provide for storage and distribution operations “at a variety of scales and in suitably accessible locations”.

Employment is reinstated under the land uses to be covered by strategic policies.

• Development that leads to the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats, such as ancient woodland and ancient or veteran trees, should be refused unless there are wholly exceptional reasons “and a suitable compensation strategy exists”.

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News { The planning system is failing to protect Scotland’s heritage, says National Trust The National Trust for Scotland has claimed that the planning system is riding roughshod over the country’s natural and historic heritage – citing developments proposed for Culloden and approval for the Coul Links golf project at Embo in Sutherland as examples.

The conservation charity said the plans could be disastrous for both locations. Culloden is the site of one of the most significant battles in Scotland’s history and is a designated a conservation area, while Coul Links falls within the Loch Fleet Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is home to rare coastal habitats.

The organisation’s chief executive Simon Skinner has written to the country’s newspapers, asking: “Do we want to protect our outstanding historical places and natural heritage or not? Do designations to protect heritage such as Conservation Areas

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and SSSIs still have any meaning?”

He said that developers would always argue that “pristine” sites are better for development because they are cheaper to build on. “They will always play the trump card of claiming that jobs and economics outweigh the loss of history and habitats,” he said.

“We would do well to remember that the economic benefit to Scotland from tourism directly attributable to our outstanding places of beauty is far larger than the entire agriculture and fisheries sectors combined. Others seem to value our heritage even if we don’t always appear to.”

The trust is arguing that the government’s planning bill, currently under consideration in the Scottish Parliament, should be amended to provide stronger protection for the country’s historic and natural heritage.

National park funding reinstated as Wales rethinks its AONB priorities The Welsh Government has reversed its decision to cut the budgets of the country’s three national parks and announced a set of priorities for the parks and the organisations that manage the five Welsh Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs).

Environment minister Hannah Blythyn said: “I want to provide security of resources for the designated landscapes during these uncertain times. In order to deliver on these priorities, I am reinstating the national park authorities’ budgets to last year’s (2017/18) level, which means an additional £1.5 million over two years.”

The priorities for the designated landscape areas include a refreshed woodland strategy, halting the loss of biodiversity, ensuring a greater focus on green energy and decarbonisation, realising the economic potential of landscape, and boosting tourism and outdoor recreation.

Emyr Williams, chief executive of the Snowdonia National Park Authority, said: “The statement includes some exciting ambitions, including the management of natural resources and developments in health and well-being – areas that we have already identified for future development.

“We haven’t yet received details of the financial settlement, however, the news that cuts will be curtailed is positive news. Cuts will continue to impact national park authorities due to the pressures of inflation, however, the effect on Snowdonia National Park Authority services won’t be clear until further discussions with the government have taken place.”

I M AG E S | I STO C K / A L A M Y / S H U T T E RSTO C K

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PLAN UPFRONT

Housing secretary publishes paper to improve social housing James Brokenshire has published the government’s social housing green paper, which aims to empower residents and tackle the stigma surrounding social housing.

The government wants to rebalance the relationship between tenants and landlords, and ensure that social housing can be both a “safety net and springboard into home ownership”.

The green paper sets out five core themes: ⦁ Tackling stigma and celebrating thriving communities. ⦁ Expanding supply and supporting home ownership. ⦁ Effective resolution of complaints. ⦁ Empowering residents and strengthening the regulator. ⦁ Ensuring that homes are safe and decent.

Housing secretary James Brokenshire said: “Our green paper offers a landmark opportunity for major reform to improve fairness, quality and safety for residents living in social housing across the country.”

Victoria Hills MRTPI, chief executive at the RTPI, said: “It’s not good enough to just focus on getting overall housing numbers up to 300,000 a year – we must also focus on the type of housing we are building. New social homes must be a priority. In the context of the loss of 150,000 social homes over the last five years, local authorities need more powers, including further devolved funding and financing for social housing.” n A consultation on the proposals will run until 6 November. It can be found here on the UK Government website: bit.ly/planner0918-consult n More reaction to the green paper can be found on The Planner website: bit.ly/planner0918-reaction PPROPOSALS IN THE SOCIAL HOUSING GREEN PAPER INCLUDE:

Belfast office scheme includes the capital’s first roof-top running track A roof-top running track features in the detailed proposals for the £75 million regeneration and restoration of the listed former Belfast Telegraph offices in the capital’s city centre.

A full planning application and associated listed building consent on behalf of developer Bel Tel LLP has been submitted to Belfast City Council by planning consultancy Turley.

The building was bought in 2016 by a partnership between the local authority and property firm McAleer and Rushe.

They are proposing to refurbish the Victorian redbrick property and demolish the non-listed buildings on the Royal Avenue site, replacing them with a new office block.

The development is designed to provide some 21,370 square metres of workspace on seven floors as well as shops, food outlets and an atrium, which will be open to the public.

Brokenshire launches rough sleeping strategy The government aims to halve rough sleeping on England’s streets by 2022 and end it completely by 2027, said housing secretary James Brokenshire as he launched the new strategy.

The £100 million three-pronged plan is to be developed across government and in conjunction with the Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel*, which comprises representatives from the homelessness sector and local government.

Proposals focus on preventing people becoming homeless in the first place, while those living on the streets will get “swift, targeted support” to help get them into long-term accommodation, as well as giving them the support they need to tackle issues they may have, explained the government.

It said a housing-led approach to ensure that people have their own home is “vital to restoring dignity and a sense of security, hope and recovery”. The strategy follows the announcement of £30 million in funding for areas with the most rough sleepers and the launch of the Housing First pilots. The three tenets are:

⦁ New reforms to make it easier for tenants to progress into

home ownership, such as allowing them to purchase as little as 1 per cent of their property each year through the government’s Shared Ownership programme. ⦁ Steps to speed up the complaints process, providing access to effective dispute resolution when something goes wrong, and giving tenants more support in accessing the redress options available to them. ⦁ Allowing councils to continue to have choice over their use of fixed-term tenancies, enabling them to offer residents greater security in their homes.

⦁ Prevention: Understanding the issues that lead to rough

sleeping and providing timely support for those at risk. ⦁ Intervention: Helping those already sleeping rough with swift

support tailored to their individual circumstances. ⦁ Recovery: Supporting people to find home and rebuild their lives.

The government also plans to review the laws relating to homelessness and rough sleeping, including the Vagrancy Act. n Read reactions to the strategy here: bit.ly/planner0918-rough

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NEWS

News { Irish coast-to-coast greenway Sturgeon signs off £1.3bn deal strategy makes waves for Edinburgh and SE region Irish ministers have confirmed that a walking and cycling route stretching coast to coast and possibly linking Dublin with Galway is the hoped-for centrepiece of the government’s national greenway strategy just published.

In total, €53 million funding is being made available for regional and national projects over the next three years.

Transport minister Shane Ross is quoted in the Irish Times as saying: “It is certainly our ambition that there will be at least one greenway that is coast to coast”.

He later explained that tourism research indicated the need for such a project and stated his preference for a Dublin-toGalway route. The government is looking for the development of greenways at scale, involving developments or extensions of at least 20km long. The development of smaller more local greenways will not be funded under this strategy.

National greenways are routes that are 100 kilometres while regional greenways would typically be 20km.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon has formally signed off her administration’s investment in the £1.3 billion Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.

The Scottish and UK governments will each invest £300 million over the next 15 years.

The Scottish Government’s investment includes: ⦁ £60 million towards a Data Driven Innovation programme of investment in economic infrastructure across the region; ⦁ £65 million towards a regional housing programme, including the creation of a new housing company and infrastructure funding supporting the delivery of 41,000 new homes; ⦁ £120 million for transport improvements to the Sheriffhall Roundabout; ⦁ £20 million for public transport improvements in west Edinburgh; ⦁ £25 million for a regional employability and skills programme; and ⦁ £10 million towards a new concert venue for the city.

The administration is also committing £5 million to boost innovative programming and skills development opportunities across the capital’s 11 major festivals between 2018 and 2023.

Tammy Swift-Adams, director of planning at industry body Homes for Scotland, said: “To really reap the benefit of this deal, the region’s councils must match that ambition with bold planning for housing, as advocated in the recent examination report for the new South East Scotland Strategic Development Plan (SESplan 2).”

Government lodges plans for 800-home village in Swansea

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Outline proposals for the 800home Pentre Felindre development on the outskirts of Swansea have been submitted by consultancy WYG on behalf of the Welsh Government.

The government has claimed the scheme would be “an exemplar Welsh village for the 21st century”.

A new primary school, playing fields, local centre, recreation and other community facilities are also planned The new neighbourhood is earmarked for part of a 190-hectare location allocated as one of six mixed-use strategic development areas in the emerging local development plan.

The land at Felindre is owned by the Welsh Government (134

hectares) and Swansea City Council (56 hectares). The latter has already set out some of the site as a yet unoccupied business park – Parc Felindre.

The residential scheme is proposed for land that is now largely in agricultural use.

Under WYG’s proposals more than half of the 77-hectare site would be left undeveloped with the three ‘discrete’ built elements of the village arranged around existing woodland.

The government and the city council have formed a joint venture to promote the strategic development area, which was once home to a tinplate works, now demolished. The city centre and coastline lie 6.5km to the south of the area.

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LEADER COMMENT

Opinion onn Too much of the same in the frame?

– The definition of madness, as I’m sure we are all familiar with by now, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It’s a phrase that niggled away at me as we in The Planner office absorbed the steady stream of commentary, both pro and anti, following the long-awaited publishing of the revised National Planning Policy Framework last month. Does NPPF 2.0 represent the ‘silver bullet’ required - or is it too much a mild rearranging of the same old chairs?

The launch of the process, lest we forget, could hardly have been more high profile with former geography student and current prime minister Theresa May taking to the stage to reiterate her government’s commitment to the NPPF and how its revision would help address such priorities as the housing crisis. A comprehensive consultation exercise was

Martin Read initiated, fuelling more than 29,000 responses and understandably fuelling anticipation amongst many that this time, more than any other time, they’d get it right.

Yet there’s a sense that many are underwhelmed at the rather conservative document that’s emerged, as our reporting this month makes clear.

Yes, quality of design is theoretically given a boost with local authorities encouraged to make use of emerging IT tools to

allow greater community engagement and resident awareness of suggested plans. This, though, seems the likely impact of new tech in any case, authorities incentivised to make the most of its ability to do more for less.

And listen to the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)’s Matt Thomson. He’s in no doubt about the effect that a new presumption in favour of sustainable development, set for introduction this November and essentially speeding up the process, might have - “a speculative developers’ charter” are his

"THERE’S A SENSE THAT MANY ARE UNDERWHELMED AT THE RATHER CONSERVATIVE DOCUMENT THAT’S EMERGED, AS OUR REPORTING THIS MONTH MAKES CLEAR."

words; local plans out of date within two years his prediction. Meanwhile, the standardised methodology for assessing housing needed has not been significantly amended, although government has said it will look again once fresh household projections are released in September 2018.

So, fresh accelerant in the system perhaps – but also a sense that no “killer app” has emerged out of the process.

Rather, it’s more a case of a tweak here, a tweak there.

It’s to be hoped that, in fact, while there may be disappointment at certain elements of the document, what will ultimately emerge from the whole is indeed a policy framework for the 21st century that genuinely allows planners and planning departments, the time and space to produce truly effective work.

Because the definition of madness, as I’m sure we are all familiar with by now, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

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AUDIO EVENT

Live webinar redefining how we democratise the consultation process?

• What do people still get wrong about the fundamentals of engagement?

Confirmed Participants:

Establishing Effective Engagement – Consultation in 2018 On Thursday 26th September, The Planner – in association with the developers of the community engagement platform Commonplace (www. commonplace.is) – will debate the best ways in which planners can manage truly effective consultation processes. The discussion will take place during an hour-long live webinar, to be broadcast at 12:00 midday. To register and listen for free, follow the link at the bottom of this page.

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The newly revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) makes much of the value in meaningful, ‘effective’ engagement. But in 2018, what does – and should – ‘effective engagement’ really involve? How can local participation be made genuinely easy for all?

Our studio guests will consider the application of the word ‘effective’ in planning policy and the potential for its misuse or misinterpretation, before going on to discuss the merit and evolving impact of IT on the ways in which we consult and engage in 2018. We’ll also be asking our listening audience for their questions and opinions as the event progresses.

Over the course of an hour-long broadcast, we’ll ask: • Just how effective is the word ‘effective’?

What issues of interpretation does its use typically cause? We’ll be including a legal perspective on the issue.

• How is community engagement evolving? What influences are social, demographic and technological changes having on the process?

• What impact are new forms of analysis such as sentiment mapping having on results of consultation exercises?

• To what extent is handheld technology

Martyn Evans, Non-Executive director, Commonplace Martyn has twenty years experience in the property business, challenging the system to make a difference by emphasising people, life and places ahead of bricks, mortar, glass and steel.

A non-exec director at Commonplace, Martyn is also the estate development director at Darlington hall, deputy chair of the London Festival of Architecture and founder of the Young Architects and Developers Alliance Sue Manns, Sue Manns Associates A fellow of the RTPI, Sue Manns is standing for the institute’s vice-presidency and works as consultation and engagement specialist leader, providing expertise and guidance to public and private sector clients on the delivery of good public engagement in the planning system. She’s also been a project leader for a range of major commercial, residential and infrastructure projects. Sue will be one of our interviewees during the event.

(Other participants to be named)

How You Can Take Part: We welcome readers’ own views on this topic in advance of the event – we’ll incorporate all we can into the discussion.

To listen, you’ll need to register ahead of the 12:00pm 26th September start time by going to this link: https://www.theplanner.co.uk/news/ commonplace-engagement-webinar I M AG E S / I STO C K

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CORRESPONDENCE

Inbox

YOUR NEWS, VIEWS AND QUESTIONS F E E D B A C K

Daniel Scharf – Under the topic ‘Housing the Nation’ at the 2018 Planning Convention, Richard Bacon MP described (p,22 Planning August 2018) the role that could and should be played by custom building under the 2015 Act, giving lots of facts and figures implying a substantial latent demand.

The idea of custom-splitting at scale does not appear to have negotiated the ‘proof of concept’ hurdle described by Nicola Gooch in the same issue (p43) despite it having most if not all of the advantages of custom-building but, by definition, taking place using existing buildings, services and infrastructure.

Sub-dividing some of the millions of under occupied dwellings could enable the downsizing-in-place of some of the 7 million households expressing a wish to occupy less space, reduce the demand for scarce materials (see report on minerals at p4) and labour. The Letwin Review has identified a shortage of bricklayers, but there would be plenty of work for and less shortage of other building trades.

Sub-divisions including a ‘green refit’ (and heating the space actually being used) would reduce fuel poverty and eat into the 20million sub-standard dwellings needing an energy efficiency upgrade by 2040.

Units could be rented (or rent-to-buy) to make them affordable. No garden land/ biodiversity would be lost and, in settlements adjacent

to or surrounded by Green Belt, the potential for custom-splitting should be explored to pass the test in the NPPF that the LPA has examined fully all other reasonable options for meeting its identified need for development. However, until the planning system becomes a major promoter of custom-splitting, and that could be triggered when more people become aware of the statutory self-build registers and obligations these impose on LPAs to provide serviced land, there is little or no prospect of reaching the 300,000 new dwellings per year to ‘House the Nation’.

Daniel Scharf MRTPI (dantheplan.blogspot.com)

Patrick Earle – Although retired, I have become involved in helping the community deal with a housing scheme as volunteer and emphasising that I'm no longer chartered. Is it possible to have a bit more detail on the Worcestershire case recently reported where a 176 dwelling development was rejected - the inspector endorsing the communities objections to the design quality of the scheme?

Patrick Earle (Retired)

Hi Patrick - our appeal stories are based on the decision letter written by the inspector in question.

Matt Moody has since sent you a PDF of Inspector David Nicholson's decision on this case. You can

find further information by searching the local authority's website - in this case Malvern Hills District Council - with the application reference, which is always included in the appeal decision letter.

It’s worth saying that all of the appeals decisions that we report every day, as well as those you’ll find in our printed digest (see p.38 this month), detail the specific individuals, location and organisations involved, as well as a link to the original decision letter. - Ed.

Christopher Bailey – I read your recent series of articles about how to improve the Planning System and thought I’d offer you my thoughts.

Step one, Recognise the limitations of the system.

Step Two, be a planner not a tax collector. Step Three, Understand people live in the built environment not the so called natural environment. And Step Four, Understand transport rules everything. With these in mind my suggestions are: 1 Stop being negative to development and treat development as the pinnacle of human endeavour instead of thinking of the built environment as something to be allowed only under direst provocation.

2 Stop using the planning system to raise cash.

Confront the government pointing out the predictable and negative consequences of such an approach 3 Plan to develop where the

people who live in the built environment have the best of the environment instead of the least worst.

4 Give planners the power to plan transport infrastructure and require it is delivered.

Christopher Bailey (Clockhouse Town Planning)

Michael Chang – I am writing because I am continuously amazed at how little, if at all, planners working in non-public and non-private sectors receive coverage or are recognised for their contribution to good planning. To many people’s surprise, there is a large cohort of planners, like myself, working in NGOs, third sector organisations, flying the flag for planning and planners, when we work on projects engaging non-planners.

Regular news items have focused on the achievements of private sector consultants and public sector planners.

While their contribution should be welcomed as they do work on the coal-face of the planning process, charitable sector planners work in the background to bring non-planners up to speed with planning current events with the aim to allow them properly participate in the process, such as through health issues. Much of the work that we do are not the day jobs of public and private sector planners, and arguably our contribution make their jobs more fulfilled and rounded. Raising the profile of these planners in The Planner will be greatly appreciated!

Michael Chang MRTPI HonMFPH

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20/08/2018 12:45

CHRIS SHEPLEY

O Opinion An appeal on behalf of distressed planner gentlefolk – please give generously I am grateful to The Planner for this chance to make an appeal on behalf of the Ebenezer Howard Home for Distressed Planners. It’s a sort of planning appeal, really.

There are many individuals caught up in planning who simply find themselves unable to cope. The home, which provides shelter from the modern high-speed, target-driven, resource-starved world of local authority planning, has seen many sad case histories. But none more disturbing than that of Arthur Smallpiece, who prefers to remain anonymous.

Arthur is addicted to development management.

He was first attracted to it, like many, by the romance, the adventure, the danger, the beautiful women. At first all was well. He’d been appointed mainly to clean the toilets and make coffee. But as resources were tight he was also asked to deal with a few applications.

After all, he had GCSEs in woodwork and drama.

Problems soon began.

He started to deal with applications straight away, even though he knew the office policy was to send them back and ask for more information. He began sniffing the habitats regulations, and would slip away to the lavatory with the NPPF. He recalled the first time he actually determined an application. It was the ultimate experience. He stayed late one night. For a few delicious moments he allowed his fingers to hover over the keyboard, savouring the moment. Then he allowed a change of use from a chip

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public examination, which found her to be sound, subject to a review within five years.

She soon ran off with a woman from Wales.

And so Arthur ended up in Ebenezer Howard. I’m sure you can find it in your hearts to feel compassion for people like him – vulnerable victims of an oppressive and uncaring system. If you have any unwanted planning applications, a bit of old green belt, the odd prior approval that you don’t need, send them to Arthur (if you prefer to send cash, it’s probably best to send it to me). Please give generously.

shop to an old folks’ home.

With several conditions!

He exploded with joy. It was the feeling he imagined you would get when you lost your virginity, except that he didn’t know what that felt like because he hadn’t had time.

He began taking applications home with him.

He didn’t mean them any harm; he just wanted to be near them. Soon it was two or three a night, and eventually whole armfuls. His colleagues made things worse by helping him carry them to the lift and advising him not to bother bringing them back. One day, one of his recommendations to the planning committee was actually supported by members; another landmark moment, but the subsequent High Court challenge did take up a lot of his time.

Things went from bad to worse. His colleagues tried to

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“HE BEGAN SNIFFING THE HABITATS REGULATIONS, AND WOULD SLIP TO THE LOOS WITH THE NPPF” help. They tried promoting him, but it was too late; they sent him to meetings about the duty to cooperate, and introduced him to highway engineers, but he carried on and soon all his colleagues had fallen victim to restructuring and austerity.

He was now the entire Development Management Department.

As readers will know, this is typical of the modern planning authority. But soon it began to affect his family life.

He got his partner to dress up as an environmental impact assessment, and arranged a

• This is an amended version of a sketch in the Grotton Roadshow, which toured the country for many years trying to make planners laugh about planning. Older readers may recall it fondly.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the first show in Manchester. The appeal also appeared in Grotton Revisited by Steve Ankers, David Kaiserman, and myself. Nobody ever sent me any cash.

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

17/08/2018 17:58

Quote unquote FROM THE RTPI AND THE WEB

“The The council have suggested that horses are wild animals and do not require constant supervision. It is unclear on what basis it has reached this conclusion.”

INSPECTOR GRAHAM CHAMBERLAIN CONSIDERS THE MERITS OF A PERMANENT WORKER'S RESIDENCE AT AN ESSEX RIDING SCHOOL

“The fa fact that the counci council receives a disproport disproportionate number ber of plannin planning applications ns for 14 units unit suggests that at some developers de are deliberately deliberatel setting out to avoid affor ordable housing contributions” INSPECTOR D M YOUNG CONSIDERS WHETHER A HOUSING SCHEME WAS SPLIT IN TWO TO AVOID AFFORDABLE HOUSING CONTRIBUTIONS

“T “Trying T i to t design d i a masterplan without urbanism is like trying to design a garden without horticulture” DAVID RUDLIN, PRINCIPAL AND DIRECTOR OF URBED

“Kit Malthouse likened making progress with social housing to turning around a big tanker, but the changes confirmed so far are barely a course correction” VICTORIA HILLS MRTPI MRT CHIEF EXECUTIVE AT THE RTPI

“Let’s be clear, [the rough sleepers strategy] is a step forward and not a total fix for homelessness” POLLY NEATE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE AT SHELTER

“This is meant to be Britain, the gr great rea home-owning democracy, demo ocr but we now have llow lower rates of owneroccupation occup pat for the under40s, than th ha France and Germany.

Germ man That is a disgrace; and you y can’t expect young people peopl le to t be automatically symp sympathetic pa to capitalism wh when he they find it so tou tough ug to acquire capital the themselves.” em BORIS BORI IS JO JOHNSON, J EX FOREIGN SECRETARY

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

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

O Opinion

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Dr Ashley Hayden is a planning officer for Milton Keynes Council

Is sustainable transport a myth?

In July, th the government published its much-anticipated m revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). This has been described as one of the biggest shake-ups in the planning system.

But how will this change affect the planning landscape?

Delivering sustainability plays a central role to the proposed changes in the NPPF and Chapter 9 (‘Promoting Sustainable Transport’) addresses this. It incorporates policies to promote a modal shift towards sustainable forms of transport.

Paragraph 105(e), for example, promotes a greater shift to charging plug-in and other ultra-low emission vehicles. Paragraph 106 discourages the use of maximum parking standards unless circumstance dictate, and endorses increased density in towns and cities if proposed developments are served well by public transport.

Will these policies be effective in tackling the UK’s ambition to promote sustainable communities?

Climate change is accepted to be one of the biggest threats facing the world. The summer heatwave that has swept across Europe is a reminder of the potential impacts.

We appear to be on autopilot to environmental disaster. Surely altering this path is in the interests of all inhabited societies?

The Climate Change Act 2008 seeks to to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the UK by at least 80

Tabitha Knowles is associate director – aviation with Lichfields

Aerodrome safeguarding is not fit for purpose

per cent (based on 1990 levels) by 2050. Planning is seen as one component to deliver this change, but it cannot deliver change alone.

Reducing levels of petrolpropelled cars is broadly accepted as one solution to reduce carbon emission. But is this a dream? The UK seems to have a love affair with the car. Department for Transport Transport Statistics Great Britain 2017 shows car trips accounted for 65 per cent of all journeys made.

Milton Keynes Council is committed to promoting sustainable communities and neighbourhoods.

Currently, the car accounts for 80 per cent of trips in Milton Keynes, even though it has one of the best cycle networks in the UK. Its Mobility Strategy 2018-2036 reinforces the desire for sustainable transport.

This explores the use of autonomous vehicles and smart technology to deliver mobility as a service. The emerging development plan (Plan:MK) continues the theme: it proposes policies to encourage the installation of electric vehicle charging points), maximise the use of sustainable transport for new development, and promote residential and officeled densification. Such policies are ahead of the planning curve and accord well with the new NPPF. The new NPPF policies remain yet to be debated and implemented and, as such, their effectiveness is unknown.

“REDUCING LEVELS OF PETROL­ PROPELLED CARS IS BROADLY ACCEPTED AS ONE SOLUTION TO REDUCE CARBON EMISSION”

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Safety iis fundamental to the aviation industry. Aerodromes, which are hubs for a wide range of aviation activity, must be able to operate within a safe environment.

But how well is this requirement to safeguard operations and protect people living and working near aerodromes being applied when proposals come forward for new development?

The civil aviation and planning regimes set out a system to meet this safety objective; it is a complex system that often gives rise to uncertainty as to its application.

Under the civil aviation regime all licensed aerodromes must ensure that the aerodrome and its airspace are safe for use by aircraft. Yet only a select few are safeguarded under the planning regime, by planning circular, and benefit from statutory direction.

It is unclear how this arbitrary group of officially safeguarded aerodromes has been identified.

The other licensed aerodromes can only seek voluntary protection and this is at the discretion of the local planning authority.

Lichfields has reviewed the local plans of all the local planning authorities in England with a civil licensed aerodrome to see how well (or indeed if) each aerodrome is appropriately safeguarded. The study has identified a flawed system with evident gaps in local plan safeguarding policy, meaning not all aerodromes are

appropriately protected. This suggests that authorities and the aerodromes do not understand the vital role of safeguarding.

In addition, the policy environment has changed significantly since the adoption of the national safeguarding circulars, with the role of aviation now elevated in policy importance, not least in respect of the latest NPPF. Consequently, the safeguarding circulars – that are already failing to secure an appropriate local planning context – are considered outdated.

The aviation industry continues to see growth and plays a key part in the UK economy.

These factors all give greater weight to the need to protect an aerodrome’s ability to carry out safe and efficient operations.

An update of national advice and how safeguarding is implemented at a local level is required.

The government, with local planning authority and aerodrome support, should amend safeguarding policy with a review and update to Circulars 1/2003 and 1/2010. Its impending aviation strategy will also provide a chance to bring this issue to the fore.

Many of the local plans reviewed, where policy even exists, fail to reflect the current position of aerodromes and their operational status. But these deficiencies create an opportunity for operators to incorporate safeguarding policy in reviewed and emerging local plans.

“ALL LICENSED AERODROMES MUST ENSURE THAT THE AERODROME AND ITS AIRSPACE ARE SAFE FOR USE BY AIRCRAFT”

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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

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Rachel White is senior policy and political adviser at Sustrans

‘Sustainable transport’?

It isn’t electric vehicles

Nestled within the sustainable transport chapter of the revised transpo National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is the need to enable charging of plug-in and ultra-low emission vehicles. It’s clear that electric cars have a role to play in the future of mobility. But are they really sustainable?

‘Sustainable’ is a word designed to be just ambiguous enough to meet everybody’s needs. Our Common Future, the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and development, states: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

But sustainable development in the NPPF has often been interpreted as literally sustaining building in as many places as possible, regardless of possible negative impacts. This is why I’m sceptical of the use of the word ‘sustainable’ in the NPPF and in any context.

Equally, the problem with the inclusion of electric vehicles as a “sustainable mode of transport” is that by its very nature it encourages car use; yet a sustainable future needs to have fewer, not just cleaner, vehicles.

We shouldn’t be moving people from one metal box to another, especially as a child born today in America has a life expectancy five years less than their parents because of physical inactivity. In the

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John Acres is president of the RTPI For more on the ‘Valuing Landscape: Connecting People, Place and Nature’ conference, see: bit.ly/planner0918conference

Can we put a value on landscape – and the planning that enhances it?

UK, physical inactivity alone costs the NHS over £20 billion a year.

Glasgow University recently found that regular cycling could cut your risk of cancer by 45 per cent and heart disease by 46 per cent.

The need to cut emissions from motorised transport provides local authorities with an opportunity to think differently about how to plan our urban centres. They need to promote active lifestyles by rethinking how people move around – a sustainable transport future is one that improves health and lengthens life, not the opposite.

Besides, electric vehicles only partly address the UK’s air quality crisis, which prematurely kills thousands a year. In London, 45 per cent of all particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) – of which there are no safe levels – comes from tyre and brake wear.

Even if we switch all our motorised vehicles to electric, we will still have a damaging amount of fine dust in the air.

Finally, there are serious supply chain issues with lithium and cobalt, essential components for batteries needed for electric vehicles. We cannot and should not rely on this technological fix. Cars have a role to play – but let’s not make that a central role, and let’s not pretend that cars in any form are sustainable.

We need to interpret the NPPF in a way that shapes cities and towns so that the natural choice for mobility is an active choice.

“A SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT FUTURE IS ONE THAT IMPROVES HEALTH AND LENGTHENS LIFE, NOT THE OPPOSITE”

Every mo morning, weather and time per permitting, I walk down my garden in the Northamptonshire garde village of Farthingstone and enjoy the peace and tranquillity.

It sets me up for the day.

One often tends to get the same sensation in a park, woodland, or on the coast or countryside – that feeling of freedom and fresh air. The quality of one’s surroundings, whether urban or rural, undoubtedly translates into a sense of well being that is tangible yet immeasurable.

Planning can create that quality of environment that is so vital to the way we live.

Landscape, too, whether it’s just the accompaniment to built development, or in the form of wider green infrastructure, is therefore vital in generating the quality of life, Street trees, open spaces, water features, vistas and viewpoints all have their role to play in creating and adding value to development change.

Making planning decisions is explicitly about weighing costs and benefits, taking a broader and often strategic view – thinking about the impact on the community and society, and not just the individual. But in a world where everything counts, but not everything can be counted, it is crucial that we try to factor in a measure of that sense of wellbeing that is key to daily life.

Strategic and local plans are accompanied by sustainability appraisals or environmental assessments to weigh up their impact, but planners have always struggled to put a ‘price’ on quality and measure environmental implications.

The Value of Planning report commissioned by RTPI Wales and undertaken by Arup, tries to address this issue. But the headline results, which identify a £2.3 billion gain within Wales during 2016/7 from planning, still only tackle the more measurable monetary consequences of planning.

Somehow we need to capture the real gains that planning can deliver to help to transform people’s lives.

Politicians will tell you that ‘good design’ helps to ‘sell’ the concept of new development and may contribute to convincing the public to welcome new housing.

That must be true. So we must all work harder to showcase to the wider world the work we do and highlight the undoubted ‘added value’ that planning offers society.

On 7 September, I will be doing just that, when speaking at the Landscape Institute’s Valuing Landscape conference at the University of Greenwich to explore how we can both promote and project the idea of landscape value and work together to deliver a positive society.

“WE NEED TO CAPTURE THE REAL GAINS THAT PLANNING CAN DELIVER IN HELPING TO TRANSFORM PEOPLE’S LIVES”

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“TRYING TO DESIGN A MASTERPLAN WITHOUT URBANISM IS LIKE TRYING TO DESIGN A GARDEN WITHOUT HORTI­ CULTURE”

PHOTOGRAPHY | PETER SEARLE

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I N T E R V I E W : D A V I D R U D LI N

LESSON OF THE MASTER AS A DIRECTOR OF URBED, CHAIR OF THE ACADEMY OF URBANISM AND WINNER OF THE 2014 WOLFSON PRIZE FOR ECONOMICS, DAVID RUDLIN IS ONE OF OUR MOST ACCOMPLISHED PLANNERS AND URBANISTS. HE TELLS SIMON WICKS WHERE MODERN PLANNING IS GETTING IT WRONG It was a tantalising suggestion – that we might need to wind the clock back to before the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, English planning’s year zero.

Its radical shift towards nationalisation of development rights had the best of intentions, but a host of unintended consequences. It made land a scarce resource and planning an adversarial occupation. It laid the foundation for market dominance by big developers and ended emphatically the era of the ‘master developer’, the holder of both land and a singular vision who had hitherto driven development of our towns and cities.

Appreciation of this top-down approach to development seemed jarring coming from someone so contemporary and democratic in outlook. Yet David Rudlin, along with URBED partner Nicholas Falk, had reinvented the garden city in winning the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize. Was he plotting a route out of a planning impasse when I heard him speak at the 2017 Young Planners Conference?

We meet at Brentford Lock in west London, a canalside development that Rudlin masterplanned a decade ago. It is smart, civilised and well-arranged in an almost Scandinavian way that is, I observe, fast becoming the new London vernacular.

He smiles and explains how his scheme differs from others, making observations of his own about how well he feels it is bedding into its environment.

It’s unusual, I learn, for a masterplanner to see their vision realised – the likes of Rudlin work to longer timescales than most.

Perhaps that’s why he is so generous with his time, expanding at length on the 1947 Planning Act, master developers, land value capture and the demise of design sensibility among planners.

Getting better “The whole point of the 1947 Act was that value generated by development would return to the state and be used to fund infrastructure,” he says when I remind him of his comments.

“That was a fundamental part of the act. On three occasions the Conservatives repealed the betterment acts. The last one was the Community Land Act, got rid of when Thatcher came in. Since then we’ve not had any way of capturing value.”

‘Betterment’, in this vision, is critical for a planning system to serve the public interest. Yet the English system turns developable land into a scarce commodity that leaps outlandishly in value when consented.

Bind this prospective gain to a discretionary, flexible approach to planning and we end up with an excessively adversarial and legalistic form of planning that, in turn, has created a market in which just a few large developers have the resources to work the system. One way or another, most potential betterment is lost, to landowner and/or developer.

“The government thinks the problem with planning is that it’s bureaucratic and overcontrolling,” Rudlin asserts. “But it is that way because that’s the way the system makes it.”

“The last thing housebuilders want is a simplified planning process. Their value is generated by the planning system. We end up with a default output that was never planned.”

In a “sensible system”, he argues, Crossrail would have been funded by the uplift in value of land around stations’ – “the way most of the world would do it.”

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I N T E R V I E W : D A V I D R U D LI N

“Sensible”, in Rudlin’s world, might be more evident in France or the Netherlands, where development zones are governed by clearly agreed rules. Much of the discretion, and thus dispute, is taken out of the system with the way cleared for master developers to prepare sites using a plot-based approach to design and building that can support a wider range of smaller developers in the market.

The Dutch system, notably, puts a cap on land value inflation.

The result is more money invested in design and build, and more gathered in for community infrastructure.

There is much we can learn, particularly about how master developer and masterplanner can work together to create “a framework in which all sorts of people can get involved”.

Can similar outcomes be achieved within the dysfunctional English system? “It’s asking too much for our planning system to be reformed to take that on, but I think that you can work within it,” Rudlin observes.

Compulsory purchase, or the threat of it, could be used more by local authorities to assemble land, he explains. From here, it’s a matter of appointing a master developer (which could also be the local authority) and a masterplanner and you’re on your way.

URBED’s Wolfson Prize entry illustrates another way in which the uplift in land value can be contained and captured. Here, the ‘unearned increment’ is hooked through a deal struck with landowners that ensures that they receive a fair return plus an interest in a ‘garden city trust’.

This trust looks an awful lot like the cooperatives Rudlin has revisited time and again across four decades, from the founding of Manchester’s Homes for Change cooperative housing association through to URBED itself.

The climax city A principle of equity courses through Rudlin’s work and conversation. Quality, too.

Why shouldn’t everyone, after all, be able to live in goodquality housing and environments? He seems to have an almost artisanal relationship to the craft of masterplanning; it’s about C A R EER

HIG HL IG HTS

P ATH OF A N UR B A NI S T Born: 1961, Birmingham Educated: Manchester University 1979-84, BA and MA in town planning

1985­90

1990–Now

Graduate/senior planner, Manchester City Council

URBED: Project manager Little Germany Action Plan; Manchester project manager; principal and director (2006)

1987­96 Founding secretary, Homes for Change cooperative

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1994 Co-author of Rebuilding the

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City: A Guide to Development in Hulme

2000 Masterplan for Brighton’s New England Quarter

University of Manchester

2014 (with Nicholas Falk) Winner, Wolfson Economics Prize

2001–Now 2017–Now Visiting lecturer in urban design,

Chair, Academy of Urbanism

finding the intrinsic “grain” of a place and bringing it out.

He uses the analogy of ‘the climax state’ of the natural environment in a blog and forthcoming book (Climax City) which explore how cities grow.

Left alone, anywhere in the UK would eventually reach its ‘climax state’ of mixed broadleaf woodland.

Rudlin argues that cities also have a climax state, where the course of their growth – their ‘grain’ – is tuned to the needs the societies that create them.

“Then planning came along and thought ‘That’s all terrible’ and ‘We need to reform that’. But in recognising it [the need to change dysfunctional urban environments], they didn’t recognise the process.”

Change the rules and the result unfolds in an entirely different way – an intriguing idea that makes me wonder where his fascination with cities began. Born in 1961, Rudlin was brought up in Birmingham in an era of massive city centre redevelopment. But it wasn’t this that captured his imagination.

The bus to and from home in Hall Green would take him “right along the Stratford Road and it’s six miles of continuous shops. You go through the different communities like the Afro-Caribbean, the Pakistani communities, and so on”.

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THE PROBLEM WITH BRITISH URBANISM

“ALL THE ROADS GOING OFF IN EACH DIRECTION LOOKED LIKE THE CITY WAS GOING ON FOREVER”

“Bordeaux is a place I go to a lot. It’s quite small – only 600,000 people – but the area of urbanity in Bordeaux is 10 times bigger than Manchester. It’s that type of apartment-based, street-based development, and it used to be the whole city. It now has suburbs, so it’s gone beyond that.

“Whereas in Britain we have a tiny city centre surrounded by what used to be the inner city, which has generally been revived quite a lot, and now is surrounded by suburbs. You can walk across Manchester City centre in 15 minutes. It takes an hour to walk across Bordeaux.

“We’re squeezing a lot of stuff into a small patch

of land. We should be urbanising the inner city as opposed to squeezing everything into a tiny city centre.

“The theory is that because we had the Industrial Revolution we lost faith in cities and with good reason because they were horrible for a time.

Therefore we became a suburban nation because of that, in the way the French never did. The French have suburbanised quite recently and if you go to French suburbs they’re actually awful. But they stayed in their cities much longer than we did and part of that is the middle classes aspired to the apartment rather than the villa in the suburb.”

direction looked like the city was going on forever. I thought I was riding through a Dickensian city. I didn’t know the Stratford Road was exceptional and it was quite dull if you went to other side. This idea of what a city is… endless and exciting.”

A love of visual arts was pointing towards architecture as a subject of study, but a careers master advised that his maths was too weak. So he studied planning instead, in Manchester, where he’s remained.

Even so, Rudlin talks a lot about architects and the need for an aesthetic sense in planning. The loss of design from planning education is a bugbear, not least because it leaves the door open to those with design training but no planning qualifications to dominate design discussions and decisions.

“To me, [architects] do it from a completely different perspective, which starts with the design of the building and works outwards to the plan.

Whereas a masterplan works from the neighbourhood inwards to the plot. The plot then defines what buildings go onto it.

“Trying to design a masterplan without urbanism is like trying to design a garden without horticulture.

You don’t understand the fundamental things that make plants grow or thrive.”

But the planning profession has “given up” teaching masterplanning, he laments. At Manchester University in the 1980s “we had design studios where at least half the work we were doing was drawing masterplans”. Planning, though, became more “sociological and theoretical”, more process driven. It lost some of its craft and character.

It's something this masterplanner is keen to revive as a visiting professor at the University of Manchester. “The planning school now has urban design lecturers, and they do urban design projects.

You’re teaching planners to recognise a good masterplan when they see one rather than to do it themselves still.”

Going with the grain Though he harks back to elements of the past in the fundamental principles of his craft, Rudlin’s sense of how the world can look and feel is entirely contemporary.

He talks about creating a “richness” of place “built for the modern age” that integrates contemporary architecture and design into the “plot-based process”.

“What I want to do is create a system where the good becomes the default. Get the process of masterplanning right and good is the default. Then you can make stuff exceptional by applying your creativity. You shouldn’t need two billion, you shouldn’t need a [Ebenezer] Howard. But because of the system we have, you do.”

Rudlin highlights the challenges and choices made at Brentford Lock. He’s pleased with how it’s growing into its space, but considers Brighton’s New England Quarter, beside the station, as the fullest extant expression of URBED’s work. Again, it evinces an urbanism that is smart, civilised, almost continental. It’s urbane, rather like Rudlin himself.

Rudlin tells me about the ‘Three Rs’ of rediscovery, repair and renewal that frame the work of his practice. A good masterplan draws out what is implicitly in a place and finds a natural expression for it. It unearths the grain.

Finally, he reminds me again how masterplanners operate on a longer timescale than most – years, decades, lifetimes.

That’s how long it takes to grow a city. Just change the parameters, uncover the grain, and the rest will follow. n Climax City: Masterplanning and the Complexity of Urban Growth by David Rudlin and Shruti Hermani will be published by RIBA Publishing in November n Simon Wicks is deputy editor of The Planner

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SUPER

SUBURBIA

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guidance. After all, many small sites require truly innovative design approaches to delivering homes of high quality; at the same time they offer the opportunity to build the homes people aspire to live in.

At present, there is a reluctance in the development industry to build any homes in the non-prime London market with a price tag more than £600,000. They simply don’t sell. This has led to over-delivery of flatted accommodation: 80 per cent of gross conventional housing supply in London in 2014/15 consisted of one and twobedroom units. To be part of the solution, small sites need to address this problem.

Lessons from Fitzroof

IN THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES LOOKING AT THE FUTURE OF HOUSING IN THE UK, RIËTTE OOSTHUIZEN CONSIDERS HOW SUBURBIA CAN CONTRIBUTE TO SUPPLYING THE HOUSING THE NATION NEEDS When it comes to tackling the housing crisis, small could very well prove to be beautiful.

Specifically, we’re talking about small infill sites in and around town centres, additional layers on top of existing buildings and other such easily overlooked locations where a new dwelling could fit snugly but comfortably.

Such locations are now in the spotlight. Both the newly revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the draft London Plan require local authorities to actively promote building on small sites – particularly the latter, in policy H2. It is creating enthusiasm and controversy in equal measure.

Concerns about lack of resources, unfair pressures on planning officers, and perceptions that residents simply would not support this type of development are paramount. Simultaneously, however, exciting new design and growth challenges are posed.

At HTA, we’ve been on the side of these overlooked sites for some time. Small sites offer the opportunity for more homes to be built in sustainable, accessible locations. At the same time, they can stimulate revival of suburban areas or neighbourhoods that have become run-down.

But they ought not to be developed in isolation.

Decision-making on smaller sites should form part of a wider concept of strategic growth. There should be a clear vision for how areas should change, set out in well-conceived design

What is small? Between draft and final versions, the NPPF backtracked its definition of a small site to one that can be as large as a hectare, having initially proposed a 0.5ha maximum. This is disappointing. Housing and economic land availability assessments require local authorities to consider broad locations for sites capable of delivering five or more dwellings on sites of 0.25ha and above. So sites between 0.25 and 0.5ha are already known; but the potential is in the sites up to 0.25ha. However, in research we have done for the CPRE on how councils tend to populate brownfield land registers, we found a reluctance to consider sites below 0.25ha. There is at present little incentive for them to do so.

The draft London Plan defines small sites as up to 0.25ha or delivering fewer than 25 homes. We have worked with many local authorities in London, delivering homes on sites smaller than 0.25ha. The outcome can be of magnificent quality, as our RTPI award for the Enfield Small Sites programme demonstrates (see page 25).

But these sites are notoriously difficult to get through the planning process unless there is

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specific policy support for the special circumstances that may be necessary for their successful delivery.

With the introduction of the Localism Act in 2011, our practice held enthusiastic seminars about the power of communities to change their neighbourhoods. This was partly fuelled by an original founding partner, Bernard Hunt, and a joint project he was undertaking in North London with 11 neighbours. Their proposal was to extend two groups of six terraced homes facing one another upwards with one storey, all designed by the same architect as a uniform proposal.

These 12 homes were recognised as a special group in the Conservation Area Statement prohibiting changes to the roof profile (right).

Getting planning consent was an uphill battle, even though it was a sensitively designed scheme fully supported by 12 homeowners and adjoining neighbours, and evidently making a positive contribution to the character of the area and the homes themselves. Impact on ‘character’ is critical to the success of these schemes. Yet the essential components of ‘character’ are ill defined in most planning policy.

The ‘Fitzroof’ project sowed the seed for a bigger project, ‘Supurbia’, which considers how to deliver homes innovatively in new locations.

With our immense housing need, it is essential to identify as many possible sources for new homes as possible. The potential of our suburban areas is immense. Beyond the typical suburban grain, there is also huge potential on rooftops and in land designated as commercial, such as retail parks and out-of-context employment land, which is surrounded by residential uses.

The 'Fitzroof' scheme in Fitzroy Road, Primrose Hill, North London

Disused lanes could be reinvigorated with mews homes

Local initiative With Supurbia, we have identified about 170 wellconnected stations in outer London suburbs that are not located in opportunity areas or town centres, or are not covered by area action plans.

These stations have Public Transport Accessiblity

WHAT IS SMALL?

NPPF paragraph 68: Small and medium-sized sites can make an important contribution to meeting the housing requirement of an area, and are often built out relatively quickly. To promote the development of a good mix of sites local planning authorities should: Identify, through the development plan and brownfield registers, land to accommodate at least 10 per cent of their housing requirement on sites no larger than one hectare – unless it can be shown, through the preparation of relevant plan policies, that there are strong reasons why this 10 per cent target cannot be achieved.

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Level rating of 3 and above, meaning they are well connected.

Yet, at roughly 25 homes a hectare, they are surrounded by lowdensity housing.

Analysing just three of the stations, we found that densities could increase to around 100 homes per hectare within a 5-10ha zone. This would produce on average 500 additional homes in each of these areas. Typologies could be introduced that still maintain a distinct suburban feel – mansion blocks, townhouses and mews houses with streets and squares.

What we find is that within a radius of about 900 metres of the station many London suburbs have housing typologies and garden sizes suited to such intensification – either as single or combined plots. Many suburban blocks dissected by disused lanes could be reinvigorated with mews homes, bringing them back into use (above).What’s more, there are good examples of residents who have come together and intensified plots with high-quality homes. But in the absence of readily available advice and funding, this usually requires an individual with unusual tenacity and some knowledge of construction. One example is that of the Hafer Road residents, led by Adam Street, and designed

by Peter Barber Architects.

It’s a challenge to work with residents to support change on a very local and immediate scale. However, there are financial incentives.

With Supurbia, we tested the viability of single homes intensifying their plots with an additional unit. Our examples delivered in the region of £140,000 to the owner-occupier.

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CASE STUDY: ENFIELD SMALL SITES

In cases where existing homes are demolished, viability becomes more complicated, as typically the value that needs to be put in its place needs to be four times the original to be viable. But small sites offer opportunities to new types of enabling developers (which currently don’t exist widely) and in particular smaller and medium-sized builders/developers to deliver homes people need at a price they can afford.

Award: Excellence in Planning to Deliver Homes – Small Schemes Project: Enfield Small Sites Key players: HTA Design LLP, Enfield Borough Council, Peter Barber Architects, Neilcott Construction

Thinking ahead

The Enfield Small Sites programme explored how small brownfield sites can deliver a significant number of homes through innovative design and collaborative planning in places that would otherwise have been overlooked.

Overall, the programme delivered 28 homes (5x1bed, 9x2-bed, 14x3-bed) on six sites of 0.05-0.19 hectares in the London Borough of Enfield. Five of the sites had previously been used for garages, which were mostly unused and which tended to attract antisocial behaviour. One site had been a pub, which was demolished. Fifteen of the homes were built for affordable rent.

The constrained nature of the sites pushed planners and the architect into innovative approaches to addressing issues with light, overlooking and enhancement of the existing residential environment.

The firm had to argue for a contemporary aesthetic, for example, and while attentive to policy, it had to put the case for at least one divergence from London-wide policy to deliver good quality, site-appropriate housing.

In that case, HTA asked for an exemption from providing wheelchair access on a sloping site that would have had a detrimental impact on the street scene. In its award submission, the firm drew attention to the overall enhancement of the environment, saying: “The redevelopment of these small brownfield sites introduces new street frontages and passive surveillance of the site and the local area, significantly improves the quality of the local environment.

“Each infill scheme has also been carefully designed to respect the height in relation to the surrounding dwellings and retain privacy for existing residents. The architectural composition of each small enhances the character of the area.”

The RTPI Awards judges picked up on the strong community consultation when praising the scheme: “We were impressed with the council’s proactive approach to delivering affordable housing on previously developed, difficult-to-develop land in their authority.

The planners were central to this project, from using planning policy to identify the sites for development through to understanding the kind of housing the community wanted to resolving some of the design issues. As a result, the project has strong local support.”

The London Plan poses a challenge and opportunity to boroughs: the presumption in favour of small sites and its requirement to deliver 20 per cent of planned housing on them have had a mixed reception. Certain boroughs have already started exploring how suburban areas can deliver housing in innovative ways. Croydon, for example, is in the process of drafting a suburban intensification SPD. Actively promoting small sites requires wider strategic thinking: cities are not stagnant, and there is no particular reason to think that post-war suburban infrastructure still suits today’s needs. As planning professionals, we need to think about how suburban areas are likely to change in future.

Who will occupy them in 20 years’ time? What levels of car ownership will there be? What community infrastructure is necessary? What is the best way to provide green space? We currently seem to answer these critical questions by judging new development against what ‘is’ rather than what ‘should be’.

The new policy emphasis on small sites challenges us to be forwardthinking. It is important as planning and design professionals to think collectively – and positively – about the challenge of subtle change in our suburban areas and neighbourhoods.

“WITH OUR Though the local authority resourcing might IMMENSE currently be an issue, there is a groundswell of HOUSING NEED, activity by local authorities that are building IT IS ESSENTIAL homes. This could, and should be better aligned TO IDENTIFY AS with those who make policy. Design guidance to MANY POSSIBLE facilitate growth on small sites would be an SOURCES FOR essential component for successful NEW HOMES AS intensification. There are good examples already POSSIBLE” – we need to start learning from one another. n Riëtte Oosthuizen is partner and head of planning with HTA Design LLP

The 5-10 hectares around many of London’s suburban railway stations are ripe for densification

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(UN)HEALTHY CULTURE RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT HEALTH OUTCOMES ARE STRONGLY LINKED TO INCOME OME S, INEQUALITY, AND REINFORCED BY QUALITY OF PLACE. SO, HUGH BARTON ASKS, ARE THE SPATIAL PLANNING DECISIONS WE MAKE BAD FOR OUR HEALTH?

The dominant public debate about health is more about illness and how to treat it than health.

It is about the funding crisis of the National Health (or Illness) Service and the related issue of social care. Little attention is given to the degree to which we are increasing healthcare costs by our social, economic and environmental decisions. Yet there is now powerful evidence that wellness is tied up with income, equality, lifestyle choices, and the natural and urban environmental conditions.

For planners of all varieties – land use, economic development, housing, transport, green infrastructure, urban design – the question is: are we part of the problem or the solution? Are spatial decisions bad for our health?

(for the moment at least) over. The ageing population is a myth. Among rich ich nations, people in the UK are dying sooner than almost ost all the rest except the USA. The USA has the most expensive ive healthcare, and the lowest life fe expectancy.

Another reversal al is even more worrying. In Britain, ain, many people are experiencing longer periods of disability as a result ult of chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and nd mental illness. On average, the number ber of healthy life years (HLY) we enjoy has actually gone down, having peaked forr both men and women around 2009. Offi cial reports (on ONS and The myth of ageing fficial Public Health England Consider the health facts. On a cursory gland websites) give remarkably bland examination, worldwide trends in health are d analyses of these trends, and no attempt at explanation. positive. Life expectancy has been increasing in planation.

Just to drive home low, medium and high-income countries. Child me the point, here are some quite shocking statistics mortality has fallen dramatically. atistics from Birmingham.

Women’s average But in certain countries, including the UK, this e life expectancy is 82, men’s 77 – both a little below trend has faltered. A series of factors are ow the UK average, and both falling slightly since interacting to create a ‘perfect storm’. While nce 2012.

But the real story politicians and pundits continue to repeat the ry is about inequality.

Birmingham ‘We have an ageing population’ irmingham is a city in two halves. mantra, life expectancy has flatlined alves. Data from the Birmingham almost unnoticed since 2012. irmingham Public Health “AMONG RICH website reveals that life Indeed, a summer 2018 Office for NATIONS, PEOPLE expectancy National Statistics (ONS) study xpectancy and HLY vary hugely IN THE UK ARE by comparing life expectancy trends in y ward. Men in the poorest DYING SOONER wards live 11 years less than in the rich countries shows the UK has THAN ALMOST ALL richest, dramatically fallen behind since 2011. chest, and spend a third of their THE REST EXCEPT lives A century of improving longevity is ves with some degree of THE USA” 26

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disability, on average from age 50 to death at 75.

Women in poor wards suffer ill health for 14 years more than those in the richest wards.

Studies that focus explicitly on income levels rather than relying on wards as a proxy indicator point to an even greater societal divide. In London the proportion of people suffering from a long-term limiting illness varies from 6 per cent for the richest to 40 per cent for the poorest – an appalling ‘health gradient’.

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Some influences on mental and physical wellbeing

Accessible Accessible local local facilities facilities

Shared Shared activities

activities

Supportive Supportive social social networks networks

Active Active travel travel

Physical

Physical activity activity and and wellwellbeing being

Mental Mental wellwellbeing being

Safe, Safe, convenient convenient street street networks networks

Friendly

Friendly and and attractive attractive homeplace

homeplace

Recreational Recreational opportunities opportunities

Sight and Sight and sound of sound of nature nature

Source: City of Wellbeing by Hugh Barton

Gross inequality appears built into the system.

The Marmot Review in 2010 – Fair Society, Healthy Lives – made the point powerfully.

Wilkinson and Pickett, in their book of the same year, The Spirit Level, demonstrate that for richer countries, health is unrelated to national income per head, or to health expenditure per head, but strongly related to income inequality.

Part of the problem is the epidemic of obesity – associated with much higher levels of a wide range of illness, including Type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. In 2016 in the UK 26 per cent of adults were obese, plus 35 per cent overweight. Being overweight has become the norm.

Trends for children give little ground for optimism. Year six children (10-11 year-olds) from the poorer households have rising levels of obesity – up a fifth in the last decade, now (2016) at 26 per cent. On present trends, half the UK population will be clinically obese by 2050.

Planning and health We now know that spatial decisions are heavily implicated in this. Research linking health and planning has grown from a trickle into a flood.

Planning has a profound influence on health and well-being, especially in relation to air quality, physical activity, mental well-being and equity.

There is no longer any excuse for professionals or politicians to claim ignorance. The NPPF and 28

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“IN 2016 IN THE UK 26 PER CENT OF ADULTS WERE OBESE, PLUS 35 PER CENT OVERWEIGHT. BEING OVERWEIGHT HAS BECOME THE NORM. TRENDS FOR CHILDREN GIVE LITTLE GROUND FOR OPTIMISM”

many plans contain the rhetoric of well-being.

But all too often the reality of spatial decisions is at odds with the fine words.

Air pollution is the most significant environmental health risk in rich and some intermediate countries. Estimates of premature death in the UK vary from 29,000-40,000 every year. The cost to UK society (£16 billion a year) is comparable to estimates for obesity and smoking.

Although traffic emissions are often the most significant factor, energy in buildings and industry is also important, and a degree of mitigation can occur through green infrastructure. Known technologies have the answer. Known politics currently work against solutions. The progressive spread of business and housing into vehicle-based locations is one factor increasing risks. The dependence of many new glass-fronted commercial buildings on air conditioning is shocking.

Policies for reducing air pollution go hand in hand with tackling obesity and promoting physical activity. How do we overcome the couch potato syndrome? Diet is affected by physical planning in very specific situations (fast/sweet food outlets by schools, for example). Physical activity is affected fundamentally.

Active travel – walking or cycling to get to places – is heavily influenced by propinquity, convenience and safety. One study of English suburbs (in the Routledge Handbook of Physical I M AG E S | I STO C K

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Activity Policy and Practice) found the ‘best’ places achieved 60 per cent active travel to ‘local’ facilities, while for the ‘worst’ it was 20 per cent.

Even the UK's best cannot compare to commonplace localities in the Netherlands. The aim should be 100 per cent, and depends on integrated planning of land use, housing, facility location, public realm design and transport at the local and strategic level.

Business parks (my pet hate) should be banished. As PPG13 recommended in 1993, all trip-generating activities should be accessible by public transport, walking and cycling. Cities such as Copenhagen in Denmark and Freiburg in Germany show what great places can result.

Accessibility is particularly important for poorer groups, and relates to recreational activity as well as travel. One European cross-sectional study suggests that the likelihood of being physically active is three times greater – and the prevalence of obesity 40 per cent less – in neighbourhoods with high levels of green space as opposed to low levels.1 The impact on children’s behaviour is particularly important. Green space is also critical for mental well-being – particularly for poorer and less mobile groups. Accessible, well-managed green space and local trees significantly can help to reduce stress levels, while also increasing social contact and physical well-being.

DOES THE NEW NPPF DELIVER HEALTH AND WELL­BEING? There is much to be welcomed in the revised NPPF, writes Hugh Barton, generally reiterating or strengthening guidance on many relevant subjects. The goals of health and well-being are embedded in the definition of ’sustainable development’, and reflected in subsequent policies. But weasel words abound. n Weak ability for LPAs to force market provision of affordable housing, vital for reducing inequality (paragraphs 63, 64). n Development trajectory and housing delivery criteria falsely implying that a local authority can control the market, and if not could lose wild card appeals leading to ‘unhealthy' development (paragraphs 73-76). n Viability and deliverability tests that on past experience lead to market-led locational choices and poor integration into existing development, undermining the NPPF's own policies for walking, cycling, public transport, good accessibility and reduced need to travel (paragraphs 102-104). n Air quality and emissions planning given short shrift, not central, and undermined by the deliverability tests as above (paragraph 181).

“HEALTHY PLANNING NOW IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. BUT IT IS ROCKET POLITICS”

Money dilemmas Income (or lack of it) is the critical determinant of health. The effect of spatial planning on disposable income is rarely highlighted. It depends on what you include. Clearly housing, transport and facility costs are heavily influenced by government policies in relation to land, tax, regulation, governance, and so on.

But the cost of housing, the biggest element in household budgets, is also fundamentally affected by the way that planning policies restrict or open up the market. And the cost of transport is strongly dependent on spatial strategies – the ability of people to live in convenient locations and get to where they need to cheaply, preferably without the necessity of owning one or two cars.

Consider an ‘average’ household of 2-plus people. The middle household quintile has an average disposable income (after tax, and benefits including pensions) of £26,000. The median UK rent for a two-bedroom flat is £700 a month, or £8,400 a year. If a couple find they need and/or want two cars (and many do), assume £2,000 annual costs a year each. Almost half the available income is taken with housing rent and vehicle costs. In many parts of the country the situation would of course be worse, with rents much higher and public transport costs on top of car costs.

n Hugh Barton MRTPI is a town planner and emeritus professor of planning, health and sustainability in the WHO Collaborating Centre at the University of the West of England.

He is the author of City of Well-being – A Radical Guide to Planning, and co-author of Shaping Neighbourhoods (2010), both published by Routledge.

Take a poor household: the average disposable income of the poorest household quintile is £12,000. Any size of household may be in this group, as in others. Three-bed houses suitable for a family with two kids in commonplace towns in the south of England might have a market rental of £900-plus, with an annual cost of £10,800.

The household budget is swallowed up.

Although government policies for social housing, housing benefit and regulation of the housing market are obviously critical, spatial planning – influencing supply and demand patterns – has a big role. For poorer households, you could say that most household expenditure (for housing and transport) is influenced to a significant degree by planning.

This is not an anti-planning diatribe; quite the reverse. Planners and urbanists often achieve miracles in the face of the neo-liberal political, media and market zeitgeist, especially in innercity areas. But the planning/health link is hugely and disastrously underplayed by public debate.

Planners need to make the case much more strongly. It is salutary to note that the fastest historical improvement in health happened as a direct result of better planning and design – for water quality and sewage treatment – at the turn of the 19th century.

Healthy planning now is not rocket science.

But it is rocket politics. Professionals are often trapped between their responsibility to their clients (commercial or political) and their responsibility to the health and well-being of people at large, now and in the future. Radical improvements depend on radical change in the governance of land – and that, perhaps, is for a future article to consider.

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Ellaway A, MacIntyre S and Bonnefoy X (2005) Graffiti, Greenery and Obesity in Adults, British Medical Journal 331: 611-612 S E PTEMB E R 2 0 18 / THE PLA NNER

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ADVERTISER CONTENT

At Capita, it’s our people that make our planning resilience service stand out from the crowd.

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One of the key benefits our planning resilience service provides is the ease in which local authorities can access our planning resource and expertise no matter where they are based in the UK. From our planning hub based in Belfast, our team of planners can help any local authority clear their application backlogs, support on a particular complex planning matter or process minor applications to free up existing council resource to work on other projects. In less than twelve months the planning hub has gone from strength to strength with our planning experts delivering on over 1,000 planning applications and contributing to the delivery of three local plans – all from across the pond!

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We have developed links with both Queens and Ulster Universities and are incredibly proud to have been invited to sit on their academic boards, where we helping to shape the academic output of their respective Planning and Development undergraduate programmes. Also, one of our Planning Assistants completed 213 applications in four months!

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Initially we employed four local planning professionals but as our list of planning resilience clients grow, we have now expanded the team to ten. We also have access to the further 100 planning professionals from Capita’s additional planning hubs across the UK.

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P31 TECH P34 REGIONAL P38 DECISIONS P42 LEGAL P50 PLAN B P51 ACTIVITY

Game on: The project was designed to instigate conversations about living in Australia’s third most populous city

GAMING FOR A BETTER BRISBANE PLAN YOUR BRISBANE WAS A COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT EXERCISE

BY AUSTRALIA’S LARGEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY THAT ‘GAMIFIED’ PLANNING TO MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE. BRISBANE’S CHIEF PLANNER, DYAN CURRIE, EXPLAINS HOW IT WORKED Under current Queensland Government population projections, Brisbane City needs to accommodate an extra 386,000 residents by 2041. That’s more than 1,300 people a month. So the city council wanted to undertake a citywide conversation with the Brisbane community about the future of the city.

Plan Your Brisbane used a vast array of engagement techniques to ask everyday residents what they love about Brisbane, what they want for Brisbane, and what trade-offs and priorities we need to think about in planning for our city.

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More than 100,000 residents took up the invitation to help shape our city’s next exciting chapter. They came from every suburb in Brisbane and are the equivalent to one in five households and about 10 per cent of Brisbane’s population.

The Plan Your Brisbane community engagement has informed the development of Brisbane’s Future Blueprint – eight principles and 40 actions to guide our city’s next chapter. These principles and actions will help inform decisions and ensure that our city thrives as a friendly and liveable place for future generations.

G Gamifying consultation A key focus of the Plan Your Brisbane project w was to offer a range of engagement options, to make it easy for every resident to get in involved and encourage contributions from pe people who might not otherwise participate.

There were more than 20 types of engagement activity, which produced more than 15,000 ideas generated by everyone from primary school students to our senior residents.

Among the activities was an online game, selected to stimulate discussion about the challenges and trade-offs the city needs to deal with to accommodate the growing population. The game was designed to catalyse conversations about Brisbane’s future as it grows.

The game challenged players to accommodate housing for 1,000 people by using different combinations of housing typologies (low, medium and higher-density options) to reach the housing target.

In so doing, it explored the impact of their different housing choices on lifestyle, green space, travel time and affordability.

Players were then able to provide additional feedback through a post-game online survey.

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TTech { L A N D S C A P E THE GAME The idea behind the Plan Your Brisbane online game was to illustrate in a clear way to non-planners that all development decisions have impacts, writes Simon Wicks, and that planning growth is a matter of balancing development and impacts in such a way that you achieve the best outcomes for the city.

In this case, players were given a target of 1,000 additional homes to fit into Brisbane city centre. To meet this housing requirement they could select from and combine a range of different typologies that offer a different density and living experience: tower block, mansion block, house.

Depending on the type of housing chosen and its location, the game would instantly calculate the impact of the player’s choices on lifestyle, travel time, green space and affordability.

Thus game players were forced to make decisions involving trade-offs and a degree of prioritisation. You might, for example, dislike tower blocks generally, but appreciate that you can’t meet your housing and living standards goals without incorporating at least one or two within your plan.

The game was easy to learn and play immediately and produced

instant feedback, allowed users to retract decisions as they sought to find a balance that worked for them. It was also challenging; although it had no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers, you couldn’t reach balanced solutions by simply employing one kind of housing.

By analysing and responses and the profile of the players, city planners could understand what Brisbane residents’ priorities were in terms of what makes a good place to live, and also how their priorities changed by demographic.

For example, are younger people more willing than older people to trade greater affordability for impacts on their lifestyle?

Do older people value access to green space above reduced travel times?

By understanding what matters to residents through this and other types of engagement, Brisbane’s city planners have been able to frame their preferences as a set of principles to guide the city’s unavoidable challenge of accommodating a growing population. n Simon Wicks is deputy editor of The Planner

Was it successful?

Plan Your Brisbane has been one of the largest and most innovative community engagement projects carried out by a local government in Australia. It involved more than 277,000 interactions (activities where no specific contribution was made) and more than 100,000 genuine engagements, such as via the website or attendance at pop-ups, where specific contributions were provided.

The programme included the first Intergenerational Forum for planning ever held in Queensland and, of course, one of the largest digital community engagement ‘gamification’ tools of its kind at the time of the engagement.

The game itself was open for two months between 18 February and 16 April 2018.

Average play time for the game was six minutes 41 seconds, with the total number of unique users from Brisbane reaching 82, 654.

The game helped achieve the overall objective of attracting players from every

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age group and it was successful at attracting involvement from the 18-24 and 25-34 demographic groups.

A Brisbane charter The key themes to emerge from the game results and the wider variety of community inputs were developed into a charter of principles. Brisbane’s Future Blueprint includes eight principles and 40 key actions to guide the next phase of the city’s growth.

• Create a city of neighbourhoods Our diverse city is richer for its unique local communities. Rejuvenating these neighbourhoods and improving their amenity

will ensure that residents are close to the services they need and the lifestyle and leisure options they want.

• Protect and create green space Keeping Brisbane clean and green will make our city liveable and sustainable for our children, and their children to follow. More green space will mean a healthier city with new places to relax as a community.

• Create more to see and do Growth offers more lifestyle and leisure opportunities across Brisbane, giving residents new ways to enjoy our subtropical city.

• Protect the Brisbane backyard and our unique character Our city’s history and character are vitally important. Protecting Brisbane’s way of life will mean our exciting future looks familiar, by retaining the things we love about our city.

More choice for how residents live and relax will mean that families can still choose to spend time in the quiet of their own yard.

• Ensure best practice design that complements the character of Brisbane As Brisbane grows, requiring high-quality and attractive design will mean new development makes good use of space and matches the area in which it is built.

• Empower and engage residents Brisbane belongs to all of us, so every resident can play a role in planning for its future. Making engagement easier will mean busy residents can have their say.

• Get people home quicker and safer with more travel options As Brisbane grows, so too will the need for more travel options so residents can spend more time with family and less time travelling. Better roads and more public transport will make it easier to get around.

• Give people more choice when it comes to housing By encouraging the supply of diverse housing options with a focus on affordability, residents will have more choice of housing that better suits their needs and actively assists people to own their own home. n Find further information including the results of the engagement activities at bit.ly/planner0918-brisbane n Dyan Currie is chief planner for Brisbane City Council and president of the Commonwealth Association of Planners

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Nations & Regions focus { Natural and national interest The South East is the most populous of the nine English regions, home to at least 8.5 million people at the time of the 2011 census. It covers a geographical area of 19,096 km2 (7,373 sq mi), wrapping around the west of London from Milton Keynes in the North, down to the South Coast cities of Brighton, Portsmouth and Southampton and into Kent. The region is prosperous, being the secondlargest regional economy in the UK after London valued at £177 billion in 2006.

While much of this wealth is attributed to London, sub-regional economies are emerging and demonstrating strong growth. For example, the technology companies clustered along the M3 in Surrey and the M4 in Berkshire, and the new city Milton Keynes, consistently cited by the Centre for Cities as one of the

fastest growing and ranked fourth for GVA and average weekly earnings.

The South East is a region of contrasts, from the South Downs to the Chiltern Hills, the Cotswolds and the Thames Valley. There are two national parks: the New Forest and the South Downs. The green belt covers about 117,928 hectares in total, comprising both the London Metropolitan Green Belt and the Oxford Green Belt. This amounts to just over 3,201 square kilometres or 83 per cent.

While it’s generally a prosperous region, there are also big inequalities.

It has some of the highest house prices both in terms of the ability to buy as well as rental costs. The city of Brighton and Hove has the highest number of homeless people outside of London – about one in 69 people is homeless.

PLANWATCH

The high-profile Oxfordshire Joint Spatial Plan, agreed in November, saw Oxfordshire’s six councils agree to jointly deliver 100,000 homes in the region in exchange for more than £200m of government infrastructure funding. The plans are set to grow further, after new housing minister Kit Malthouse wrote to the councils requesting plans for new settlements to help meet a target of one million new homes in the corridor between Oxford and Cambridge by 2050.

Elsewhere, a report commissioned by Kent County Council has identified a £2bn funding gap for the infrastructure required to support its projected population increase of 40,000 people by 2031. According to the Kent and Medway Growth and Infrastructure Framework, "unprecedented funding challenges" have brought local services across the country to "breaking point". The 98-page report advocates "innovation and a place-based approach" in bridging the funding gap.

FACTFILE 2018 2018 2018

Area: 7,373 square miles Population: 8,635,000 (making it the UK’s most heavily populated region outside of London) Counties: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey, West Sussex Major population centres: • Brighton/Worthing/ Littlehampton (c474,000) • Portsmouth (c461,000) • Southampton (c377,000) • Reading (318,000) • Milton Keynes - c230,000 • Maidstone (c168,000) • TC - SE Region (RIP) (9,080,800), • Medway Towns (277,600) Parliamentary constitutencies: 84 (Conservative 72, Labour 8, Liberal Democrat 2, Green 1 and the Speaker) Planning authorities: 8 county councils, 11 unitary authorities, 55 district councils, 2 national parks

IN THE PIPELINE

1. Phase 2 East West Rail

3.5 km tunnel under the Thames.

A strategic rail link between East Anglia and central, southern and western England. Phase 2, Bicester to Bedford, will see upgrades along the route and the reinstatement of a ‘mothballed’ section of railway.

n bit.ly/planner0918-crossing

bit.ly/planner0918-eastwestrail

2. Thames Lower Crossing With the Dartford Crossing at capacity, the government has chosen a 13-mile expressway linking the M25 with an expanded A2 east of Gravesend – to include a

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3. Ebbsfleet Garden City The Ebbsfleet Development Corporation is bringing forward up to 15,000 homes and 30,000 new jobs on former industrial or quarry land between Dartford and Gravesend around Ebbsfleet International Station.

The challenge will be to deliver homes and jobs alongside ample green space to warrant the ‘garden’ epithet.

3 2

n bit.ly/planner0918-ebbsfleet

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The South East INSIGHT: DO­IT­YOURSELF AT GRAVEN HILL

Emily Shaw MRTPI is principal planning officer for Cherwell District Council Graven Hill, 241 hectares of former Ministry of Defence land on the southern edge of Bicester in Oxfordshire, is one of the UK’s largest custom and self-build sites.

Development is governed by a local development order ensuring fasttrack permission for applications that comply with an approved masterplan and design code.

“We’ve got approved detailed parameter plans which set building heights and sizes for each of the plots within different ‘character areas’,” says Shaw. “The two main areas with the highest design control are the village centre and the rural lanes – the more visible areas.

“Elsewhere in other character areas there’s more freedom, with no restrictions for example on materials or boundary treatment. But the parameters are still there in respect to things like building heights and where in the plot they have to build.

“Generally people are happy to work within the parameters. The local development order (LDO) has been a useful tool in simplifying the

process while giving flexibility.

“It’s very different from dealing with a standard market housing development. Handling the different planning documents that relate to the site [such as outline planning conditions, reserved matters, the design code and masterplan] and applying these through the LDO is complex and challenging.

“But I can see more of this happening. We’ve learned lots in applying the LDO to this scale and type of development.

It’s been intriguing to see the wide range of designs we’ve had people coming in with, when you think they had so much flexibility. We have had some very modern innovative designs but also ones where people have chosen a very standard market housing type.

“It’s been very worthwhile. It’s given me a number of opportunities to speak on the subject – I’ve really enjoyed sharing that knowledge and learning with others.” www.gravenhill.co.uk

RECENT SUCCESSES

1. Depot, Lewes Community Screen The winner of the 2017 RTPI South East Award for Planning Excellence, Depot is a former brewery in a prominent location sensitively transformed into a community arts venue – with a cinema, restaurant and film education facilities. n bit.ly/planner0918-lewes

2. Bransgore Affordable Housing Scheme The 2017 South East Award for Excellence in Delivering Housing is a scheme to build and let two affordable homes to local families in the New Forest National Park.

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It was made possible by a new legal framework allowing the National Park to construct the homes and become a landlord. n bit.ly/planner0918-bransgore

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3. Newport Pagnell Neighbourhood Plan The Buckinghamshire town’s neighbourhood plan embraced growth by allocating housing well above that required by the core strategy – thus addressing community concerns about community infrastructure. n bit.ly/planner0918-newportpagnell

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The South East COMING UP

Graven Hill sefl-build homes

1. Housing Matters 6 September, Reading Joint RTPI/ CIH Planning for Housing Network afternoon event that invites speakers including Janice Morphet to give views on challenges and potential solutions to the housing crisis. bit.ly/planner0918-reading

2. Development Management – South East 12 September, Ashford, Kent An afternoon update on recent policy and current best practice, as well as the opportunity to hear from those involved in different areas of the development management process. bit.ly/planner0918-ashford

3. Planning and Infrastructure 21 September, Brighton Sue Percy, chief executive of Chartered Institute of Highways & Transportation, chairs an afternoon panel discussion considering policy, best practice and challenges of infrastructure delivery in the South East. bit.ly/planner0918-brighton

SIGNPOSTS The Big Wheel on Brighton's seafront

n Regional chair: Cian Cronin MRTPI n Regional web address www.rtpi.org.uk/southeast n Annual review: http://www.rtpi.org.uk/media/2638656/2017_ regional_annual_review_south_east.pdf n South East Young Planners: http://www.rtpi.org.uk/the-rtpi-near-you/rtpi-southeast/young-planners-in-the-south-east/ n Events: http://www.rtpi.org.uk/the-rtpi-near-you/rtpi-southeast/events/ n Email address: southeast@rtpi.org.uk n Twitter: @RTPISouthEast

Painswick in the Cotswolds

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Working in...

ADVERTISER CONTENT

The South East

5 REASONS TO LIVE AND WORK IN THE SOUTH EAST

Despite the South East being more built up than the rest of England and the wider UK, the region is still very green.

Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (OANB) include the Chiltern Hills, South Downs and High Weald, while coastal towns such as Brighton and Hastings in Sussex or Broadstairs in Kent can keep you busy at the weekends.

Congestion aside, rhe South East is well connected by public transport (and car). You can get from Reading to Oxford in less than 25 minutes on the train, and from Brighton to London in just over an hour. And of course the ferry or Eurotunnel from Folkestone will get you to Calais if you fancy the short trip to France.

For music lovers there is the Isle of Wight Festival, which is scheduled next for June 2019,while The Great Escape (Brighton in May) showcases new music. The region is also blessed with theatres - New Theatre in Oxford; Kings Theatre in Portsmouth; or Queens Park Arts Centre, to name just a few.

The South East has its fair share of characterful towns and cities such as Oxford where its historic buildings making it a prime location for film and TV. To the south, Canterbury is one of the most-visited cities in the UK and HQ to the Church of England. There’s also Winchester and Windsor, past and present homes to the royal family.

The South East of England is the second largest regional economy in the United Kingdom, valued at £177 billion as of 2006 – only London’s economy is larger.

It’s also a magnet for high tech industries, while for education the region has a broad spectrum of universities and colleges, with the University of Oxford routinely ranked amongst the very best in the world.

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

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CASES &DECISIONS

A N A LY S E D B Y M A T T M O O D Y / A P P E A L S @ T H E P L A N N E R . C O . U K

Outcry over historic ceiling demolition ‘influenced council decision’ EXPERT ANALYSIS

Bristol City Council was ‘markedly influenced’ by public anger over a developer’s destruction of a 17th century ceiling in determining a proposal to convert the same building into student flats, an inspector has ruled, and must pay full costs.

The appeal concerned a 400-year old townhouse in Bristol’s historic centre, which was last used as a bar with offices and flats above. The owner of the building applied to the council for permission to convert the building’s upper floors to form four student accommodation units, retaining the bar use below.

After the application was submitted, Bristol’s conservation advisory panel applied to Historic England for the building to be spotlisted to preserve its ornate Jacobean pendant ceiling.

A day before it was due to be inspected, the developer tore down the ceiling, claiming that the works were carried out “for safety reasons”.

The developer’s actions caused public outrage in Bristol, drawing criticism from MP Thangam Debbonaire and others.

Historic England stated that because the building was not listed at the time of the demolition the developer had not broken the law. SAVE Britain’s Heritage and others called for this legal loophole to be closed.

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Henrietta Billings MRTPI, director of SAVE Britain’s Heritage ( “The demolition of the 17th century ceiling in Bristol highlights the urgent need for interim protection for buildings of historic interest being considered for listing. ( “We need to change the English heritage protection legal framework to close the current loophole that allows owners and developers the chance to destroy important features before they are fully assessed for listing. ” ( “This kind of deliberate vandalism needs to stop.”

LOCATION: Bristol AUTHORITY: Bristol City Council INSPECTOR: J P Tudor PROCEDURE: Written submissions DECISION: Allowed REFERENCE: APP/ Z0116/W/18/3194372

The council subsequently voted to refuse planning permission for the developer’s student accommodation, but the decision was appealed and

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was referred to inspector J P Tudor for determination.

Tudor noted that in the council’s development control committee minutes, which suggested that despite warnings from its planning officers, the council’s decision was “markedly influenced by the public controversy” surrounding the removal of the historic ceiling.

“Regrettable though those actions may have been,” he ruled, “the proposal must be determined in accordance with the development plan.”

He was not persuaded by the council’s reasons for refusal, which he called “vague, generalised and, at some points, confused”.

The council had alleged that there was potential harm to “designated heritage assets”.

However, the appeal building is undesignated because it was not listed, and the proposals did not involve any external alterations that could impact on other designated heritage assets nearby, Tudor pointed out.

Overall, and not withstanding the “unfortunate” harm to the historic ceiling, Tudor concluded that the scheme would comply with both local and national policy.

He allowed the appeal, and also ordered a full award of costs against the council.

I M A G E S | B I G C H I L L B A R S W N S / I S T O C K / S H U T T E R S T O C K

20/08/2018 11:30

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

Housing scheme would not harm Forth & Clyde canal An inspector has approved a housing development comprising townhouses and four-storey blocks on the edge of Glasgow, finding no harm to the setting of the protected canal that runs alongside the site.

175-home scheme’s ‘bland’ design conflicts with NPPF Plans for 175 homes in Worcestershire were refused after an inspector sympathised with local people who described the design as “mundane, monotonous and mediocre”.

The appeal concerned 8.5 hectares of land near Great Witley, a village in Worcestershire. The appellant planned to build 175 homes on the site, 70 of which would be designated affordable.

The site sits beyond the settlement boundary of the village, where the local development plan prohibits new housing unless there are material circumstances to justify it.

Considering the scheme’s design, inspector David Nicholson noted that the houses would be “simple and relatively similar to each other, with a lot of repetition in style and materials”.

Although he “found nothing wrong with housing designs which aim to be modest and unpretentious”, he considered that some of the proposed houses “would not only be bland but also quite big”.

Nicholson sympathised with local residents who described the proposals as “mundane, monotonous and mediocre” houses that could be found in any part of the country.

There would be nothing cohesive about the design to elevate it above the ordinary, he decided, nor would there be a central focus. The dwellings would be “closely packed, with meaningless small gaps in between, and little LOCATION: Great Witley to integrate them as a coherent whole”.

AUTHORITY: Malvern Hills District On this basis he considered that the scheme Council would amount to poor design under paragraph 130 INSPECTOR: David Nicholson of the revised NPPF. In the planning balance, PROCEDURE: Written submissions Nicholson afforded only “moderate weight” to the DECISION: Dismissed provision of more housing despite the identified need REFERENCE: APP/ for affordable homes in the J1860/W/17/3187943 area, in light of the council’s housing land supply of greater than five years.

The appeal was therefore dismissed.

The appeal concerned a seven-hectare strip of land that forms a gap between the Forth & Clyde canal and the built-up area of Bishopbriggs, on the northern edge of greater Glasgow. The appellant sought permission to build 135 homes on the site in the form of three-storey townhouses and four-storey blocks of flats.

The council argued that the proposed 135 units would be “excessively dense”, given that the appeal site and adjacent land combined were only allocated for up to 108 units.

Buylla disagreed, noting that the proposed mix of townhouses and flats would require less land per unit than standard homes, allowing 40 per cent of the site to remain open and undeveloped.

Although he accepted that the scheme’s four-storey parts would represent “a departure from established built form that is not entirely without disadvantage”. Buylla agreed with the appellant’s point that the proposed configuration would allow “a wider range of dwelling types and sizes”.

Buylla then turned to

LOCATION: Bishopbriggs AUTHORITY: East Dunbartonshire Council

INSPECTOR: David Buylla PROCEDURE: Written submissions DECISION: Allowed REFERENCE: PPA­200­2047

the scheme’s effect on the canal, which is a scheduled monument. Although one of the proposed four-storey buildings would be “prominent to users of the canal as they pass”, he noted, the principle of development on the site had already been established.

He was not persuaded that a four-storey building would be materially more harmful in this regard than a two-storey house.

Buylla decided that the scheme would make a “valuable contribution” to the local housing supply. The appeal was therefore allowed.

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C&D { C Brokenshire overrules inspector in light of neighbourhood plan

LOCATION: Benson AUTHORITY: South Oxfordshire Council INSPECTOR: John Felgate PROCEDURE: Recovered appeal DECISION: Dismissed REFERENCE: APP/ Q3115/W/17/3180400

RJ and S Styles had appealed against South Oxfordshire District Council’s refusal of the scheme, which included 40 per cent affordable housing.

Inspector John Felgate applied the tilted balance to allow it.

At the time of the public inquiry, South Oxfordshire could not prove a five-year supply of housing land and the Benson Neighbourhood Plan was at examination. But this came into force after a referendum in June and is now part of the development plan.

Cycling trails would not match ‘thrill’ of unauthorised routes National Trust plans to create formalised cycling trails at Badbury Hill to prevent harm to ancient woodland have been refused, after an inspector considered that ‘thrill-making’ young riders would still use unauthorised routes.

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The appeal related to Badbury Hill, a hill in Oxfordshire known for the Iron Age fort at its summit. Although managed by the National Trust, access to the hill is largely unrestricted.

The trust was concerned about the development of unauthorised “wild” bike trails and their impact on biodiversity and public safety.

The neighbourhood plan committed Benson to substantial housing growth and Brokenshire accepted that the council could now show a five-year land supply. But he found that relevant policies in the development plan “are not silent or absent or out of date” on housing allocations in Benson and said the tilted balance no longer applied.

Brokenshire said the scheme conflicted with policies on the development of unallocated sites outside Benson and the

loss of countryside. He gave significant weight to these conflicts, particularly in the light of the NPPF, which says permission should not usually be granted where an application conflicts with a current neighbourhood plan.

The plan would not greatly harm the area’s character, he said, but there were no material considerations to indicate that it should be determined other than in accordance with the development plan, and so the appeal was dismissed.

On this basis, it proposed three formalised cycle trails – for beginner, intermediate and advanced cyclists.

Inspector Heward noted that the proposed trails would go through an area of ancient woodland, potentially harming tree roots. The appellant indicated that “flexibility is required... for the art of creating an attractive bike trail”, as it is difficult to accurately depict in plans what work will be required on the ground.

Heward was not persuaded, noting that it would therefore be equally difficult for her to ascertain the likely impact on the ancient woodland.

Heward was told that many of the riders are youngsters using unauthorised routes that involve “speed, height and thrill-making”. These people were unlikely to stick to the formalised trails, she said, which would be “quite a different experience”. Once in

use, she added, the trails would facilitate an overall increase in the number of people using the ancient woodland area, causing more deterioration.

Heward had also seen evidence of badger activity near the proposed trails. Deciding that the appellant had not shown adequate mitigation measures to address this aspect, she dismissed the appeal.

I M A G E S | U K PA R L I A M E N T / I S T O C K / S H U T T E R S T O C K

Housing secretary James Brokenshire has rejected an inspector’s recommendation and refused outline permission for 120 homes near Benson, Oxfordshire, after considering a nearby neighbourhood plan.

LOCATION: Badbury Hill AUTHORITY: White Horse District Council

INSPECTOR: Helen Heward PROCEDURE: Hearing DECISION: Dismissed REFERENCE: APP/ V3120/W/17/3190461

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DECISIONS DIGEST{

SUBSCRIBE to our appeals digest:

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

Affordable homes requirement upheld for neighbouring schemes A 14-flat scheme in High Wycombe must include an affordable housing contribution despite being just below the 15-unit threshold, an inspector has ruled, because it forms a “single developable area” with a similar neighbouring scheme. bit.ly/planner0918-affordable

Extended hours at 166­year old cricket club would disrupt new homes

Appeal leads to stricter condition for holiday let

An inspector has issued a split decision on an appeal by Darlington Cricket Club to extend permitted use times of its allthe permit weather practice nets, in light weathe of complaints from the o owners of newly built homes nearby. bit.ly/ planner0918-cricket

An inspector has allowed an appellant’s application to remove a planning condition prohibiting the residential use of a holiday cottage in Rutland – only to replace it with a more strictly worded condition. bit.ly/planner0918-let

Green wedge fears halt 185­home Leicestershire scheme

Residential conversio conversion of listed London police station blocked A plan to convert the grade II listed Wealdstone Police Station into nine flats was refused after an inspector upheld six of the council’s 10 reasons for refusal. bit.ly/planner0918-pub

Plans for a 185-home extension to the village of Bosworth, Leicestershire, have been blocked, after an inspector found unacceptable harm to the function of the green wedge of which the appeal site forms part. bit.ly/planner0918-wedge

Military vehicle storage unit would ‘incrementally harm’ countryside side A storage unit forr a collection of military vehicles has been refused after inspector er an inspecto t r found that it would outlast any personal circumstances, building cumstances, le lleaving aving a buil u ding with “no functional purpose”. ose”. bit.ly/planner0918918military

Camden pub conversion thrown out on historic interest grounds A proposal to convert a former Camden pub located in a conservation area into offices has been rejected for harm to its “social and historic interest”. bit.ly/planner0918-pub

Adult gaming centre blocked despite charity offer

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A plan to restore a derelict leisure centre in South Wales for use as a Korean Christian community centre has been blocked because of its location on a flood plain, “irrespective of actual predicted flood risk”. bit.ly/planner0918-flood

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An inspector has rejected plans to convert a vacant café in Chorley into an ‘adult gaming centre’, despite the appellant’s offer to display local art in the window and donate a portion of profit from sales to charity. bit.ly/planner0918-gaming

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INSIGHT

LLegal landscape THE REVISED NPPF: VISIBLY DIFFERENT ON DESIGN? The revised NPPF has a stronger emphasis on design than its predecessor. Meeta Kaur and Spencer Tewis-Allen consider the shift and what it may mean for applicants and planning authorities “Refocusing on the quality and design of proposals which are in line with what local communities want, the framework ensures councils have the confidence and tools to refuse permission for development that does not prioritise design quality and does not complement its surroundings.”

So reads the government press release on the issue of design in launching the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF2). But what are some of the legal and practical implications?

NPPF2 took effect for decision-making purposes from its publication day, 24 July.

It is non-statutory guidance, but is an important material consideration in local planning authorities’ decision-making.

Some observations: • Original design principles are retained. See, for example, paragraph 127, which also includes reference to health and well-being and a footnote on accessibility and national space standards.

• There is more focus on clearly articulated development plan design policies that “…should

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Meeta Kaur

“NPPF2 MOVES FURTHER TOWARDS DESIGN IN A BROADER SENSE – OF DEVELOPING ATTRACTIVE PLACES THAT FUNCTION WELL FOR COMMUNITIES – AND FURTHER AWAY FROM A NARROWER FOCUS ON VISUAL AESTHETIC” be developed with local communities so they reflect local aspirations…” and stronger wording on the use of design codes and design review panels.

• More weight is given to “early, proactive and effective” engagement throughout the process of scheme design evolution.

• There is encouragement to LPAs to ensure that approved designs are not diluted during the construction process.

For decision-making, the design and access statement (DAS) is in practice the primary document that

Spencer Tewis-Allen decision-takers will consider when it comes to design aspects of a proposed development. It is a legal requirement under the Development Management Procedure Order (DMPO) 2015 to submit a DAS with most planning applications.

There is no statutory requirement for applicants to carry out pre-application consultation for most applications, but the DMPO makes explicit that a DAS must include consultation steps taken by the applicant.

There is no legislative requirement for a statement of community involvement (SCI) to be submitted with an application, but it is a common requirement under LPA local lists, without which the local planning authority may refuse to validate an application.

NPPF2 principles say SCIs should show that consultation has been carried out early enough for responses to be taken into account; proactive in leading on and seeking out views – do not wait for objections; and effective.

Applicants should therefore expect local planning

authorities to interrogate DASs and SCIs more closely than before, and care should also be taken in drafting environmental statements where these set out details of scheme evolution, alternatives and evidence of consultation.

There is a greater emphasis in NPPF2 on design generally, but it moves further towards design in a broader sense – of developing attractive places that function well for communities – and further away from a narrower focus on visual aesthetic.

Nonetheless, local planning authorities may now be more likely to insist on use of design codes and obligations to retain particular architects in planning agreements to guard against dilution of architectural quality after grant of permission.

There is also more explicit focus on the process of scheme design, particularly in terms of local engagement.

NPPF2 contains some hooks to indicate that applications that demonstrate proper local engagement should fare better than those that do not.

But under NPPF2 principles, showing a meaningful approach to engagement could now be a genuine opportunity to assist in realising a positive planning decision and it would be reasonable to expect local planning authorities to have proper regard to it.

Clearly the weight to be given to these matters in determining applications is for the decision-maker. But with competing challenges such as meeting housing requirements and the new housing delivery test, it remains to be seen if the increased emphasis on design in NPPF2 will change local planning authorities’ approach to design.

Meeta Kaur is a partner and Spencer TewisAllen an associate of Town Legal LLP

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LATEST POSTS FROM THEPLANNER.CO.UK/BLOGS

B LO G S The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England’s annual State of the Green Belt report argued that developers and authorities are gobbling up green belt for housing while overlooking opportunities to develop brownfield land. Is it a fair characterisation?

LEG I S L AT I O N S H O R T S High Court stands firm on caravan breach

Increasing protection for the green belt Katherine Evans The green belt continues to be one of the most hotly contested issues in planning and development. This was given new life recently by the publication of the government's long-anticipated revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) on 24 July and the latest report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), which suggests that more must be done to protect the green belt from unnecessary development.

The revised NPPF aims to provide “a comprehensive approach for planners, developers and councils to build more homes, more quickly and in the places where people want to live”.

It aims to make it easier for councils to challenge poor-quality and unattractive development and to give communities a greater voice about how developments should look and feel.

Among the key focus areas of the revised framework is providing stronger protection for the environment. Despite what the CPRE report says about the number of permissions in the green belt, the latest government statistics suggest that green belt land decreased by less than 0.05 per cent in 2016-2017.

Moving boundaries The government has highlighted its commitment to green belt protection for some time now and the revised NPPF makes it clear that green belt boundaries should only be altered where exceptional circumstances are fully evidenced and justified. This means that any planning authority must be able to demonstrate that it has fully examined all other reasonable options for meeting its identified need for development.

Extensions to boundaries and building on the green belt are only likely where the local authority has already made use of suitable brownfield sites and underused land, optimised the density of development on existing land set aside for housing or has reached an agreement with a neighbouring local authority to take on some of its housing needs.

If it is decided that green belt land should be released for development, then the planning authority should first consider using land that has previously been built upon and/or is well served by public transport.

Looking ahead While building more homes to tackle the housing crisis is one of the government’s main priorities, it is quite clear from the revised NPPF that this is not to be at the expense of the green belt. The policies set out in the NPPF are material considerations that should be taken into account in dealing with applications from 24 July 2018.

The revised framework will go some way to improving clarity on the planning requirements for new housing. However, the call from the CPRE for departments to work together is to be welcomed and probably reflects the legislative position in relation to the duty to cooperate. While it is important that brownfield sites are redeveloped, some locations will still need economic and housing development where there are no brownfield sites available.

Katherine Evans is a partner at UK law firm TLT

Ashford Borough Council has seen off a bid to overturn a High Court injunction against a group that had unlawfully created a mobile home site.

The case, which involved several defendants and ‘persons unknown’, concerned a site at High Halden in Kent.

In March, Ashford was granted an injunction preventing the defendants from using the land or carrying out works in breach of planning controls under Section 187B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, including stationing any caravan or mobile home for residential use.

Council officers had witnessed substantial works on the site in defiance of a stop notice.

His Honour Judge Richard Parkes ruled that the injunction seemed to “have been completely ignored” and refused an application by one of the defendants to vary it to allow temporary residential use.

He decided that using the land for residential purposes had never been lawful and that it “strains credulity” for the defendants to believe otherwise and he saw no prospect of planning permission being granted for residential use.

The judge also said varying the injunction would mean some defendants using the site for residential when they had “no legal right to bring mobile homes onto the land in the first place and when there was a court order in place preventing the use of the land for such purposes”.

Welsh language group start plans challenge Welsh language campaign group Cymdeithas yr Iaith has launched a legal challenge against rules they say stop councillors from considering the impact of planning applications.

The group is concerned that Welsh Government guidelines published last year suggest that councillors cannot request a report on the impact of a planning application on the Welsh language except in specific cases, such as ‘big’ developments, sites not identified in local development plans, or “linguistically significant areas”.

The group says the guidelines violate the Planning (Wales) Act 2015, which says the Welsh language must be considered in all applications.

The organisation’s communities spokesman Jeff Smith said: “This could be a difficult fight, but it will be a worthwhile one to ensure a bright future for the language in all our communities.”

Judicial review for Heathrow expansion Five local authorities, the Mayor of London and Greenpeace have formally issued judicial review proceedings in the High Court over the proposed third runway expansion of Heathrow Airport.

The claim is being brought against the Secretary of State for Transport on the basis that he has unlawfully designated the Airports National Policy Statement under the Planning Act 2008. The councils involved are the London Boroughs of Hillingdon, Wandsworth, Richmond, and Hammersmith and Fulham and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

The grounds of challenge include air quality, inadequate environmental assessment and flawed consultation.

The government faces another challenge from Friends of the Earth (FoE), after its lawyers Leigh Day filed papers at the High Court asking for the Airports NPS to be quashed.

FoE says the NPS fails to account for all the adverse impacts on future generations.

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NEWS

RTPI {

RTPI news pages are edited

by Josh Rule at the RTPI, 41 Botolph Lane, London EC3R 8DL

10 ‘best places’ in Ireland announced: public to vote for winner Ireland’s longest walking and cycling trail, an 18th century estate town and the country’s most historic and compact medieval city, are among the best places in Ireland, as nominated by the public.

Ireland’s Best Places is a competition run by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Ireland. It celebrates some of the most attractive and inspiring places and the role planners have played in helping to protect or shape them for communities across Ireland. The top 10 best places have been whittled down by the Ireland’s Best Places Judging Panel from nominations from the public. The finalists are:

Abbeyleix, Laois One of the oldest planned estate towns in Ireland, largely built in the 18th century.

Planners have worked to conserve and protect its high-quality historic buildings and streets, helping make the heritage town an attractive, vibrant place.

Cobh, County Cork This seaside town has built on its harbour setting with panoramic views. It has used its history to enhance tourism with visitor attractions that have protected and enhanced its heritage.

Cork City Centre The city centre regeneration began with repaving and widening of pavements to create a plaza effect.

It has continued reinventing itself with revitalised stretches of waterfront, new shops and leisure facilities and innovative architecture while retaining its cultural and historical character.

Dingle, Kerry The village, framed by its fishing port, makes best use of its environment, including rugged scenery, trails

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and sandy beaches. Planners have enhanced the village to become a cosmopolitan, creative place that respects its historical architecture and community ethos.

Grand Canal Square, Dublin The square is an attractive, wellused public space in Dublin’s Docklands framed by shops, homes, restaurants, and cultural attractions and includes public art and landscaping. The 10,000 square metre site is one of the largest paved public spaces in the city.

1. Submit your vote online www.rtpi.org.uk./Irelandbestplaces 2. Email it to: contact@rtpiireland.org 3. Tweet your vote for your chosen place and use #RTPIIrelandsBestPlaces

Kilkenny City Centre, Kilkenny Ireland’s most historic and compact medieval city, the centre has been managed and protected to retain and augment its historic core while becoming a hub for arts, crafts and design, with a great cultural scene.

Lough Boora Parklands, Offaly This cutaway bog was reclaimed for agricultural and eco-tourism use and is maintained as a nature reserve. It can be explored for its outdoor activities, nature and biodiversity, sculptures and Mesolithic Site.

The Great Western Greenway, Mayo At 42km long, it is the longest off-road walking and cycling trail in Ireland.

It follows the route of the renowned Westport to Achill railway, which closed in 1937, taking in the beauty of Achill, Mulranny, Newport and Westport.

Greystones, Wicklow Originally a small fishing village, Greystones has grown significantly with the redevelopment of its harbour, but has kept its village atmosphere.

Housing, road networks and facilities have been improved to cater for the growth.

Tully Cross, Galway This village on the Renvyle Peninsula in Connemara was revitalised by investment in its historical assets and is now a focus for natural heritage-based tourism.

Marion Chalmers MRTPI, Chair of RTPI Ireland said: “The competition has reminded us of the passion we have for places we love. The finalists, places clearly loved by the public, have been protected, carefully planned or improved by the planning system. I encourage everyone to ensure their favourite place wins.”

The public can now vote for their favourite, to be crowned Ireland’s Best Place in November. Voting is open until Friday 12 October – see box at the top of the page.

I M AG E S | T H I N K STO C K / S H U T T E RSTO C K / B OR D NA MONA

17/08/2018 18:04

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 planning system

James Cross MRTPI PLANNER, RENAISSANCE RETIREMENT LTD Due to the high birth rate experienced in the postwar ‘baby-boom’ era, the 65+ population is estimated to increase by 20 per cent in the next 10 years. As life expectancy has increased, providing housing for an ageing population is critical.

This need has been partially met by privatesector developments, although demand currently outweighs supply; with a present undersupply of 1 unit to 4 persons in the 65+ population.

Up to 2022, research by Knight Frank forecasts 44k additional retirement dwellings will be required; however, there are unique barriers to delivering such numbers. Costs associated with providing retirement developments are greater than open-market developments, given the unique specifications required for elderly needs (e.g. concierge offices, guest suites, communal lounges). These unique characteristics prejudice retirement developers when acquiring/developing sites compared to open-market developers. Retirement developments release existing family houses onto the open market, reduce hospital visits and increase social interaction between residents, leading to improved physical and mental health. Retirement developments therefore provide significant public benefits and savings to the public purse.

2

3

Endorse qualitative benefits and needs when calculating housing numbers, which are not accounted for in current quantitative housing prediction methods

Exempt retirement developments from CIL/ affordable housing contributions to reflect the bespoke costs of retirement developments and enable delivery

1 Identify a separate use class for retirement housing to acknowledge the unique characteristics of retirement developments

POSITION POINTS

LAND VALUE CAPTURE REFORM

An awards ceremony and Gala Dinner to be held at Girton College, Cambridge, in mid-September

Research by the Scottish Land Commission examines why most land value uplift remains uncaptured by the state, despite negotiated developer contributions having been in place for over two decades in Scotland and three in England and Wales.

The RTPI is supportive in principle of capturing land value uplift for the public benefit. In Scotland the current Planning Bill means that such a mechanism could be imminent: the Institute is urging careful design of a system for capturing land value uplift, to anticipate and minimise any unintended consequences. Awaiting the outcomes of research currently being undertaken on this issue before legislation is introduced is therefore the preferred approach of RTPI Scotland. n Scottish Land Commission report: bit.ly/planner0918-slc n RTPI report: bit.ly/planner0918-rtpi

CPD events in September, on the subjects of Neighbourhood Planning

LOCAL AUTHORITIES’ ROLE IN STRATEGIC PLANNING

A Law Update in early November, to be hosted at Downing College, Cambridge, sponsored by No. 5 Chambers and Cornerstone

A review of strategic planning in England by the County Councils Network argues that there is scope to enhance the role of county councils in two-tier areas by building on the current government reforms and introduce a more formal approach to strategic spatial and infrastructure planning.

The RTPI sees planning at its most effective when it takes a strategic overview, rather than narrowly focusing on housing numbers. This means aligning transport infrastructure investment decisions and housing delivery. It means thinking about the structure of the market and existing housing stock.

And it means taking innovative approaches to align housing plans with other goals like climate change mitigation and public health. n CCN report: bit.ly/planner0918-ccn

COMMITTEE PRIORITIES: RTPI EAST OF ENGLAND Adam Banham MRTPI, the East of England Region chair, outlines the committee’s priorities for the next 12 months:

RTPI East of England continues to work on its calendar of events for 2018. A programme of conferences has been matched to the training priorities of the region’s membership, along with a series of other networking events.

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NEWS

RTPI { C HPIA RINT EACR TI E DONM: EP LMAN B EN RI NSG RT N E W M E M B E R S REFORM E LEC T E ADN AD PLEG R I LI ­S JL ATI U N EON2 0 1 8 “MANY CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF OUR NEW CHARTERED MEMBERS. EMPLOYERS RIGHTLY RECOGNISE THE PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE AND INTEGRITY CONFERRED

BY CHARTERED STATUS. BEING A CHARTERED MEMBER OF THE RTPI MAKES YOU PART OF A LARGE PROFESSIONAL TEAM INVOLVED IN A DIVERSITY OF WORK DESIGNED TO CREATE BETTER PLACES.” JOHN ACRES, RTPI PRESIDENT

Katy Adubi Edward Allison-Wright Daniel Allwood Lucy Aspden Mark Behrendt Jasdeep Bhalla Sian Blacker Joshua Brear Alan Brown Chloe Buckingham Grace Campbell Antonio Caparelli Thomas Clarke Charlotte Cranmer Terri-Anne Cross Coral Curtis Paul Dadswell Shelly Delderfield Ian Deverell Matthew Dixon Rebecca Drake Caitlin Duffy Maria Dychala Geraint Evans Emma Faith Amy Farrelly Gary Farrelly Thomas Fleming Luke Garrett Jake Geczy Stephen Gill Sarah Grady Kirstin Gray Hannah Gray Rafael GrossoMacpherson Peter Hall Michelle Hill Kerry Hobbs Richard Holliday Helena Horton Zoe James Fraser James Emily Jones Chloe Jones David Jones Sean Kelly Ben Kettle Bethany Kington Mark Knibbs 46

Sana Lakhany Bethany Lambourne Christopher Law Gladys Wai Kwan Leung Gary Mackin Catriona MacLachlan Katharine Mansell Charlie Mayer Laura McCombe Rachael McMurray Louise Medland Andrea Merrington Lynne Miles Nicola Miller Katie Moriarty James Moysey Hannah Munro Emma Newfield Craig Newton Gillian Nicks Matthew Nouch Benjamin Noutch Laura O’Brien Susan O’Neil Prerana Parida Adam Perry Matthew Pigott Spencer Powell Daniel Rech Matthew Rose Gail Rowe Aqib Saghir Neil Sainsbury Georgina Schofield Rebecca Scott Alasdair Sherry Jenna Shore Jay Skinner Gavyn Smyth Robbie Steel Grahame Stuteley Harriet Swale Melissa Tyler Matthew Usher Benjamin Vickers Kerry Walker Stephanie Walker Hannah Weston Leanne Whiteman

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How devolution and infrastructure can unlock housing: the RTPI’s focus at this year’s party conferences The housing crisis continues to be at the top of the political agenda. This year, the RTPI is considering how, through planning, devolution and infrastructure can be used to unlock housing.

The RTPI’s joint events with the British Property Federation will feature a panel of experts to discuss devolution, include Gareth Bradford, West Midlands’ director of housing and regeneration, Siobhain McDonagh MP, and Councillor Melanie Baker, deputy leader at Malvern Hills District Council.

At events sponsored by Countryside, expert panels will consider how infrastructure can unlock housing. Shadow planning minister Roberta Blackman-Woods, Richard Bacon MP, and Bob Neill MP are among the confirmed panellists.

The Institute is also co-hosting two more events with the Royal Institute of British Architects, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and the Chartered Institute of Building.

Diversity and skills in the built environment sector will be the topic of conversation with a senior representative from the UK Department of Education at the Conservative Party Conference.

And Roberta Blackman-Woods and planner-turned-politician Helen Hayes MP will address a networking reception at the Labour Party Conference.

RTPI members are strongly encouraged to attend the Institute’s six events to help it champion the power of planning to parliamentarians and decision-makers.

The events are part of the RTPI’s ongoing contact with policymakers: we also run an annual parliamentary reception, produce legislative briefings, and meet ministers, MPs, MSPs, peers, and civil servants on a regular basis. n Reserve your place today: bit.ly/planner0918-parties IM I MAAGGEE| |I SI STTOOCCKK

17/08/2018 18:05

RTPI Y ACTIVIT E PIPELIN

Current RTPI work – what the Institute is doing and how you can help us LAST FEW TICKETS: CONFERENCE SHARES SECRETS TO CREATING THRIVING PLACES IN NORTHERN IRELAND Where we live affects how we live and how we live affects everything else including our health, well-being, relationships, access to work, social life, and impact on the environment. Development must be about more than just the number of ‘units’ that can be built.

The RTPI NI Planning Annual Conference will explore the interrelationship between mobility, green infrastructure, social infrastructure, placemaking and the role of a clear vision through plan-making in creating great places to live. Experts from Space Syntax, Design Commission for Wales, Department for Infrastructure and the RTPI will hold presentations and seminars during the day.

Held on 11 September in Belfast, the conference is not to be missed.

Book your place now: bit.ly/planner0918-ni

YOUNG PLANNERS CONFERENCE: DON’T MISS OUT Tickets have been selling faster than ever before for this year’s Young Planners’ Conference and are still great value at £145 + VAT, and there are group discounts available. If you are attending the conference on 2-3 November, make sure you book your ticket for the Friday evening gala dinner. It is always an unforgettable evening and provides a chance for you to network with fellow young planners in a more laidback environment. Group of 10 can reserve a table at a discounted rate. Whether you are in Nottingham on your own, or in a group, kick off the event with welcome drinks on the Thursday evening.

Be sure to reserve your place: bit.ly/planner0918-ypc2018

BOOK NOW FOR RTPI SCOTLAND ANNUAL CONFERENCE Speakers and delegates at this year’s RTPI Scotland Annual Conference will ask: What do we want Scotland to be, and how will we get there? National Planning Framework 4 will set a vision for how Scotland should be planned over the next 30 years. Do we want or need Scotland to be ‘business as usual’? Or should planners be advocating for change? We have challenged speakers including Professor Samer Bagaeen of 100 Resilient Cities; Niall Cussen, Chief Planner for the Government of Ireland and Prof. Sarah Skerrett of the Scottish Rural College to disrupt our thinking and spark a debate about what kind of Scotland we want to help build.

Join the debate on Tuesday 2 October at the COSLA Conference Centre, Edinburgh: bit.ly/planner0918-scotland

BOOK YOUR PLACE FOR THE NEXT PLANNING LAW UPDATE: This briefing will provide you with a thorough and thought-provoking examination on the latest development, legislative and case law changes within the Welsh planning system. Combining strategic updates, policy amendments and panel discussions, this briefing is essential for anyone working in the planning environment.

27 September, Cardiff: bit.ly/planner0918-cardiff

RTPI NEWS

RTPI ELECTIONS: MEMBERS TO VOTE FROM RECORD NUMBER OF CANDIDATES From 3 September, members can now vote – from the largest number of candidates since 2015 – in the 2018 RTPI Elections. The number of candidates standing for election is up 66 per cent since 2015, and the diversity of members standing has also widened. There is a 71 per cent rise in female candidates and a 20 per cent rise in candidates under the age of 40 since 2016.

There is also a good geographical spread: all of the nations of the UK, Ireland and each of the English regions are represented by at least one candidate.

Victoria Hills MRTPI, RTPI Chief Executive, said: “This year, we’ve asked members to ‘be the change you want to see’ in the Institute, so I’m thrilled to see such a large increase in the number and, crucially, diversity of candidates standing. These strongly contested elections are an indicator of the health of the Institute.

“While there have been strong increases in female and younger members nominating, we will continue to work on encouraging an ever more diverse crosssection of our membership to get involved, particularly amongst our BAME members. I call on our members to ‘be the change’ again and cast their vote for the candidates they think have the vision, competency and passion to play an effective and productive role.”

For the first time in two years, the role of the Chair of the Board of Trustees is up for election and two candidates – Peter Geraghty FRTPI and Graham Stallwood FRTPI – are standing.

Who will be the next Vice-President?

Watch Samer Bagaeen MRTPI, Paul Barnard MRTPI and Sue Manns FRTPI share why they think they would be an effective Vice-President on the RTPI website.

How to vote Members are being asked to look out for a letter or email from Mi Voice, this year’s election provider and ensure they have voted by 5pm, 3 October.

The following positions are open for election: Board of Trustees - Chair of the Board of Trustees - 3 corporate trustees Vice-President General Assembly - 14 corporate - 3 student/licentiate

Timetable Voting: 3 September-3 October Notify candidates of results: October Candidates asked to express interest in serving on an RTPI Committee for 2019: October Induction for elected candidates: December n Join in the Twitter conversation: #RTPIElections n More information: bit.ly/planner0918-elections

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ADVERTISEMENTS

Recruitment {

Grads – Where Is Your Planning Career Heading?

It’s been a blast of a few years. You’ve made life-long friends and you have your degree in hand. But now you are wondering ‘what will my next steps be?’

Do not fear. This is completely normal. As is the next question: ‘Will I even work in a Àeld related to my degree?’ You’d be surprised how many graduates don’t.

Work experience is key. A summer internship working in a planning role is deÀnitely a great thing to do. It adds a new layer to your CV that will help you climb to the top of the pile when employers are hiring graduate planners. Which begs another question – public or private?

It’s a traditional divide in planning, and though it’s still apparent, is less marked than it once was. Historically, planners would start in the public sector and might migrate to the private sector as they learnt their trade and their skills developed. Nowadays, the planning Àeld is far more Áuid, with many more graduate roles available off the bat in the private sector and planners moving quite freely between the two.

Each has pros and cons, and requires a slightly different skills set to excel. Here’s where your internship (or even internships plural) comes into play. By exposing yourself to one or other sector – or even both – you’ll have a better idea of where your own strengths and preferences lie and which sector to target from the get-go.

The good news is that there’s a skills gap in planning, particularly in development management.

Both local authorities and consultancies are looking for graduates with up-to-date planning knowledge, an eagerness to learn and

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willingness to work hard, “I’m looking for the right attitude,” one public sector development manager told us, “you can teach someone to determine a planning application, but you can’t teach someone the right attitude.”

This means going above and beyond for colleagues, and being passionate about learning and developing while showing a hands-on attitude to customer service. It’s important to keep a step ahead – by knowing where the council is up to in its local plan, understanding the issues facing the local area or framing the constructive advice that will help a client push ahead with a longterm project. Do your research, take an interest and you’ll impress your new employer. You’ll also improve your chances of securing that second position that you really want, then you’re really on your way.

On the Áip side, it could be that you have obtained your degree but a career in planning is not on the cards for you. Again, changing your mind is normal. Have you ever considered a profession using your planning skill set but applied to a different Àeld? Property recruitment perhaps?! It could be the answer you were looking for; It’s a whole new direction, but if you’re looking for a job to combine your passion of Planning with a drive to be successful in a meritocratic environment, a career in recruitment could be for you.

Either way, come and talk to us at Oyster and we’ll help you Ànd the direction that suits you. www.oysterpartnership.com Eleanor Wood - Planning, Development & Regeneration Recruitment Specialist Katie Ayre - Town Planning Recruitment Specialist Hannah Clarke - Talent Manager

S e ar ch t h e p l a nne r.co .uk/ jo bs for the best vacancies

15/08/2018 12:26

ADVERTISEMENTS To advertise please email: recruitment@theplanner.co.uk or call 020 7880 7665

“A new story is being written’’

BIRMINGHAM’S GREATEST CHAPTER

Birmingham is a city embracing change, on an unprecedented scale. The many diverse projects range from commercial and housing growth to major infrastructure projects to schemes enhancing the City’s unique historic environments.

Among other projects, the arrival of HS2 will connect Birmingham to the capital in just 49 minutes; Birmingham Smithfield will be the largest city centre mixed-use development in the country; and the Langley Urban Extension will create a new community with 6,000 homes. We’re even welcoming the Commonwealth Games in 2022 with its unique planning challenges.

None of it, though, is possible, without the talented professionals in the largest planning department in the country and due to the exciting developments in the city, we are now looking to expand our team.

We are now recruiting for a range of roles within the Planning Department.

Find out more and apply at www.greatestchapter.com

BABERGH AND MID SUFFOLK DISTRICT COUNCILS, ENDEAVOUR HOUSE, IPSWICH Is it time for a change? Are you looking for the opportunity to rise to new challenges and really influence how our communities develop?

The 'Heart of Suffolk' is blessed with a beautiful natural environment and vibrant communities. Our offices in Ipswich are conveniently located and offer great transport connections to Cambridge, Norwich and London. If you are looking for that ideal work life balance, then Babergh and Mid Suffolk Councils is the right organisation for you.

Want to be part of a great team? We have adjusted our structures to allow us to deliver an ambitious, new Joint Local Plan and to play our full part in a whole Suffolk based approach to creating inclusive growth and this has created the opportunity for internal promotions. We are now seeking motivated and talented people who care about the future of our communities and have the desire and skills to balance the need for growth, whilst preserving what is unique about our district, to join our team.

Principal Planning Officers (Development Management) £36,153 - £41,846 plus market forces supplement of £3,000 pa

Ref: BMS00098

Senior Planning Officers (Development Management) £28,221 - £33,136 plus market forces supplement of £3,700 pa

Ref: BMS00096

Spatial Planning Policy Officers Grade 4: £22,401 - £27,358 Grade 5: £28,221 - £33,136 plus market supplement of £3,700 pa

Ref: BMS00129

Senior Spatial Planning Policy Officer £36,153 - £41,846 plus market supplement of £3,000 pa

Ref: BMS00130

Applications are welcome from individuals with either a general degree along with some planning or community experience, or a master's degree, who will bring a wealth of relevant experience with them.

For an informal discussion about these roles, please contact one of our team members: Development Management roles: Gemma Pannell (01449) 724992 or John Pateman-Gee (01473) 296343.

Spatial Planning roles: Robert Hobbs (01449) 724812.

If you are interested in this exciting opportunity, please apply online by visiting our career pages on the Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Councils' website: www.babergh.gov.uk/council-business/careers Closing date: 30 September 2018.

S ea rc h t h ep l a nn e r.co .u k / j o b s fo r t h e b e s t v a canci e s

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LANDSCAPE

THE MONTH IN PLANNING The best and most interesting reads, websites, films and events that we’ve encountered this month WHAT WE'RE READING... PART 1 Planning for AuthentiCITIES “A key concept underscoring planning’s inherent challenges is the notion of authentic community,” argue authors Laura Tate and Brettany Shannon in a book questioning whether our cities becoming "hollowed out” as the result of gentrification. It’s one of several theories analysed in a gripping book examining the reasons for and responses to the quest for ‘authentic’ places.

Available on Amazon & specialist bookshops.

WHAT WE'RE READING... PART 2 Planning Practice: Critical Perspectives from the UK Authors Jessica Ferm (coordinator of the Bartlett School of Planning’s ‘Planning Practice’ module) and John Tomaney (professor of urban & regional planning in the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL) consider what it means to be a reflective practitioner in today’s planning system, and the constraints and opportunities that planners face daily.

Available on Amazon & specialist bookshops.

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING...

Sinkholes – Buried Underground This documentary series examining the underlying forces behind the sinkholes that swallow up streets and destroy forests is a compelling watch. Eyewitness video of sinkhole collapses has been captured from across the world. It’s been shown on Channel 5, but is also available through a variety of streaming and catch-up services. bit.ly/planner0918-sinkholes

WHERE WE'RE GOING...

Each month the RTPI runs a range of free or low-cost events up and down the UK. Here’s our pick for the next few weeks. See the full calendar here: bit.ly/planner0718-calendar RTPI Scotland Annual Conference 2018 2 October, COSLA Conference Centre, Edinburgh ‘Scotland 2050: What do we want Scotland to be and how do we make it happen?’ A powerful theme set against the context of the impending Scottish National Planning Framework 4, setting out a vision for how Scotland should be planned over the next 30 years. Early work on NPF4 will follow the Planning Bill, and this event will ask what it is we want it to advocate. Booking details: bit.ly/planner0918-heritage

How can infrastructure help to deliver housing?

(Conservative Party Conference) 2 October, Novotel Birmingham Central The RTPI, with Countryside Properties, considers how devolution can boost housing delivery in a panel discussion followed by a Q&A. To be in the audience, email rsvp@rtpi.org. uk before 28 September – where you can also apply to be in the audience for one of the RTPI’s other party conference events. bit.ly/planner0918-edinburgh

National Association of Planning Enforcement (NAPE) Annual Conference

WHAT WE'RE PLANNING... of Housing feature series Our Future Fu continues with a look at the potential for contin offsite manufacturing. We’re also talking urban planning issues with Rosemarie Harris and preparing to give over the reins to RTPI’s young planners. Got ideas for us? the RT Get in touch: editorial@theplanner.co.uk

3rd October, 9 Margaret St, Birmingham ‘The New Enforcement Landscape’ will discuss enforcing new PD rules for the NPPF. NAPE members only. bit.ly/planner0918-nape

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Boost your career High quality expert training across the UK @RTPIPlanners RoyalTownPlanningInstitute Royal Town Planning Institute @RTPIPlanners

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Book today rtpi.org.uk/training +44(0)20 929 8400 training@rtpi.org.uk

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