The Planner - August 2015 by The Planner

AUGUST 2015 PERSPECTIVES ON A PRODUCTIVITY PLAN // p.6 • RTPI AWARDS 2015 // p.10 • SPEAKER BY SPEAKER, THE 2015 PLANNING CONVENTION // p.22 • FOLLOWING IN BAZALGETTE’S FOOTSTEPS: THE THAMES TIDAL GATEWAY // p.34

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

PLANNER

THE

HEAD OF ESTATE HOW ALISON NIMMO IS TACKLING ‘THE BEST JOB IN PROPERTY’

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CONTENTS

PLANNER 10 22

THE

AU GU ST

20 15

“ATTEMPTS TO SIMPLIFY PLANNING ARE MAKING OUR REGULATIONS MUCH MORE COMPLICATED”

NEWS

6 Can brownfield development drive the economy?

7 Put local plans in place or face having one imposed

OPINION

8 Planners call for clarity 9 Ending RO is ‘antibusiness’, says Scots energy minister 10 Learning and engagement recognised in 2015 Planning Awards 11 Forth Bridge awarded World Heritage Site status 12 Retail not enough to make town centres thrive 13 Northern Powerhouse is derailed

14 Chris Shepley: Edstone’s slab-gate – or why standing stones gather no gloss COV E R I M AG E | PE T E R S E A R L E

QUOTE UNQUOTE

“WHEN I LOOK AT THE 1940S SPATIAL PLAN FOR THIS AREA IT HASN’T CHANGED MUCH BECAUSE IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE – BIG STUFF HAPPENS IN BIG PLACES AND SMALLER STUFF HAPPENS IN SMALLER PLACES” PAM EWEN, STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT PLANNING MANAGER, TAYPLAN

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INSIGHT

FEATURES 18 Alison Nimmo, chief executive of the Crown Estate, talks regeneration, Olympics and the challenges of being at the helm of one of the UK’s biggest landowners 22 More than 450 delegates attended the RTPI Planning Convention 2015 on the theme 'The New Politics For Planning' 34 As the capital’s population fast outstrips its infrastructure, the prize-winning Thames Tideway super sewer is set to serve London for the next century. Mark Smulian reports

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

40 Career development: Attracting young people to planning 42 Plan Ahead – our pick of upcoming events for the planning profession and beyond 44 RTPI round-up: News and interviews from the institute 50 Plan B: ‘We agree with Waheed’

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PLAN UPFRONT

Leaderr New language, but the same set of problems – So, our newly emboldened government has clearly decided to get its muchtelegraphed planning measures in early. ‘Fixing the Foundations’ is a cute title for its multi-faceted productivity plan, but one that appears to tacitly admit how much its reforms to planning since 2010 have failed to fully achieve what they set out to do. Now, with no coalition partner to hold them back, this Conservative administration is seeking (for example) to impose a 2017 deadline for the publication of local plans, a measure it claims is in the best interests of local communities, if not the local authorities that represent them. Because after all, what is it that constitutes good performance in planning? Is it the speed at which a process is completed, or the quality of the end

Martin Read result? There’s a perfectly obvious answer to that question, but it doesn’t feel as if it tops the political agenda just now. Freeing up the planning process by punishing perceived underperformance in local authorities, and devising fresh new ways of avoiding established process and policy seem to be the order of the day. Yet surely there was, and still remains, a reason for all that existing policy in the ﬁrst place? The measures contained

in ’Fixing the Foundations’ include some nebulously worded new language seeking to give core voters, property developers and the wider public more confidence about a more flexible planning process. It suggests, for example, that in certain cases major infrastructure projects that include a housing component to them may now be able to apply through the nationally significant infrastructure project scheme. Using local development orders on brownfield land for housing schemes is also on the agenda. But so much of the impact of these suggestions is eroded by the sheer

"THAT NATIONALLY SIGNIFICANT INFRASTRUCTURE CHANGE, FOR EXAMPLE. WHAT, PRAY, DOES THE PHRASE ‘AN ELEMENT OF HOUSING’ ACTUALLY MEAN?"

wooliness of the language used. Take that Nationally Signiﬁcant Infrastructure change, for example. What, pray, does the phrase ‘an element of housing’ actually mean? What the public is likely to take away from ‘Fixing the Foundations’ is the sense of a government seeking to develop ever more ingenious ways of circumventing existing bureaucracy and process to address the country's increasingly urgent need for new housing. What the wider profession seems to be saying in response is that these attempts at simpliﬁcation and restructuring are certain to founder, at least to some extent. Lack of local authority resource won't mean an end to process, just longer processing times – the opposite outcome to that intended. The language we use is important, and indeed you can read more on that topic in our coverage of the RTPI convention, from p.22.

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PRODUCT ION

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Average net circulation 19,072 (January-December 2014) © The Planner is published on behalf of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) by Redactive Publishing Ltd (RPL), 17 Britton St, London EC1M 5TP. This magazine aims to include a broad range of opinion about planning issues and articles do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the RTPI nor should such opinions be relied upon as statements of fact. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any print or electronic format, including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet, or in any other format in whole or in partww in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher. While all due care is taken in writing and producing this magazine, neither RTPI nor RPL accept any liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. Printed by Polestar Colchester Ltd.

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AU G U S T 2 015 / THE PLA NNER

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NEWS

Analysis { GOVERNMENT PRODUCTIVITY PLAN

Planners call for clarity By Huw Morris The Productivity Plan’s proposals for devolution of planning powers and a new wave of enterprise zones generate much heat but little light so far. First there was the Queen’s Speech, then came the Budget, followed by the Productivity Plan. The quartet of government fiscal announcements with a major bearing on planning will be completed in November with the comprehensive spending review, when projected cuts of up to £20 billion in Whitehall budgets will be unleashed. Of the four, the Productivity Plan indicates the direction George Osborne sees the country taking in the next five years on devolution and enterprise, but crucial details are notable by their absence. On devolution, major planning powers will pass to the mayors of London and Manchester, starting with wharves and sightlines in the capital. The Mayor of London will be allowed to call in planning applications of 50 homes or more, and there will be future proposals – probably through permitted development rights reforms – to scrap planning permission for upwards extensions for a limited number of storeys up to the height of an adjoining building where neighbours do not object. “We expect this to be received with mixed reviews from the development sector, with the Alconbury Enterprise lack of clarity on how matters of Campus design and appearance and Birmingham scope of impacts such as daylight Black Country or sunlight will be dealt with Bristol Temple Quarter Discovery Park remaining a high concern,” said Great Yarmouth and London First planning and develLowestoft opment programme director Sara Harlow Parkinson. Hereford Humber But aficionados of devolution Lancashire are looking north, though they Leeds City Region admit the view is still unclear. Manchester New powers will be devolved to Mersey Waters future mayors of Manchester, MIRA Technology Newquay Aerohub “giving them the tools to drive North East forward complex, brownfield Northampton Waterside developments”, according to the Nottingham Productivity Plan. Chief among Royal Docks these are plans to allow the Sci-Tech Daresbury Science Vale UK mayor to create development Sheffield City Region corporations to spur regeneration Solent and complex schemes, promote Tees Valley compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) and set up a land com-

Current 24 enterprise zones

mission. Both the corporations and CPO powers must work with the agreement of the leader representing the borough. British Property Federation chief executive Melanie Leech urged caution. “We will not know what the full impact of policy will be until we see what the full reform of the compulsory purchase orders system that will take place in the autumn will entail,” she said. “As it stands, the CPO system is outdated, time-consuming and complicated and is badly in need of updating.” Another proposal for the city region is the creation of a land commission in line with the government’s plan to devolve powers over transport, housing, health, planning and policing to an elected mayor. Its role will be to help the 10 Greater Manchester authorities deliver 10,000 homes a year. According to figures from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority 4,160 homes were delivered in 2013-14. Central to the commission’s mission will be a full database of public sector land to help it identify both barriers to its disposal as well as solutions. The mayor and a housing minister will jointly chair the commission alongside other ministers. The new powers sit alongside the forthcoming Greater Manchester Spatial Framework. The government points to city regions around Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield as the next candidates for devolved powers, while Cornwall is fast becoming the first non-metropolitan area to agree what is described as a ‘county deal’. The chancellor said cities must introduce “metro mayors” to gain new powers, with an expectation that deals will be finalised in time for November’s spending review. “The onus is on leaders in “IT IS CRITICAL THAT places like the North-East, West WE DON’T GET STUCK Midlands and South-West to act IN A CONSTITUTIONAL before they fall even further QUAGMIRE AND FIXATE behind Manchester,” said ON ELECTED MAYORS” Centre for Cities chief executive – MELANIE LEECH Alexandra Jones. But Leech warns: “It is critical that we don’t get stuck in a constitutional quagmire and fixate on elected mayors. The key to success and attracting investment is to have a coherent, positive vision for an area, creating a place where people can live, work and play, and this is not dependent on having a mayor in place.” Attracting investment is a key element of the Productivity Plan’s bid to boost enterprise. The government is encouraging councils to work with their Local Enterprise Partnerships on plans for a new wave of enterprise zones (EZs). The current 24 EZs have attracted 439 businesses, created 15,500 jobs, and secured £2 billion of investment since April 2012. Key aspects of EZs include a range of tax relief and discounts, government support for superfast broadband and simplified planning regimes through local development orders granting automatic planning permission for certain developments. Rural areas must wait for Defra to publish its own plan setting out ambitions for new EZs in the countryside, although this will review the threshold for converting agricultural buildings to homes. Current rules allow development of three homes, which some rural campaigners say already risks harming the countryside. But Country Land and Business Association policy director Christopher Price said the review shows the government is ready to circumvent obstructive planning authorities. “Delivery of rural housing has been woeful. The review must be significant if it is really to make a difference.”

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PLAN UPFRONT

Fergus Ewing: “Businesses at the forefront of renewables technology are now being forced to look at making redundancies”

Ending RO is ‘anti-business’, says Scots energy minister Scotland’s energy minister Fergus Ewing has criticised the UK Government’s decision to end the Renewable Obligation (RO) early as “anti-business” at an onshore wind summit. The Scottish Government was meeting with renewable energy professionals at the event, held in Glasgow in July, to hear about the impact ending the RO would have on businesses in Scotland. After the summit, Ewing said the decision “can only be described as antibusiness”. The eﬀects, he said, could spread across Scotland to the supply chain, including to ports and harbours, transmission and distribution, communities and the civil engineering sector. Ewing explained: “All of this will come at great personal and economic cost to our

businesses and people. I’ve heard from many successful businesses at the forefront of renewables technology who are now being forced to look at making redundancies as a result of these changes. I also heard from investors both in Scotland and abroad who want to invest in this industry, but these are currently being stalled because of the uncertainty this is causing.” Jenny Hogan, director of policy at Scottish Renewables, said the industry is urging the UK Government not to “abandon the onshore wind sector in Scotland by pulling the rug from under it a year earlier than planned”. She added: “Ending the RO one year early could have a devastating impact on onshore wind developers and supply chain across the country with around £3 billion of investment in Scotland being put at risk.

Key Irish transport projects to get €50m from EU Transport minister Paschal Donohoe has welcomed EU funding totalling more than €50 million for ﬁve key infrastructure projects, mainly port-related and involving schemes in Dublin, Shannon and Cork. This follows the news that the Ringaskiddy project in the Port of Cork has recently been granted planning permission, while the Alexander Basin redevelopment project was given the green light by An Bord Pleanála. The latter represents the largest-ever infrastructure development project proposed for Dublin Port. Donohoe said: “This is a further boost for infrastructure investment in Ireland. These ﬁve projects will allow for future growth and development which will ultimately help with job creation.” I M A G E S | PA / K U T T I G T R AV E L 2 A L A M Y

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He added: “The continued commercial development of the port companies is a key strategic objective of the government which will support job creation across the country as they are progressed in the years to come.”

RTPI sets out to name England’s Great Places The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has launched its England’s Great Places campaign. Following its soft launch at the RTPI Planning Convention 2015, nominations are now being taken for England's Great Places. Kathie Pollard, RTPI England’s Great Places coordinator, said: “It was exciting to see people enthusiastically nominating during our early launch at the Planning Convention. It encouraged people to talk about how planning has shaped great places in England. Nominations for England’s Great Places are open until 1 September, with everyone, including members of the public, able to nominate. The judging panel will then work on deciding a shortlist of 10 regional winners before the public is asked to vote for England’s greatest places from 25 September. The winner will be announced in early December. Janet Askew, president of the RTPI, said: “As part of our centenary we wanted to celebrate the great places we have in this country. We want to recognise those cherished places, which have come about because they have been protected, carefully planned or improved. I expect competition will be very popular and people will be passionate because they care about the places that mean most to them.” The competition was held in Scotland last year, with Dundee Waterfront winning ﬁrst prize. “It might be a vibrant and diverse community you are especially proud of, a special place within a city, a stunning cultural quarter or a neighbourhood,” added Askew. “There is no single deﬁnition of a great place. We are leaving that up to you.” To nominate a great place email: greatplaces@rtpi.org.uk, tweet the RTPI or use Instagram. n For more information, please visit the RTPI website: http://www.rtpi. org.uk/events/rtpis-englands-greatplaces/

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NEWS

Analysis { PLANNING FOR PRODUCTIVITY

Can brownfield development drive the economy? By Laura Edgar New policy announced by the government will see automatic planning permission granted on brownfield sites in a bid to raise the productivity of the economy. Fixing the Foundations: Creating A More Prosperous Nation, published in July following the Summer Budget, says the UK has been incapable of building the right number of homes to meet demand, harming productivity and restricting market flexibility. Among other proposals, the government wants to see an “urban planning revolution on brownfield sites” and will introduce a new zonal system that will effectively give automatic planning permissions on suitable brownfield land. Fixing The Foundations says previous studies show that development proposals that require individual planning permissions create a “slow, expensive and uncertain process”. The government, the document explains, “is clear on the need to promote use of brownfield land, and will remove all unnecessary obstacles to its redevelopment”. Sites on the brownfield register, introduced in the recent housing bill, will be granted planning permissions in principle. This kind of zonal system is already in use in other countries, including France, Germany and America. Areas are designated for specific use, often before an application has been submitted. But Charles Mills, head of planning at Daniel Watney, said the greatest challenge facing the development of brownfield land is not the speed of the planning process, “but remediation costs and the sometimes awkward shape and location of sites”. Mills said granting automatic planning permission in some areas might result in a “whole wave of ill-considered developments”. “FORMER INDUSTRIAL Gareth Hooper, CEO of BROWNFIELD urban planning consultancy SITES ARE OFTEN DPP, agreed. Planning DISCONNECTED obstacles to brownfield land, FROM VITAL SOCIAL he said, are not as important INFRASTRUCTURE, as the “fundamental viability SUCH AS SCHOOLS of a given site” as well as AND HOSPITALS, AND the market perception of GOOD TRANSPORT brownfield site for builders. CONNECTIONS” And Kate Henderson, – ANDREW JONES

chief executive at the Town and Country Planning Association, warned that automatic planning permission “seriously undermines the ability for genuine place-making”. Jim Newton, head of planning and regeneration at North West Leicestershire District Council, told The Planner the brownfield proposal needs more detail. He said for his council it could mean that “nothing much changes or we could find that ‘hope value’ starts to significantly hold up regeneration”. Newton added that the implications of transferring commercial land in central and edge of centre locations to residential land on large scales – and the problem of where to put those jobs – “demand much greater analysis”. “And of course we have to understand how, if at all, the proposals take account of neighbours’ amenity together with all of the other usual planning considerations,” he said. Cautioning against a disjointed approach, Andrew Jones, practice leader of design, planning and economics at AECOM, instead recommended that the government should address two “significant barriers” to speed housing delivery – contamination and a lack of good infrastructure surrounding some brownfield sites. “Former industrial brownfield sites are often disconnected from vital social infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, and good transport connections,” he explained. And Mills said that if the government is to meet its promise that 90 per cent of all brownfield land has planning permission by 2020 for new homes it needs to accelerate disposal of public land. With the public sector sitting on “large swathes” of brownfield land, “encouraging more government agencies to open their estates for housing development would be a welcome move”, he added. Mike Jones, vice-chairman of the environment, economy, housing and infrastructure board at the Local Government Association, suggested measures that would make sure developers prioritised brownfield land, including the “devolution of housing and infrastructure and introducing a sequential test for brownfield land”. n Fixing the Foundations www.bit.ly/1Ro2S6Q (pdf)

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PLAN UPFRONT

HOUSING CRISIS

Put local plans in place or face having one imposed By Laura Edgar

Osborne says 200,000 homes could be built on brownﬁeld land by 2020

George Osborne: Other key announcements – Summer Budget And Fixing The Foundations (1) Transport for the North (TfN), established by the

(2) (3) (4) (5)

(6)

(7)

chancellor to bring together Northern transport authorities to work alongside the government to help create a Northern Powerhouse, will receive £30 million of funding over three years. The government said this would give TfN more responsibility for setting out policy and investments, with cities and counties in the region given more control over local transport. A land commission will be implemented in Greater Manchester. The chancellor said he is working towards devolution deals with an elected mayor with Sheffield and Liverpool city regions, and Leeds, West Yorkshire, and partner authorities. Major infrastructure that features housing elements is to be submitted to the Nationally Significant Infrastructure regime. London residents will be able to build extra storeys on their properties without planning approval from their local councils, where neighbouring authorities do not object. “In cases where objections are received, the application will be considered in the normal way, focused on the impact on the amenity to neighbours,” states Fixing The Foundations. A new approach to station redevelopment and land sales on the rail network will be introduced. A dedicated body will be established to “focus on pursuing opportunities to realise value from public land and property assets in the rail network, to both maximise the benefit to local communities and reduce the burden of public debt”. “The government does not intend to proceed with the zero carbon Allowable Solutions carbon offsetting scheme,” said Osborne.

I M AG E | G E T T Y

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The government vows to take “tougher action” to ensure that local plans are put in place to increase the level of house building in the UK. Fixing The Foundations: Creating A More Prosperous Nation aims to ensure that local authorities are using their powers to get local plans in place. It states that the government will intervene and “arrange for local plans to be written where necessary”. If communities secretary Greg Clark does decide to intervene, Fixing The Foundations says local plans will be written in consultation with local people. Additionally, proposals will be brought forward to “significantly streamline the length and process of local plans” to speed their implementation and amendment and improve cooperation between local authorities. League tables will be published detailing councils’ progress. Despite the assurance that communities will still be consulted on local plans if the government intervenes, Kate Henderson, chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association, expressed concern about the administration’s intentions. She said although the government has continually stressed its commitment to the localism agenda, “local people are increasingly losing the ability to have any say in how their communities are being developed”. DPP CEO Gareth Hooper agreed, saying the changes amounted to local authorities being “coerced” into speeding local plan deliver or “risk facing fines and lose control to centralised decision-making.” “None of this will sit well with communities and neighbourhoods who wish to decide their own futures,” he concluded. On the other hand, Charles Mills, head of planning at Daniel Watney, said powers to intervene in local plans could prove beneficial, if exercised with care. “Local and central government need to work together, and not against each other, if we are to fix our housing crisis.” Andrew Burgess, planning director of Churchill Retirement Living, agreed. “It’s absolutely right that government will have powers to intervene when local authorities fail to produce local plans setting out how housing will be met.” Jim Newton, head of planning and regeneration at North West Leicestershire District Council, told The Planner the council did not support the government being able to intervene on local plan delivery. The prospect of the private sector preparing development plans “could be a conflict of interest”, he said. But Newton added: “Working on the assumption that the process will be streamlined and guidance will be provided concerning the operation of ‘Duty to Cooperate’, this should not come to pass anyway. “It will focus minds, though.”

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NEWS

Analysis { RTPI AWARDS FOR PLANNING EXCELLENCE 2015

Learning and engagement recognised in 2015 Planning Awards By Simon Wicks The Thames Tideway Tunnel took the top prize of the Silver Jubilee Cup and the title of overall winner from a record number of entries to the 38th RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence, which were given out on 6 July. Praised by the judges for overcoming huge obstacles in planning a project of enormous complexity, the tunnel also won the award for Excellence in Planning for Economically Successful Places. (Our four-page case study on the project starts on page.34 of this issue.) “This is a unique scheme providing an example of how to manage a complex infrastructure project with very complex public consultation with more than 900 community groups,” said awards evening master of ceremonies and past RTPI president Kevin Murray. The judges, said Murray, had cited the scheme for – among other things – its community involvement, its focus on developing skills locally and its insistence on using local contractors. The first project to go through the streamlined NSIP (Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project) regime, the Tideway Tunnel will stretch from Acton in the west of London to Stratford, Greenwich and Beckton in the east. It was honoured as an essential project that had to find creative solutions to problems of construction on a huge and potentially disruptive scale – not least

using river transport to move spoil so as to minimise its above-ground impact. “It’s been 150 years since the last investment of this scale with London sewers,” said Murray. “It shows that planning can and should be good for everyone.” The scheme exempliﬁed the two common threads running through a night that celebrated success in planning across the board, from big infrastructure to a community primary school in Snowdonia that brought the children of four communities together: honesty about failings and problems, and sincere community engagement. “The people that have won have recognised that there were problems and they have faced them and addressed them,” said RTPI Wales and Northern Ireland director Roisin Willmott, who advised the judging panel. In some cases, she noted, this involved entrants admitting and dealing with their own shortcomings during the course of projects to make them successful. Learning, she said, was a fundamental element of the awards. Beyond this, said Willmott, the sheer quality of the community engagement “really shone through” in many of the winning projects. “It’s not consultation, it’s engagement. It’s listening to people and responding to that by making changes.” At The Rise in Newcastle, the project submission for the RTPI Awards demonstrated community engagement that “elicited strong local support” which was a key factor in a “totally transformative” housing

THE WINNERS

RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence 2015 Excellence in Decision Making in Planning: Green Park House Redevelopment, Bath – Bath and North East Somerset Council Excellence in Planning for Built Heritage: Delivering the Vision for Dudley Town Centre, West Midlands – Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council Excellence in Planning for Community and Well-being: Ysgol Craig y Deryn/Craig y Deryn Primary School, Wales – Snowdonia National Park Authority Excellence in Planning for the Natural Environment: Hanham Hall, South Gloucestershire – HTA Design Excellence in Planning to Create Economically Successful Places: Thames Tideway Tunnel, London – Greater London Authority Excellence in Planning to Deliver Housing: The Rise, Scotswood, Newcastle upon Tyne – New Tyne West Development Company Excellence in Planning to Deliver Infrastructure: National Planning Framework 3 & the Scottish Planning Policy – The Scottish Government Excellence in Plan Making Practice: The Plymouth Plan, Devon – Plymouth City Council Excellence in Planning and Design for the Public Realm: River Taff Central Link and Penderyn Square, Wales – Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council Employer Award for Excellence: Bilfinger GVA -RTPI Graduate Training Scheme Local Authority Planning Team of the Year: Peterborough City Council Small Planning Consultancy of the Year: Place Studio Planning Consultancy of the Year: Indigo Planning Young Planner of the Year: Viral Desai, planning consultant, Amec Foster Wheeler

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PLAN UPFRONT

Forth Bridge is awarded World Heritage Site status Viral Desai (above), New Young Planner of the Year (left) Staﬀ from Merthyr Tydﬁl County Borough Council, winner of Excellence in Planning for the Public Realm

scheme. The project won the award for Excellence In Planning to Deliver Housing. In Planning to Deliver Housing. In Wales, the River Taﬀ Central Link and Penderyn Square Development was praised for its “really interesting approach to community engagement” on winning the Planning and Design for the Public Realm award. Peterborough City Council, winner of the Local Authority Planning Team of the Year, was noted for its neighbourhood planning support, as well as its “far-sighted approach to the process of change”. Place Studio, the Small Planning Consultancy of the Year, had a “strong philosophy with a clear niche in neighbourhood planning and community engagement”; Indigo Planning, the victor in the Planning Consultancy of the Year category, was said to have “an excellent client and stakeholder engagement ethos”. If nothing else, 2014-15 was the year planners discovered and promoted the value of working with communities. But it was also a year of record entries to the RTPI Awards – 50 per cent more than in 2014, with 80 ﬁnalists across 14 categories. “Quite frankly, planning has never been so popular,” joked Kevin Murray. RTPI president Janet Askew added: “I think it’s a credit to the very high standards of excellence in this country.” But it fell to former Labour planning minister and chair of judges Nick Raynsford to sum up the mood of the evening. “Planning by its very nature arouses strong feelings and that’s why it’s so important to recognise the achievements of those who have created and facilitated inspirational plans and developments that have truly enhanced the quality of life in Great Britain and Ireland. Good planning is fundamental to the prosperity and health of a society.” The Planner's series of RTPI Awards case studies starts this issue on p.22.

The Forth Bridge is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site – becoming Scotland’s sixth site to be awarded the status. The 125-year-old cantilever rail bridge joins Edinburgh Old and New Towns, the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, New Lanark, the Antonine Wall and St Kilda. Spanning the Firth of Forth on the east coast of Scotland, the bridge opened in 1890 after eight years of construction.

Lough Neagh sand-dredging ﬁrms face huge appeal costs The companies appealing against Northern Ireland environment minister Mark H Durkan’s order to stop dredging sand from Lough Neagh face escalating costs estimated at more than a quarter of a million pounds. Five sand companies and the Shaftesbury estate, which owns the bed of the Lough, are challenging a direction to stop extraction. But an appeal also serves as an application for planning permission – and that will cost each of the six parties more than £40,000. The minister intervened over the long-running activities of the companies last month and ordered them to halt dredging operations. Sand has been extracted from the bed of the lough since the 1930s, but the operation has never had planning permission. It is estimated that about 1.7 million tonnes of sand a I M AG E S | A L A M Y /

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It was designed by Sir John Fowler and Benjamin Baker. The award was announced during the 39th session of the World Heritage Committee in Bonn, Germany. The bid for World Heritage Status was taken forward by the Forth Bridges Forum, which was established by the Scottish Government to promote the three Forth Bridges. In a statement on the UNESCO website, the bridge is described as “innovative in style, materials and scale”. It continues: “The Forth Bridge is an important milestone in bridge design and construction during the period when railways came to dominate long-distance land travel.” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that it is ﬁtting that the Forth Bridge has been recognised as a World Heritage Site as it “is known as one of the industrial wonders of the world”. Sturgeon added: “The Forth Bridge is an outstanding example of Scotland’s built heritage and its endurance is testament not only to the ingenuity of those who designed and built it, but also to the generations of painters, engineers and maintenance crews who have looked after it through the years.”

year are removed using special dredging barges. The sand dredged from the lough supplies around a quarter of Northern Ireland’s construction needs annually. But the Lough is also an important bird habitat, protected by European Union directives. Environmentalists had complained that unregulated sand extraction was threatening the site.

AU G U S T 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

24/07/2015 14:40

NEWS

Analysis { RETAIL DEVELOPMENT

Retail is not enough to make town centres thrive Rescue plan By Simon Wicks

The traditional high street had left us with “too many shops and too many of the wrong What can planners do to help kind of spaces”, he said, arguing that, “We rescue town centres in the light of don’t have a crisis in the high street. We have changing retail trends? A National a crisis of retail space.” Retail Planning Forum seminar Anna Rose, chief planner of Milton Keynes, explored the possibilities agreed. “Demand for retail floor space on the traditional high street is falling,” she said. “The Town centres need to offer far more than just retail model is clearly moving away from small retail if they are to remain at the heart of national retailers towards a European market-type culture, with retail coalescing into healthy communities and economies. Dining, leisure, entertainment, brand expe- fewer, bigger centres.” riences and environments to With Apple at the vanguard, linger in are the things that large, multi-channel retailers attract visitors in the wake of a were forsaking traditional stores “RETAIL IS A “convenience boom” which is for ‘brand centres’, where the CONSEQUENCE pushing traditional high streets was on experience OF PLACE, NOT A emphasis down the pecking order for rather than transactions. RATIONALE FOR “Retailers are using larger and shoppers. PLACES” – LEIGH SPARKS more Speaking at a National Retail flexible formats to adapt to Planning Forum seminar in changing habits,” she said. early July, Professor Leigh Sparks, “Demand for food and drink of Stirling University’s Institute and leisure uses is also increasof Retail Studies, said the market ing,” Rose continued, adding had changed “quite dramatically” since 2008. that coffee shops were flourishing – not least Traditional high street retailers were being because people use them as offices. Older towns with small units, more patchusurped by the “locational convenience” of out-of-town retail parks, and by ‘express’ work ownership patterns or with poor sites to supermarkets, online shops and ‘click-and- develop were being abandoned by ‘brands’ collect’ outlets. and becoming dominated instead by discount If high streets were to survive, Sparks told retailers – accentuating the sense of dwinthe audience at ‘Rescuing town centres in the dling prosperity. Some towns, she said, may light of changing retail trends’, they needed to have to oversee an “orderly decline”. show “adaptive resilience” – which might For Sparks, the key to reviving traditional mean substantial remodelling. high streets was to “develop the broader idea

(1) Think ‘town centre’ not ‘high street’ (2) Consolidate small units into fewer and larger

(3) Stress dining, leisure, entertainment (4) Give reasons to linger (5) Promote town centre living (6) Think ground ﬂoor uses – active frontages

(7) Site accessible public services in town centres

(8) Go digital – public Wi-Fi, click-and-collect

of the town centre, as opposed to simply the high street. “Successful modern town centres have a linger factor,” he continued, citing the example of Stirling, where following the Scottish national ‘town centre action plan’ had driven revival. Milton Keynes, though, was untypical of most town centres, said Rose. Its geometric grid enabled very focused planning, and leisure was booming. But the city was struggling to develop a culture-based or night-time economy. She hoped a business neighbourhood plan, the ﬁrst in the UK, would resolve these challenges. Overall, said Sparks, the picture for UK town centres was patchy. “We need to build an experience about the place,” he concluded. “Retail is a consequence of place, not a rationale for places. “Filling up retail units alone is not going to revive Britain’s declining town centres.”

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24/07/2015 14:41

PLAN UPFRONT

Northern Powerhouse modernisation derailed The Northern Powerhouse programme has been dealt a body blow after the government shelved key regional rail projects following failures in Network Rail’s £38 billion modernisation plan. Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin said that plans to electrify the TransPennine route between Manchester and Leeds and Midland Mainline north of Bedford will be “paused” after Network Rail missed targets and its costs spiralled. He said electriﬁcation of the Great Western line from London to the SouthWest and Wales would go ahead. The Trans-Pennine scheme is a key aspect of the Northern Powerhouse, spearheaded by chancellor George Osborne, to connect major cities across the region. Osborne has described the scheme as HS3. An electriﬁed Midland main line had been mooted to cut journey times between

Green Investment Bank to be privatised A ﬂagship government initiative to fund green projects, businesses and technology is to be privatised. The Green Investment Bank was launched in 2012 and is already in proﬁt. Business secretary Sajid Javid said that while the detail and timing of the I M AG E S | A L A M Y / P E T E R A DA M S

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Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham and London. The Conservative Party’s manifesto said the scheme would “put the Midlands at the centre of a modern, inter-connected transport network for the UK”. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said the decision to delay the schemes was “bad for regional growth and jobs”. She added: “How can the government expect to build a Northern Powerhouse if it is unwilling to stump up funds for vital transport links and infrastructure?” Network Rail said it had “revisited” the costs of electrification and capital projects and found that these “have been higher than assumed at the earliest stages of definition”. Its chairman, Richard Parry-Jones, has stepped down and will be replaced by London transport commissioner Sir Peter Hendy.

privatisation will depend on talks with the private sector, most of the government’s shares will be sold during the lifetime of this Parliament. He claimed the move could turn green investment into a global sector. “I’m sure people will say this shows the government is reneging on its environmental commitments, that we’re somehow throwing our green credentials into a coal-fired furnace, but such cynics could not be more wrong,” he told a conference. “The bank will still be green, it will still be profitable, it will still be a marketleader in financing environmentally sound infrastructure. But it will be free from limitations on where it can borrow money and from EU regulations on state aid.”

Plaid Cymru sets out 100% renewables plan Plaid Cymru has laid out plans to deliver 100 per cent of Wales’s electricity from renewable energy – if it wins the National Assembly for Wales elections next year. Llyr Gruffydd, the party’s shadow energy minister, has announced it will publish a plan for generating 100 per cent of renewable energy by 2035 within the first 100 days of a Plaid Cymru government. Speaking while visiting Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon, Gruffydd pledged to increase the amount of electricity produced by renewables, from 10 per cent to 100 per cent, in Wales – a net exporter. The “route map”, Gruffydd said, would outline exactly how this will be achieved. The plan will include targets for each individual sector, as well as measures to “encourage community ownership”. Gruffydd said Wales generates twice the amount of electricity it uses, but the country relies too much on fossil fuels. Although Wales is well placed to “take advantage of the global shift towards renewables”, it is not realising its potential. Energy projects under 350 megawatts are set to be devolved under the Wales Bill, with the UK Government expected to consult the Welsh Government and take account of Welsh planning policies when granting consents for larger projects. Roisin Willmott, Royal Town Planning Institute director of Wales, told The Planner: “RTPI Cymru welcomes Plaid Cymru’s aspirations, particularly its recognition that energy efficiency must accompany this strategy. We would encourage any strategy to also include action to increase public understanding and acceptance that we all need to reduce the amount of energy that we use.”

AU G U S T 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

24/07/2015 14:41

CHRIS SHEPLEY

O Opinion Edstone’s slab-gate – or why standing stones gather no gloss I have, on your behalf, got hold of a copy of the minutes of the Royal Academy of Tablets of Stone (Planning Committee), dated May 2015. If you are unfamiliar with this organisation, it is a learned body dedicated to the protection of tablets of stone, both real and metaphorical, in the public interest. One stratum of RATS looks after the correct use of the wellknown phrase or saying, and other clichés such as ‘stonyfaced’ or ‘blood from a stone’. The other deals with the care, promulgation and reputation of tablets, monuments, plaques, memorials, Rolling Stones, and similar ediﬁces, unless tainted with concrete. In May the committee discussed the ludicrous slab which was a signiﬁcant factor in the defeat of the Labour Party at the election. The ‘Edstone’ was clearly the product of the mind of an adviser whose education, while no doubt well regarded by Ofsted, had failed to bring him into even tangential contact with the real world. This ridiculous object had, it was feared, brought the whole idea of slabs into disrepute. But the planning committee was particularly concerned with the aborted plan to erect the tablet in the garden of 10 Downing Street, the argument that this would have needed planning permission, and most particularly the reported comments of Robert Davis, the Conservative Chair of Westminster City Council’s Planning Committee. He apparently opined that the stone would be unlikely to

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“HERE WAS A CLEAR INDICATION THAT, IN MODERN BRITAIN, DECISIONS HAD BECOME ENTIRELY PARTY POLITICAL” get permission because “The fact is that the committee which would make the decision comprises three Conservatives and one Labour member, so you could probably guess without me telling you which way the decision would go”. The chair wondered if his tongue had been in his cheek, but that would have been rare in a politician. It seemed that here was a clear indication that, in modern Britain, decisions had become entirely party political. No Tory would

approve anything that Labour promoted, irrespective of the planning issues involved, and no doubt vice versa. Old considerations like whether the slab was detrimental to the setting of the listed building, would upset the amenity of the neighbours cause highways problems, spoil the view of St Paul’s, or lead to noise and disturbance late at night (all of which to a greater or lesser extent could be relevant in this case), seemed to have been set aside. It was agreed that this was part of a trend. Political considerations (such as how a decision might aﬀect an election) had become more prominent – even dominant. Once, recalled an ancient planner on the committee, there had been a debate within the RTPI about whether planning was a political activity or a purely

technocratic one. This seemed remarkable now – but had the politicians invaded decision-making to such an extent that objective analysis and the public interest had been completely overtaken by political expediency? Was Greg Dickson of Turley’s right when quoted in The Planner (June) as saying that “politics needs to take a step back and let planning take a lead”? Ron Wood, representing the Rolling Stones on the committee, strongly agreed with this, but added “if I’m not being ultra vires, I think the Edstone is de minimis statutorily and jurisprudentially, but it’s only rock, and I like it”. An unhelpful remark, but nonetheless the committee’s deliberations must lead us all to consider anew the respective roles of politicians and planners, to deplore the way in which dispassionate advice and methodical examination are diminished, to reaﬃrm the ethical basis of planning. Which, in the form of our Code of Conduct, is set in tablets of stone.

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

24/07/2015 14:42

Quote unquote FROM THE RTPI PLANNING CONVENTION “I looked in the NPPF, I looked under equality, inequalities and poverty. And we have zero, zero and zero. And we are supposed to be promoting sustainable development” RIKI THERIVEL, PROFESSOR AT OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY’S DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING

“If exercise was a drug we would be prescribing it everywhere” SIR MALCOLM GRANT, CHAIR, NHS ENGLAND

“We must persuade the public that planning is good for places, good for cities, good for neighbourhoods” JANET ASKEW, RTPI PRESIDENT

“Gone are th “G the d days when you appear in front of a judge who doesn’t know what the NPPF is” NATHALIE LIEVEN QC, BARRISTER, LANDMARK CHAMBERS

“I think, as professionals, and it is just a problem for planning, it is a problem across the built environment profession, is to be a bit braver in confronting power, whether it is central government or private interests”

“It’s too easy for planning professions to hide behind politicians and say they are the reason we can’t have growth”

“When I look at the 1940s spatial plan for this area it hasn’t changed much because it’s not rocket science – big stuﬀ happens pp p in big gp places and smaller stuﬀ happens in smaller places” PAM EWEN, STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT PLANNING MANAGER, TAYPLAN

WAHEED NAZIR, REGENERATION AND PLANNING DIRECTOR, BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL

MICHAEL EDWARDS, TEACHING FELLOW, BARTLETT SCHOOL OF PLANNING, UCL I M A G E S | A K I N FA L O P E / D R E A M S T I M E / I S T O C K

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AU G U S T 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

24/07/2015 14:42

CORRESPONDENCE

I Inbox

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

Tony Robinson — Remember the old song Lola – “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets”? For ‘Lola’ substitute ‘London’, at least where transport investment is concerned. As you conclude in your interview with TfL boss Richard de Cani (July 2015), other regions lacking an effective integrated transport authority look on with envy and disbelief as yet more billions are poured into London’s transport while other cities get almost nothing. London has had an integrated transport body for over 80 years and now enjoys the best public transport anywhere in the UK. Somehow, by some legislative sleight-of-hand, London managed to avoid the shambolic bus deregulation of the 1980s which killed off well-run municipal bus services in many provincial towns and cities. The provincial conurbations, notably West Yorkshire and the West Midlands, suffered extensive cuts under Beeching and have become over-reliant on car use. There is limited scope for rail reinstatement, thanks to the selling off of land and severing of former routes. Up here in the North we look in vain for railway improvements, metro tram schemes (sorry, Leeds) and the like, but face constant cutbacks, most recently the proposed TransPennine electrification and the threatened further loss of rural bus services. Some of us always suspected that talk of a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ was so much hogwash; recent events (TransPennine electrics

setback) and Runway 3 at Heathrow show that it was empty rhetoric.

ON THEE WEB WEB @ThePlanner_RTPI ner_R ner_RTPI ne er_ _RT RT TP PI

Tony Robinson (RTPI Retired)

Graeme Bell — Your last issue carried the sad news of the death of Stan Procter. In a career in local government that stretched over 40 years, Stan was elected the first president of the District Planning Officers Society in 1974 when he was chief planning officer of Mole Valley District Council. He was born in Carshalton, close to the famous Lavender Fields, and he remained in the north Surrey area all his life except for the war years. Stan was a Normandy Veteran. Serving in the Royal Signals attached to the Wessex Regiment, his regiment fought across France and the Low Countries well into Germany. This experience moulded his character and, like many of his generation who had seen the horrors of war, he was determined to build a better Britain. Planning was his career choice to achieve that. Mole Valley District with offices in Dorking includes a large area of the Surrey Hills AONB, this was (and is) an area under intense pressure for development and Stan was a leader in the difficult job of balancing local needs with the conservation of the natural environment. When he was in post and after retirement, Stan was a prolific letter writer. His letters were published both in the national broadsheets and in the technical press – the institute journal and Planning often carrying his pungent, sometimes humorous but also well-informed views. If planning had a Hall of Fame, Stan would be among the first wave to be installed. Graeme Bell OBE

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

group to conduct surveys, elicit response to topical questions and amplify debates. If you’re in the RTPI’s own group, you’ll probably see us asking the odd question there as well. So, please visit us and join the group at The Planner Think Tank. See you online.

A LL OF A TWITTER Rob Cowan @cowanrob ”’If London is an enormous party, millions of people are on the wrong side of its velvet rope’ – Rowan Moore”

Mary Walsh @marywalsh354 “@ThePlanner_RTPI Diﬃcult to encourage Housing Associations to build more houses when Government then wants them to be sold oﬀ cut price.” Rob Krzyszowski@robzowski “@ThePlanner_ RTPI My response to James Bisset letter in Jul 2015 edition: Water vapour actually most potent greenhouse gas (but short-lived)”

John Bowers — Ross Anthony writes (Plan Ahead, July 2015) about “the excellent planning regulations of the City of Westminster… they require a replacement theatre to be built on the site of any theatre that is being demolished.”

Are you sure that he actually means “Regulations”? What he describes looks like a policy. Decision-makers must obey regulations – or change them through due process. They need not follow policies when “material planning considerations” are more important. John Bowers

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21/07/2015 10:42

I N T E R V I E W A LI S O N N I M M O

t’s the best job in property by a mile. Who else gets to shape bits of the best capital in the world?” Alison Nimmo is buoyant, and it’s no wonder: the Crown Estate – owner of Regent Street, much of St James, the UK foreshore, swathes of agricultural land and much else besides – has just published record returns. In 2014-15, the Estate’s profits topped £285 million – up 6.7 per cent. A big chunk of this came from its West End assets, which are beginning to reward extensive redevelopment. With a total return of 20.8 per cent, the Estate has also outperformed the industry benchmark (18.4%), which makes Nimmo particularly proud. “How do you be a good business and a responsible business, and demonstrate that these things aren’t in conflict?” she asks. “We’re trying to say there’s a different way of winning the game.” It’s a game Nimmo has been winning since becoming chief executive of the Crown Estate in 2012. She’s overseen three years of rising returns, increased value in capital assets (to £11.5 billion), record investment in regional retail and a sharpened focus on “conscious commercialism”. Though she graciously attributes much of the boom to others, including predecessor Roger Bright, you can’t help feeling she’s giving the organisation a new impetus. But this is what Nimmo does – breathes new life into places that need it. Since 1996, she has overseen three of the UK’s biggest regeneration projects, in Manchester, Sheffield and East London (the Olympic Park). She has a natural civility, but beneath it is an unyielding determination to get the job done, in the ‘right’ way.

PHOTOGRAPHY PETER SEARLE

ALISON NIMMO IS THE UK’S LEADING LADY WHEN IT COMES TO REGENERATION, HAVING OVERSEEN THE REBUILDING OF MANCHESTER AND SHEFFIELD, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF WASTE LAND INTO THE OLYMPIC PARK. BUT HOW IS SHE HANDLING THE DAYTO DAY AS CHIEF OF ONE OF THE UK’S BIGGEST LANDOWNERS? SIMON WICKS FINDS OUT 18

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27/07/2015 13:03

AD OFESTATE Crowning glory £285m Net proﬁt 2014-15 – up 6.7% on 2013-14 REVENUE SOURCES: £263.7m Urban (£79.5m London West End retail; £72.9m from West End oﬃces; £42.6m from retail and leisure parks) £50.5m Rural and coastal (£22.3m from agriculture) £8.4m Windsor Great Park £50.5m Energy and infrastructure (£19.1m from renewables, £17.1m from aggregates)

"Who else gets to shape bits of the best capital in the world?" Alison Nimmo above Regent Street

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I N T E R V I E W A LI S O N N I M M O

A rise through regeneration Her history bears the presumption out. A Manchester planning graduate, Nimmo was On values: “The in the city as a consultant with KPMG when, values of the in 1996, an IRA bomb blew the centre apart. Crown Estate are “I wanted to help mend my adopted home commercial integrity and stewardship. city,” she recalls. “I persuaded my boss he We’re in it for the wouldn’t miss me for three months and I long term. It’s about went to see Howard (Sir Howard Bernstein, making sure the chief executive of Manchester City Council), quality of what we deliver is lasting” saying I want to work for you and I can put together a masterplan and business plan.” She was made project director. “Being put in charge was one of the life-changing moments, where somebody sees more in you and what you are capable of than you see yourself,” she remarks. As she watched a “wonderful new city emerging from a hole in the ground”, she discovered a “love for regeneration”. In January 2000, Sir Bob Kerslake appointed her chief executive of Sheﬃeld One, tasked with the £1 billion regeneration of Sheﬃeld city centre. Here, says Nimmo, she learnt “leadership” while consolidating her unusual blend of technical skill, strategic intelligence and political savvy. Her reputation grew. In 2003, she was invited to set up the interim Olympic Delivery Authority and appoint masterplanners for the London bid’s proposed Olympic Park. By coincidence I’m interviewing her on the tenth anniversary of the capital winning the Games. “Jacques Rogge opened the envelope and life would never be the same again,” she recalls. It was “an opportunity to create a whole new piece of

C V

HIG HL IG HT S

A LI S ON NI MMO Born: May 1964, Edinburgh Education: BA in Town and country planning, Manchester University

city. You get that very, very few times in life”. By the end of 2011, Nimmo had overseen three of the most transformative regeneration projects seen in the UK for decades. She had also transformed herself from planner to serious force in UK regeneration and property. Where next?

All roads lead to Regent Street “There was an advert in the Sunday Telegraph for the chief executive of the Crown Estate,” she recalls. “I was intrigued. What an extraordinary organisation that no-one really knows about. And what an amazing collection of assets!” There was a regeneration challenge, of course. The Estate’s major assets are two of London’s iconic areas which had slipped into decline – Regent Street and St James. As a young planner in Westminster, Nimmo had been struck by the extent to which John Nash’s grand Regency boulevard had become home to “dusty airline offices”. But change was afoot. In 2002, the Estate began reacquiring the leases. “You saw something really special being created,” says Nimmo. “A fundamental shift from being a passive landlord to taking back these long-held leases, having a vision and a masterplan, and going back to fundamental principles of good town planning and placemaking.” It’s a huge job – 1.5 million square feet of retail space is being consolidated into larger units to attract big brands such as Apple to open showcase stores. A million square feet of office space is being improved, too, as is urban realm. Nimmo describes the Grade II listed frontages as a “fantastic stage set”. “We’re going back to good principles of city planning,” she says. “Sites for people. Wide pavements, traffic calming,

Timeline: 1985

2012

198994 199500 199600 200003 200306 2004 Associate Consultant, Project director, Chief executive, Director, Awarded CBE

2006–11 2012 Director, – to present:

partner, Driver Jonas

Olympic Development Authority. One of eight directors responsible for delivering the facilities and legacy for London 2012 games. Leads on design, environment, sustainability and gender.

KPMG

Manchester Millennium Ltd. Responsible for delivery of programme to regenerate Manchester city centre following IRA bombing.

Sheﬃeld One. Oversees £1bn regeneration of Sheﬃeld city centre.

London 2012/ Interim Olympic Delivery Authority. Senior position in London 2012 bid team, sets up Olympic Delivery Authority.

for services to regeneration

Chief executive, Crown Estate.

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“In right of the Crown”

cycle lanes, quiet routes through the estate. We’re not the only ones doing it. But you need people to be brave and ambitious – Crossrail is such a big opportunity.” Nimmo acknowledges that as sole owner the Estate is in the envious position of being able to masterplan coherently. But she is proud of the results. “Regent Street is a great story of town planning through the ages and shows that if you get it right you cannot lose that thing that’s special about place.”

On sustainability: “My road to Damascus on sustainability was the Olympics. I hadn’t really realised the impact you could have at work and in a business context until the Olympics”

A long-term view Regent Street also illustrates a tension between stewardship and enterprise. Yes, the Estate belongs to the nation and is guardian of nationally important land; but it must operate as a business, too, its profits going to the Treasury. Nimmo calls it ‘conscious commercialism’ – a long-term view that fuses the values of “responsibility”, “sustainability” and “professionalism” together to create land use of lasting social and economic value. “Is there a way that these things can work together to create a competitive advantage and added value?” she asks. The answer, given the Estate’s financial return, must surely be yes. “That does set us apart and makes what we do quite thoughtful and different,” she continues, adding that: “That sense of stewardship was here [when I arrived], but it wasn’t a total philosophy in terms of how we do business. That’s one of the things I brought to the organisation.” Another is a commitment to environmental sustainability. Nimmo is a strong advocate of renewables, and when I suggest that government policy on onshore wind could impact on investment in the Estate’s offshore wind business, she counters firmly. “We’re generating enough power for three million homes,” she points out. “We have clear visibility to put a gigawatt in the water every year for the next five years. By 2020 we’ll have around 10 gigawatts in the water.” The Estate is also facilitating tidal energy generation. Though renewables currently make up a relatively small proportion of its revenue (£19m in 2014-15), there is enormous potential to increase this. “We are the landlord of the sea bed and we see a clear opportunity to facilitate this industry and generate a commercial return for it,” says Nimmo. “But we don’t see it as a mission to provide energy for the nation. We feel we are playing an important part in providing that mix of energy and energy security.” Does she still think of herself as a planner? No. “I think of myself as a chief executive and a leader. I really enjoyed my planning and it gave me a

The Crown Estate is an “independent commercial body” created by Act of Parliament, initially in 1760. But its origins date back to 1066 and William the Conqueror’s assertion that all land belonged to him “in right of the Crown”. By 1760, when George III acceded to the throne, the sovereign’s estates had been reduced to a small area producing little income revenue which George III sorely needed. It was agreed that Crown Lands would be managed on behalf of the government, with surplus revenue going to the Treasury. The sovereign would receive a ﬁxed annual payment - the Civil List. In 1956 and 1961 the Crown Estate Acts renamed Crown Lands as the Crown Estate and established an independent management board. In 2011 the Sovereign Grant Act replaced the Civil List with a mechanism for the Treasury to determine funding for the Monarch by reference to the Estate’s annual surplus – currently approx. 15%. The modern Crown Estate has a capital value of £11.5bn and owns Regent Street, St James’s in London, 19 retail and leisure parks, Windsor Great Park, swathes of agricultural and ‘strategic’ land, around half of the UK’s foreshore and the entire seabed out to 12 nautical miles.

fantastic view of life and projects but there were missing components.” Regeneration ﬁlled the gaps. But running a centuries-old organisation is a challenge of a different order. “It’s a bit like landing on the deck of the Ark Royal,” she smiles. “There’s a lot to be done.” The immediate challenge, says Nimmo, is to deliver the “biggest development pipeline in our history”. Then there is the strategic land portfolio where the Estate is securing housing allocations within local plans. Nimmo is also leading an investment push into the regions, where the retail park portfolio is a growing asset. Indeed, the Estate made its biggest ever acquisition this year, paying £345m for Fosse Shopping Park in Leicester. “As a business we are in really good shape,” she notes. Nevertheless, Nimmo cautions: “We forget that we are in a cyclical market at our peril. We've timed what we are doing extremely well.” We ﬁnish on the dot. Timing – it’s everything. Alison Nimmo seems to have it in spades. AU G U S T 2 0 1 5 / THE PLA NNER

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CONVENTION

PLANNING’SS LE LEADING ROLE Language, leadership and linking up with emerging technologies – three principal themes to emerge from a lively 2015 RTPI Planning Convention Following chief planner Steve Quartermain’s traditional breakfast Q&A session, it was a shame that planning minister Brandon Lewis, due to follow, ended up a no-show. His presentation instead appeared on video across four giant screens, giving a somewhat surreal start to the day. But the convention’s heavy hitters soon made up for the disappointment of not being able to engage with the minister in person. The event’s theme of ‘The New Politics For Planning’ was neatly encapsulated in the two presentations by Birmingham City Council’s Waheed Nazir and Eugénie Birch of the World Urban Campaign. Nazir addressed the direct political connection, his near-revolutionary approach in Birmingham bringing swoons from those we spoke to; Birch’s expansive speech focused on planning’s inevitable and urgent requirement to tackle the major sustainable, environmental and social issues exposed by the world’s certain urban growth. Together, Nazir and Birch had the politics theme covered, but similarly illuminating presentations from the likes of NHS England’s Sir Malcolm Grant, UCL’s Michael Edwards and Dr Rick Robinson showed that although there is plenty of frustration at the outlook of the profession and how it is portrayed, the desire and need for planning at a macro level is, if anything, of increasing importance. Over the course of the following 12 pages you’ll see each presentation in sequence, as well as highlights from the afternoon’s breakout sessions. We hope you’ll get a strong sense of a vibrant and thought-provoking event.

“It is only right that we should seek to bring the very best talents possible into the planning professions and I am sure this scheme (RTPI future planners bursary) will play an important role in that” – B R AND O N LEWI S

I M A G E S | A K I N FA L O P E Attendance was high for an event that got the thumbs-up from delegates

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27/07/2015 14:56

“We need to liberate ourselves from wellintentioned bureaucracy” – WAHEED NAZIR

Clockwise from top left: RTPI chief executive Trudi Elliott picks a winner; delegates exchange views; as do Eugénie Birch, Janet Askew and Waheed Nazir; Prof. Riki Therivel points to the sky; Sir Malcolm Grant (circled) gets serious; but there was light relief; and a strong turnout.

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27/07/2015 14:56

SPEAKER S T E V E Q UA RT E R M A I N

Ask the chief planner “We need more plans to allocate more land. My own view is that the planning profession and planners are the people to do it” Steve Quartermain The diﬃculty of delivering housing and the importance of local plans were the dominant themes at this year’s ‘Ask the Chief Planner’ session. Convention delegates also asked Steve Quartermain and colleagues about permitted development rights, neighbourhood plans and developing brownﬁeld sites. Indeed, the topics anticipated the national productivity plan (see pages 8-11), published the following day. Here’s a small selection of questions and answers.

research that there is office space no longer being used for offices, and land for employment uses not being used for employment uses. It plays out differently in different parts of the country – which is where your local plan is critical. It’s through local plans that these sorts of issues can be resolved. Get your local plan in place!” The trouble with neighbourhood plans

Lack of development on consented sites Breaking the (land) bank Q Richard Grant of Plymouth City Council: “Consented sites in the city weren’t being developed. The council is also struggling to put together a five-year housing land supply. What does the chief planner suggest?” A Steve Quartermain: “If sites are approved and not coming forward there’s a question about how viable they are. If they are not deliverable and unviable, they shouldn’t be part of the five-year land supply. “The government is sticking to the five-year land supply and they’re sticking to the 5 per cent buffer. But it should be a 20 per cent buffer, not a 5 per cent buffer. Why? Because we need housing.” 24

Q Justin French-Brooks of CPRE Sussex: “Government is asking local authorities to ‘do the impossible by telling them to become developers themselves’. Deliverability should be the concern of private house builders, but they delay development by land banking. What is the route out for a local authority when local house builders refuse to take sites forward?” A SQ: “There’s a role for elected members and the local plan to get an objectively assessed need and a vision for what you want your area to look like. Why shouldn’t they be more proactively involved in delivering that vision? “What’s the point of spending all that money on a plan if you don’t deliver

on that vision? When I was in a local authority I worked with developers to bring sites forward. That, I think, is what planning’s all about – making things happen.” Is permitted development threatening growth? Q:Michael Bach of the London Forum: “Successful town centres are critical to growth, but permitted development rights are removing office space. Where do you think new office sites are going to be found or are they [local authorities] going to have to look at housing sites?” A SQ: “Through local plans the authorities are trying to look to make those sorts of predictions about growth and what office space they will need. We know from

Q. Will Nicholls of Strutt and Parker: “How does the demise of regional planning and the rise of neighbourhood planning help to deliver strategically important but locally unpopular development?” A SQ: “It’s still early days. Initially, the view was that the Localism Act and the duty to cooperate would pick this up and people would talk to each other. There’s also an issue about to what extent this can be picked up by LEPs. “The challenge we have is about the broader housing issues and how we get people to think beyond their districts. We try to give guidance on how they should assess that. It’s patchy if I’m honest – in some areas it’s working very well and others we have more work to do.” n To see how the government is addressing these issues in more detail, read our productivity plan coverage on pages 6-9

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27/07/2015 13:06

SPEAKERS JANET ASKEW AND BRANDON LEWIS

Session title: RTPI president’s opening remarks and ministerial address Speakers: RTPI president Janet Askew, followed by housing and planning minister Brandon Lewis

A call for stability “We need to build more homes. We need to make sure those homes are well built, well designed, well laid out, well planned for” – Brandon Lewis In a plea to the government, RTPI president Janet Askew called for more “stability” and “certainty” to be incorporated into the planning system. In response to a prerecorded message from housing minister Brandon Lewis that opened the convention, Askew said the RTPI doesn’t think any more legislative changes are required to the planning system. “Attempts to simplify are making our regulations much more complicated,” Askew told the audience. She called for stability because it brings certainty in planning, “local government, communities and the development industry want certainty too”. With both Lewis and Steve Quartermain, chief planner at the department for communities and local

government, saying how vital local planners are, Askew called on the government to resource planning better in national and local government. Local plans were something that Lewis endorsed during his appearance on screen. But without planners in local authorities, said Askew, “we can’t produce local plans that are so important”. A “vital tool” to bridge the gap between the national planning framework and neighbourhood planning, local plans enable local communities to plan for themselves and help local authorities to “avoid local authorities costly and damaging appeals”, she said. If the planning system is not well resourced, Askew warned that planners would “not be able to deal

with planning applications, major and minor, in the time limit, in an eﬃcient way”. Her ﬁnal plea concerned strategic planning – something that the RTPI has called for now on more than one occasion. Local authorities, she said, need to “work together across geographical boundaries” to enable coordinated land use, travel support, infrastructure, employment and housing. The RTPI wants this to be driven forward with strong incentives to invest in health, education and transport, she added. The president concluded by saying that more investment is required in cities beyond London, so “we can start to resolve some of the inequalities and disparities between London and the rest of the country”.

ASKEW AND LEWIS ON EDUCATION

“A part of delivering the government’s agenda, housing and infrastructure, is education of planners. “At the moment we need to encourage more young people to enter our profession. There simply aren’t enough and soon we will have a shortage” – JANET ASK E W

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27/07/2015 13:13

SPEAKER E U G É N I E B I RC H

Planning’s global importance

AT A GLANCE

(1) A rapidly urbanising world makes it impossible to ignore the role of planners and their input into global development issues.

“You know what’s being said by these nations? That there is an enduring, permanent and ongoing cry for more planning”

(2) Next year’s Habitat III conference oﬀers planning an opportunity to prove its value to the world.

Speaker: Eugénie L. Birch, Chair, World Urban Campaign

(3) At a UN level, planning’s stock is on the rise.

Session title: The global politics of planning

Eugénie Birch was booked to give the biggest possible picture of planning’s global importance – and delivered on that brief in spades. Planning, said Birch, is key to three “global conversations” – on peace and conflict; equality and economy; and climate change. On peace and conflict, planning’s role can be felt in addressing internal conflicts that may, for example, “be created by a lack of public goods, public services and the volatility of food prices”. On the economy, “there are around 600 cities producing some 70 per cent world GDP. Now, we know there are 4,000 global cities of 100,000 people, so if only 600 are producing that 70 per cent, what’s happening in the others? Why aren’t they contributing in the same way?” Lack of functioning infrastructure at local, regional and national levels was part of that answer, suggested Birch. As for inequality, the World Economic Forum has called it the most pressing issue to be dealt with for the future, with some 870 26

WHAT THEY SAID

“Why isn’t the British government doing anything on Habitat? We ought to be doing more in ﬁnding out what other places are doing.” – – JANE

C U STANC E , H E AD O F R EG ENER ATI O N AN D D E VE LO PM E NT , W ATFO R D B O R O U G H C O U NCIL

million people living in ‘extreme poverty’. Birch skirted over climate change’s likely impact, but here too the scope for planning was implicit. So – three global conversations, and a number of upcoming global conferences in which planning’s role in them can be developed. Among these events is the COP 21 climate change conference in Paris later this year (its goal being to ﬁnd a legally binding agreement on world nations to reduce their greenhouse gases) and the ‘once-in-ageneration’ UN Habitat III conference with its output document, the New Urban Agenda. “It talks about dealing with the economy and culture; about setting up systems of governance, of ﬁnance and legislation, of a

regulatory environment that works, and of territorial planning and urban design as part of this new agenda. This is the stuﬀ we are made of, right?” Detailing the UN’s activities set for this autumn and into 2016, Birch suggested opportunities for planning “are enormous right now. And at every single one of these conferences do you know what is being said by these nations? That there is an enduring, permanent and ongoing cry for more planning”. Birch also referred to UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 – ‘Make cities and human settlements safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable.’ Principles include aﬀordable housing, sustainable transport, preserving cultural and

natural heritage reducing environmental impact of cities. The hardest aim to get the world’s diplomats to understand? The importance of planning. “They just don’t understand it,” she said. Outlining what civil society can do ahead of Habitat III to raise awareness of the conference and feed into its themes, Birch reported how, sadly, the UK government has done little to recognise its existence thus far. In any event, “where do planners ﬁt into these major events? Everywhere. In managing risk, in building back (using the results of disasters to better design for the future); there are huge roles for us in this arena.”

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27/07/2015 14:58

SPEAKER WA H E E D N A Z I R

AT A GLANCE

Speaker: Waheed Nazir, director of planning and regeneration, Birmingham City Counci

(1) Planners need to

Session title: The new leadership in planning

(2) (3) (4)

City visionary

WHAT THEY SAID

“We need to liberate ourselves from well-intentioned bureaucracy” “We need to liberate ourselves from wellintentioned bureaucracy.” As a mantra for a bold approach to planning, it sums up the ongoing transformation of Birmingham city centre under Waheed Nazir. Beginning with his own inspirations, the city’s planning chief recalled the humane principles of George Cadbury, who put wellbeing at the heart of the pioneering Bournville development. Modern planners “have the tools,” he insisted, but lack the conﬁdence to use them. In a sweeping account of Birmingham’s regeneration, Nazir explained how he reformed governance by dividing the city into four zones and creating a cross-disciplinary team for each. He explained how “subsuming” housing development and education infrastructure enable him to run the planning and

regeneration department “as one place delivering one set of outcomes”. The “re-education” of planners and members has underpinned delivery of a citywide vision that prepares for 150,000 new people, 80,000 new households, 100,000 new jobs. “I spent an incredible amount of time trying to shape planners to become more rounded,” said Nazir. Early engagement, negotiation and purposeful decision-making are driving dramatic change. An Enterprise Zone has lifted business rates, enabling borrowing to fund infrastructure such as a Metro extension and the Paradise Circus development, in limbo for 30 years. Instead of nibbling at green belt to the north of the city, Nazir has persuaded neighbouring authorities to support a sizeable urban extension. “Why do communities

“liberate” themselves from bureaucracy to pursue big visions. Good governance underpins creation and implementation of good plans. The language of economic growth is more persuasive to politicians than the language of planning. Planners have the “tools” to drive inspiring development, but need the conﬁdence to use them.

object to growth? It’s because you’re putting pressure on infrastructure.” So they’re leading with infrastructure and backing it up with an economic growth argument. “It’s challenging enough to get my own members to consider releasing green belt, let alone my neighbours. We’ve worked closely with adjoining authorities to create a joint housing market. We put it as the social and economic consequences of not planning for housing growth. If we have Deutsche Bank and HSBC coming into the city their executives need places to live – that’s paid more dividends than the NPPF argument.” Infrastructure, housing, green belt, brownﬁeld land, commerce, employment, working across boundaries – it was all there in a dynamic talk that set the tone for the day..

“It’s great that a planner can show the sense and conﬁdence that he has in terms of the profession but back it up in terms of bringing forward development.” – P ETER G ER A G H T Y , S O U T H E N D B O R O U G H C O U N CI L

“I was very impressed with Waheed Nazir. He was very practical in giving demonstrations of how he built his team, the challenges they have faced and things for the audience to take away.” – D AVI D

SU LLI V A N , S T R U T T & P A R K E R

“I’m not sure how his ideas can be devolved into the kind of sites we work in such as urban extensions and green belt sites. But there needs to be more thought like that in planning, more drive, more determination to make a diﬀerence.” – JO SEP H C A R R , D A V I D LO C K ASSO CI ATES

“Really quite inspiring in terms of thinking outside the box and really doing the thing that he believed was right.” – SAR AH

K ER R , A LLE N & Y O R K

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27/07/2015 14:58

SPEAKER N AT H A L I E L I E V E N Q C

Lawyers ‘power grab’ over planning It’s not just about what the words mean, but what every previous High Court judge decides the words mean” Speaker: Nathalie Lieven QC, Barrister, Landmark Chambers Session title: Who decides and interprets policy? Lawyers or planners? There has been a “power grab” by lawyers over planners, taking control of the planning system over the last three years, according to Nathalie Lieven QC, barrister at Landmark Chambers. A decision by the Supreme Court between Tesco Stores Ltd and Dundee City Council (DCC) in 2012 is the reason Lieven gave for the “power grab”. That, and the introduction of the NPPF. Until the case between Tesco and DCC, Lieven said: “The interpretation of planning policy had always been a matter primarily for the decision-maker.” However, the judge on the case said, “interpretation of the policy was a matter for the court, not the decision-maker,” with the policy meaning different things in different contexts. Bringing the NPPF into her argument, Lieven explained that it has become “critical” in the bulk of residential planning and their determinations. What that means, then, is that enquiries have become fights regarding what a High Court judge meant in South Gloucestershire, for 28

KEY QUOTES

(1) “Gone are the days where you appear in front of a judge who doesn’t know what the NPPF is. Now the danger is to appear in front of a judge who thinks that he or she knows everything about housing policy and is now going to apply that knowledge willy-nilly and, indeed, in some cases, is going to re-ﬁght cases lost a year or two ago.”

(2) “Viability assessments are becoming ever more important, particularly around aﬀordable housing.”

(3) “As more [neighbourhood

example, when the case being argued is in Leeds or Birmingham. “It’s not just about what the words mean, but what every previous High Court judge decides the words mean,” explained Lieven. This provides a “straitjacket for decisionmakers” with what central government says becoming all the more important. Planners did, however, have “a little bit of hope”. The Supreme Court in the Tesco and DCC case was very careful to say that in many cases the issue will not be interpretation of the policy but application of the policy to a given set of facts. She emphasised ﬁrst the importance of not falling into the trap of thinking that because the judge in the South Gloucestershire

case said this, it means the same for every authority. Second, Lieven said policy could turn the case between Tesco and DDC in planners’ favour. If policies can be drafted in a “hard-edged way” and local plans (a convention theme is beginning to emerge here) are put in place with clear policies in them, “you get the advantage”. Those policies, Lieven added, have to be applied in a “consistent and objective way”. Endorsing what Steve Quartermain and Brandon Lewis had said earlier, Lieven told the room: “Get your development plans in place; that shifts the balance away from the centre, giving control back to local authorities, but do it in a clear manner.”

plans] start coming through they are going to become increasingly important around residential development greenﬁeld sites.”

(4) “The role of the courts is creating a straitjacket for decision makers that limits their ability to apply policy ﬂexibly.”

WHAT THEY SAID

“From a Scottish perspective [the presentation’s content] was transferable. Even though she referred to England, you would get a lot of what she was referring to everywhere. “There needs to be clarity in policy-making, I think that was key. If we are going to have a plan-led system, policies need to be in place.” – N I K O LA MI LLER , P L A N N I N G

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27/07/2015 13:08

SPEAKER DR R IC K ROB I N S ON

AT A GLANCE

Speaker: Dr Rick Robinson, IT director, smart data and technology, Amey; member of the UK government’s Smart Cities Forum

(1) Digital technology is (2)

Session title: New forms of engagement

(3)

Topic: Smart cities

(4)

Smart thinking

WHAT THEY SAID

“The real story isn’t about how much the world has already changed, but how much it’s going to change in unlikely ways in the future.” Smart cities. What do we really know about them? For Dr Rick Robinson, a ‘smart’ city uses technology to drive operational eﬃciency, and it adapts to the ways in which technology can transform our relationships with place, space and the services we use. Compared with the 1980s, when Robinson would track down obscure thrash metal records in specialist record shops, the way we use and consume services has changed profoundly. Nowadays we download, check in, share; and digital technology maps relationships with services (and each other) in ways that were unthinkable then. “What does it mean to a company like Amey, collecting bins and performing all sorts of jobs where people look after the I M A G E S | A K I N FA L O P E

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fabric of the places where we live?” Robinson asked. “All this technology enables us to do that more eﬃciently. “It can help with our understanding of the social and economic impact of works, for example. It’s improving the way we look after cities and how we operate as a business.” It’s also creating new kinds of business. “Free cloud computing services meant businesses like Airbnb could get started very cheaply and build new transactional networks that create value very quickly,” said Robinson, noting that Airbnb already has more rooms in more cities than Hilton Hotels. “What are the consequences of a business model like Airbnb replacing businesses that used to have highly organised

changing our relationship with cities. It can create operational eﬃciencies in the services that help cities function. But we’ve yet to understand the impacts of new technology on transport, business and behaviour. Planners need to be able to respond to these impacts by reconﬁguring urban spaces to maximise the economic and social value of technology.

supply chains? And what about Amazon, the transport consequences of their activity? We haven’t remotely begun to understand how digital activity will change transport demands in cities.” Aligning physical and digital connectivity may be critical to maximising the social and economic value of new technology – and this is where planners come in. 3D printed prosthetic limbs, for example, bring together digital tech, advanced manufacturing, design and health, said Robinson. “But in Birmingham, advanced manufacturing is in the jewellery quarter and separated from the tech sector in Aston. “Life sciences capability is a bus ride away. These capabilities are in places that have not previously

“I was thinking ‘Hang on, is this the way planning’s going?’ Things are moving so fast. People don’t have the time to keep up with it really. All this other stuﬀ is going on that we need to know about, but it’s a fulltime job to understand it.” – C HR I S SHE P LE Y , C H R I S S H E P LE Y

P LAN N I N G

“[The presentation] was hard to relate to, because it was more abstract and less relevant to planning. A diﬃcult subject to traverse and to get a balance.” – D AVI D SU LLI V A N , S T R U T T & P A R K E R

needed to work together.” But now they do, and the challenge to planners is to understand and respond to this. The UK has a particular problem here, Robinson argued, because our cities have less autonomous spending power than cities elsewhere. “Without being able to set out local objectives, we will fall behind the rest of the world in a competitive sense.” AU G U S T 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

27/07/2015 13:09

SPEAKER PROF E S S OR S I R M A LCOL M G R A N T

Adapting healthcare for longer lives “There will be nothing left untouched in modern healthcare across the world by disruptive technologies”

healthcare system focused more on managing chronic conditions, less on primary interventions.

(2) New technologies will have

(3) NHS England wants to be

Session title: Building for prevention rather than cure

(1) Our ageing society needs a

a profound eﬀect on care, but even more on the way we develop and manage prevention strategies.

Speaker: Professor Sir Malcolm Grant Chairman, NHS England

The 70 years since the formation of the National Health Service have seen nothing less than a “complete transformation of modern life”, in which longevity and life expectancy go up year after year. All of which is to the good, but the system that was designed in 1948 – with care divided into primary and secondary, physical and mental, health and social – no longer works in a world in which the management of chronic conditions is becoming a much more important consideration. And anyway, said Sir Malcolm Grant, “as a patient, why should I worry about which budget my health is coming from? Why should I go to outpatients in a hospital for a consultation that could be performed elsewhere?” For the past two decades, most NHS investment has been into new hospitals – “great cathedrals of science”, says Grant, that are simply unsuitable for the new priorities involved in nursing a population with long-term chronic conditions. “People will get older and live longer; we have to adapt both our healthcare system and our cities to cope.”

AT A GLANCE

in at ground level on the design of new housing settlements, literally building good health in to communities.

WHAT THEY SAID:

“Everyone should know about what he’s saying, more so than any of the other speakers here. There’s so much in the health agenda about new neighbourhoods and how we live and work together.” As care is relocated out of acute institutions and into the community, it brings with it enormous implications for planning, as does NHS England’s other big focus – prevention rather than cure. The prediction and prevention of poor health is set to be a major theme in the way NHS England prioritises its future work. Because while by international standards the UK’s healthcare system ranks above almost every other country on all indicators, it fails on one – the healthy lives of citizens. What is to be done? Our individual good health results typically from what our genes dictate (40 per cent), the care we receive (10 per cent) – and the way we live (a massive 50 per cent. It's in this latter area

that NHS England is increasingly focused, “and where planning has a major part to play,” said Grant. NHS England is working on a number of new models of care, which it hopes to use in its Healthy New Towns programme on major new housing schemes. It’s seeking ‘test bed’ sites to work with developers and planners on “a more advanced model of settlement … one that interacts with the health of its occupants”. These sites will test distributed ‘convenience care’ and neighbourhoodlevel sites – but no new shiny hospitals. “We want to inject our hopes for the NHS into these new models for development. And we want to re-inject health into planning.”

– C HR I S SHEP LEY, C O NS U LTAN T

“One thing the London mayor has had universal acclaim for in his version of the London Plan is the concept of a lifetime neighbourhood, extending into layout and design of service provision. It’s been welcomed by many people as a way to help planning authorities think about what needs to be in walking distance in terms of exercise, medical care, shops, green space, etc. It’s a really useful and terribly simple metric which I would have thought would beneﬁt a lot from a big push from the NHS.”

– M I C HAEL ED WAR D S , B AR T LET T S CH O O L O F P LAN N I N G , U C L

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27/07/2015 15:30

SPEAKER M I C H A E L E D WA R D S

Winners and losers in the pursuit of growth “I have come across contemptuous behaviour from planning oﬃces not just in dealing with members of the public, but even elected members”

(1) Green belts are a great achievement but have had the unintended consequence of creating an unequal property market

(2) Planners need to be more critical when assessing past endeavours and their consequences

Speaker: Michael Edwards, Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning UCL

(3) Viability and the primacy of proﬁt undermine the social purpose of planning

Session title: The politics of inequality: Challenges for the profession

Green belts and the protection of the countryside are a couple of British planning’s great achievements - but they have since taken on another role as components in conditioning the performance of our property markets. “Planning ideas that were very influential in their day, including conservation areas, have become assimilated by property markets,” suggested Edwards. Edwards detailed the extent to which residential property has now become a dominant element in an assessment of the country’s tangible (physical) assets, a percentage that has risen dramatically since 1990 when the upward trend was first identified. With this in mind, Edwards considered it important for the planning profession to recognise the success or failure of schemes when judged against original intentions. “As a profession we need to be more critical in interpreting past planning operations, to look at developments, new towns

AT A GLANCE

(4) Better consultation and community planning support can provide a bulwark against worsening social inequality.

KEY QUOTES

(1) “Green belts and the protection of beautiful countryside seems to be one of the really great achievements of British planning."

(2) “The problem is the and neighbourhoods and consider the long-term effects – the gainers and losers.” Referring to Sir Malcolm Grant’s earlier session about medicine being primitive in its approach to selfcriticism, Edwards suggested that planning is, if anything, worse in this regard. Viability testing is a key inequality issue. “Profitability has become the card which trumps all others in the way the planning system works,” suggested Edwards. “That is extremely unjust because of its effect on social housing provision." Edwards also spoke of the need to address the way that public officials,

including planners, behave towards citizens and elected mayors. All too often he has come across “quite contemptuous behaviour.” Inequalities also exist during consultation processes, which “are really too late, when the decision has already been made”, while it is very diﬃcult for citizens and citizen groups to be eﬀective in these process because they are “totally under-resourced”. What can we do to kind of inoculate areas against worsening inequality? It's partly about good consultation processes and impact analysis, but also about “defending the rights of people to stay in their communities”.

dominance that viability testing now has. Really, proﬁtability has become the card that trumps all others in the way that the planning system is working. That is extremely unjust – an extremely serious contribution to growth of injustice in society because of the eﬀect on social housing provision.”

(3) “How do you manage cities in such a way that inequality is not exacerbated?”

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28/07/2015 10:39

SPEAKER V I N C E N T G O O D S TA D T

A new professionalism “The challenge for planners is that we have the tools to support the conditions for sustainable economic growth, but we do not use them”

AT A GLANCE

(1) Planning is depicted by (2)

Speaker: Vincent Goodstadt, chair of RTPI policy, practice and research committee

(3) (4)

Session title: The politics of inequality: Challenges for the profession Topic: Free market vs intervention

(5)

media and politicians as an impediment to growth But free market economics is ﬂawed and depends on failure Planners have the tools to create and stimulate growth – they need to use them Clyde Gateway provides evidence of how planners can work with the market to create major transformation Planners need to cast oﬀ bureaucratic restraints to realise great visions.

WHAT THEY SAID

Planning, said Vincent Goodstadt, is widely depicted in the media and politics as “an impediment to growth”, a brake on the natural operation of the market. But are the proponents of free market economics oﬀering a fair assessment? “A lot of the debate is trying to put a price on planning without trying to understand the value of planning,” said Goodstadt. Besides, the free market itself is far from perfect, “producing failure, because it depends on failure”, thus leading to “unbalanced development and overdependence on limited sectors” – or a skewed economy where some have far greater opportunity than others. As an overview of the context in which modern planners operate in the UK, it was a pessimistic opening from Goodstadt. Market forces rule. State intervention is undesirable. Tough cookies. 32

And yet, said Goodstadt, even the darling of free market evangelists, economist Adam Smith, argued that public works “in the highest degree advantageous to a great society” could never be run proﬁtably by individuals, and they ought not to be. The state must be an actor in shaping the public good. That may mean working in concert with private investment to achieve schemes that generate economic wellbeing. The Clyde Gateway scheme, he said, was proof that change was possible on a major scale – in this case through a spatial plan endorsed by government, an urban development corporation and “complementary” partnerships. Planners have the instruments they need to regulate and stimulate markets, and to “shape and create” new markets. The problem is that, when

blamed for everything from lack of trees to excessive drinking, they may become too risk-averse. “The challenge for planners is that we have the tools to support the conditions for sustainable economic growth, but we do not use them,” he said. Goodstadt urged planners to step from behind the bureaucratic constraints of the planning system – and look beyond the “economic geography” of the UK – to pursue bold visions. “Statutory planning has its place, but it’s not the vehicle to be visionary and transformative,” he said. “The plans that work are the ones that are done outside of this. “We need to have a broader view of planning, recognising our leadership role; to use our available planning instruments, not being restricted by boundaries; to have this greater international focus, a new professionalism.”

“The idea that we’ve got the tools but we are not using them is slightly blue-sky thinking – I’m not sure that we have the tools any more under the current government to meet the challenge that’s been laid down for us. “When you see people like Waheed Nazir, you can see that if you put yourself at the centre of an authority and you have the right resources and the right leadership skills you can make a diﬀerence on the ground” – JAN E C U S TA N C E , H E A D

O F R EG ENER ATI O N A N D D E V E LO P M E N T , WATFO R D B O R O U G H C O U N CI L

“Planning needs people to be brave. We need people who aspire to lead. That might be learning a whole set of new skills. There’s an interesting challenge for the institute here as we work with the current government as we seek to embrace the values we’ve talked about today” – R ESP O N SE FR O M A U D I E N C E

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SPEAKER PA M E W E N

AT A GLANCE

Speaker: Pam Ewen, TAYplan manager and RTPI Scotland convenor

(1) Cross-boundary thinking drives long-term planning.

Session: What next for cooperation? The new politics of strategic planning

(2) TAYplan shows how a small

Richard Blyth, RTPI head of policy and practice

(3)

Cllr David Hibbert, Oldham Borough Council

(4)

Chair: Mark Harris, planning and policy adviser Wales for the Home Builder’s Federation, chair of RTPI Cymru

WHAT THEY SAID

Fresh strategies “When I look at the 1940s spatial plan for this area it hasn’t changed much. It’s not rocket science – big stuﬀ happens in big places and smaller stuﬀ happens in smaller places” – Pam Ewen “We’re planning not for our children, but our children’s children’s children,” said TAYplan manager Pam Ewen. “It’s that long-term spatial thinking that’s really important when we talk about strategic planning.” But how is strategic planning faring across the UK? Is cross-boundary co-operation fuelling a ‘larger than local’ approach to planning? TAYplan, jointly funded by four authorities, provides cross-boundary planning via ‘community planning partnerships’, which in turn are “tied into the planning outcomes for Scottish government and how that translates regionally”. Thus TAYplan slots into a wider Scottish context, but it’s not something that could be easily replicated in England. “TAYplan’s just three people – it’s

body can shape a wide area – but not easy to replicate in England. Strategic planning can be re-established in England through combined authorities. Strategic planning requires civil society co-operation, political buy-in and coordinated investment.

straightforward,” said Ewen. “In England, there are massive budgets and big staﬀs. In Scotland, it’s not so complex.” David Hibbert, of Oldham Borough Council, gave an English perspective from Greater Manchester, where 10 districts share a spatial strategy. Though considered an examplar for strategic planning to re-establish itself in England, it is full of challenges, said Hibbert. The biggest was “retaining district identity while working at a Greater Manchester level, because each council has their own aspirations”. There could also be “tensions around delivering economic and housing growth” and dealing with individual constitutional arrangements within the larger body. The RTPI’s Richard Blyth identiﬁed the ingredients

required to achieve successful planning for regions. “Co-operating between local authorities is worth it,” he said, citing Lille in France as an example of a declining city revived by joint action with surrounding districts. “They pooled their concerns and in doing so produced beneﬁts for the whole area. If civil society works together to start with, it provides a good basis for strategic planning,” he continued. “In both Lille and Manchester, failed sporting bids brought people together. They thought, ‘We might as well do something with the planning'.” Eﬀective strategic planning involved a range of public policy areas – such as health and utilities – as well as political ‘buyin’, engagement with

“How do we get the government to see the really important role strategic planning should be playing in the devolution revolution?”

– C ATR I O NA R I D D E LL , C AT R I O N A R I D D ELL ASSO CI AT E S

“Do too many councillors not see the value in strategic planning? Is it not taken seriously enough?” – K E V I N M U R R AY, K EVI N M U R R A Y A S S O CI AT E S

“There are strategic green belt issues which aren't being properly dealt with. This is something in strategic planning that is huge and it needs to be dealt with diﬀerently” – JO HN M C LAR T Y , S T R U T T & P A R K E R

business and co-ordinated investment. The London Mayor’s Infrastructure Plan 2050 was a good example of this, said Blyth. Whatever form it takes, however, strategic planning is essential, said Pam Ewen. “We don’t have enough of these long-term, strategic, bold, often infrastructureled projects – and that comes back to strategic planning. We are too riskaverse.” AU G U S T 2 0 15 / THE PLA NNER

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THAMES TIDEWAY

CASE ST UDY

TUNNEL V I S IO N SIR JOSEPH BAZALGETTE’S SEWERAGE NETWORK TRANSFORMED THE PUBLIC HEALTH OF VICTORIAN LONDON, BUT AS THE CAPITAL’S POPULATION FAST OUTSTRIPS ITS INFRASTRUCTURE, THE PRIZE WINNING THAMES TIDEWAY SUPER SEWER IS SET TO SAFEGUARD ITS WELLBEING FOR THE NEXT CENTURY. MARK SMULIAN REPORTS

Top: Sir Joseph Bazalgette Above: The old Fleet sewer, once a river, ﬂows into the Thames when the sewer system is overloaded

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The full extent of this year’s winner of the RTPI Silver Jubilee Cup for planning excellence will be seen by no one until 2023 and few thereafter. Unlike most large prestige projects, the Thames Tideway Tunnel will be forever hidden as it’s a large sewer, designed to relieve London’s overloaded Victorian sewerage infrastructure. It also won the RTPI’s category award for excellence in planning to create economically successful places, and was a ﬁnalist in the excellence in decisionmaking in planning category. Thames Tideway Tunnel will cost £4.2 billion to build and will roughly follow the River Thames for most of its 25 km journey from Acton in West London to the Abbey Mills pumping station in the east, from where it will connect to a tunnel to the Beckton sewage treatment works. The 7.2 metre-wide tunnel will have a capacity of 1.6 million cubic metres and lie at 35m depth at Acton, falling to 65m at its eastern end. By intercepting the sewage, the tunnel is intended to prevent the Thames being polluted by the 39 million tonnes of untreated sewage that enters it each year. Once complete, it will provide a solu-

tion to the problem that London’s aged sewerage system relies on a network of overﬂows designed to release ﬂows through discharge points along the Thames during heavy storms. This used to happen only rarely, but infrastructure and population factors now make this a weekly occurrence that can be triggered by a mere two millimetres of rain, according to Thames Water. Its great depth means that the tunnel itself will be unnoticed by most people. They will, though, undoubtedly notice the 24 construction sites scattered along its course across 14 London boroughs. Going to borough planners and saying: “We wish to dig several very deep holes on your patch, conduct tunnel boring and the remove vast amounts of extracted soil through your streets”, might at the least provoke comment. Those organising the project had to take a planning approach that could deliver something ready for construction work as rapidly as possible. A series of disputes with the 14 boroughs, or with aggrieved members of the public, could only result in costly delays. Phil Stride, head of Thames Tideway Tunnels at Thames Water Utilities, and I M A G E S | A L A M Y / M AT T H E W J O S E P H

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The Lee Tunnel, under construction and expected to be completed during 2015-16, will connect to the Thames Tideway Tunnel

planning manager Ian Fletcher take up the story of how they negotiated this behemoth through the planning process. Stride says: “If you reflect back to 2008-2009 there were a variety of routes by which we could have obtained planning permission, a hybrid bill, using the Planning Act 2008 or seeking permission from each of the 14 boroughs concerned.” They chose the Planning Act 2008 route, as this law had created the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) to move major projects swiftly through the planning system. Except it hadn’t. Whether by intention or oversight – it is unclear which – the IPC’s remit turned out not to include major storage tunnels such as this. It was first necessary for the Tideway Tunnel team to use the act’s section 14(3) to create a new category to accommodate the project in the IPC. “The act was very new and intended to be a fast track,” says Stride. “We felt it was the most appropriate route. It was the route that would get us to the completion phase the quickest.” The tunnel was not affected by the IPC’s subsequent abolition by the coalition and absorption into the Planning

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THAMES TIDEWAY

T H AME S

Inspectorate in 2012. “There was no problem; it really was a seamless change,” says Fletcher. Their goal was a development consent order (DCO), granted by the inspectorate to nationally signiﬁcant infrastructure projects, which combines planning permission with other relevant powers such as compulsory purchase and, in this case, powers to divert services encountered on the subterranean route.

TIDE WAY

TUNNE L

TIME LINE

1860s

2004

2007

2008

Sir Joseph Bazalgette provides London with its ﬁrst underground sewerage system

UK heavily ﬁned by the European Commission over breaches of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive

Government asks Thames Water to proceed with the Thames Tideway Tunnel, after discarding alternatives

Planning Act creates the Infrastructure Planning Commission to fast track major projects, and work starts on planning the tunnel

Going the extra mile The 2008 Act, though, lays consultation obligations on applicants. As Stride says: “We did go the extra mile with consultation. We wrote to 300,000 people who lived on our route or adjacent to our sites, had thousands of replies and held meetings along the route attended by professionals from all the disciplines involved. “We did that ourselves; we did not use a public relations company at any point. There were 300 briefings and we never refused to provide one.” Some 900 community groups participated in the consultation. Stride says if he could distil those thousands of responses down to two things they would be “use brownfield sites and move as much a possible by river”. Fletcher says: “In comparison to using the Town and Country Planning Acts, the 2008 Act route requires detailed consultation first. “In my experience, when I worked for developers an aggressive house builder could fire in an application with no consultations at all and see what happened, but this route requires consultation and is better for having the applicant’s engagement.” There was also engagement with young people, with 50 project staff also acting as science, technology, engineering and maths ‘ambassadors’ in local school educational programmes. Stride says the project team was very open with the boroughs about the sites, having previously agreed with them a methodology for site selection. “We knew there would be disagreements about the choices made, but at least then people would be disagreeing about the choice of site rather than about how we had arrived at it, as that would have been known beforehand.” In all, some 1,100 sites were considered, with only residential locations and world heritage sites automatically ruled out.

The team settled eventually on 24 locations, some chosen after others had been discarded as a result of the consultation.

In Bazalgette’s footsteps Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the Victorian civil engineering innovator who built London’s sewerage system in the 1860s, in part dictated the sites too. “Sites had to be on the route as we were largely following the river from Acton, the westernmost point serve by the Beckton sewage works, to Abbey Mills, ” says Stride. “We had to connect 36 drawing points, many of them installed by Bazalgette, so in a sense were we joining up the dots.” The main concerns of borough planners on behalf of local residents concerned noise, smells, dust and traﬃc, all of which had to be mitigated.

Using the river, as had proved popular in the consultation, will help to minimise traﬃc movements. Some 90 per cent of extracted spoil, and 56 per cent of all materials including deliveries, will be moved by river. Spoil from Crossrail has been used to create a new bird habitat at Wallasea, Essex, and Stride says: “We are discussing where it might be sent as we are anxious that it is reused rather than becoming waste”. The tunnel has to pass through three distinct geologies, from clay in the west through mixed sand and gravel to chalk in the east, “so it also made sense to structure our sites around those geological changes so that the right tunnel boring machines could be used for each type of material”, says Stride. Boring machine drive sites will be located in Fulham, Battersea and South-

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2011

2012

2014

2015

2016

2023

The project passes its cost-beneﬁt analysis

Infrastructure Planning Commission abolished and the tunnel project moves with it into the Planning Inspectorate’s oversight

Planning Inspectorate agrees development consent order

Legal challenges end and preferred investors are named

Construction work due to begin

Target for project completion

The 25 km scheme will run mostly under the Thames through central London, from Acton in the west through to Abbey Mills in the east

more disruptive, and the team had been “very creative in looking for alternatives and removing adverse impacts”. She also praises the project for being expected to create several thousand direct and indirect jobs and to develop skills through its proposed apprenticeship scheme.

No more big stinks wark at each point of geological change. Winning the RTPI award neatly coincided with some other key stages of the project. In late June the two remaining applications for judicial review against it were dismissed, and in July Thames Water announced the preferred investors who would support it. Joint venture contracts for the construction work are expected to be awarded

“ITS OPEN VISIONARY PROCESS BELIEVES THAT PLANNING SHOULD BE GOOD FOR EVERYONE. IT HAS POSITIVELY RESPONDED TO OBJECTIONS IN THE COMMUNITY”

later this year, each roughly coinciding with one of the three geological sections. Judging panel chair, former housing minister Nick Raynsford, says the project team “approached public engagement positively; it was concerned to respond to public concerns and in the process of which it improved the project and reduced the sensitive impacts. “One of the great risk beneﬁts of this scheme will be that although it will have a huge impact, we will be largely unaware of it on completion.” RTPI president Janet Askew says the Thames Tideway Tunnel was “an exemplar for big investment projects”. She adds: “Its open visionary process believes that planning should be good for everyone. It has positively responded to objections in the community.” Askew notes that the project’s original plan would have taken longer and been

While considering the planning process, it is important not to lose sight of the reasons for building the Thames Tideway Tunnel. Bazalgette built well, but his infrastructure has run out of capacity as London’s population grows remorselessly, reaching eight million in 2014 and projected to rise to 16 million by 2160 according the Thames Water, roughly as far away from us in time as we are from Bazalgette. Thames Tideway Tunnel will have an unusual commercial structure, being a regulated utility in its own right that will design, construct and ﬁnance it and collect payments regulated by Ofwat from consumers through Thames Water to meet the cost. Once ﬁnished the tunnel is expected to make the Thames a far cleaner river and to avoid any risk of a repetition of the ‘big stinks’ that were notorious before Bazalgette got to work.

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INSIGHT

LLegal landscape IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE BIKE As construction of the first sections of London’s much-vaunted North-South cycle superhighway near completion, Adrian Lord calls for the removal of legal impediments to effective cycling infrastructure in the UK. Much is written about the need to adopt a ‘continental’ approach to design of cycling facilities, but one of the reasons why UK infrastructure looks and feels different from that of our northern European neighbours is the underlying legal framework. Across most of Europe, the driver is presumed liable in the case of injury to a pedestrian or cyclist. ‘Presumed liability’ doesn’t mean cyclists and pedestrians are always found blameless – they may be proved to have acted irresponsibly or unlawfully and be held proportionately liable. But around 70 per cent of collisions involving cyclists in the UK happen at junctions when the cyclist is riding straight ahead and can’t do much to avoid being hit by a turning vehicle. It is often a struggle for them to get legal or financial redress. Presumed liability already exists in the UK. For example, if you drive into the back of somebody, you will normally be presumed liable. And, although it does rely to some extent on pedestrians and cyclists being

Adrian Lord insured, many household policies already include public liability insurance that covers damage or injury accidentally caused to others. Members of cycling organisations such as British Cycling also have insurance through memberships. Presumed liability is certainly not a panacea that makes every driver behave more safely. It applies in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, but also southern and eastern European countries, where attitudes to cyclists and road conditions are no better than in the UK. However, it is likely to be hidden somewhere in

“IT MAY MODIFY BEHAVIOUR ENOUGH TO ENSURE THAT DRIVERS OBEY SIGNS AND MARKINGS THAT ARE THERE TO PROTECT CYCLISTS AND PEDESTRIANS”

a driver’s psyche, and may modify behaviour enough to ensure that drivers obey signs and markings that are there to protect cyclists and pedestrians. Anybody who has cycled in Copenhagen will have experienced the slightly unreal sensation of approaching a busy side road on a bicycle track and all the cars stopping to let you across. It takes some getting used to for Britons. Being able to cross side roads without stopping is an important feature of segregated infrastructure. Most urban cycle journeys in Britain are less than 5 km and rarely last more than 30 minutes. Frequent stops add disproportionately to journey time; the eﬀort required to get going again is equivalent to adding 200 metres. It’s hardly surprising that many cyclists stay on the road if the cycle path takes more time and eﬀort. The only clear guidance on giving cycle tracks priority in the UK suggests they should be on a hump and set back 5 metres from the junction mouth – impossible to achieve in most urban streets.

Similarly, giving pedestrians priority at a side road would require a zebra or signalled crossing. These can’t be placed on junctions so usually end up away from where people actually want to cross. In Denmark, an ‘unconditional duty to give way’ applies to drivers at side roads. As a cyclist you can pedal along a cycle track, or along the road, straight across the side road. Motor traffic will not cut you up, and will even wait for you to come from behind before turning in. In the UK Rule 170 of The Highway Code requires drivers to give way to those already crossing a junction, but not people approaching the junction. The Danish rule requires that drivers also have to wait for cyclists approaching the junction. It is very simple and applies (almost) everywhere, including at signalised junctions where cyclists can go straight ahead while turning traffic has to wait for a gap. In design terms this rule enables very simple priority side road layouts with minimal signs and markings. At signalised junctions it eliminates the requirement for expensive and slow ‘staggered’ toucan crossings that throw pedestrians and cyclists together into a space dysfunctional for both. These two simple legal changes are still a pipe dream for UK traffic planners and engineers, but their introduction could go some way to making streets more attractive for cycling without filling them with yet more street clutter. Adrian Lord is an associate director of Phil Jones Associates and infrastructure adviser to British Cycling

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LATEST POSTS FROM THEPLANNER.CO.UK/BLOGS

B LO G S Will recent changes introduced to ‘fast-track’ planning for strategically important infrastructure projects provide some much-needed impetus?

Varying development consent orders – a hurdle better avoided than jumped James Parker and Sheridan Treger

The ‘fast track’ planning system for ‘nationally significant’ infrastructure has been in place for seven years and, in July 2015, some welcome changes came into effect to shorten timescales and simplify the process for varying orders for consented schemes. This is critical. An order that can be varied, without daunting cost and risk, can be make or break for delivery of any scheme. This part of the process, however, is still mostly uncharted waters. So far, only three ‘non-material’ change applications have been made. None of them can be described as ‘fast track’. For one, even moving a slip road on the M6 by just 12 metres, unopposed and to avoid having to divert a gas pipeline, added five months of delay, and almost certainly significant cost. Another, some changes to service buildings for the Hinkley Point nuclear facility, was applied for in March 2015 and remains undetermined at the time of writing, some four months on. None of this includes the promoter’s preparation time. Nobody has yet summoned the courage for a ‘material’ change. Inevitably, though, more and more schemes will need ‘material’ changes. Years often pass between a scheme being crystallised

for pre-application consultation and being implemented. In that time, its commercial or technological context could well have moved on dramatically (the Hinkley changes were part of a postFukushima disaster review). For ‘material’ applications, the new changes will: c Limit the scope of consultation (from all and sundry to just those directly affected); c Allow the secretary of state not to hold an examination (though how often will this discretion be exercised, given local controversy around many ‘nationally significant’ schemes?); and c Reduce examination and decision targets from a year to eight months. There are therefore four options for changing a scheme, as follows: (1) Obtain approval to a change of plans from the local planning authority under terms of the order: the scope for doing this on any significant scale is ever narrowing. (2) Apply to the secretary of state for a ‘non-material’ change: appealing at first glance, but there is no statutory timescale for decisions. There can be no compulsory acquisition, environmental assessment or habitats angle. There is also no consistent line on what is ‘non-material’. (3) Apply to the secretary of state for

a ‘material’ change: as described, now faster and potentially less onerous, but it still involves eight monthsplus preparation time. (4) Apply to the local planning authority for planning permission: this option is not open to parts of the project that are nationally significant infrastructure. Also, the authority may not have been in favour of the project in the first place. None of the above is appetising for a promoter weighing up risk, time and cost. Prevention is always better than cure. Truism though it sounds, the original application should reflect the scheme that the promoter and funders will want built out. Maintenance and operational personnel should be involved at the earliest stages. It may even be worth bringing forward detailed design. Application materials have to be right first time – ‘fixing things on the go’ is often impossible during the system’s (so far) unaltered sixmonth examinations. Promoters with a culture of encouraging constructive challenge by internal stakeholders and with experienced planning, environmental and legal teams increase the chances of avoiding, what remains, a hurdle better avoided than jumped. James Parker and Sheridan Treger of Berwin Leighton Paisner

L E G I S L AT I O N S H O R T S Opponents launch lawsuit against Hinkley C Green power suppliers have launched a lawsuit against the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset. Greenpeace Energy and nine German and Austrian utilities have banded together in a move to challenge the plans, which they allege were based on “legal and procedural errors” when state aid was approved for the project by the European Commission. Sönke Tanger, managing director at Greenpeace Energy, said the operating aid was “unlawful” and “should never have been approved.” Speaking to the BBC, a spokesperson for EDF Energy, the company set to build the power plant, said the agreements for Hinkley Point C are “durable because they are fair and balanced”, approved by the European Commission after a “robust and lengthy investigation”.

High Court gives Gloucestershire waste incinerator the go-ahead A High Court bid to stop a £500 million waste incinerator near Gloucester has failed. Following a public inquiry the secretary of state originally approved the plans for the Javelin Park incinerator, but Stroud District maintained that the planning inspector had “made errors.” Geoﬀ Wheeler, leader of Stroud District Council, said: “We put forward a robust case, throughout the proceedings, to demonstrate the adverse impact that the proposed waste incinerator would have on the district. The argument was quite technical, with the court ultimately concluding that it was legitimate for the secretary of state to interpret the waste plan for Gloucestershire as he did, and consequently give approval for the incinerator. Our challenge hinged on this aspect, something which the county council also concurred with at the time of the original planning appeal.” He said he hoped that Gloucestershire County Council would examine ﬁnal alternatives for the project. Objections to the waste incinerator include its size, location, cost, environmental implications and potential health implications.

£47m Newry out-of-town development to go ahead A multi-purpose development planned for the outskirts of Newry, Northern Ireland, will go ahead after a judicial review dismissed objectors’ claims. Newry Chamber of Commerce objected to the development because of its “concerns for the future of Newry city centre”, Orla Jackson, chief executive, said in the Belfast Telegraph. But Judge Seamus Treacy ruled that no grounds for this had been established so he dismissed the case. Developer Hill Partnership can now – following a seven-year battle – proceed with its £47 million plans to build 70 business starter units, a food retail store, 14 homes and a coﬀee shop.

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INSIGHT

Career { D E V E L O P M E N T C ATTRACTING YOUNG PEOPLE TO PLANNING

How does the planning profession persuade young people that it’s not all decisions about dormers, but that planners are also engaged in the exciting task of shaping communities, towns, cities and, ultimately, the nation?

n October, we’ll be producing a young planners issue to coincide with the Young Planners’ Conference in Southampton from 9-10 October. We asked our editorial team how they would encourage young people to get into planning.

Ditch jargon “We need to bring to life how influential planning is in people’s lives. Focusing on the issues that matter, we need to ignite their interest and make sure to leave the jargon and dusty plans in the office. “We should be partnering with professionals who work with young people, using film, games and art to spark imaginations. We can get people interested, excited and involved in the future of where they live.” JOSIE TURNER, senior development and planning officer, Birmingham City Council

Be a champion

Minecraft, or property development after a game of Monopoly? “I used to love playing SimCity, something that undoubtedly laid the foundations for my later step into urban planning. That said, whilst the cities are now real, it’s a relief not to worry anymore about the threat of dinosaur attack!” ZOE GREEN, senior planning consultant, Atkins

Stress variety “Planning shapes people’s lives, but for many young people this is not apparent. It can be easy to develop a narrow view of what it means to be a planner. “It would be helpful if more young people were allowed to understand the breadth of planning, the potential

for specialisation and the links between planning and related professions such as property, public health, heritage and urban design.” GEORGE WEEKS, urban designer, Transport for London

Get into schools “If young people had a better understanding what planning involves, and the backgrounds, skills and interests needed within the profession, more would consider it as a career. “Speaking to students in schools, colleges and universities is one way of informing young people about planning; others include inviting students into the workplace or encouraging planning-based projects in schools and universities.” ANGELA MOORE, senior planning oﬃcer, Horsham District Council

Associate planning with place “We need to make planning a ‘known’ and aspirational career option earlier in people’s lives. We should enable young people to understand that some of the best places they have been to are there as a result of good planning. “By bringing planning into the discourse of popular culture in a positive way, we can familiarise young people with the activity of planning at a younger age.” LUCY SEYMOUR-Bowdery, planner, West Sussex County Council

“Planning needs to be properly championed. Ask a young person about what planning means and they think about home extensions and dormer windows – BORING! In reality, planning has a much wider remit. Project the wide scope of planning to allow young people to relate to it as a discipline and possible career.” RUPY SANDHU, minerals and waste policy planner, West Sussex County Council

Encourage play “Play is a great way of fuelling early passions in a profession. How many children, for example, consider engineering after using Lego and 40

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