Planning debate on Radio 4
Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme, You & Yours, debate the planning reforms. Minister Gregg Clarke, CPRE Chief Executive Shaun Spiers and John Stewart from the Home Builders Federation contribute.
Listen again
BBC Radio 4: You & Yours, 23 August 2011
Add your comments on this page.
Having been active in the Labour Party as recently as 12 years ago, I suppose I can’t complain about being described as Left-wing. But minsters are making a big mistake if they think that opposition to their proposed reforms is limited to ‘a small number of interest groups trying to justify their own existence’.
Making localism work
I have no wish to enter into a slanging match with ministers, fun though that might be. We agree with the Government that the planning system has become too complex and too top-down. And we support localism. CPRE is, after all, a locally based organisation.
But we want to make localism work. What is being proposed will be bad for the countryside, bad for towns and cities, and will not win public consent. If the Government does not think again, it can look forward to battles against development up and down the country.
Bob Neill seems to think that CPRE’s position is being manipulated by reds under the bed, but I have been under strong pressure from CPRE’s branches to stop worrying about maintaining good relations with the Government (I obviously haven’t done a great job of that anyway) and, in the words of one former branch chair from the middle of Middle England, to start ‘screaming from the top of Big Ben’ that ‘the government is proposing to dismantle the countryside protection that CPRE helped create in 1947’. It is a pity, as the leading article in today’s Sunday Telegraph observes, that ministers have chosen to dismiss criticisms of their proposals rather than listen.
Countryside protection under threat
So why do we think that the that the proposed National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) will seriously erode countryside protection and, indeed, the ability of people living in towns and cities to resist undesirable developments? I will mention just three aspects.
First, the new presumption in favour of sustainable development in the NPPF is designed to make planning principally an instrument for enabling economic growth. It is about development, not sustainability. George Osborne made this clear in his Budget speech: ‘We will introduce a new presumption in favour of sustainable development so that the default answer to development is “yes”.’ The message for local authorities is ‘build, build, build’. Their local plans should be plans for growth.
Of course, the planning system should not unreasonably impede growth. It should be easy to deal with and as speedy as is compatible with sound decision-taking. But the relationship between land use planning and economic performance is not straightforward. It will not necessarily be helpful for the UK to move towards a Greek-style planning system and away from a German-style system. The NPPF is unlikely to result in more development overall, certainly not enough to turn the economy around, but there will be more development in the wrong places.
This is partly because of the removal of any guidance to local authorities to use previously developed brownfield land before building on green fields, our second major concern. The brownfield-first policy was introduced by the last Conservative government as a response to the executive estates that sprouted in open countryside in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Over the last 15 years it has saved countryside and aided the regeneration of many towns and cities. The draft NPPF removes any pressure to develop brownfield in preference to open countryside, including farmland.
Finally, the draft NPPF requires local authorities not only to ‘maintain a rolling supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide five years worth of housing against their housing requirements’, but also to ‘include an additional allowance of at least 20% to ensure choice … in the market for land’. Local authorities are given a strong steer not to include anticipated ‘windfall’ sites within their five year supply, even though in most areas windfall sites – former industrial sites and so on – will inevitably become available. Some local authorities will struggle to identify five years of housing land, plus 20% and excluding likely windfalls. Whatever the Government’s intentions for the Green Belt, and I believe that ministers are sincere when they say that they want to protect it, pressure to redraw Green Belt boundaries is bound to grow.
Fighting for a democratic planning system
I still hope that we can have a serious dialogue with the Government. But public pressure will be necessary, as it was with the proposed forest sell-off. The pressure will grow over the next few months, but we hope as a first step to generate thousands of letters to MPs in support of a democratic planning system that is able to achieve necessary development, of course, but also to protect the places people care about, in town as well as country.
Take action
Write to your MP
In the news
Ministers go to war with green charities over planning shake-up 'smears'
Telegraph, 8 August 2011
Will Britain remain green and pleasant?
Telegraph, 8 August 2011
Planning debate on Radio 4
Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme, You & Yours, debate the planning reforms. Minister Gregg Clarke, CPRE Chief Executive Shaun Spiers and John Stewart from the Home Builders Federation contribute.
Listen again
BBC Radio 4: You & Yours, 23 August 2011
Find out more
Communities and Local Government website: Draft National Planning Policy Framework (842K PDF)
