The Planner - June 2015

JUNE 2015 IDEAL HOMES FOR THE FUTURE // p.22 • CROWDFUNDING PIONEER IS SHAPING THE PUBLIC REALM // p.26 • LONGBRIDGE LIVES DRIVING FORWARD A NEW COMMUNITY // p.30 • AN INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT // p.40

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

CITY CENTRED

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Eugénie Birch and the World Urban Campaign’s input into the UN Habitat III conference

26/05/2015 11:22

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20/05/2015 17:31

CONTENTS

PLANNER 07 18

THE

JU NE

20 15

“NOBODY HAD LOOKED AT WHAT WE CALL THE ‘CIVIC MARKETPLACE’ AND SAID ‘THIS IS A BROKEN SYSTEM, AND WE CAN OPTIMISE IT’ "

NEWS

6 Planners await ‘clear focus on housing’

7 Social housing programme kicks off in Ireland 8 Greenery in cities can boost people’s health 9 Bill to set Wales’s greenhouse gas cut targets 10 A choice between action and inertia 11 City council submits Edinburgh LDP for scrutiny

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OPINION 12 Chris Shepley: Government must venture outside the magic circle for life lessons 16 Alex Herbert: New tech must be recognised in infrastructure planning 16 John Phillipps: Grey is the new green 17 Penny Norton: Online consultation is changing the game 17 Toby Lloyd: Let’s talk about the green belt

C OV E R I M A G E | M AT T G R E E N S L A D E

18 Eugénie Birch,who is coordinating the planning profession’s input into next year’s defining UN conference, discusses her career 22 Detached homes with gardens or flats for singletons? What kind of housing does Britain need? David Blackman reports 26 Spacehive is starting to make a concrete impact on the urban realm. Simon Wicks meets its founder, Chris Gourlay 30 A new town is emerging at Birmingham’s historic Longbridge car-making site. By Mark Smulian

QUOTE UNQUOTE

“WHO DID THEY ASK FOR MILTON KEYNES? A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE AND SOME COWS?” BOND DICKINSON'S DUNCAN TILNEY ON THE GARNERING OF LOCAL SUPPORT FOR GARDEN CITIES

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INSIGHT

FEATURES

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

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40 Career development: Introduction to project management 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: Goodbye, and arise Sir Eric

J U NE 2 015 / THE PLA NNER

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26/05/2015 16:02

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22/05/2015 15:15

PLAN UPFRONT

Leaderr Election over, planning can now plot its path – It is a most curious beast, our electoral system. For one thing, what we term a ‘majority’ requires an alternative, UK-specific definition in American dictionaries. ‘Majority’ in all other circumstances means just that – a sum greater than any other amount combined. Yet in our elections, ‘majority’ can mean considerably less than, well, an actual majority. In the case of the 2015 general election, ‘majority’ means 36.1 per cent – the Conservatives' share of the vote.

All electoral systems require some artificial element to force a result and, like others, our system’s ability to reflect popular sentiment is gradually compromised in proportion to the number of parties involved. It’s a combative system structured to provide a winner and a loser, rather

Martin Read than necessarily provide a government representing the majority view.

Outcomes can be perverse; compared to 2010, the share of the vote obtained by the two main parties each went up, albeit marginally. Yet what we see and hear in the media is one side victorious over another; a party that increased its vote share by 0.7 per cent taking full control, another that increased its vote share by 1.4 per cent

forced to re-evaluate its whole reason for being. Do the figures bear that out?

Or is the narrative wholly at odds with the figures?

Only the clear drop in Liberal Democrat support is demonstrably the case.

There is one positive from all of this – political stability. There is a value in being able to rely on and plan around a government’s direction of travel. No matter your view of the outcome, there is a certain five-year course set out – one the planning profession can assess and respond to.

So what will we see?

The aggressive pursuit of brownfield sites with a view to their conversion into

“GREEN BELT POLICY MUST SURELY COME UNDER GREATER SCRUTINY AS CONTRADICTORY FORCES KEEP HOUSE BUILDING TOTALS BELOW TARGET”

housing; further pressure on local authorities to do more from their planning teams with less; and the curious contradiction already playing out where the rhetoric about local people taking control of planning butts up against the threats - already being reported - of more centralised control of decision-making should house building targets not be met. Greg Clark, the new communities and local Government minister is strong on localism and will doubtless be a a key character in the months and years ahead.

Bigger-picture issues will surely be forced out into the open. Green belt policy must surely come under greater scrutiny as political forces keep house building totals below target. And certainly, much original thinking will be required if planning is to be looked back on in another five years' time as a critical component in addressing all of these problems.

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26/05/2015 11:23

NEWS

Analysis { HOUSING

Planners await ‘clear focus on housing’

By Laura Edgar Although planning industry professionals have welcomed the new Conservative government’s “clear focus on housing”, concerns remain on ‘how housing will be delivered’.

In its manifesto, the Conservative Party made a number of housing and infrastructure commitments, including investing £38 billion in the railway network, ensuring the completion of High Speed 2 and 3, investing in 200,000 Starter Homes for first-time buyers under 40 and extending the Help to Buy equity loan scheme until at least 2020.

The manifesto also affirmed that the party would continue to protect the green belt as well as support “locally led garden cities and towns and prioritise brownfield development, making sure new homes are always matched by the necessary infrastructure to support them”.

These ambitions to “build on the achievements of the last five years and continue to address this long-term housing crisis” were welcomed

by Stewart Baseley, executive chairman at the Home Builders Federation (HBF).

He told The Planner that it was many years since a government came to power “with such a clear focus on housing and a strong mandate to implement policies required to boost supply”.

But for Mark Sitch, senior partner at Barton Willmore, “important challenges” on how the “significant volume of homes needed to address the housing crisis” would be delivered remain.

He explained to The Planner: “We have to tackle the supply of housing to ensure that our cities and major towns can grow and while demand-side initiatives are welcomed, they GARDEN CITIES have to be matched by supWITHIN THE CURRENT ply-side policies. So far there GREEN BELT OR has been little evidence of a STRADDLING ITS will from the Conservatives on BOUNDARIES ARE this front.”

VERY MUCH PART OF Phil Villars, managing director THE SOLUTION ANDREW WINTERSGILL at Indigo Planning, agreed that

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following the election result the big question is housing delivery. Based on the Conservative manifesto, Villars said there would be no national targets and any new towns and garden cities would need to be locally led.

“Unless a major new initiative is announced, the industry will remain reliant on a system that is already feeling the strain and opportunities for housing growth will be seriously hampered,” said Villars.

Seeing how the Conservative government would unlock brownfield land is something that Roger Tustain, managing director at Nexus Planning, is “eagerly awaiting”.

Although the pledges to create a £1 billion “brownfield regeneration fund” and a new London Land Commission to identify surplus public sector land were described as helpful by Tustain, “concentrating on brownfield alone won’t resolve the issues the industry faces” he said.

This thought was echoed by Andrew Wintersgill, partner at David Lock Associates.

Speaking to The Planner, he said that although there is now an opportunity to tackle the environmental, social and economic problems through policies aimed at bringing brownfield land back into use, “it is a misconception that brownfield land alone can solve our housing crisis and therefore the government must face up to a multi-pronged attack on that crisis”.

If the housing shortage is to be addressed, both Wintersgill and Tustain suggest that focus should also be on the green belt.

Wintersgill said the housing provision required can’t be accommodated sustainably “without substantial green belt releases”, therefore the government must give “stronger encouragement to councils to review their green belts” while they prepare their local plans.

Additionally, “garden cities within the current green belt or straddling its boundaries are very much part of the solution to the nation’s housing crisis”.

Tustain said a “full and frank debate about the purpose and function of the green belt around our key cities” was needed to resolve the housing shortage.

“Without such a debate, they are unlikely to succeed in delivering enough homes, in the right locations, to keep pace with demand.”

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26/05/2015 14:18

PLAN UPFRONT

RTPI launches Future Planner Bursaries

Social housing programme kicks off in Ireland The Irish government has announced plans to build 1,700 housing units in the first phase of its ambitious countrywide €3.8 billion social housing programme.

Initially, some 3,000 construction jobs will be created as 100 separate projects get under way at a cost of €312 million.

The announcement marks the first phase of a programme designed to eliminate housing waiting lists by 2020 and provide 35,000 homes through a combination of purchase, direct build and long-term leasing.

Schemes will get under way in each local authority area, ranging from single units in rural areas to projects of 50 or more homes in Dublin.

Environment minister Alan Kelly said the announcement was the beginning of addressing the housing crisis, but he stressed that more funding was needed.

“This is the first major investment in local authority housing for many years,”

Greg Clark appointed communities secretary Greg Clark has replaced Eric Pickles as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in Prime Minister David Cameron’s Cabinet reshuffle.

Formerly the minister for universities, science and cities from July 2014, Clark was minister of state at communities and local government under Eric Pickles.

Holding the position from May 2010 until he became minister for cities in July 2011,

he said. “It represents a good start, but with much more needing to be done.”

The figures show the highest expenditure is in South Dublin County Council, where €40.8 million will be spent on delivering 203 homes.

Some 6,217 people are on the council’s housing waiting list.

Across the four Dublin local authorities, about €116 million will be spent on creating 566 units.

The Department of the Environment said most schemes were “shovel-ready” with planning permission in place, and that all would be completed by 2017.

Clark was responsible for decentralisation and planning policy.

Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) vice-president Phil Williams said: “We welcome Greg Clark back to the department of communities and local government. In his previous role as planning minister he described planning as a ‘noble profession’ and we enjoyed a good working relationship with him.”

The RTPI is now looking forward to discussing with Clark its ideas to help address some of the “pressing national challenges where planning and planners can contribute solutions”, including building more homes, increasing capacity in local authority planning teams, something that “cannot be avoided if the government expects to deliver on its ambitious programme”.

IN THE CABINET AMBER RUDD Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

LIZ TRUSS Continues as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

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PATRICK MCLOUGHLIN Remains as Secretary of State for Transport.

MARK FRANCOIS Becomes Minister of State at Department for Communities and Local Government.

BRANDON LEWIS Remains as housing and planning minister.

JAMES WHARTON Is the new Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government with Northern Powerhouse responsibilities.

The RTPI has announced the launch of a new fund to generate bursaries for places on accredited University Planning Masters courses this year.

The scheme, part of a wider plan to promote town planning as a career choice, launches this month alongside a campaign encouraging planning as a career.

RTPI chief executive Trudi Elliott told The Planner: “To help address the challenge of producing future chartered town planners in the numbers we need, the RTPI has created a new fund to generate bursaries for places on accredited University planning masters courses this year. We are also inviting partners to contribute to the fund will seek to secure additional funding for future years.”

In this pilot year, each Bursary will be for £1,000, with £750 contributed by the RTPI Future Planner Bursary fund and £250 from the University. If the student is on a part-time Masters course this will be divided equally over each year of their programme. A partner’s contribution of £750 will therefore fund one bursary.

The Planner 2015 reader survey opens We at The Planner are asking readers to take part in our 2015 reader survey.

This survey is part of our continuing programme to ensure that The Planner and its associated newsletter and websites fulfil the role you as RTPI members require of it.

The survey, which should take no more than 10 minutes to complete, asks you to rank our performance in terms of news, features and engagement with the audience.

You'll also have an opportunity to put forward your own suggestions for the content and stories we should cover. n To have your say, please go to http://bit. ly/theplannersurvey

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26/05/2015 14:18

NEWS

Analysis { GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

Greenery in cities can boost people’s health

By Laura Edgar Cities facing the challenges of population growth, climate change, resource depletion and urbanisation can gain significantly from greater investment in green infrastructure, claims Arup’s (2014) report Cities Alive: Rethinking Green Infrastructure.

Julia Thrift, head of projects and events at the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), says it is now recognised across the world that green infrastructure in cities is vital in creating places that function well economically and help people to live happy and healthy lives. So how can green infrastructure make towns and cities healthier, more sustainable places to live?

James Harris, policy and networks manager at the Royal Town Planning Institute, says that green infrastructure delivers a variety of “ecological, economic and social benefits”. He said urban tree planting, green walls and roofs, and pocket wetlands can “support climate mitigation and adaptation by absorbing pollutants” as well as reducing

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“SKILLED WORKERS CAN CHOOSE TO WORK ALMOST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD ­ AND THEY WILL CHOOSE TO GO SOMEWHERE NICE” JULIA THRIFT the urban heat island effect and managing water drainage.

Additionally, there are economic benefits.

“Skilled workers can choose to work almost anywhere in the world," says Thrift, “and they will choose to go somewhere that is nice to work.”

And there are health benefits, too.

“There is overwhelming evidence that just being able to see greenery improves mental health," says Thrift. “People who live on a tree-lined street or near a park are more likely to walk; it is vital for people’s health.”

Not only that, but “green open spaces encourage active lifestyles, which help to reduce cardiovascular disease,” said Harris.

This in turn, he said, eases the pressure on

public health systems.

But according to Thrift, as the population rises, green infrastructure is going to have to be re-thought because green spaces like parks fall under a council’s leisure budget – and council budgets are being cut.

To benefit from growth in London, and to prepare for it, Mayor of London Boris Johnsonlaunched the London Infrastructure Plan 2050 in March. In it, Johnson says the newly established Green Infrastructure Taskforce “will develop the evidence base to prove the benefits of green infrastructure and work to accelerate its delivery”.

The taskforce also aims to work on a more long-term strategic approach to its investment and delivery.

Although one size does not fit all, Thrift believes a form of the Green Infrastructure Taskforce could be used elsewhere, and she agrees that green infrastructure systems could be more strategic.

She added: “It will be interesting to see what happens with devolution and city regions. There are some really interesting opportunities for how green infrastructure can be managed, designed and funded.”

But there are issues around implementing green infrastructure, including the aforementioned funding cuts. It falls under the leisure department yet benefits are felt across multiple council departments, Thrift explained. Therefore, there needs to be a move towards all departments contributing towards its funding.

Harris said that to overcome difficulties with ownership and maintenance “successful green infrastructure needs to be supported by a long-term management and funding plan”. He added: “Green infrastructure also needs to be viewed as a tool for delivering other local, regional and national policy objectives, not just those related to green space.”

In addition, said Thrift, planners “have been left stuck” following the removal of green infrastructure guidance from the National Planning Practice Guidance (NPPG). The Green Infrastructure Partnership, managed by the TCPA and supported by the Land Trust, Natural England, the Landscape Institute, Arup and Groundwork, wrote to ministers to stress the importance of the guidance.

Thrift concluded: “It is really unhelpful.

We know that planners want to be able to deliver green infrastructure – there is just not enough information about it. Hopefully, they will reinstate it.”

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22/05/2015 16:03

PLAN UPFRONT

Bill to set Wales’s limits on greenhouse gases The Welsh Government will be required to set legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050 under legislative proposals unveiled recently.

The Environment (Wales) Bill is designed to improve Wales’s management of its natural resources and will require the administration to set carbon budgets between

2016 and 2050.

The bill equips the government with powers to take action to achieve higher levels of waste recycling, and increase food waste treatment and energy recovery.

Legislation will require the Welsh Government to produce a national policy that sets out the priorities and opportunities for managing Wales’s natural resources sustainably.

Chancellor outlines English devolution strategy Chancellor George Osborne has laid out his proposals for devolution to cities in England, declaring the “old model” of running everything from London broken.

Speaking in Manchester on 14 May, Osborne said cities would get powers over planning, housing, transport and policing as well an elected mayor.

A Cities Devolution Bill was due to feature in the Queen’s Speech on 27 May. This follows an announcement in November in which Osborne said Manchester would get a directly elected mayor and devolved powers. In his first speech following the election Osborne said other cities should be able to have this too.

He invited other cities to request greater devolution of powers, but added: “It has to involve an elected mayor. It is a proven model that works across the globe.”

The chancellor emphasised that he would not settle for less – an elected mayoralty is key to the process.

Responding to the announcement, the British Property Federation (BPF) said devolution would drive development across the UK. Andrew Carter, acting chief executive at the Centre for Cities, said the “ability and willingness” of other city regions across the UK to respond to the invitation would depend on the extent to which combined authorities and crossboundary working were established.

Osborne also said Scotland and Wales would receive their devolution promises.

This will be underpinned by a suite of so-called area statements, prepared by Natural Resources Wales, (NRW) identifying the challenges for the management of natural resources at a local level.

The bill also clarifies the law for a number of existing environmental regulatory regimes including marine licensing, land drainage and flood risk management.

Office jobs outpace office space growth The number of office jobs has outstripped the rise in office space, sparking a “race for space”, says research.

Workspace Futures: The Changing Dynamics Of Office Locations, a report by Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners (NLP), shows that between 2000 and 2012 the number of office jobs rose in England and Wales by 21 per cent, yet the stock of office space increased by less at 17 per cent.

This, says the report, implies that those using the space are “making increasingly efficient use of office space, both in terms of new additional space as well as existing space”.

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

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At a regional level – in Manchester, for example – the report shows that the growth of office jobs was double the increase in office floor space. In London, Liverpool, and Leeds the number of office jobs increased by a third more than floor space.

But despite the growth in office space the report also proves that permitted development rights, which allow the conversion of office space to residential dwellings without having to make a planning application, is “reducing the amount of available stock”.

Ciaran Gunne-Jones, economics director at NLP, told The Planner: “The effects of permitted development rights have been mixed.

“In some locations the measure is helping to repurpose obsolete office stock and, in time, may improve the viability of new office development.

But in some higherdemand locations the loss of office stock is outpacing new supply with an ensuing race for space amongst occupiers.

“Local authorities need to assess how this will impact upon plans to meet longer-term office space needs in their areas, particularly if the measure is extended further.”

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22/05/2015 16:03

NEWS

Analysis { DEVELOPMENT AND REGENERATION

A choice between action and inertia

By Huw Morris An inflammatory article in The Economist in October 2013 caught Keith Burge’s attention. Underperforming towns and cities such as Burnley, Hull and Middlesbrough did not merit any further government intervention, it said. Instead, residents should be supported to commute or move to more successful places.

Burge, who was then chair of the Institute of Economic Development (IED), said the article “offered bait and he could not help but nibble at it”. The choice is not between “people and place, only action and inertia”.

He spearheaded a drive by professional bodies in economic development and regeneration to amass the views of practi“GOVERNMENT SLAPS tioners from around the UK. ITS FOREHEAD Members of the RPTI, Royal WHENEVER A REGION Institution of Chartered SurveyHAS A SQUABBLE. IT ors (RICS) and the Association WANTS TO DEAL WITH of Town and City Management PEOPLE WHO HAVE (ATCM) along with the IED held CLEAR AGREEMENTS” a series of discussions on the KEITH BURGE steps councils, local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and government can take to narrow the gap between underperforming and successful places.

The result is a report detailing 16 recommendations as the UK debates devolution of powers and budgets in an age of austerity (see box). “The danger is devolving responsibility without resources,” said Burge. “That will be merely passing the buck – it’s your budget – you decide where the cuts go. Having got your hand on the levers, you find they are coated with something nasty.”

The report says while some things only central government can do, local areas can take up the gauntlet. Strong political and officer leadership is crucial, with Burge citing the example of Greater Manchester. “Government slaps its forehead whenever a region has a squabble,” he said. “It wants to deal with people who have clear agreements.”

While elected mayors are a toxic issue, the government wants to see the emergence of figures in the image of the Victorian mayor of Birmingham Joseph Chamberlain or New York-style civic leaders. Pointing to Bristol and Liverpool, Burge argued: “People get it when they see it is somebody around whom ideas form.”

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RTPI policy and networks manager James Harris said it is not practical to simply call for extra investment in austere times. Much better is to look at how existing policies can be adjusted to encourage the regeneration of underperforming places.

“One of the best ways this can be achieved is through wellresourced planning departments, which are ideally and uniquely placed to develop a long-term strategic vision for a town or city, perhaps reinventing or reinterpreting its former identity.”

Another key factor is for economic development to be seen as investment with a return.

ATCM interim chief executive Shanaaz Carroll said it should become a statutory function for local authorities. “We must ensure economic development is given the importance it deserves to create a focused holistic approach to managing places. The needs of communities will always evolve so in many ways the timescale has no ending, as there will always be work to do to ensure they reach their economic and social potential.”

Having seized the gauntlet, professional bodies have now thrown it down for the country to consider. RICS head of policy and parliamentary affairs Jeremy Blackburn said their combined thinking offers a real alternative to “the strong doing what they can and the weak suffering what they must”.

He added: “Here is the lifeboat, if you want to get in and start rowing.” n A Brighter Future For Our Towns And Cities is available at www.bitly.com/1EJZmaO

Helping underperforming towns and cities • Each area should produce a

• Leaders should head new

development plan and be given the resources for it. This would set out what kind of place it wants to be and how this would be achieved, including priority projects.

• Physical developments should attract people to live, work, study and shop and play.

• Devolution of powers and responsibilities should be detailed in specific terms.

• Economic development to be a statutory function within each council.

• All LEPs to have full responsibility for funding skills development.

• Transport and communication infrastructure projects should be explored to connect underperforming areas with successful economies.

• Business rates to be overhauled.

• Leadership should focus on economic development, regeneration, housing, commercial property, planning and transport.

partnerships of private, public and third sectors.

• Higher education provision to be expanded by a combination of reduced tuition fees and relocation from over-heating economies.

• Higher education provision should be resourced to provide start-up businesses for graduates, staff and communities.

• Major health care schemes should consider economic impacts.

• London-based government departments must justify why they cannot relocate outside the capital.

• LEPs to be better resourced and show best practice among their peers.

• A beefed-up LEP network to coordinate decisions that cross boundaries.

• Area-based regeneration to focus on long-term solutions.

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22/05/2015 16:03

PLAN UPFRONT

Guidance on LAAs is issued The Mineral Products Association (MPA) and the Planning Officers’ Society have published practice guidance on the production and use of Local Aggregates Assessments (LAA).

The guide offers advice to mineral planning authorities, Aggregate Working Parties (AWPs) and the mineral industry on what should be expected in terms of LAA style and content.

Director of mineral planning at MPA Ken Hobden said LAAs are a “fundamental component” of the mineral planning system under the National Planning Policy Framework.

“They are important in the monitoring of aggregate sales and supply and crucially provide the evidence on which future provision in mineral plans is based.”

The guide is intended to highlight that LAAs should be “relatively simple” in style. The data should be clear and the terminology used should be consistent throughout.

Hobden explained that over the past two to three years mineral planning authorities have been producing LAAs that differ in standards and lack the degree of consistency that the NPPF requires.

“This document provides mineral planning authorities (MPAS) with advice on good practice in producing LAAs and guides AWPs and the minerals industry in terms of what can be expected to be included in an LAA.”

City council submits Edinburgh LDP for evaluation Edinburgh City Council has approved the latest version of its Local Development Plan (LDP) for examination by a reporter to be appointed by the Scottish Government.

When the city’s planning committee met to endorse this move it agreed a motion to set out the merits of options for changes to housing site provision in the strategy – decisions on which will be left to the judgment of the reporter.

Ian Perry, convener of the committee, said: “The council needs to allocate land to allow much-needed housing to be delivered for the city. While we are keen to ensure that brownfield land is developed first, it is necessary to identify some new

Durkan says planning handover has posed snags Environment minister Mark H Durkan has told the Northern Ireland Assembly that ransferring planning powers to local authorities has created a backlog of applications.

Durkan has conceded that problems have arisen since the 11 new supercouncils assumed the new responsibilities last month.

He said: “While the transition has been relatively smooth, I cannot stand here and tell you that it has been seamless.”

The transition, rolled out as part of the review of public administration, saw the bulk of planning powers devolved from central to local government from April 1.

It involved the transfer of 400 staff and 6,500 live applications.

The minister acknowledged that there had

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green field sites in a growing city.

“It is therefore very important that the LDP is now moved to the next stage.

This has been a difficult decision, but it is important that we move towards providing certainty for local communities and developers.”

Once Edinburgh’s LDP is adopted it will replace two existing local plans.

Developers say the current draft plan falls 6,500 homes short.

The decision to submit the LDP for examination comes as the capital awaits decisions on proposals for hundreds of new homes, including a controversial green belt scheme at Cammo to be determined by Scottish ministers.

been minor issues in places with the transfer of staff and with the transfer of cases.

“However, I have outlined previously in the chamber the benefits of planning going to local councils. Hopefully, it won’t take much time for the new systems to bed in,” he said.

Image courtesy of the Northern Ireland Executive

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22/05/2015 16:03

CHRIS SHEPLEY

O Opinion Government must venture outside the magic circle for life lessons What I wonder – the wishes of the people having been expressed with greater clarity than most people expected – is whether the government will be sufficiently confident to take notice of people who know what they are talking about, and whether they will allow policymaking to be influenced in any way by facts and research.

It has been a feature of modern governance that advice is taken primarily from people who say the things governments want to hear. ‘Group think’, it is called. People outside the magic circle, with experience and knowledge, are viewed with the deepest suspicion.

They are assumed to be motivated purely by selfinterest. Teachers, doctors, planners, whatever – they are dismissed as the “blob” (Michael Gove’s term for the education world, which he saw as determined to resist his remarkable plans, rather than, as most of us thought, wanting to educate children as well as possible).

It says a great deal about the sort of society that we’ve built that people are assumed always to act and speak from purely selfish motives. This is not so; lots of people still look at real information in order to make better decisions.

This struck me at a conference organised by the National Retail Planning Forum (which I chair).

Present in a rather splendid room atop the Peter Jones store in Sloane Square, were a hundred retailers, developers, surveyors, lawyers and planners from all sectors.

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“HOW DID IT COME TO PASS THAT POLICY IS MADE WITHOUT THAT EXPERTISE AND RESEARCH THAT USED TO BE A BEDROCK OF GOVERNMENT?” Those people were questers after truth. Laden already with thick crusts of expertise, they came to learn even more from the foremost experts of the day. Idle though it would be to assume that none of them had any personal interest in the planning of town centres (which was the burden of the debate), it became clear that all of them were motivated equally by trying to find a sensible way through the gathering thickets of modern retail planning. In the public interest as much as their own.

As Christopher Katkowski explained the government’s policies with a clarity that the government itself certainly could not manage; as the man from John Lewis, the top developer, the local authority chief, and the leading surveyor opened our eyes, I just wished that the minister – any minister – could be present. How much more these experts know than any special adviser ever could. How committed they are to finding ways to revive town centres. How well they grasp the implications of the internet and the changing needs and habits of shoppers.

These are changing faster than governments can react – certainly more profoundly than recent government efforts (like tinkering with Permitted Development) could deal with. They vary across the country,

so effective local powers and leadership are crucial.

Big supermarkets decline, smaller ones grow; DIY declines, gambling spreads.

Click-and-collect evolves.

People like independent shops, and worry about the loss of local character in special places like Covent Garden. All these things are central to what we do.

There’ll be other NRPF conferences soon, and equally brilliant debates on other topics. How did it come to pass that policy is made without that expertise and research that used to be a bedrock of government? And why do ministers discount people who spend their lives working on these things in favour of the advice of wellconnected young things from Oxford using the planning system to test political theories? Greg Clark may be just the man to provide something more thoughtful over the next five years.

See the splendid The Blunders Of Our Governments by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe for some mindnumbing examples of the effects of this phenomenon

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

22/05/2015 16:04

Quote unquote FROM THE WEB AND THE RTPI “The imposition of a mayor ... hands too er much power to one individual. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)) is doing a great job and you don’t need an s” elected mayor sitting above 10 authorities”

“Managed to squeeze “M in a quick turbo session early today before heading into Westminster”

A CONSERVATIVE BACKBENCHER, QUOTED IN THE INDEPENDENT

BRANDON LEWIS OVER SHARES ON TWITTER

“In the lead-up to the election, planning and politics were intertwined. Politics needs to take a step back and let planning take a lead” GREG DICKSON, ASSOCIATE AT TURLEY’S MANCHESTER OFFICE, SPEAKING TO THE PLANNER

“We are seeing a major shift in the flexibility and varying types of workspaces” CIARAN GUNNE JONES, ECONOMICS DIRECTOR AT NLP, ON THE WORKSPACE FUTURES: THE CHANGING DYNAMICS OF OFFICE LOCATIONS REPORT

“We’d need 100,000 wind turbines on 30,000 square miles of land each year to keep up with the annual increase in world electricity consumption, let alone gain market share. That’s a whole Scotland each year” MATT RIDLEY IN THE TIMES ON THE POTENTIAL OR OTHERWISE OF WIND TURBINES

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

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“This idea that we will ask the local people if they support a garden city – well, there isn’t any local people, just farm land. Who did they ask for Milton Keynes? A handful of people and some cows?

DUNCAN TILNEY, MANAGING ASSOCIATE, BOND DICKINSON LLP, SPEAKING AT ITS PLANNING IN THE NEW ADMINISTRATION SEMINAR

J U NE 2 0 1 5 / THE PLA NNER

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22/05/2015 16:04

CORRESPONDENCE

I Inbox

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

Victoria Bankes Price I read with interest Huw Morris’s article ‘Battle for The Skies’ looking at the competing schemes for the development of an additional runway at either Gatwick or Heathrow.

It was with dismay that I noted that the article did not make any effort to consider the environmental impacts of either scheme. Should the environment just be taken to fall within the ‘Disruption’ box?

The Airport Commission Consultation document set out that a new runway at Gatwick would result in the loss of 14 hectares of ancient woodland. This is inconsistent with figures previously supplied by Gatwick Airport Limited, the trust has asked for clarification on this figure, but no response has been forthcoming.

The Woodland Trust is the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity and aims to protect native woods, trees and their wildlife for the future. We do this by restoring and improving woodland biodiversity and increasing people’s understanding and enjoyment of woodland. We own over 1,000 sites across the UK, covering 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) and we have 500,000 members and supporters.

The trust’s primary concern is for the preservation and enhancement of ancient woodland. Ancient woodland is an irreplaceable habitat and one of the country’s richest terrestrial wildlife habitats, home to 256 species of conservation concern as listed on the UK Biodiversity action plan. It has evolved over

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hundreds, if not thousands of years and cannot be recreated or compensated for. It holds a unique, indescribable value for all those who visit or have an association with it.

Infrastructure decisions should never be made without fully assessing the environmental baseline.

The environment, especially irreplaceable ancient woodlands should always be central to decisions on infrastructure.

Victoria Bankes Price Planning adviser

A LL OF A TWIT TER @ThePlanner_RTPI

National Housing Federation @natfednews “We have the second worst energy standards in Europe – England’s housing needs substantial improvement. #fuelpoverty” Ben Castell @ben_castell “All the years beards weren’t cool, they were seen in every planning mag. Now they’re hip, not a single 1 in today’s @ThePlanner_RTPI.”

Peter Eversden Greg Clark told a conference in January, when he was cities minister, that London had not made its case for fiscal and powers devolution as recommended by Tony Travers’ Finance Commission report and granted to Manchester. We need to know what he and George Osborne are looking for so they can agree devolution to London.

Peter Eversden, chairman, London Forum of Amenity and Civic SocietiesPlanning adviser

Welsh Government @WelshGovernment “Transport links are vital to the economy – we are committed to a well maintained & robust road network #FMQs”

Ben Harrison @BenCities “Osborne City Devo offer not perfect, but by far best opp to make progress in decades. All local pols, biz + wonks shd engage to make it work” David Lammy @DavidLammy (Labour MP) “Green belt regulations allow older generations to protect their golf courses while young people can’t afford a decent home. Needs to change.”

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26/05/2015 11:23

SECTOR INFORMATION GUIDES Throughout 2015 The Planner will be publishing several A5-sized desktop reference supplements. These will be targeted at local authorities, other planners and professionals of all types seeking to get updated quickly on the services of planning consultancies in key sectors from urban regeneration to conservation, transport and major infrastructure. These are annual guides reflecting on the current state of the sector and looking ahead to the activity and events likely to influence the sector over the course of the coming twelve months.

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

O Opinion

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Alex Herbert is head of development planning for Tidal Lagoon Power

Applicat Applications for Nationally Significan cant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) have been made under the Planning Act 2008 for five years. Only one of 36 determined has been refused, but many have fallen along the way, suggesting the best schemes make it through a vigorous process. It is not a well-trodden path, but opinions of the regime appear to be positive on all sides and I’d endorse that – with a few caveats.

The application for Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay (TLSB) was submitted in February 2014 and a decision is due by 10 June 2015. As a first-of-a-kind project, TLSB created challenges for everyone (from the public to regulators) in a regime that works better for established technologies with clear policy backing.

Newer technologies will inevitably challenge the system again and should be welcomed.

TLSB is also in Welsh waters, creating further challenges in a parallel marine licensing process, plus the absence of associated development and of support from the Planning Inspectorate’s Consents Service Unit or Defra’s Major Infrastructure and Environment Unit.

Improvements to the regime are underway, adding more consents and simplifying postconsent changes. But I hope to see more focus on the significant and unpredictable costs of the

John Phillipps is a consultant masterplanner with Carter Jonas

Grey is the new green

New tech must be recognised in infrastructure p planning process. In addition to the application fee, developers are charged for inspectors’ time in considering the application and for costs associated with hearings. As applicants have no control over the number of inspectors appointed, nor the number of hearings held, examination costs can escalate.

And as public sector stakeholders don’t receive application fees, the cost of supporting their participation is typically borne by applicants through Planning Performance Agreements.

The Inspectorate and UK government should be sympathetic if they wish to see more of these critical projects.

The UK has the world’s second-best tidal range resource and a unique chance to create a lagoon industry to harness this potential and export the expertise globally. Tidal Lagoon Power Ltd aims to develop a network of six lagoons around the UK coast generating 8 per cent of our electricity needs. We have no other clean, renewable resources available to us to generate predictable power at this scale, and which can be delivered quickly through a small number of strategically sited (and locally popular) projects. Consent for TLSB is the first step on that path. To support subsequent projects, we need National Policy Statements to recognise the emergence of tidal lagoons.

“NEWER TECHNOLOGIES WILL INEVITABLY CHALLENGE THE SYSTEM AGAIN AND SHOULD BE WELCOMED”

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Has anyone any noticed that (apart from th the Green Party) none of the major parties at the election talked about environmental issues? As this is a fundamental issue for the UK’s continued existence, and particularly for the developing world, this may help to explain why so many young people in England are apathetic about politics.

Not so in Scotland, where people believe they can change the ‘same old’ political culture.

So have green issues become subservient to the concerns of the economy? Has grey become the new green?

Just to say “It’s the economy, stupid” is to miss a fairly important point – we need to build our economy as well as looking after our carbon footprint.

The two are not mutually exclusive; they ought to be intertwined.

And if we can’t sort out the basic principles of low-carbon living in our own country, how the Hell can we lecture the rest of the world?

And if we can’t sort this out fast the long-term future of our own economy may well become increasingly irrelevant. We need to start taking the future of the Earth – at the local and understandable level – a lot more seriously. You only have to look at how a combination of war-related, climate and economic factors is driving the

current migration across the Mediterranean to see how a combination of social, economic and environmental issues can unbalance an already fragile European Union.

So why did no major party see this is a vote-winner? And why is nobody considering the environmental movement as a job creator and boost to the economy, when countries such as Germany and Japan have shown there is another way?

Compared with many European nations our environmental standards were already low, even before the economic downturn.

But they are now getting even worse.

So is there another way to consider how we should integrate people into a more naturally based world? This is what the garden city movement was about, but it needs to be reinvented.

Five thoughts: • Decent housing must be joined up by smart infrastructure; • Housing has to be innovative and affordable for the young; • Greater public sector involvement is inevitable, with the value uplift to the state reinvested for the public good; • We need a new town programme, plus all other forms of urban development; and • Development needs to be truly green, not superficial.

“WE NEED TO START TAKING THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH – AT THE LOCAL AND UNDERSTANDABLE LEVEL – A LOT MORE SERIOUSLY”

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Have your say Would you like to see yourself in these pages?

Get in touch by email – editorial@theplanner.co.uk Topical, inspirational, angry or amusing – we consider all relevant comment

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Penny Norton is director of ConsultOnline

Toby Lloyd is head of policy at Shelter UK

Let’s talk about the green belt

Online consultation is changing the game

The lega legal obligation to consult on a p planning application has existed for many years and following the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, reporting on the methodology, results and impact of a consultation has become a specific requirement. And localism and neighbourhood planning have pushed community engagement up the public agenda.

Yet, according to the planning press in 2014, 12 per cent of applications are delayed or rejected because of inadequate public consultation. What are the issues affecting consultation and how can they be overcome?

Consultation ranges from a ‘tickbox’ exercise to a process whereby the community instigates its own vision. The former is less likely to gain the support of the planning authority, but the latter is only successful if the correct balance is struck; successful consultations do not offer a blank canvas but manage a constructive dialogue by communicating the purpose, the limitations, the statutory policy framework and the way in which the results will be used.

Traditionally, consultation attracts older people in the community and those who hold a strong view. But the best consultations elicit responses from a broad representation and give a

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voice to the ‘silent majority’.

Responding to the way in which people increasingly choose to communicate, and enabling residents to take part in consultation when and where they wish, online consultation is becoming popular. Analysis of all ConsultOnline projects to date shows that 79 per cent access consultation by smartphone or iPad. The time-poor are considered hard to reach and so it is unsurprising that 50 per cent of those taking part in ConsultOnline consultation are aged 18 to 34.

Another problem with older methods of engagement is the dominance of a specific character or group. Online, behind a username, people are more likely to give opinions without fear of repercussion.

Online consultation also allows the consultor to correct any misconceptions immediately.

There is no doubt that the internet has expanded the toolbox, enabling more accessible, timely, and balanced consultations with the potential for comprehensive analysis. As communication increasingly moves online, so too will consultation. But to some, a screen will never compensate for a human face and successful consultations will use the best of both online and offline tactics.

“THE BEST CONSULTATIONS ELICIT RESPONSES FROM A BROAD REPRESENTATION AND GIVE A VOICE TO THE ‘SILENT MAJORITY’ ”

The green belt is the best known and mo most totemic aspect of the English planning system, but is often misrepresented by both defenders and detractors.

From its 1947 beginnings, the policy has never been aimed at environmental protection.

Green belts were created to stop sprawl and incentivise urban regeneration.

Without them, the incentive on developers would always be to build where profits are easiest to come by.

There is also no denying that some of the best locations for housing are now in the green belt. But any relaxation of national policy could be unpopular. Worse, it could be ineffective, triggering a wave of land speculation and illplanned development.

Shelter believes that neither fetishising nor scrapping the green belt is credible. Instead, we need an approach that can: • Preserve green space round cities to stop ‘creeping development’ at the urban fringe; • Improve local people’s access to green space; • Concentrate urban growth into a small number of appropriate locations; and • Capture the gains in land value that development creates for public benefit, for infrastructure and affordable housing.

By suppressing land prices in profitable locations, green belts

have created an opportunity to release huge increases in land value if planning permission is granted. That value can be captured to benefit communities by paying for infrastructure, services and affordable housing.

The government should repeal the recent guidance giving green belts maximum protection, returning it to NPPF status. Authorities should review green belts and identify areas for housing, while protecting green belt areas with the highest environmental value and improving public access to them by creating country parks.

Community land trusts and rural exception sites have long operated on the principle of releasing land from planning constraint on the basis that the value created is captured for locals’ benefit.

Lord Taylor proposed amending the New Towns Act to allow local authorities powers to create new garden villages.

Shelter and KPMG outlined a model for New Homes Zones to speed development and capture land value uplift on brownfield sites or urban extensions.

URBED’s Wolfson Prize-winning proposal examined taking ‘a confident bite’ out of the green belt to grow small, successful cities such as York.

The time is right for a serious discourse.

“GREEN BELTS WERE CREATED TO STOP SPRAWL AND INCENTIVISE URBAN REGENERATION”

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INTERVIEW EUGÉNIE BIRCH

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ugénie Birch is working to a significant deadline. As chair of the World Urban Campaign (WUC), a body set up in 2009 to advocate for the prioritising of cities and urban issues in development policies, she is helping to prepare WUC input into the United Nations’s Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development – known universally as Habitat III – that takes place in Quito, Ecuador, next year. Habitat III will be the first such event for 20 years, and seeks to set the agenda for urbanisation for the next 20. Already, over half of the world’s population lives in cities, and that's a figure expected to reach 70 per cent by 2030 – well within the 20-year parameters of Habitat III. The RTPI itself joined the WUC as an associate partner in May, and next month Birch flies over to present the keynote at this year’s 2015 RTPI convention. She’ll talk about the challenges facing planning globally; the changing political context in which planning is having to operate across the world; and the potential implications for British planners. She’ll also talk about the recently launched General Assembly of Partners (GAP), a WUC initiative allowing non-governmental partners to come together and have their input into the conference.

Clearly, Habitat III is a pivotal event for the future of urbanisation globally, and Birch highlights what for her are the two fundamental challenges ahead.

“Mass urbanisation in the developing world, and the coming of majority urbanisation in the developed world, are our twin challenges,” she explains," and those challenges will come in PHOTOGRAPHY M AT T G R E E N S L A D E

HABIT TO COORDINATE PLANNING'S INPUT INTO NEXT YEAR’S UN CONFERENCE ON HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, YOU NEED SOMEONE FOR WHOM PLANNING IS INGRAINED. EUGÉNIE BIRCH FITS THE BILL PERFECTLY, AS MARTIN READ REPORTS

how we deal with the different cases and character of urbanisation relative to the developed and developing worlds. Each has similar issues – from climate change to inequality – but there are other elements, concerning how to manage the growing state of urbanisation, that differentiate the two areas.”

How these are effectively addressed will come down to how planning oversight is brought into the mix. As with its predecessors, Habitat III will result in an outcome document.

The 2016 document already has a title – the ‘New Urban Agenda’ – and UN member states are currently in the throes of defining and writing up the document, aided by a variety of

ON TECHNOLOGY

“One of the most exciting and promising things in how we manage the changes in urban places is the use of geospatial technologies, overlaid with population statistics, to monitor growth” 18

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INTERVIEW EUGÉNIE BIRCH

non-member state activist organisations ranging from local authorities and subnational government officials through to professionals, academics and grassroots ON THE NEXT GENERATION OF PLANNERS organisations.

“The New Urban Agenda (NUA) document “We don’t have a problem with the will lay the groundwork for policies and number or brightness approaches to the development of cities of of young planners, but nation states, international development we do have a problem funders, United Nations programmes and civil in attracting more diverse populations society, for the next 20 years,” explains Birch. in to the field. There Good intentions apart, what reporting are competitive fields mechanisms will be in place to ensure that to planning where, member states stick to promises? How can quite frankly, the pay the world ensure that these policies for cities is better” will actually be enacted?

“Within the NUA document there will be a monitoring and evaluation element," says Birch. The question of how that will be shaped, and who will be doing it, will also be under discussion over the next year.

“Under UN protocols, member states are responsible for reporting on the agreements they sign up for. When they sign up to the NUA there will be a reporting and monitoring structure that they agree to.”

But this shouldn’t mean that there’s only one source of monitoring and evaluation, says Birch.

“One would hope that there would be a monitoring arrangement that would either include participation from the non-member state groups, or be set up separately by the non-member state groups to undertake this sort of activity.”

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Birch also wonders whether it could be time for a UN intergovernmental panel on urbanisation (similar to the intergovernmental panel on climate change); “there’s a logic to that kind of format, she suggests.

An innate enthusiasm for urbanisation As Birch discusses these issues, you realise how much enthusiasm she has for the benefits that increased urbanisation can bring.

“We need to be taking advantage of all the opportunities that urbanisation creates,” she says, “and those opportunities include economic prosperity. No country has grown its GDP without urbanising first, and we know that 60 to 70 per cent of the world’s GDP comes from cities.”

That 60/70 per cent figure concerns the largest 600 cities worldwide – and there are 4,000 cities of 100,000 people or more.

“The challenge,” says Birch, “is to make the other 3,400 other cities more economically prosperous through planning solutions; the creating of frameworks for the agglomeration that creates economic growth – bringing up land, working on infrastructure, providing incentives for creating a labour force and so forth.”

A comprehensive body of work Eugénie Birch is clearly enthused by her WUC work and its Habitat III input, but this is just the latest in a long line of projects. Her ‘day job’ is as the Lawrence C Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education at the University of Pennsylvania. But in a wide-ranging career she has variously: taught in Canada, Hong Kong and South Africa; written and contributed to dozens of books and reports; and lectured more than a hundred times in the US and around the world.

HIG HL IG HT S

E UG É NI E B I R C H Eugénie Birch has a CV spanning 30 pages – the timeline below shows just a sample of the milestones along the way Timeline: 1971

2014

1965 1967 1985 2003 2006 2008 2008 2009 Recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship to Latin America

Director, Land Value Section, Cadastre Office, Consejo Municipal, Caracas, Venezuela

1978 Consultant, Board of Education, New York, New York

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Consultant, Office of the Mayor, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1990

Founding coDirector, Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn/IUR)

Appointed Lawrence C Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education, University of Pennsylvania (ongoing)

Appointed chair, Graduate Group in City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania (ongoing)

Member, Urban Management Council, World Economic Forum (until 2010)

Member and co-Chair of the Steering Committee, UN-HABITAT World Urban Campaign (ongoing)

Appointed member of the New York City Planning Commission

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ON URBANISATION GLOBALLY

Birch has sat on the boards of directors, com“No country has mittees and advisory boards for schools, grown its GDP universities, associations and societies. It’s without urbanising first, and we know quite the body of work, and she continues to that 60 to 70 per be driven to achieve in her profession. How, cent of the world’s then, does she keep all these plates in the GDP comes from air? cities” “Everything I do has a central focus, and that central focus is on research that translates to practice,” she says.

“Whether I’m involved in my instructional capacity as a professor, or as a researcher, or engaged in my professional organisations, or heading the Penn Institute for Urban Research, my mission is to be active in this translational world of evidence-based research, communicating that research out to those using it, and receiving back from those using it their views and contributions too."

A planner for the past, present and future Born in Connecticut, Birch first came to New York as a student.

“I come from a family within which a sense of community and community participation were very important,” she explains. “My family are very supportive and have shared my interests.".Indeed, one of her daughters has a degree in city planning.

As much as she is a shining light in the profession’s present, Birch has always maintained an interest in its past. Until last year, she was president of the International Planning History Society.

“The profession is the product of its past,” she explains. “It learns from it, is shaped by it, uses it actively in terms of the ideas it tries and has success with. It’s a very self-examining profession, and it’s a defining characteristic of our profession to be thinking about its past activities.”

As for planning’s present, “when I first got into the field 40 years ago I thought then that there was a great call for planning; but right ON BRITISH PLANNERS now there is a tremendous call for planning “Speaking as a and for all the expertise that planners can bring planning historian, the precedents to these issues of urbanisation. I am actually that come from quite astonished to see how omnipresent the the UK have had a call is among local and global leaders for planterrific effect on our ning.” thinking here in the US and worldwide” Is the current generation of planners up to

the task?

“The leaders in the field are articulating and moving forward on current issues, so yes, they’re absolutely up to it. Skills of critical thinking and their communicative powers in terms of convening different stakeholders are skills planners have and exercise well. The difficulty is in the tension that always exists between local, regional and national political officials – focusing on short-term activities by virtues of their profession – and planners who are more long term in view. So the magic trick for planners is to be able to translate, for those who are actually carrying out the policies, the importance of various activities in the short term even if they may have long-term effects.

“I think the challenge for the planning profession and for elected officials is to find that area where stakeholders and those making decisions can work out the compromises that have to be worked out. Any planning issue brings out many voices, and when you’re talking about space, place, home transportation, jobs etc., these are important topics for which different stakeholders have different views. What we need is a safe space in which to work out those compromises.”

Beyond Habitat III As for the future, Birch directs me to a particular project from her immediate past. She details her students’ most recent research project, working for the Partnership for Sustainable Communities (PSC), an initiative from the US government’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Transportation (DOT) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The PSC aims to improve community access to affordable housing and lower-cost, sustainable transport options, so Birch and her students were tasked with creating a catalogue of indicators to help communities measure their progress in meeting these sustainability objectives. The three-year project culminated earlier this year in publication of an indicators catalogue, covering land use, housing, transport, human health, and the environment on the PSC website. It’s an exercise that highlights Birch’s innate enthusiasm for research and its application – an enthusiasm she hopes will rub off on students.

“First and foremost I’m a professor,” says Birch.

“I’m involved in educating the next generation of planners, particularly through my organisation’s PhD programme, and working with my colleagues in helping move that next generation forward. It’s the central force of everything I do.”

No matter the current scale of her WUC work on Habitat III, you get the distinct impression that Eugénie Birch will continue to influence planning and those that practise it for many years to come.

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HOUSING

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he late Sixties saw an explosion of interest in communal living as a generation of younger people dropped out, rejecting the hallowed notion that the ‘Englishman’s home is his castle’.

But the idea never really took off.

By the late 1970s, home ownership was back in vogue as council tenants’ right to buy became the flagship policy of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government.

Since then, housing has become progressively less affordable – UK property costs are among the highest in the developed world.

The result is renewed interest in house building – not just in the overall volume of homes needed, but alternative ways to meet housing needs.

The latest household formation projections published by the Department for Communities and Local Government in February, show that 210,000 new homes will be needed each year for the next 25 years.

DETACHED FAMILY HOMES WITH GARDENS OR COMPACT APARTMENTS FOR SINGLETONS? DAVID BLACKMAN CONSIDERS WHAT KIND OF HOUSING BRITAIN NEEDS

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Demographic dilemmas Scratch beneath the surface, however, and a more complicated picture emerges. The DCLG predicts that the size of the average UK household will shrink to 2.1 people, fuelled by an ageing population and declining numbers of younger people having children.

But current housing supply runs counter to these trends.

The coalition’s scrapping of Labour government-era rules, which stipulated that plots should be built at a minimum density of 30 dwellings a hectare, has triggered a revival of the suburban detached and semi.

These two types accounted for nearly half of all registered new dwellings in 2014, according to the National House Builders Council. This figure compares with just 30 per cent in the late Noughties. Outside London, detached and semi-detached properties account for 59 per cent of new registrations.

House builders will say they are meeting a market need for family housing.

But Chris Brown, chief executive of the regeneration developer Igloo, believes they are building what they can easily sell rather than meeting emerging social needs.

“I don’t think that’s the future; it’s developers wanting to pluck the lowrisk, low-hanging fruit of the higher-end, executive, detached market,” he says.

“We should be building for 50 years, not what the market wanted 20 years ago.”

Matt Thomson, head of planning at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, says demographic trends still point to less land-hungry development.

He says: “We often overlook that we have an enormous stock of detached and semi-detached houses with a garden. The fact that they are being subdivided and turned into flats and student accommodation at a high rate is a market sign that we need to be

EXPOSITION

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HOUSING

building more apartments rather than what the development industry wants to do, which is to build more houses with gardens sprawling out into the countryside. We need to recognise changes in way that lifestyles are evolving.”

Thomson admits that the minimum density rules became a “bit of a blunt instrument”. The Urban Task Force vision of compact communities was tainted by a glut of speculatively developed blocks containing small flats that proved hard to shift when the housing market went sour in the late Noughties.

He says: “We have tended to go for the pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap approach to apartment living.”

Apartments versus houses Ben Derbyshire, managing partner at North London architecture practice HTA, says in a recent paper for the London Society that urban housing needs to catch up with changing lifestyles, citing the emergence of the “sharing culture”.

“The notion of independent, private apartments is a rather limited concept that does not recognise the emerging value to society of collective organisation,” he says.

“The economic necessity of living close to each other and to work, especially for young people, is resulting in a culture of sharing,” he adds, pointing to the innovative housing solutions being developed by companies like Pocket Living and The Collective (see box).

Many of the youngsters Derbyshire talks about will, however, want something bigger than a Zone 1 or 2 crash-pad one day, especially when tiny feet intrude on the hipster dream.

The CPRE’s Thomson says the answer is to find ways of creating more familyfriendly apartment living with adequate storage space.

But Nicholas Boyes-Smith, founder of the Create Streets campaign, believes it is important to go with the grain of people’s housing preferences.

“Most people, given a choice, prefer a house. Living in a house is correlated with better wellbeing outcomes than being in a flat.”

By encouraging apartment construction, the ex-banker says what we are warping the market to build “is almost imperfectly correlated with what

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people don’t want to buy”.

For Boyes-Smith, the once-ubiquitous terraced house provides a good trade-off between the individual desire for privacy and society’s wider desire to minimise land take for housing.

“In an urban context, the tall, thin terraced house is the best way of maximising the number of people without taking up too much physical footprint. We’re not saying that all people should live in terraced houses, but in an urban context that seems to be the way of manufacturing those tradeoffs.”

He adds that by providing mediumrise flats and mansion blocks where building terraces is not feasible, the densities delivered by high-rise solutions can be near-matched, especially if regulations such as those surrounding minimum road widths are eased.

Homes for older people Igloo’s Brown cites the examples of Dutch and German large, four-storey terraced homes as a way forward for upmarket urban family living.

Arguably though, the solution to our family housing needs lies less in new development than in the existing built environment. Left-wing geographer Danny Dorling caused a stir last year when he said the UK’s housing problem wasn’t inadequate stock but unfair allocation.

Much of this is down to fiscal policies, notably council tax banding structures that provide home owners with few incentives to move out of large and expensive properties, which planners are powerless to influence.

Many experts see a role for development in freeing up some of this valuable but often underused family housing stock.

Robin Tetlow, managing director of specialist housing planning consultancy Tetlow King, says: “Providing for older people releases housing stock. It doesn’t just solve a problem for the older people – it potentially helps to provide housing for younger people too.”

Tony Burton, chair of the Sustainable

Homes campaign, agrees. “Small houses are being provided but what is being built doesn’t meet standards that people want. They generally have capital locked up in their existing houses, but nowhere to spend it.

“To make that big emotional jump from leaving the family home it has to be of a standard they will want to live in.”

Tetlow says: “If you are providing incentives for people to move out of a four-bedroom house, it won’t be sufficiently attractive to provide a onebed.”

Birkbeck says two bedrooms is the minimum that older people will contemplate in return for giving up the family home. But the benefits are substantial. He adds: “If you can free up a three, four or five-bed house you are freeing up accommodation that will sleep a minimum of four people. By building a one or two-bed flat you are housing six people.”

HTA’s Derbyshire champions the conversion of tired suburban shopping precincts into mixed-use developments for older people.

In his report Superbia he calculates that the number of people housed on such sites could be doubled by replacing shop terraces with four or five-storey building over smaller but higher-quality cafés and restaurants.

He says: “The liberated space in the hinterlands of these high streets could then be remodelled with much more flexible planning to accommodate many more people.”

But Birkbeck says retirement home developers find it hard to compete for sites with mainstream house builders.

“They have net-to-gross ratios way below what you get by knocking out little boxes, where there’s no need for circulation space. If there’s no common

“THE ECONOMIC NECESSITY OF LIVING CLOSE TO EACH OTHER AND TO WORK, ESPECIALLY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, IS RESULTING IN A CULTURE OF SHARING”

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lounge or a health centre on the ground floor, the whole building is saleable. They (retirement developers) can’t compete in land tendering. Even Pocket Living kicks them out to touch.”

Can planners prescribe housing type?

Andrew Whittaker, director of planning at the Home Builders Federation, says the viability of retirement schemes could be improved if they were subject to less demanding community infrastructure levy tariffs than mainstream housing.

Planners could draw up development briefs to specify the housing types for sites.

Paragraph 50 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) states that authorities should plan for a mix of housing that caters for demographic and market trends, embracing the needs of different groups. They should then “identify the size, type, tenure and range of housing that is required in particular locations, reflecting local demand”.

Burton says: “The NPPF clearly expects local authorities to audit the type of housing coming through in their areas.”

But it is tough for planners to be this prescriptive. The CPRE’s Thomson says that implementing these policies is difficult – appeals on home type are “almost impossible” to defend.

“The emphasis on being positive about development proposals and taking account of market signals in the NPPF means you don’t have much of a leg to stand on, even if the most pressing need for housing in an area is for apartments.”

The developer’s argument that they have their finger on the market’s pulse often trumps any evidence that policy has been based on, especially when it is out of date, adds Thomson.

Whittaker counters that the nature of the housing market means developers do not have to fully address needs on every site.

“Newly forming households will buy into the existing stock and therefore the houses you provide are for the people moving out of those houses, vacating smaller properties.”

All political parties promise to boost housing supply. But a more robust approach to housing typology could guard against the risk that the new homes debate is once again reduced to a simple numbers game.

Filling the niche Pocket Living is one of a new breed of developers seeking to offer fresh solutions to the housing crisis.

Pocket Living develops in London, targeting its schemes at first-time buyers who would otherwise be priced out of the market. All apartments are offered at a 20 per cent discount on local market prices, and are limited to people living or working in the same borough.

To ensure that the housing remains affordable for future generations, they are subject to covenants that restrict resale to others who meet local affordability requirements, so depressing the price that they can fetch.

And it entails no erosion of affordable housing.

“Our model enables us to bring forward sites where a normal speculative developer would be able to avoid providing any affordable housing,“ says

Russ Edwards, Pocket Living’s design director.

Elsewhere in London, The Collective offers its mainly young professional clientele studio flat accommodation with lavish communal facilities.

Igloo’s Brown is an enthusiast for The Collective’s approach.

“You have a private dining room that you can hire a laundry room and all kinds of services that you can buy. This is 100 per cent what kids in London of that age want.

It’s not just a response to affordability, it’s delivering a lifestyle.”

At the other end of the spectrum, specialist retirement housing developer Pegasus is building the kind of highquality housing that might tempt older people out of their family homes.

An example is the company’s scheme at Taunton, part of Somerset Cricket Club’s redevelopment of its county ground. When they buy a home from Pegasus, residents get free membership of the

Somerset club’s facilities.

Brown believes that all three developers share an innovative approach.

“These are all people who are trying to deliver accommodation for smaller groups that are not being catered for by the current system. They have seen a demand in the market that the planning system is not delivering.”

London-based Pocket Living targets its homes at first-time buyers living or working the same area

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SPACEHIVE

AS THE KICKSTARTER FOR CIVIC IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS, SPACEHIVE IS BEGINNING TO MAKE A CONCRETE IMPACT ON THE URBAN REALM. SIMON WICKS MEETS ITS FOUNDER, CHRIS GOURLAY

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MIND 26

hris Gourlay was writing about the built environment for The Sunday Times when he had the idea for Spacehive. He had led that paper’s campaign against a third runway at Heathrow and written, among other things, about ‘Boris island’ and the London mayor’s plans to uncover London’s ‘lost’ rivers.

It was the height of global recession and economic doubt. Gourlay was describing big schemes and fanciful plans and all the while he was “sceptical” he says, about the ability of existing political and civic mechanisms to deliver the “sweeping change” that communities craved.

Instead, the traditional placemakers – the politicians, the private developers, and the local authorities – were turning urban environments worldwide into “homogenised nirvanas” where the public realm was becoming more and more “sterilised”.

“If I go to New York, does it feel like London?” he asks, rhetorically. “If it does, is that a good thing?”

He explains: “I’ve always found the civic environment interesting. It says a lot about how we as a community work – our value system, the relationship between citizen and state.”

Gourlay detected something very wrong with this relationship. Established mechanisms were “determinedly shutting off any approaches by local people and business to get involved in making things work better for local people”.

“I thought that was a peculiar dynamic,” he continues. “I was sure that we were wasting a great deal of energy, talent and cash that relied on this slow path through

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the state to deliver change.

“Historically, we hadn’t had such a constrained channel for change. That was in my head as an idea. The economy was in a rough shape at the time. It became obvious that a lot of the funding sources that had been available were going to dwindle.”

It wasn’t looking good. But an American start-up called Kickstarter was making headlines with a new enterprise-funding model that relied on micro-investments from a high volume of individuals. By tapping into non-institutional sources of funding, crowdfunding was a “springboard for creativity”.

“There were people who were doing this for things that were civic in nature and involved some established funders,” Gourlay says. “But nobody had looked at what we call the ‘civic marketplace’ and said ‘This is a broken system, and we can optimise it’.”

prise selling animal tails for humans to wear at parties, clubs and festivals.

So, yes, maybe he is from an entrepreneurial family. Certainly his track record would fit his own description of an entrepreneur as someone who “takes on challenging businesses, things that are not working properly and fixes them”.

Which leads me to wonder whether Gourlay is motivated more by a desire for greater individual ownership of place or the need to “fix”, “optimise” and otherwise improve a “broken system”.

His speech is peppered with busi-

ness-speak. There are “quantums” to be counted, “efficiencies” to be made.

The planning system, he says, presents a “user-experience” problem. It sounds very neutral, very mechanical, but he’s actually describing Spacehive as a tool to enable a quite radical shift in the relationship between power and people.

The way to achieve this, he says, is to tap into the innate self-interest of the market mindset. “In the civic marketplace, on one side of that equation you have resource providers, which could be grant-makers, local business, individuals,” he explains.

“On the other hand, you have suppliers of ideas and change. These could be architecture practices and construction groups. But they’re more likely

Tapping into the market mindset

Crowdfunded civic projects (1) P A R K

A N D S LI D E : B R I S T O L

LUKE JERRAM

To say that Gourlay is willing to take a risk to satisfy his curiosity would be an understatement, if his history is anything to go by. In the immediate post-9/11 world, as American tanks were massing at its borders, he took off for Iraq with a backpack.

“I wanted to take a closer look at the big forces that were shaping the world,” he says, as if this were perfectly normal behaviour. He was in Baghdad when Saddam fell. Returning to England, Gourlay changed his degree course to Islam and became features editor of the Leeds University newspaper.

When the London bombings occurred in July 2005, his contacts in the local Muslim community brought him to the attention of The Sunday Times. He was taken on as a political researcher, but shifted to the general reporting team while awaiting security clearance.

He stayed, became an architecture and planning specialist, and the idea for Spacehive was born. “When I tested the idea no one could really voice any real obstacles,” says Gourlay. “So I just carried on trying to develop it until somebody told me stop. And no one has.”

You wouldn’t – Gourlay is self-possessed to an almost unnerving degree.

The only time in the interview when he hesitates is when I ask him if he considers himself entrepreneurial or whether he comes from an entrepreneurial family.

He seems genuinely never to have thought about this. His father, he explains, is a finance director. But there’s his Guatemalan mother and her three businesses.

Oh, and his sister, who runs a small enter-

f

On 4 May 2014, Park Street in Bristol was turned into a giant waterslide.

Cash raised: £5,546 No. of funders: 519

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SPACEHIVE

community groups and business groups.

“It struck me that because of the rules of the game in this marketplace, we were stifling the supply of money and the supply of ideas. The market speaks a particular language and has processes that shut people out [if they don’t speak the language].”

He continues: “The market that Spacehive has designed around project supply and funding looks very narrow-ended. But there’s an awful lot of self-interest at play.

For example, a mum can contribute to a local play park for her kids for just £50. A local trader can improve the high street for a payment of a thousand pounds.”

SPACEH HIVE GIVES ACCESS DDLE­TIEER FUNDING”, TO “MID G FROM £500 TO EVERYTTHING 00 £500,00

Successful projects The proof of ‘self-interest’ comes from a survey conducted jointly by Spacehive and the ‘innovation charity’ Nesta, that found people typically dipped into their ‘consumer spending’ pot when backing projects.

“We’re mobilising this sense that this is stuff we can acquire that can make our lives better. It’s got kudos for the consumer, but these are also benefits that have a public interest.”

The range of funded projects is impressive. There was the famous ‘Park and Slide’ in Bristol; a phone box converted into an art gallery in Edinburgh; free public wi-fi in Mansfield; the first phase of The Line, a riverside sculpture walk through East London from the Queen Elizabeth Park to the O2 Arena.

In year one of Spacehive (2012), Gourlay tells me, there were three projects successfully funded; in year two, 15; last year there were 68. Some 44 per cent of projects are successfully funded and the site has to date enabled £2.7 million to

flow into community-led improvements to the civic realm.

“I think the public realm is still seen as the arena which is ‘not ours’, even thought it’s just a few inches from our homes,” he says. “It wouldn’t cross people’s minds that you could submit proposals to improve that. That’s a battle we still have to fight and win.

“Most people feel that places that reflect the overall identity of their community they make people happier and more supportive of the local economy.

We should encourage that mechanism and make it more likely.”

Spacehive, Gourlay says, gives access to “middle-tier funding”, everything from

(2) ANCOAT S DI S P E NS A R Y : MA NC HES T E R (3) T H E F LY O V E R : LIV E R P O O L

F R I E N D S O F T H E F LY O V E R . O R G. U K

B R I A N S TA R K

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Save the Ancoats Dispensary: Repair and conversion of Manchester’s Grade II listed Ancoats Dispensary into a creative workspace and community hub.

Cash raised: £368,319.

No. of funders: 371 (including grant-giving bodies)

f

The Flyover, Liverpool: An ambitious plan to turn a concrete flyover into an urban park.

Cash raised: £43,724 No. of funders: 337

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£500 to £500,000. It’s “plugging a gap” that isn’t filled by existing funding streams.

“PEOPLLE CAN HAVE A MUCH STRONGER SENSE OF OWNERSSHIP P OVER TH HE PLACES WHERE THEY LIVVE. THEY CAN BE AS RICH AND DISSTINCT AND AS EXC CITIING AS THE PEOPLE THAT LIVVE IN THEM””

Plugging a gap But there’s another sense in which it’s plugging a gap; the shortfall in public finance as a result of the economic crisis.

If schemes like Spacehive attract enough private money into the public realm, what incentive is there for any government to address funding deficits in, say, local planning departments?

Gourlay insists that Spacehive is not intended to replace local authorities, but can supplement the work they do. From the get-go, he’s worked with local authorities and other funding bodies to improve the flow of cash into the public realm.

Indeed, a number of authorities now have their own ‘hive’ on the site to highlight all projects within their area.

Many projects draw on a mixture of funding, and sometimes the initial spur of individual contributions opens up more traditional sources, such as local authority grants. Projects that require it still need to seek and obtain planning permission, of course. But, as Gourlay points out, a groundswell of grassroots support for a project could have a powerful effect on decision-makers.

“Local authorities are guardians of the public interest. But in relation to the supply of ideas, they are one of many,” he stresses. “Good ideas are more robustly tested and backed with our model.”

In other words, he sees Spacehive as a channel for generating grassroots ideas and opening up new and existing fund-

(4) OUR BI G G I G : V A R I OUS LOC AT IO N S

ing sources to all. We’re back to his theme of efficiency – “optimisation” is the foundation for citizens to claim ownership of their streets.

This means simplifying the funding application process as much as possible.

Why can’t we have a universal funding application form that is good enough for local authorities, government departments, public and private grant-making bodies? Gourlay hints that he may be working with the Mayor of London on such a scheme. And the ideal result?

“People can have a much stronger sense of ownership over the places where they live. They can be as rich and distinct and as exciting as the people that live in them.

“We can all put forward ideas, and we can all be grant-makers, too. I would love for that to feel normal.” Is that a touch of passion I detect in his voice?

(5) S T E V E N S O N S Q U A R E : M A N C HESTER

R E D RO S E FOR E ST

J A M I E S P ROAT E S

f

Organised

by Superact with funding Organ from the Department for Communities and Local Government, Our Big Gig crowdfunded 14 separate free community music events held over three days in July 2014.

Cash raised: £10,500+ No. of funders: 100s

f

Steve Stevenson S Square Green Makeover, Manchester: The transformation of Manchester’s Stevenson Square into a green urban oasis, with street trees, hanging baskets and a green roof. This has inspired MakeMCR, a citywide initiative to transform civic spaces.

Cash raised: £38,170 No. of funders: 77

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LO N G B R I D G E

BACK GEAR

Longbridge was the birthplace of iconic British car marques

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ON THE BOUNDARY between Birmingham and Worcestershire a new suburb is taking shape on a site that was once among the UK’s premier industrial landmarks.

It’s 10 years since the Longbridge car factory closed, with devastating consequences both for both its staff and surrounding communities; there were some 6,500 direct job losses and a further 20,000 in the supply chain and wider local economy.

There is a way to go, but 10 years on both landowner St Modwen and Birmingham City Council planners feel their regeneration plan has got the area back on its feet and offering brighter economic prospects.

The factory was built in 1905 and by its 1960s heyday employed some 25,000 people building cars.

It was later owned by the nationalised

THE HISTORY OF LONGBRIDGE HAS BEEN A TRANSITION FROM BOOM TO BUST. THE CAR MANUFACTURING PLANT SET UP

BY HERBERT AUSTIN IN 1905 SERVED IN TWO WORLD WARS AND FOUGHT OFF POST WAR ECONOMIC DEPRESSION, STRIKES, MERGERS AND TAKEOVERS. NOW A NEW TOWN IS EMERGING FROM THE 468 ACRE SITE.

BY MARK SMULIAN

British Leyland, and to those of a certain age the name ‘Longbridge’ will conjure up images of news programmes showing mass meetings voting for strikes at the behest of trade union shop steward Derek Robinson – ‘Red Robbo’ – then a household name and either hero or villain depending on one’s view.

Poor industrial relations are commonly cited among the factors that led to the demise of the old Longbridge.

It was privatised by the Thatcher government, bought in 1994 by BMW, then sold again in 2000 to MG Rover Group, which failed in 2005.

Only a remnant of car manufacturing survives in the shape of the now Chinese-owned MG Motor UK, which still uses a small part of the site.

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It’s now a new town centre, a new suburb of south Birmingham and that gives it an identity”

Longbridge was always more than a workplace; it was the economic and social hub for communities in the south of Birmingham

Social nexus In as sense, the timing of the 2005 closure was fortunate. The economy was otherwise booming, making easier for those displaced to find other jobs than it would have been a few years later during the recession.

Even so, unemployment spiked sharply (see table, p.32). Longbridge, though, had been more than a workplace; it had been the economic and social centre for surrounding communities – as readers of Jonathan Coe’s popular novel The Rotters Club will know – and with this heart torn out of them the Longbridge and Northfield areas were in trouble.

As it happened, property company St Modwen already owned Longbridge, having struck a sale-and-leaseback deal

in 2003 with MG Rover. Now it was left with a 488-acre site and no tenant.

Mike Murray, St Modwen’s senior development surveyor, who has worked on Longbridge for the past 10 years, explains: “There always had been plans to develop parts of the site not used by the factory and we drew on that.

“About 60-70 per cent of the former workforce lived locally. It was not just a workplace, but a social focus of about four or five communities. When it had gone, all that was left of that focus was a convenience store and a railway station.

“It’s now a new town centre, a new suburb of south Birmingham and that gives it an identity.”

A small part of the site lies in Bromsgrove District Council’s area, and

St Modwen is working with it and with Birmingham, guided by the area action plan that all three have agreed on.

This, though, took until 2009 to be adopted, by which time the recession had upset the economic assumptions on which it was based.

“It’s been a case of do what you can, when you can,” Murray says. “By the time the plan was adopted it was the depths of the recession.”

The partners stuck to the plan’s principles, but public money was not as plentiful as expected and some plans had to be scaled back.

“One example was a plan to improve the A38 by moving a bridge and diverting the River Arrow,” says Murray.

“In the end we couldn’t do that, so the

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river has been left, creating better pedestrian linkages along it.”

Enter the Framework Planning policy has changed over the action plan’s life, notably with the coming of the National Planning Policy Framework.

“Some planning policy changes were beneficial and some not, you just all need to work together to overcome problems,” says Murray.

One notable feature of the site’s regeneration was the use of an infrastructure tariff from 2007-08 onwards, modelled on the one in Milton Keynes, under which developers awarded planning permissions were charged various set rates per square metre depending on the type of building they were constructing.

This tariff is now ending and will be folded into the councils’ community infrastructure levy.

“It was used not primarily for roads infrastructure, but for station improvements, the public realm and parks,” says Murray.

Birmingham’s planning and regeneration director Waheed Nazir recalls the area “facing economic collapse” when MG

Longbridge record n 488 acres site, 466 acres owned by St Modwen, 22 by the Homes and Communities Agency. n To date, £101 million public sector investment and £280 million private sector investment. n Regeneration intended eventually to deliver 10,000 jobs, 2,000 homes, a local centre, new parks and community facilities. n Employers on site include: MG Motor UK factory, 400 jobs; Bournville College, 500 jobs; Innovation Centre, 400 jobs; Cofton Centre, 200 jobs; 30,000 square feet Bournville Construction College. n 601 new homes built or in progress.

32

“One of the main issues is finding the people with the right skills to complete the project”

Rover went into liquidation, but the partnerships’ efforts have (see table) returned employment levels to those seen before the closure.

“It’s been phenomenal over 10 years to see what has happened there,” says Nazir.

“The challenge has been that since MG Rover went we had a huge empty site to deal with and we’ve seen that through with the area action plan for a mixed-use new town there.

“The town centre has been just for the locality, with Sainsbury’s the largest shop, but now it’s growing – with the Marks & Spencer store coming – and becoming more like a district centre.”

Nazir says the next stage will be “to complete it so it becomes a sustainable urban extension; there is, for example,

n Longbridge Infrastructure Tariff delivered new children’s play area, an upgrade to Cofton Park and environmental enhancements.

What’s coming? n Planning permission granted for 150,000 square feet Marks & Spencer store. n Defence Infrastructure Organisation application for new accommodation for the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine. n Further £8 million to be invested in Longbridge Connectivity package.

a 20-hectare site still to be developed, which we hope will go for industrial use”.

Longbridge benefits from being well connected. It is sited on the A38 with a railway station on the Redditch to Lichfield line, which together with the nearby bus station has benefited from £8 million of improvements financed by the regional investment fund. It is only around three miles from the M5 and M42 motorways.

Murray says the partnership is “being flexible about development for the future, being concentrated in commercial and residential”. St Modwen eventually plans to have some 2,000 homes on the site.

Park View is the first phase and provides 113 new homes in a mix of terraced, semi-detached and detached designs, supported by £3.7 million from the Homes & Communities Agency’s Kickstart funding.

But Murray does see a cloud on the horizon in the shape of skills shortages as the economy recovers.

“One of the main issues is finding the people with the right skills to complete the project, whether that is in construction, property development, planning or other skills. There are just not the people there after eight years of recession.”

The regeneration of Longbridge has coped with the tough challenges of closure and recession, but skills shortages and competition from other projects mean that it has to grapple with the problems of success.

Economic impact Unemployment rate

Longbridge ward

Northfield ward

Pre-MG Rover closure

3.9%

4.1%

Immediately post-closure

6.2%

5.8%

March 2010 recession depth

8.1%

7.7%

January 2015

3.7%

3.9%

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INSIGHT

DiF { D

DECISIONS IN FOCUS

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

Aerodrome case focuses on ‘any other harm’

Only in truly exceptional situations will building be allowed on green belt land to meet housing need

(1 SUMMARY A case concerning an application for planning permission to replace the grass runway at Redhill Aerodrome with a hard runway has resulted in further exploration of current policy on development on the green belt. The different judgments in the case looked at the interpretation of ‘any other harm’ under paragraph 88 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), alongside the general policy found in paragraph 87.

(2 CASE DETAILS The original inspector had rejected the application by the aerodrome. In making such a finding, the inspector had considered all the factors, which together passed the threshold and was found to be “inappropriate development” under the NPPF. Despite this conclusion, the inspector acknowledged that there were economic merits to the proposed planning application – but these were not sufficient to counteract the environmental harm.

At the High Court stage, the judge overturned

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the inspector’s decision, considering that the NPPF had resulted in a change of policy from its predecessors and as a result, that a more restrictive interpretation of the words ‘any other harm’ had been created. Consequently, it was concluded that ‘any other harm’ should be solely limited to considering the damage against the green belt.

At the Court of Appeal, the court concluded that paragraph 88 of the NPPF should factor in a broader range of risks and harms and should not be strictly limited to only considering

harm against the green belt, thereby overturning the High Court judgment.

(3 CONCLUSION REACHED The Court of Appeal determined that, in contrast to the High Court’s view, there had not been a policy change implemented in the NPPF from previous incarnations. It stated that Parliament had not intended for such a radical policy overhaul in the NPPF. The court indicated that development on the green belt was only to occur in exceptional situations,

which had been retained in paragraphs 87 and 88 of the NPPF. Therefore, ‘any other harm’ was found not to be limited to green belt issues, but other factors must be considered.

It was also submitted that only considering specific harm to the green belt when assessing the concept of ‘any other harm’ would actually narrow the factors that could be taken into account and ensure that planning applications would be approved, despite being unsuitable on a broader basis.

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(4 ANALYSIS [1] POLLY REYNOLDS The inspector and Court of Appeal followed the pre-NPPF approach. The NPPF policy does not make a sufficiently radical change to the green belt policy. There remains a strong desire to avoid building on the green belt. This is evidenced by the terminology contained in paragraph 87, as any development must pass the demanding ‘very special circumstances’ threshold. Further, there is a strong political desire to avoid development on the green belt and this decision reflects this approach.

Updated guidance confirms that in the decision-making process the need for housing will be unlikely to pass the ‘very special circumstances’ test in paragraph 87 of the NPPF. This offers important steer for decision-makers when undertaking an assessment of what will satisfy the threshold enabling development on the green belt.

This confirms that only in truly exceptional situations will there be building on green belt land to meet any housing need. The implications for LPAs is that such a stringent rule against development on the green belt will mean that there may be a housing shortage in these areas.

Alternatively, such housing needs will be directed to other areas where there are more brownfield sites to cover any shortages.

POLLY REYNOLDS is senior associate, Veale Wasbrough Vizards

Redhill Aerodrome v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Tandridge District, Reigate and Banstead Borough Council 2014 () EWHC 2476 (Admin)

RETAIL

Conditions make cautionary tale for planning officers (1 SUMMARY An applicant had applied for a lawful development certificate for the existing use of the retail space for any under Use Class A1 following the imposition of a restrictive planning condition. Planning permission was granted to a retail park in 1994, but subject to a planning condition that the “retail floor space… shall not be used… for the sale of food for consumption off the premises, clothes and footwear, stationery and jewellery goods”.

(2 CASE DETAILS The issue for the inspector was whether the planning condition acted to restrict the use of the premises from being used in any manner as expressly set out in the condition, or whether the condition acted to exclude the operation of the Use Classes Order (UCO) in its entirety. The law provides that the use of a building within the same use class under the UCO is not classed as development and no planning permission would be required.

The parties referred the inspector to the High Court case of Telford and Wrekin Council v SSCLG and Growing Enterprises Ltd from 2013. This case provided the authority that for a planning condition to restrict the impact of the UCO the condition must be expressed in “unequivocal terms”.

The inspector in his decision drew upon I M AG E | I STO C K

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examples that the judge in the Telford case had referenced. Examples of the types of planning conditions that were to be interpreted in a manner that excluded the UCO and conversely, planning conditions that were taken to not exclude the UCO, were discussed by the inspector and explained.

A condition that provided that the premises “shall be limited to the display, sale and storage of new and used cars” did not restrict the UCO. Whereas the provision that “stands were only to be used ‘ancillary to the main use of the premises as a sports stadium, and for no other use…’ ” was found to have successfully excluded the operation of the UCO. The inspector concluded that the wording of the condition in this case did not restrict the operation of the UCO as the wording did not expressly provide for the UCO to cease to have effect and that it was certainly not articulated in “unequivocal terms”.

The inspector also reasoned

that the wording of the condition was not as restrictive as other similar conditions. An example of a similar planning condition was put forward and highlighted how such a condition could be couched in more restrictive terms, “the retail consent shall be for non-food sales only in bulky trades”. It was noted that the word ‘only’ had the impact of excluding the UCO but in the current case no such limiting wording was used.

Consequently, the inspector resolved to issue a certificate of lawful use for Class A1 Uses.

(3 CONCLUSION REACHED The detailed analysis of the wording contained within various planning conditions, and the impact that such wording can have on the use of land, demonstrates the care that local planning authorities need to display when drafting such conditions. In order to exclude the UCO, precise wording will be required.

On the other hand, landowners with land subject to such planning conditions

Local planning authorities must be meticulous in their wording when drafting use conditions

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DECISIONS IN FOCUS

Plans for up to 125 dwellings have been allowed on appeal at Calne, Wiltshire

should be encouraged to carefully review the wording of the condition as loose drafting might open the door for the availability of the land to be used in a manner more flexibly than anticipated.

POLLY REYNOLDS is senior associate, Veale Wasbrough Vizards

HOUSING

Housing demand leads to reversal of development decision (1 SUMMARY A proposed residential development for up to 125 dwellings, including infrastructure, ancillary facilities, open space and landscaping, along with the demolition of existing buildings and construction of a new vehicular access off Sandpit Road, in Calne, Wiltshire, has been allowed on appeal.

(2 CASE DETAILS The site comprises 6.7 ha of undeveloped agricultural land on the eastern side of Calne. It is outside, but adjoining, the settlement boundary of Calne. There is residential development within the settlement boundary immediately to the west, and to the north a new residential development nearing completion.

The application to Wiltshire County Council was made in outline and a masterplan was submitted with the application indicating the general form and layout the appellants envisage for the site.

The council’s reasons for refusal included that the proposal is premature to the progression of its Local Development Framework

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and the Wiltshire Core Strategy document for the area, and prejudicial to the council’s plan-led approach to sustainable development and the phasing of future growth. The council confirmed at the opening of the inquiry that it no longer objected on this basis.

The development plan for the area includes Policy H4 of the North Wiltshire Local Plan 2011. This policy prevents development outside defined Framework Boundaries, save for countryside purposes. For the purposes of Policy H4, the settlement boundary of Calne is the Framework Boundary. The site lies outside this boundary and the development was therefore deemed contrary to Policy H4.

(3 CONCLUSION REACHED Both parties agree that Policy H4 is a relevant policy for the supply of housing. The council’s position is that it can demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites. However, if that is

found not to be the case it considers that Policy H4 should be considered as out of date, the appeal should be allowed and planning permission granted. The appellant argues that the council cannot demonstrate a five-year housing supply, but it considers that even if it can, planning permission should be granted in view of the strong presumption in favour of sustainable development and what it considers to be the absence of demonstrable harm.

Against this background, inspector Paul Dignan found the main issue to be whether or not there are material considerations that outweigh the conflict with development plan policy – and, central to this, the question of a fiveyear supply of housing.

Dignan also considered a submitted Unilateral Undertaking (UU) in the light of the NPPF and the statutory tests introduced

by Regulation 122 of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Regulations, 2010. The county council

has provided a Statement of Compliance setting out the justification for the detailed obligations, liaising with the appellant in the drafting of the UU. The UU makes provision for a minimum of 30 per cent affordable housing – in line with LP Policies C2 and H5, on-site open space, off site highways improvements, a travel plan, and financial contributions towards local cemetery provision, the continued maintenance of the on-site open space, offsite transport and highways improvements, off-site sports provision, primary school infrastructure and travel plan monitoring – all legitimately required by LP Policies C2, CF1, CF2, and CF3. Dignan said he was satisfied that these are directly related to the proposed development, fairly and reasonably related to it and necessary to make it acceptable in planning terms.

Appeal Ref: APP/ Y3940/A/14/2213225

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+ We’d like to incorporate your comment, insight and analysis into Decisions in Focus each month. Whether you can offer a brief obversation on a matter of interest within an inspector’s judgement or an informed interpretation of a decision, please let us know by emailing DiF at editorial@theplanner.co.uk

ROUND­UP Here are seven more decisions that we think are worth a look this month. All the details and inspector’s letters can be found on the Planning Portal website: www.pcs.planningportal.gov.uk

APPEAL DECISIONS

Appeal reference: APP/ A3010/A/14/2216434

ENERGY HOUSING

Application: Appeal against refusal to grant permission for a single wind turbine and associated works at Tuxford in Nottinghamshire.

Decision: Appeal allowed.

Main issues: Inspector Michael R Moffoot said the turbine would be seen from several viewpoints as well as similar units nearby, but the wider undulating topography of woodlands meant it would not have a harmful cumulative impact on the area. It would neither significantly harm the Tuxford Conservation Area nor compromise the 19th century Tuxford windmill nearby. He also considered that increased noise for local residents would be unlikely.

Appeal reference: APP/ A3010/A/14/2213392 Application: Appeal against refusal of a 500kW wind turbine and ancillary works on a field north of the A6075 at Tuxford, Nottinghamshire.

Decision: Appeal allowed.

Main issues: The NPPF says such applications should be approved if the impacts are (or can be made) acceptable.

Inspector Michael R Moffoot decided the issues were the same as for the concurrent appeal for a turbine to the south (see above). It would be in an open field to the west of Tuxford. Although the site (in the Trent and Belvoir Vales character area) adjoins arable farmland it is close to the sizeable Walker Industrial Estate, which has a 99.5m-high turbine next to the main road so it would not be a significant feature in the wider landscape.

Application: Appeal against refusal to grant outline permission for 77 dwellings at Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Decision: Appeal allowed.

Main issues: The brownfield site is set aside as an industrial area in Lichfield’s district local plan, which called for 79.1 ha to be used for employment. Inspector John Wilde noted that the district had 142.37 hectares (28.53 ha being Ministry of Defence land), still leaving 112 ha for employment use.

In deciding whether or not the appellants should contribute to secondary education provision, he said he had been supplied with a S106 agreement that would provide for such a contribution, but while it was hard to assess future pupil numbers he said he did not find that the contribution was necessary to make the development acceptable.

Appeal Reference: APP/ K3415/A/14/2216143 Application: Appeal against refusal of permission to convert a three-storey house to 1 x 2 bed flat and 1 four-bed maisonette plus alterations to the east elevation for new window and additional parking on land at Jesmond, Newcastle.

Decision: Appeal allowed.

Main issues: The appeal property is a semi-detached house in a residential area with a mix of semi-detached houses, Tyneside flats and terraces. Although two-storey in appearance, the loft has previously been converted to provide two bedrooms with

Velux windows. Inspector Alison Partington said this minor change to the front elevation would not impact on the appearance of the dwelling or the street scene.

As the property was already in mixed occupancy by students, its continued use as such would not alter the balance of the community nor deprive the area of a family home, so would not affect the area’s character.

Appeal reference: APP/ M4510/A/14/2222501 Application: Appeal against a refusal to grant outline permission for a 35-flat retirement scheme set in two blocks on land at Burnhamon-Sea, Somerset.

Decision: Appeal allowed.

Main issues: The former garage site is a large town centre site that is acceptable for the use. The flats would be in two blocks – one at the front and other at the rear with an intervening parking area. Each building would mostly have four floors. The area has a mix of architectural styles from differing periods, including the imposing art deco Ritz Cinema opposite. For these reasons, said inspector Gareth Symons, the scale of the buildings would not be excessive in terms of bulk, mass and height and their architectural style would not be discordant with the built surroundings.

Appeal reference: APP/ V3310/A/14/2217838

TELECOMS

Application: Appeal against approval for a 14m-high telecoms pole with three antennae and associated equipment cabinets

following removal of existing 12.5 pole at Fullwood, Lancs.

Decision: Appeal allowed.

Main issues: The appeal site is at the back edge of the footway set against a line of lofty established evergreen trees close to the entrance to Preston College. Other than the college and its sports pitches, the area is residential. The road has a lot of tall street furniture, such as street lighting, another telecoms pole and floodlights for the college pitches.

Inspector Mark Caine said the proposal would be a little more intrusive than the existing equipment, but would not harm the residents’ outlook.

Appeal reference: APP/ N2345/A/14/2220697

AGRICULTURAL

Application: Appeal against a refusal to grant planning permission for an agricultural building at Newbury, Berkshire.

Decision: Appeal dismissed.

Main issues: The key matter was the proposal’s effect on the character of the site in the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The site is southwest of a holding called Brightwalton Stud in open countryside in a dip in the landscape. The building would be used primarily to store hay/straw and fertiliser.

Inspector Jonathan Manning said due to the large floor space of 540 square metres, the building would be a significant structure. He concurred with the council that its scale, siting and associated works would render it overly dominant.

Appeal reference: APP/ W0340/A/14/2221743

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INSIGHT

LLegal landscape CORE STRATEGIES UPHELD: HUNSTON ‘STAGE 2’ AND GREEN BELT RELEASE EXAMINED

b

b

Annabel Graham Paul of Francis Taylor Building considers a “counsel of perfection” in a Greater Nottingham green belt judgment Calverton Parish Council v Nottingham City Council [2015] EWHC 1078 (Admin) provides essential guidance in interpreting the twostage Hunston* approach to housing numbers and ‘exceptional circumstances’ for green belt release.

Calverton Parish Council had sought to quash parts of the Greater Nottingham – Broxtowe Borough, Gedling Borough and Nottingham City – Aligned Core Strategies on the basis that the inspector, whilst having correctly identified the figure for objectively assessed housing need under Hunston ‘Stage 1’, had assumed that the need had to be met in full and that constituted ‘exceptional circumstances’ to justify green belt release under Hunston ‘Stage 2’.

Mr Justice Jay agreed that it would be illogical, and circular, to conclude that the existence of an objectively assessed need could, without more, be sufficient to amount to ‘exceptional circumstances’ within the meaning of NPPF paragraph 83.

At paragraph 51 of the judgment, he set out the ‘ideal approach’ when exercising the planning

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Annabel Graham Paul judgments involved in the ascertainment of exceptional circumstances in the context of both national policy and the positive obligation in s. 39(2) Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

Mr Justice Jay advised that the following matters should be identified and grappled with:

b

b

b

The acuteness/intensity of the objectively assessed need; The inherent constraints on supply/availability of land prima facie suitable for sustainable development; (on the facts of this case) The consequent difficulties in achieving sustainable development

“MR JUSTICE JAY AGREED THAT IT WOULD BE ILLOGICAL TO CONCLUDE THAT THE EXISTENCE OF AN OBJECTIVELY ASSESSED NEED COULD, WITHOUT MORE, BE SUFFICIENT TO AMOUNT TO ‘EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES’ WITHIN THE MEANING OF NPPF PARAGRAPH 83”

without impinging on the green belt; The nature and extent of the harm to this green belt; and The extent to which the consequent impacts on the purposes of the green belt may be ameliorated or reduced to the lowest reasonably practicable extent.

Whilst that ‘ideal approach’ had not been explicitly followed on a systematic basis in the instant case, it is a counsel of perfection, and the inspector’s more discursive and open-textured approach was legally sufficient on the facts.

A linked point concerned the parish council’s criticism of the two-stage local plan process adopted by the authorities. The Aligned Core Strategies formed Stage 1 with Stage 2 local plans to follow in time. Mr Justice Jay found that the inspector was able to reach an evidencebased conclusion as to the presence of exceptional circumstances at the first stage, and she was not in some way adjourning the matter over for substantive consideration at Stage 2.

ANNABEL GRAHAM PAUL Annabel appeared for the three councils led by Morag Ellis QC, both of Francis Taylor Building.

She will be presenting a session on case law at the RTPI’s Planning Law Update conference in London on 18 June – www.bit.ly/1EX6kub

*In 2013, Hunston Properties Limited survived a challenge from St Albans District Council to successfully argue that “very special circumstances” applied to an application for 116 dwellings on a green belt site because, among other things, the local plan was out of date and the council had not identified a five-year supply of deliverable housing to meet full, objectively assessed, housing needs

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LATEST POSTS FROM THEPLANNER.CO.UK/BLOGS

B LO G S Roy Pinnock of Dentons begs the government to call a moratorium on new planning legislation and correct existing defects

Manifesto for planning 2015: Please don’t reinvent the wheel Roy Pinnock

However the new Parliamentary balance of power plays out, planning will be in the frontline of addressing housing needs.

Our manifesto for progress on the ground is simple: 1. No new planning legislation. There has been some helpful, and some genuinely radical, planning reform in the vast swath of legislative paperwork spawned by the coalition.

Please stop legislating, at least for one Parliamentary term. There is now insufficient public sector resource to do much with legislation as it stands, let alone more of it.

2. No changes to the Town and Country Planning Act. 3. No changes to the NPPF. Broadly it works.

4. CIL agreements for major sites. CIL breaks down when applied to big projects.

It makes sense to put agreements entered into ahead of CIL setting and during the application process on a footing that prevents viability debates and creates certainty about land value and infrastructure delivery.

5. A National Policy Statement for Housing which sets defined Broad Housing Market Areas and needs and a tiny change to the Planning Act 2008 to allow DCOs for housing

above the 5,000 units mark.

6. Fiscal incentives for authorities to allocate land to meet needs.

None of the manifestos tackled the issue that dogs what is meant to be a plan-led system – there are no local political incentives to plan for growth to meet needs. A clearer relationship between land allocation and infrastructure planning and government grants would clarify local decision-making.

Funding that is tied to allocations, LDOs and authority-sponsored DCOs makes sense.

7. A national template highways agreement and a national template planning agreement. So much time is wasted in unnecessary, cruel and unusual drafting that could be so much better spent on decisions about where, when and how we are going to build an extra 200,000 homes every year.

8. Resourcing planning.

In many local authority legal departments the last person to leave has already switched off the lights and departed for a remotely operated shared services regime.

Planning officers are an endangered species. Highways teams have been outsourced en masse.

Despite this there is some committed work done in challenging circumstances. The development industry should look harder

L E G I S L AT I O N S H O R T S at how it can support the public sector.

Authorities in turn should recognise that delivery will now often require outsourcing to the most capable external advisers at developers’ cost.

9. Sort out the CPO process. It is too longwinded and unfair.

The Law Commission did an excellent report on how it could be improved and that should be dusted off.

And allow the private sector to initiate the CPO process – after all, if it is acceptable for CP powers to be given as part of the DCO process why cannot there be a similar ability to support housing and smaller-scale development?

10. Transparency and viability. We need to make the viability assessment process less opaque and more open. We also need to make sure that if viability is addressed as part of the local plan process then it should be rare for the policies to be challenged afresh application by application.

Roy Pinnock is a partner at Dentons. This is an abridged version of a post that first appeared on the Dentons Planning Law blog www. planninglawblog.com

ACV green belt listing upheld A judge has dismissed a challenge by Banner Homes to St Albans District Council listing a 4.83-hectare site as an asset of community value (AVC).

Following the five-year AVC listing in March 2014 and a subsequent review by the council, site owner Banner Homes, which would have to notify the council if it wanted to sell it, appealed to the FirstTier-Tribunal. Developer Banner had already put up signs to say that the land was private.

Judge Peter Lane said that given the long history of the land and the views of the previous owners, he did not consider it “fanciful to think that, in the next five years, there could be non-ancillary use of the land”.

“Whilst I note Banner Homes’ stated stance, it is not fanciful, given the history of the field, to think that Banner Homes may well conclude that relations with the local community will be best served by restoring the status quo or entering into some form of licence arrangement with the residents’ association.”

London Wharf CPO quashed A Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) for Orchard Wharf, which is currently vacant, has been quashed by the High Court.

The Port of London Authority wanted to use the wharf, owned by Grafton Group and British Dredging Services, to handle river-borne aggregates and cement. London Concrete Ltd and Aggregate Industries UK Ltd had submitted a planning application to develop the operation.

Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin had confirmed the CPO following a recommendation by the Planning Inspectorate, despite the communities secretary at the time, Eric Pickles, rejecting the planning appeal for the development.

Mr Justice Ouseley said there was nothing wrong in principle with confirming the CPO despite the planning appeal dismissal on the basis that compulsory purchase could be justified by an alternative scheme that might secure permission. But in his decision he said: “The CPO was confirmed, in my judgment, on a basis which Grafton had no real chance to deal with. This was an unfair decision.”

Legal challenge to Shell development The Court of Appeal will hear a legal challenge against permission granted for the redevelopment of the Shell Centre in London.

In April’s issue of The Planner Legal Landscape reported resident George Turner’s claim that the inspector reporting to then-communities secretary Eric Pickles had made errors of law in coming to his conclusions.

The development, to be undertaken by Braeburn Estates, a joint venture between Canary Wharf Group and Qatari Diar Group, would be one of mixed use.

On his website Turner said: “The fact that a judge granted my permission to proceed ‘on the papers’ indicates that they think this is a very strong case – or that it raises a significant legal controversy which should be resolved by one of the highest courts in the land. The decision destroys the argument put out by my opponents that the case has no merit and has been thoroughly and properly considered. ”

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INSIGHT

Career { D E V E L O P M E N T C INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT MANAGEMENT

In theory, planners should be excellent project managers – but that doesn’t mean it’s always so. What does it take to run a planning project effectively?

O

rganisation, forethought, awareness of context, ability to see where resources are needed – these are qualities integral to both planners and project managers.

So it should be straightforward for planners to transfer their skills to project management as their responsibilities grow, shouldn’t it?

Not necessarily.

For, although you may have many of the skills required to be a successful project manager, it pays to understand the additional skills needed. These include people management, the capacity to assess risk and to evaluate technology, budget management, and adaptability.

It also helps to have an organised framework in which to apply these skills.

An orderly approach All approaches to project management will stress the importance of breaking the work into more manageable parts.

This will begin by separating the entire project into stages, such as: Stage 1: Stage 2: Stage 3: Stage 4:

Set parameters Develop the project plan Implement Review

The number and type of these stages will vary according to the kind of project you’re managing and the methodology you use. For example, Prince2, devised by the UK Civil Service, adopts seven stages from starting up a project to closing it.

It provides a detailed framework for thorough higher-level management of complex projects, and is ideal for the kind of large-scale strategic planning undertaken by TAYplan, the strategic development planning authority for the city regions of Dundee and Perth.

Pam Ewen, manager of TAYplan, describes Prince2 as “essential” and her description of the TAYplan approach to project management illustrates why she needs such a tool.

“At project inception a four-year project plan is agreed by the board and joint committee, and this runs to 40

project completion,” she says.

“Progress is monitored against this; the project plan timescales are fixed and the reporting on this deals with any deviations. Project task plans are prepared well ahead of each key stage, drilling into the detail.

“Where required, task delegation notes are issued to provide effective delegation,” she continues. “Risk planning is reported regularly to the

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PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS

What tools do you use to help you organise and keep track of projects?

REBECCA SANDERS: “I’m a big fan of scribbled lists in my notebook and on Post-It notes! On a more serious note, I particularly enjoy the process of being able to cross completed items off and the sense of progress it provides. We also always put together a project programme which either we or our planning colleagues monitor through the duration.”

board. Resource planning is undertaken nine months ahead of key stages.

Meeting dates are set 12 to 18 months in advance aligned with the project task plans. Once this is done once, it provides a platform for the next TAYplan.”

Homegrown methodologies Your employer may have its own project management methodology that it expects you to follow – as at property consultancy Carter Jonas, where different kinds of planning projects have given rise to specific management approaches.

“Taking the example of an outline planning application,” says masterplanner Rebecca Sanders, “we normally undertake the following stages”: Stage 1: Review and audit (including site visit); Stage 2: Masterplan development; Stage 3: Preferred option development; Stage 4: Public consultation; Stage 5: Masterplan refinement and detailed design; and Stage 6: Design and Access Statement production.

“Cutting across all stages will be constant communication, in meetings, workshops, telephone updates and emails. Communication ensures that there are no surprises.”

What matters is that the approach makes sense, follows the natural development of a project in a systematic way, and prompts you to take into account every element of the project – including making allowance for the unexpected.

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PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS

What’s the most important thing for a project manager to do?

PAM EWEN: “Project manage!

The person who is leading the project needs to do so effectively.

People can change, but how, when and what an agreed project needs to deliver needs to be clearly set out.”

A more detailed breakdown Broken down once more, our fourstage model might broadly incorporate the following tasks.

Stage 1: Set parameters • Read/understand/clarify the brief • Identify tasks • Set goals • Establish roles • Communicate with other stakeholders to obtain commitment (e.g. a public consultation) • Research wider context (e.g. site visits, desk research, regulatory conditions) Stage 2: Develop the project plan • Create task list, assign to people • Create timeline • Estimate costs • Identify and allocate resources • Assess risk Stage 3: Implement • Initiate the work • Monitor progress and maintain control • Meet regularly to assess progress, resolve difficulties and adjust the plan • Bring to a close Stage 4: Feedback • Collect feedback from stakeholders • Assess and identify lessons for future projects • Report to relevant parties • Feed learning into training/ development Managing a project is not an exact art. But the more you do, the more you can develop your own approach to

l Interview 1 Project manager: Rebecca Sanders Associate partner & head of masterplanning at Carter Jonas LLP What’s your starting point for a project?

“We start all of Carter Jonas’s masterplanning projects with a thorough review of existing information and a site visit. You can pick up a huge amount of information by walking around a site and its surroundings – and taxi drivers are always a good source of extra info.”

(1)

How do you determine how long different steps will take when building a schedule?

“Duration varies according to the size and complexity

(2)

of the project and you cut your cloth accordingly. For example, we undertook some site promotion work on behalf of Croudace, where the site was very straightforward because it was under one ownership and without any ground constraints. We could get going very quickly.”

What kinds of obstacles do you encounter and how do you deal with them? “We get just about every sort of problem there is. A recent application for low-density houses in Sussex had to

(3)

deal with constraints such as searching for nonexistent dormice, historic landscape concerns from English Heritage and objections from some local people. Technical obstacles can normally be resolved by the professional team, but emotional obstacles are sometimes impossible to resolve satisfactorily.”

l Interview 2 Project manager: Pam Ewen Manager of TAYplan, the strategic development planning authority for the city-regions of Dundee and Perth What are the skills you require for a strategic plan, as opposed to other planning projects?

“The key difference is the ability to think long term, to focus on the vision – and to focus on how places function regardless of administrative boundaries.”

(1)

How important are communication and delegation?

“Excellent communications and delegation are essential.

I lead with a strategy that covers how we communicate with key partners, industry

(2)

bodies, politicians, community councils and the public. It’s important that this not only focuses on when, but also how – our attitudes are very important in how we gain trust.”

How do you determine and allocate resources?

“Staff and financial resources were agreed at inception of TAYplan. Each of the four councils pay 60k per annum and that sets the budget. Financial agreement is in place along with other governance arrangements to ensure

(3)

dealing with the fresh challenges that every project presents.

As Sanders says, the key to good project management is to “be organised. Have a clear idea of what the deliverables are and when they need to be done by, and then you can work backwards and work out what needs to be done in order to get there”.

that this can be managed.

“The TAYplan team is three people – me, a senior planner, and a planner. At peaks we now have temp contracts – typically a three-month summer student, and a six or eightmonth temporary planner over the years needed.”

l Find out more n Project management for planners – a masterclass with Dr Mike Clayton, London, 17 June. n www.rtpi.org.uk/events/events-calendar/2015/ june/project-management-for-planners/

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INSIGHT

Plan ahead P

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

NW Bicester is the only eco-town to get off the drawing board

The tale of an eco-town NW Bicester is set to become the UK’s first (and possibly only) ecotown. A special event in June gives planners the chance to catch up on its progress In the late Noughties, eco-towns were central to New Labour’s house building plans. The party promised green space aplenty and primary schools within a short walk of all homes. It pledged that food would be locally produced and power generated within the community itself. It would ensure that homes were being built to optimal environmental standards.

These pioneering zerocarbon developments would be an antidote to the careless consumption driving our species towards an early grave.

They would show the rest of us how to live sustainably in the communities of the future.

Unfortunately, such a grand promise has never come to pass. Amid various political and planning controversies, only four of 15 settlements shortlisted for development were given the go-ahead before the coalition government shelved eco-towns in favour of the not entirely dissimilar garden cities.

At least one has stalled, and two have been extensively revised. NW Bicester alone has made it to construction – with an ‘exemplar’ development of

“PLANNING SUSTAINABLY AND CREATING GREAT PLACES TO LIVE AND WORK – THEY ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE” 42

close to 400 homes begun in spring 2014.

Another 5,600 houses will follow on the 400-hectare site.

Bicester itself is set to expand even more – under the garden city label – with 13,000 homes after 2021 (including the NW Bicester homes).

“Cherwell District Council (CDC) has taken a ‘whole town’ approach,” says Caroline Clapson, adviser to the council’s Eco Bicester project team. “The idea was that it shouldn’t just be an extension to Bicester, but the transformation should spread the benefits to the existing town.”

Thus, Clapson stresses the potential impacts of three pillars of sustainability – environmental, social and economic. Environmentally, she says, a zero-carbon development has not previously been attempted on such a scale in the UK. Socially, the Bicester eco-town will incorporate a land value capture model not unlike the one that underpins Letchworth Garden City.

“We’re working with developer partners to set up a community-led management organisation,” explains Clapson. “This will let local people make decisions on how community assets are managed, with a view to making profits and investing that back into the community.

“The idea is that we get a financial endowment through a section 106 agreement, as well as assets that have the ability to generate rental income – such as retail units and office accommodation.

The economic benefits from the development will include rolling out a programme of construction apprenticeships throughout the build, which will have the potential to be expanded to include future residents.

Partnerships are critical to making the town work, she stresses.

“The A2Dominion Group [social housing provider and property developer] has been working with us on phase one, the exemplar that demonstrates a lot of the standards and technologies. Bioregional [specialist consultancy] is helping us embed the environmental standards.”

This exemplar will see its first residents moving in later this year. Work is sufficiently advanced for CDC to unveil what’s been built to date.

‘Transforming Bicester – the story so far’ will give planners an insight into the project and its progress on Wednesday, 24 June.

The day will include a tour of the construction to date so that delegates can see what’s taking shape in the UK’s sole eco-town.

“Even though eco-towns are no longer flavour of the month and the focus has shifted to garden cities, the challenges we face are still relevant to how you plan for new growth,” says Clapson. “Planning sustainably and creating great places to live and work – they are not mutually exclusive.”

T H E S T O R Y S O FA R

What: Transforming Bicester – the story so far Where: John Paul II Centre, Bicester, Oxfordshire When: Wednesday 24 June 2015 Find out more and book: www.bit.ly/1ELqhTv

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DIARY

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

DON’T MISS RTPI Planning Convention 2015 This year’s theme, ‘The New Politics for Planning’, will help to set the agenda at the start of what is likely to be another period of challenges, following the general election in May – with other elections in the UK and Ireland due in 2016.

LONDON 10 June – Affordable housing: policy and provision A look at new thinking in affordable housing delivery, the changing role of the HCA, the diversification of housing associations into commercial activities and joint venture opportunities for developers and local authorities.

Venue: The Hatton (etc Venues), 51-53 Hatton Garden, London Details: www.bit. ly/1AKOM2D 11 June – Negotiation skills for planning professionals This one-day programme will equip you with a range of practical tools and techniques to improve your chances of getting a positive outcome.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1Hnd5Zd 16 June – OAN and fiveyear supply: learning from experience Planners need to properly assess and align their economic and housing objectives. Failure to do so at the evidence base stage leaves plans open to challenge at examination.

This discusses the new planning system, how it is working, and how different participants are dealing with it.

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

examination of key legal issues that delegates face to deliver sustainable development. It critically assesses policy changes, new legislation, and a number of significant ministerial and appeal court decisions.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1EX6kub 24 June – Neighbourhood planning Neighbourhood Planning is in its infancy but here to stay. This briefing & workshop brings together key stakeholders in the field. Speakers include people engaged in the process, from the communities who produce plans through to the examiners assessing them.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1EepSZc 1 July – Giving evidence at inquiries This masterclass will provide you with the tools and techniques to prepare for inquiries, present evidence to the best of your ability, and deal confidently with cross-examination.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1Hct0Hh

SOUTH EAST

17 June – Project management for planners This will help those embarking on a career in project management who need a short, intensive introduction to the concepts, methods, and techniques.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1JsKB2v

18 June – Port Solent walking tour Port Solent is a mixed-use development, with housing, commercial and leisure set around a marina basin. It is built on a reclaimed landfill site alongside an SSSI and Ramsar designation.

The walk is led by Ron Tate, who worked for Portsmouth City Council on the project.

Venue: Harvester, 15 The Boardwalk, Port Solent, Portsmouth PO6 4TP Details: www.bit. ly/1PQWyio

18 June – Planning law update conference This one-day conference provides a practical

30 June – Transport and land use planning Better integration of transport and land-use

It will examine local and neighbourhood planning, sub-national strategic planning and cooperation, and the changing relationship between the UK’s nations and regions. It will discuss and debate new forms of engagement, environmental protection and the global priorities for planning. Speakers and delegates will also reflect on the changes going on across the UK in terms of shifting powers and responsibilities, and provide attendees with intelligence on how these could affect planning policy and practice.

Date: Tuesday 7 July Venue: etc.venues, 155 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3YD Details: www.rtpi.org.uk/events/rtpi-planning-convention/

planning is essential for delivering sustainable communities. Speakers will consider issues at national, regional and local levels and reflect on changes in policy and legislation.

Venue: The Hatton Details: www.bit. ly/1L1w0Jz 30 June – Post election housing event Delegates will hear from four diverse speakers on what they think are the key trends and what they mean for planning.

Venue: Calverley House, 55 Calverley Road, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Tunbridge Wells, Kent Details: www.bit. ly/1B7vfJR

SOUTH WEST 26 June – Planning to deliver jobs The event explores good practice examples where planners have developed initiatives to promote jobs and growth and highlight how these lessons can be translated into everyday practice.

Venue: Venue TBC, Bournemouth Details: www.bit. ly/1AgcQQ1

unitaries and county), particularly those new to planning.

Venue: St Albans District Council Offices, St Peter’s Street, Hertfordshire Details: www.bit. ly/1HniQ9k

WEST MIDLANDS 24 June – EIA: a changing environment This seminar explores aspects of the application of EIA regulations, from the legal, public and private sector perspectives, in relation to NSIPs as well as EIA practice relating to other (non-NSIP) developments.

Venue: Pinsent Masons, 3 Colmore Circus, Birmingham, West Midlands B4 6BH Details: www.bit. ly/1AgbPHG

YORKSHIRE

EAST OF ENGLAND

9 June – Hull: city of culture & transformation Hull will transform itself as the UK City of Culture 2017.

This seminar examines a range of transformational projects as Hull embraces the big issues it faces.

Venue: The Guildhall, Hull HU1 2AA Details: www.bit. ly/1KqpvzJ

19 June – Annual conference for councillors Key speakers will help inform delegates of current issues and good practice. For all councillors (parish, town, district,

17 June – Improving the design quality of housing developments This conference explores the ways in which good, sustainable housing design can be encouraged,

approved and built.

Venue: Leeds Details: www.bit. ly/1FtDIhv

NORTH WEST 10 June – Neighbourhood planning & historic places Joint seminar organised

by RTPI NW and IHBC NW looking at the neighbourhood plan process and at ways in which heritage can be incorporated into neighbourhood plans.

Venue: Pinsent Masons, 3 Hardman Street, Manchester Details: www.bit. ly/1deVVDe June 16 – Rural update This event considers a recognition of rural visions and strategies, examines the current position of rural policies in local plans and asks whether optional neighbourhood plans offer a better way forward.

Venue: Stricklandgate House, Library Rd, Kendal Details: www.bit. ly/1GjeWQi

NORTH EAST 15 June – Is there a future for town centres?

This event looks at ways to increase the vitality and viability of our town centres large and small.

Venue: Centre for Life, Times Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear Details: www.bit. ly/1Gjewcs

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NEWS

RTPI { RTPI Planning Convention: the new politics for planning Following the UK general election on 7 May, planning and built environment professionals cannot afford to miss the forthcoming RTPI Planning Convention 2015, ‘The New Politics for Planning’ on Tuesday, 7 July in London.

Always a key diary date, the RTPI Planning Convention this year is an important opportunity to come together to examine and debate the key issues in the first major planning conference after the formation of the new UK government.

The packed programme will examine the future of local and neighbourhood planning, sub-national strategic planning and cooperation, and the changing relationship between the UK’s nations and regions.

It will also be the first opportunity many planners have to meet the new minister for planning and hear first-hand the minister’s views on his new role at the ministerial address.

The RTPI Planning Convention will bring together thought leaders from across the UK and internationally – practitioners, politicians, policymakers, consultants and developers – to explore the key role of planning in delivering economic, environmental, community and social agendas across and beyond the UK. Taking place in central London, the conference will feature an inspiring line-up of expert speakers, with keynote plenary presentations and Eugénie E Eug én Birch break-out sessions.

The keynote address will be delivered by Eugénie Birch, chair of World Urban Campaign.

Dr Birch will discuss the challenges facing planning globally and the changing political context in which planning is having to operate across the world and what this means for British planners.

Waheed Nazir, director of planning and regeneration at Birmingham City Council, will offer insights into developing effective strategic Waheed W Wah e Nazir partnerships across multi-profession disciplines and the role of leading planners within this process and lessons learned from his experience.

Dr Rick Robinson, IT director, smart data and technology at Amey, will offer thought leadership on how information technology can help planners with new forms of engagement.

Sir Malcolm Grant, chairman of NHS England, will discuss how the value of urban planning and civic leadership can support England’s health.

Steve Quartermain, chief planner, Department for Communities and Local Government, will also

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RTPI news pages are edited

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

be available in a Q&A session with delegates at the start of the day.

After lunch, delegates then have the choice of four break-out sessions for the afternoon: 1 The future for neighbourhood planning – getting real about localism, to be chaired by Carol Rhea, APA president.

D Rick Dr Ri Robinson

2 What next for cooperation? The new politics for strategic planning, Grant Si Malcolm Sir M chaired by Mark Harris, planning and policy adviser Wales, the Home Builders Federation.

3 Getting real about the environment! Chaired by Simon Marsh, acting head of policy and head of planning policy, RSPB. 4 The politics for planning – the European agenda, chaired by Dr Peter Geraghty, head of planning and transport, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council.

Michael Edwards, from University College London, and Rachelle Alterman, from Law & Property Rights, lead a session on ‘The politics of inequality: challenges for the profession’.

The convention will then hear from the RTPI president, Janet Askew, and the new minister.

Our chair, Andrew Taylor, RTPI Board of Trustees, will recapture the prominent points from the day’s proceedings.

As well as an opportunity to hear more on specific areas in the break-out sessions, there will also be opportunities to engage with exhibitors, and a networking reception.

Prices for the convention are: £195 + VAT RTPI member rate £295 + VAT Standard rate The headline sponsors for the Planning Convention are Allies and Morrison Urban Practitioners. n http://www.theplanningconvention.co.uk/

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Editorial E: rtpinews@rtpi.org.uk

RTPI (switchboard) T: 020 7929 9494 F: 020 7929 9490

Registered charity no.

262865 Registered charity in Scotland SCO37841

3 POINT PLAN Planners explain how they would improve the English planning system

Chloe French Planning Associate BIDWELLS Planning departments have seen major cuts and some councils do not have the resources to give applications the necessary time and consideration, particularly if there are technical issues.

A plan-led system can enable democracy and facilitate development, but some councils lack the time or resources to progress plans. The industry needs a strategic approach to address the housing crisis. Development is an expensive business that thrives on certainty. Certainty will reduce the speculative cost and reassure ‘Nimby’ tendencies. District-level local plans need to be the priority. Once these are in place, neighbourhood planning can put the meat on the bones, but allowing it before taking a strategic approach could encourage unsustainable growth and uncertainty within the industry. A commonsense approach is paramount. It isn’t logical to enable individuals to hold up planning applications for selfish reasons while costing the taxpayer thousands of pounds. A balanced and proportionate approach needs to be applied. Not all applications require reams of information; sometimes it is just a small development that has no harm.

YOUR INSTITUTE, YOUR QUESTIONS LUCY SEYMOUR BOWDERY, CHAIR OF THE SOUTH COAST YOUNG PLANNERS NETWORK

How can young planners ensure that we can sufficiently plan for an ageing population?

VICTORIA PINONCELY, RESEARCH OFFICER Local authority planners should encourage the provision of homes flexible enough to meet the changing needs of residents as they grow older, such as a higher percentage of smaller houses on new sites, and lifetime homes so people don’t have to move when their needs change. For developers, Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners has published CAREpacity, a package of tools to assess the potential for specialist housing for older people and present the best case for such development. Planning must allow independent living. It is not only dwellings that matter, but also their location, the provision of public transport, green spaces, street design and access to local services. n www.rtpi.org.uk/knowledge/research/planning-horizons/futureproofing-society/

1 ] Resource the planning departments and train councillors

2 ] District

councils should have an up­to­date local plan, prepared before neighbourhood plans to enable strategic thinking and a local perspective

3 ] Adopt a commonsense approach from all parties, including local residents, developers, consultants, case officers, councillors and everyone in between

POSITION POINTS

LOCAL GOVERNMENT OMBUDSMAN REPORT ON PLANNING PROFESSIONALS We would recommend a recent Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) report, Not In My Back Yard: Local People And The Planning Process, on learning lessons from complaints as a tool to explain the planning process, what it can and cannot do, to the general public. The LGO’s findings also provide a checklist for good local authority practice. It is crucial for chartered town planners working both in private and public sectors to keep communication and engagement skills in mind and document key factors clearly and simply, avoiding jargon, so that your planning judgement is presented in a logical way. The RTPI is updating practitioner guidance on personal and business ethics later this year.

Please share any case studies or reflections on practice to ethics@rtpi.org.uk

A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR OUR TOWNS AND CITIES In 2013, an article in The Economist suggested that Britain’s underperforming towns and cities should receive no further interventions, with residents relocated to more successful areas. In response, the Institute of Economic Development (IED) initiated a unique collaboration with the RTPI, ATCM and RICS to gather the views of practitioners working in regeneration and economic development. The RTPI believes in the value of supporting existing communities, and by seeking the views of those who work in and care about underperforming places, we hope to offer practical recommendations for local authorities, LEPs and government to boost economic performance.

n www.bit.ly/1QX3U6a

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NEWS

n

RTPI {

CHARTER MEMBERS LI S T

THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF STORIES ABOUT RTPI MEMBERS WORKING AROUND THE WORLD

Steve Butler head of Environmental Planning FALKLAND ISLANDS GOVERNMENT STANLEY, FALKLAND ISLANDS The white sandy beaches, clear blue skies and abundance of wildlife of the Falkland Islands makes it sound idyllic, however, this is an environment with its own particular challenges.

I live with my wife and two children on the islands, which are comparable in size to Northern Ireland, but with a population of just 2,840, most of whom live in the capital, Stanley.

Some of the issues faced by the islands are similar to those in the UK, such as housing, but with the added complication of having to bring building materials in from 8,000 miles away. Hydrocarbons exploration is ongoing and the potential to move to production in the next few years brings opportunities for infrastructure investment, but also the need to manage change so that what makes the Islands special is not lost.

Part of my department’s remit is to administer the planning system, which is based on the UK framework, but adapted for local context. With only a single tier of government, the workload is varied, from policy and legislation through to development management.

We receive around 200 planning applications each year, ranging from domestic extensions to a new dock for hydrocarbon exploration. Last year we worked with the Attorney General’s

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Chambers to implement three changes to the planning system – public speaking rights, clearer requirements for application publicity and delegated powers for less complex applications.

The best aspects of living and working in the islands include being part of a strong and safe community, the amazing wildlife and the sense of freedom.

“PART OF MY DEPARTMENT’S REMIT IS TO ADMINISTER THE PLANNING SYSTEM, WHICH IS BASED ON THE UK FRAMEWORK, BUT ADAPTED FOR LOCAL CONTEXT”

Congratulations to our newly elected Chartered Members between January and March 2015 “Many congratulations to all of our new Chartered Members. Employers rightly recognise the hallmark of professional expertise and integrity conferred by charter status. Being a Chartered Member of the RTPI makes you part of a community at the forefront of planning” – Janet Askew, RTPI president.

q Claire Biddle Alex Jane Bird Rebecca Bishop Sheila Mary Black Caitlin Emily Boddy Jamie Richard Carr Lewis Conde Paul Creighton Ben Dancer Mark Doodes Henrik James Dorbeck Fiona Duffy Sioned Edwards Sian Evans Sarah Evans Kathryn Michelle Fitzgerald Edward Fox John Kenneth Frazer Victoria Frith Brian Gatenby Elinor Zoe George Calum Glen Andrew Edward Bowyer Golay Hannah Harne Jessica Harper Alan Richard Hesketh Gemma Hiden Peter Arthur Hilldrup Wing Hei Nancy Ho Samual Hollingworth Naomi Hubbard Simon Thomas Robert Hughes Andrew Richard Hughes Ian Humble Matthew Anthony Jones Lucie Jowett Andrea Jane Kellegher Man Hin, Ryan Kwok Caroline Anne Legg Poie-Yee Li David Mabb Andrew John Metcalfe Alexander Moseley Andrew Mullaney Graham Trathan Noakes Emma Lucy Pearman Dale Rogers Peppitt Harry Quartermain Aahsanur Rahman Luke David Raistrick Simon Thomas Richardson Katy Roberts Victoria Robinson Asher Raphael Zvi Ross Katie Jane Simpson Ashley James Smith Rebecca Clare Sowerbutts Siobhan Sweeney Matthew Philip Taylor Felicity Tozer Andrew Tregay Philipp Tschavoll-Selenko Tou Wei Todd Wan Michael Ward Dominic James Watkins Emma Louise Watts Sally Amber Watts

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RTPI Y ACTIVIT E PIPELIN Current RTPI work – what the Institute is doing and how you can help us WORLDWIDE VALUE OF PLANNING In 2014 the RTPI published a brochure on the Worldwide Value Of Planning, and we’re working on a follow-up for publication later this year. The first Worldwide Value Of Planning set out why planning is important worldwide, and how it can address global issues such as rapid urbanisation, climate change, and health and wellbeing. The follow-up publication, being jointly undertaken by the RTPI and the Global Planners Network (www.globalplannersnetwork.org/), aims to raise awareness of planning, particularly in the developing world, and to encourage greater planning capacity in these countries. It will be aimed at non-planners to highlight what planners do, their skills and roles, and how planning is critical to sustainable development for the public good. n For further information: http://www.rtpi.org.uk/the-rtpi-near-you/rtpiinternational/

COMMUTING IN THE SOUTH EAST OF ENGLND PROJECT Several organisations have suggested relaxing green belt designations in order to accommodate growth in the south-east of England. These favour housing in the green belt when located in proximity to a railway station – with an assumption that those living near a station would use it to commute. However, census data indicates that living near a railway station is no guarantee of use, with many travelling between smaller towns and cities across the South-East rather than directly into London. The RTPI is therefore analysing census data for towns and cities in the South-East, examining commuting patterns and travel methods used for different journeys. The results will help planners and policymakers understand the practicalities of commuting when evaluating proposals for regional growth. n For further information contact: policy@rtpi.org.uk

ROUTES TO MEMBERSHIP: PHASE TWO How well are the current non-accredited routes to becoming a chartered member working? How can we make them fit for purpose for planners today and in future?

These are some of the key issues to be looked at in phase two of the RTPI’s Routes to Membership project. Members said they valued the opportunity to provide their views during phase one of this project (the review of the accredited route, the APC) and we are keen to continue the conversation in phase two through consultation with committees, panels, regions and nations. n At this stage we would like to hear from technical members and legal associates: please contact catherine.middleton@rtpi.org.uk to find out more.

ENGLAND’S GREAT PLACES Work is well under way for a July launch to find England’s Great Places – following on from the success of last year’s competition in Scotland. We will be celebrating some of our most attractive and inspiring places. Each place nominated will also be judged against how it was shaped, protected or improved by planners and the planning system. A diverse panel of judges will come up with a shortlist from public nominations, and we will then invite a public vote. Local media will be targeted to promote the competition with the overall aim of raising the profile of good planning. Katherine Pollard is the project lead (RTPI Policy and Networks Adviser).

Katherine.Pollard@rtpi.org.uk

RTPI SHORTS

PHIL PLUCK APPOINTMENT Phil Pluck, a director with extensive board-level experience in the private, charity and government sectors, has joined the RTPI, as Commercial and Corporate Services Director. Phil has held a number of senior roles, including at board level for a children’s charity, and within higher education and employer membership organisations. His responsibilities will include: owning the strategic plan for the delivery of the business development function which supports the RTPI’s overall business and financial plans; acting as main creative and operational driver of the format, nature and style of commercial and publishing partnerships and business development products and services; and managing external commercial partners. Phil said: “I look forward to helping to continue to develop high-quality, value-for-money services to support our members throughout their careers.”

RTPI AWARDS FOR PLANNING EXCELLENCE Projects, people and plans from Belfast to Bridlington will be battling it out for the prestigious RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence.

The awards, celebrating the best in planning, will be strongly contested, with a record 80 projects, consultancies and local authority teams competing across 14 categories. The judges have the difficult task of selecting the winners from the 80 finalists.

Chair of the judges, Nick Raynsford MP, said: “This is the first year I have chaired the judging and am looking forward, with my fellow awards judges, to determining which entries are the most outstanding examples of planning and selecting an overall winner of the prestigious Silver Jubilee Cup.” The Silver Jubilee Cup is the most coveted prize in planning. It has been awarded annually since 1977 to the entry judged to be the most outstanding.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony to be held at the Pullman London St Pancras on 6 July 2015. The ceremony has now sold out.

This year’s headline sponsor is AECOM. Other sponsors and supporters include Bilfinger GVA, Quod, The Planner, Planning Aid England and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. n For the full list of finalists, visit www.rtpi.org.uk/ excellence

RTPI 2015­2020 CORPORATE STRATEGYY The corporate strategy sets out clear and focused objectives for the period 2015-2020 020 for the whole of the RTPI. This is supported ted by two-year business plans and budgets with thematic cross-cutting strategies across the organisation. Underpinning this is our commitment to growth – in influence, membership, profile, partnerships, international reach, and as a key contributor to education and professional ssional standards, research, knowledge and debate. ate. n http://rtpi.org.uk/about-the-rtpi/corporatestrategy-2015-2020/

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ADVERTISEMENTS

Recruitment { Could you help shape Woking’s future?

Located in the heart of Surrey yet within 30 minutes of Waterloo station, Woking is one of the leading towns in Surrey.

The Council’s forward thinking attitude and pioneering approach to building sustainable communities makes the business of planning both exciting and challenging.

Significant growth is planned with an emphasis on ambitious town centre regeneration to compliment recently delivered improvements such as Jubilee Square.

By contrast 60% of the Borough is designated as Green Belt and benefits from extensive tree cover as well as forming the backdrop to a number of villages which retain much of their historic character. With its combination of attractive green spaces, excellent transport links and a thriving business community, Woking is a quality place to live and work.

You will play a leading role in ensuring that new development is high quality and respects and contributes to the diverse character and heritage of this dynamic Borough.

We are looking for self-motivated individuals with a positive outlook, excellent communication skills and a commitment to customer focused services to fill the following roles: Senior Planning Officer x2 (Development Management) – circa £32k (plus flexible benefits allowance of £1,741 and vehicle allowance of £2,400) Senior Planning Enforcement Officer (Development Management) – circa £32k (plus flexible benefits allowance of £1,507 and vehicle allowance of £2,400) Woking Borough Council offers in return, competitive salary, flexible working arrangements, pleasant working environment at the Civic Offices and excellent career opportunities for committed individuals. Further benefits are detailed in the Job Pack.

For full application details and to apply for any of these posts, please visit www.surreyjobs.info Closing date for applications is 14 June 2015.

www.woking.gov.uk

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Pembrokeshire County Council Cyngor Sir Penfro

Hyndburn is an attractive area set in the heart of Pennine Lancashire, within easy reach of Manchester, the Lakes and the Coast. Hyndburn is a great place to work. Over recent years we’ve established an impressive reputation as a Council with a strong sense of direction and an enviable record for improving services and getting things done. We have an exciting opportunity to join our team.

Project Co-ordinator Haverfordwest Townscape Heritage Initiative £30,978 – £35,662 3 year fixed contract The Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) is a conservation led, imaginative scheme that aims to encourage economic regeneration through the sympathetic renovation and conservation of historic buildings. The Haverfordwest THI is a partnership project jointly funded

by Pembrokeshire County Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund, Cadw and the Welsh Government.

As Project Co-ordinator you will lead, deliver and provide professional input into the initiative, including advice on design solutions and be responsible for its operational management. This will involve close liaison with property owners, as well as other public agencies, to ensure the sensitive repair of key buildings within the town’s conservation area and their subsequent re-use to foster sustainable economic growth.

This is an important project management role that would suit an accomplished architect, town planner or chartered surveyor with at least 5 years experience, ideally including building conservation work.

For full information about this vacancy, and to apply online, please visit www.pembrokeshire.gov.uk Alternatively, call our Contact Centre on 01437 764551 or e-mail recruit@pembrokeshire.gov.uk

Closing date for applications: 19 June 2015 We welcome applications from all sections of the community.

Principal Planning Officer (Development Management) £30,978 - £33,857 (SCP 36-39) The Principal Planning Officer will be responsible for managing a complex and varied caseload of planning applications and appeals. Working as part of a small team, you will be expected to work within the relevant time frames to secure high quality and sustainable development across the Borough. Strong communication skills, and the ability to effectively engage within the Council, with its residents, applicants, and elected members, are essential. You should be a member of the RTPI with an excellent knowledge and experience of planning and development control. You should also be computer literate and understand development control IT systems and also possess strong negotiation skills.

If you are passionate about delivering results as we are, and if you want a job where you can be part of a team that’s making a real difference, we’d like to hear from you.

Closing date: Monday 15th June 2015. Vacancy Ref: V980 Application packs can be downloaded from www.hyndburnbc.gov.uk

www.pembrokeshire.gov.uk

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At Chiltern District Council we care passionately about protecting our beautiful AONB Green Belt countryside and attractive historic towns and villages. We seek to plan positively to meet local development needs, delivering sustainable development and achieving effective planning enforcement.

PRINCIPAL PLANNER (PLANNING POLICY) £42,531 - £46,785 p.a.

The Council has created a new Principal Planner role in its Planning Policy team. We are looking for an accomplished policy planner with ability to lead high proÄle projects, work collaboratively with partners and motivate, help develop and support others and deputise for the Manager (a shared post with South Bucks District Council). You would join the Council at a challenging time with work on a new Local Plan and key evidence base studies including a Green Belt Assessment.

You will also be involved in supporting neighbourhood plans and other projects like HS2 and conservation area appraisals.

Ref: 23210

TEMPORARY PLANNING OFFICER (ENFORCEMENT) - 2 YEARS £22,230 - £27,963 p.a.

We are looking for a Planning OfÄcer to join our busy Planning Enforcement team as we have a Service Review pending.

You will have excellent time management and interpersonal skills, ideally with some experience in development control or enforcement. You will have your own case load and be responsible for assessing if there is a breach of planning control, seeking to resolve breaches by negotiation, dealing with retrospective planning applications and subsequent appeals and Court action as well as drafting and serving enforcement notices. Ref: 24405 For an application form and further details either visit our website at www.chiltern.gov.uk, or contact Personnel, Chiltern District Council, King George V Road, Amersham, Bucks, HP6 5AW. Tel: (01494) 732155 (24 hours). Please quote appropriate reference.

Closing Date: 15th June 2015

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22/05/2015 15:17

INSIGHT

Plan B P

I M AG E S |

ALAMY / GETTY / REX / SHUTTERSTOCK

GOODBYE ‘KING OF THE BOGIES’, ARISE SIR ERIC So we bid farewell to Eric – sorry, Sir Eric – y Pickles, a man who has ushered in a community planning revolution while personally rejecting more wind farms and housing than you can shake a stick at.

But he ever was a man of beguiling contradictions. We discover from Wikipedia that, born into a line of distinguished Labour supporters, Master Pickles found himself “massively inclined” towards communism.

Yet history and habit were not enough to resist the allure of the Young Conservatives and in 1968 the firebrand swapped red for blue.

He leaves us somewhat baffled by much of what he said and did in five years as secretary of state. Yes, there is the handing down of planning powers to local people. But there’s also permitted development which, some locals might say, has removed their power to shape their environment.

There is the un-Christian suggestion that people who leave their bins in the street should be “flogged”, while insisting that prayers at council meetings be made compulsory. At least he has a sense of humour, if not of irony: the front page of Mr Pickles’ website has a video featuring his ‘best conference jokes’.

Mr Pickles is to be knighted for his service to national and local government, and Sir Eric will become the ‘anti-corruption tsar’.

We leave you with a story from his local newspaper, the Brentwood Gazette, which reported in April on a spoof rewrite of Pickles’ Wikipedia page describing him as a double F1 champion, in 1962 and 1968. Pickles took it in good heart, pointing out that as a lad he would race down hills in homemade boxcars. “In my youth there was a fashion of taking wooden carts and putting wheels and old bogies on them,” he said. “I was the king of the bogies”.

Eric Pickles. An irresistible target for satire. We’ll miss you.

BORING PHOTOS Speaking of dull things, Plan B is captivated by the monumental monotony of Geograph (www.geograph.org.uk),, an ‘open community’ project to photograph every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland and put it online.

Every. Square. Kilometre.

It takes a certain kind of very British fanaticism to engage in this kind of activity – not least because few of the photographers are attempting to achieve any kind of aesthetic merit with their images. This is all about being completist.

The overwhelming

50

impression created by Geograph is that Britain is largely a nation of grass and fields, mainly devoid of human life. ‘Geographers’ seem to deliberately avoid featuring people in their photographs of places, which they then describe with a mechanical neutrality that heightens the weirdness.

Look, here’s a shopping

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street in Chester (deserted). A horse, Uffington (brown, not white). A yellow box on a green bank, Bridstow.

A sign in a lane in Oxfordshire warning of “100”. Just 100.

“Everything else seems to have dropped off,” notes the accompanying comment. It surely has.

Geograph presents Britain as a mash-up of The Archers and The Day Of The Triffids as conceived by J G Ballard, and its images make Martin Parr’s Boring Postcards seem the height of artistry. By way of example, here’s a picture of some fields to the east of the A483, Howey.

… AND HELLO MR CLARK The appointment of Greg Clark as new communities secretary has Plan B extremely worried. Everybody welcomes it – and they seem to mean it. This isn’t a good sign.

The son of a milkman, born and raised in Teesside, Clark – to his great credit – earned a place at Cambridge University and subsequently the London School of Economics, where he gained a PhD. From 2001-05 he served as the Conservative Party’s policy director under William Hague, Iain DuncanSmith and Michael Howard. OK, that’s not much of a claim to fame – nor is the fact that he was once a member of the SDP. Oops.

As planning minister he oversaw the creation of the NPPF and enjoyed good relations with the profession.

His appointment has been seen as a sign that the government will adopt a more conciliatory approach to local authorities – just as well as they’re all about to be hit by humungous cuts.

Does this make Mr Clark a Trojan Horse? We’ll have to see.

Meanwhile, we’re struggling to find anything amusing or scurrilous to say about him. He doesn’t look funny (a touch of the Harry Potters, maybe?), he tweets innocuously and he supports causes you can’t really argue with.

This is a calamity. Come back, Sir Eric, we need you!

n Have any more dull postcards to share? Tweet us - @ThePlanner_RTPI 22/05/2015 16:15

ADVERTISEMENTS

} Recruitment Braintree is a large and diverse Essex District with a varied mix of historic towns and villages, over 3000 listed buildings, borders Suffolk and Constable country with Stansted airport close by.

Braintree is seeing a step change in the level of development it experiences and needs to build on a strong and committed planning team to deliver that growth sustainably. It’s an exciting and challenging time for the District as it prepares a new Local Plan which will balance the need for both economic and housing growth with the need to safeguard attractive rural landscapes and the established character of its many rural villages.

•

Planners £22,947 – £31,056

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Senior Planners £31,680 – £36,294

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Area Development Manager £38,571 – £42,915

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Principal Planner £38,571 – £42,915

If you are ambitious, ready for a challenge and looking for a rewarding career we can offer competitive salaries, a local government pension scheme, employee discounts, support towards your professional fees and qualifications and help if you need to relocate.

We welcome applications from experienced planners and recent graduates in Planning or related degrees.

Closing date of 22nd June 2015

Closing date: 22nd June 2015

An opportunity to grow...

For more information please visit www.braintree.gov.uk/jobs or call Fiona Bradley on 01376 552 525 ext 2519

Planning Manager Grade 13 (£42,808 - £45,982) 37 hours per week 4 Ednam Road, Dudley Are you a leader of people? Do you thrive in a culture of innovation and transformation?

Dudley MBC is looking for an experienced Planner with a proven track record in leading and performance managing service delivery to help to drive the continued transformation of a large and busy Development Management Section. The section sits within an ambitious award winning and highly commended Local Planning Authority.

We are looking for a individual who can not only ensure the delivery of major inward investment and regeneration proposals but can also lead and develop others in parallel with seeking to continuously improve the service we provide to investors and developers, whilst retaining the authorities community council ethos. We need you to sustain a culture of timely customer driven service, build on the established web enabled service delivery and to continue close partnership working to ensure the delivery of high quality sustainable development for the borough.

Closing date for applications is 19th June 2015 and the interviews are to be held on 13th and 14th July 2015.

NB: We reserve the right to close vacancies prior to the advertised date if a large number of applications are received Online application forms will only be accepted for this vacancy. If you have a disability and require assistance in making an application, or have experienced a problem whilst applying for a position, please contact the HR Resourcing Team on 01384 81 1300 (option 2, for directorates and then option 1), or via email to: HR.Resourcing@dudley.gov.uk Online facilities for jobs are available at public libraries within the Dudley Borough. Previous applicants need not apply.

For further information please contact Helen Martin on 01384 814186 or via email: helen.martin@dudley.gov.uk To apply for this post and for further information, please go to www.wmjobs.co.uk/ and under search all jobs type Dudley0000001054.

See www.dudley.gov.uk/jobs for further vacancies.

For free access to the Internet visit your local Library or Job Centre.

Successful candidates for all posts working with children or vulnerable adults will be subject to checks by the Disclosure and Barring Service.

People with disabilities are guaranteed an interview where they meet the essential criteria for the job.

PLANNER RECR June15.indd 51

22/05/2015 15:17

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