The Planner June 2016

JUNE 2016 SPEAKER BY SPEAKER, THE 2016 PLANNING CONVENTION // p.24 // • DEVOLVING POWERS TO CITY REGIONS HOW WILL IT WORK? // p.26 • PLYMOUTH’S PRIZE WINNING PLAN FOR HOMES // p.30 • BENEFITING FROM ENTERING AWARDS // p.34

OF THE POSSIBLE

THE ART

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

ALFONSO VEGARA ON THE CHALLENGE OF CREATING SUSTAINABLE CITIES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

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CONTENTS

PLANNER 06 18

THE

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“IN FIVE YEARS’ TIME PEOPLE WILL NOT TALK ABOUT ‘SMART’ AS THE PANACEA… THEY WILL TALK ABOUT THE VALUES THAT THE PLANNING PROFESSION HAS BEEN CULTIVATING FOR CENTURIES”

NEWS

6 Plymouth City Council wins big at RTPI Awards

7 St Ives votes to ban second homes

8 Housing bill gets Royal Assent as Lords withdraw amendments 9 Elections 2016: The results 10 Government can’t help the poor if it neglects ‘place poverty’ – RTPI 11 New broom plans ‘root and branch’ review of Irish planning

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OPINION 14 Chris Shepley: When the nanny state really doesn’t know what’s best 16 Paul Miner: Does the New Homes Bonus work well with our planning system?

16 Jamie Ratcliff: Lesson from America 17 Lucy Furlong: The art and meaning of land use 17 Witness Dzumbira: Gardening for growth S th Africa’s Sou in South tow wnsh n ips townships

C OV E R I M AG E | B E N RO B E RT S

INSIGHT

FEATURES

34 Career development: The pros and cons of entering built environment awards

18 Fundación Metropóli founder Dr Alfonso Vegara tells us why the future lies in 'intelligent territories' 22 Your guide to the RTPI Planning Convention 2016 26 A patchwork of power: Mark Smulian talks devolution 30 Case study: RTPI Silver Jubilee Cup winner: Plan for Homes, Plymouth City Council

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36 Decisions in focus: Development decisions, round-up and analysis 40 Legal landscape: Opinion, blogs, and news from the legal side of planning 42 Plan Ahead – our pick of upcoming events for the planning profession and beyond 44 RTPI round-up: News and interviews from the institute 50 Plan B: No Fosse, no bother

QUOTE UNQUOTE

“HOW DOES A COUNTRY GET TO THE POINT WHERE THE AVERAGE AGE OF A FIRST­TIME BUYER IS 38?”

PAUL BARNARD, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING AND INFRASTRUCTURE, PLYMOUTH CITY COUNCIL

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PLAN UPFRONT

Leaderr Building the case for being bipartisan – There was a lot of love in the room for Plymouth’s ‘Plan for Homes’, the winning project in the Excellence in Planning for Housing category at last month’s RTPI Awards. In fact, Plymouth City Council scored a memorable awards hat-trick on the night, also picking up the Local Authority Planning Team of the Year award and, as a consequence of these two earlier successes, the Silver Jubilee Cup (awarded to the best of the night’s category winners, essentially).

Judges enthused about the project in tones suggesting that this was no ordinary submission. Plymouth City Council was “an exemplary planning team,” they cooed, the Plan for Homes scheme “one from which we can all draw inspiration”.

Even by the traditionally positive standards of awards organisers commentary, this was high praise indeed.

Martin Read Plymouth’s submission had been “a joy to read”, describing as it did a focused team effort in which planners had demonstrated leadership in driving the project forward, notably in how the planning team and community had worked together. Plymouth stood out for “the scope of the municipal vision”.

‘Plan for Homes’ aims to deliver 22,700 new homes by 2031, to a city whose population will increase by more than 15 per cent

during the same time frame.

You’ll read elsewhere in this issue about the full scope of the project, but suffice it to say that there’s plenty of creativity in the way the planning team has gone about advancing the project’s aims.

What’s interesting here is the political landscape in place during the time in which ‘Plan for Homes’ came together. Plymouth’s local Conservative and Labour councillors were essentially in a grand coalition, freezing the remaining UKIP councillors out of the balance of power.

The council’s assistant

"IF THIS IS TRULY THE EXEMPLAR SCHEME JUDGES SAY IT IS, THERE’S SURELY EXTRA MILEAGE IN POINTING OUT THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH IT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED"

director for strategic planning and infrastructure, Paul Barnard, talks of the success of an “unusual degree of cross-party political support” and the bipartisan nature of the end product; programme for housing supported by the majority of those elected.

If this is truly the exemplar scheme that th judges say it is, there’s surely extra mileage in pointing out the political environment in which the success has been achieved.

At a time when planning departments continue to suffer from lack of resources, shouting from the newly constructed rooftops about how political pragmatism and a shared will has led to a housing programme in which all parties feel engaged and involved has to make sense.

Who’d have thought that having both ends of the political spectrum willing to accept compromise might yield such impressive results? Well, perhaps quite a few people actually…

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NEWS

Analysis { RTPI AWARDS OF PLANNING EXCELLENCE

Plymouth City Council wins big at RTPI Awards

‘Plymouth City Council’s ‘Plan for Homes’ won the RTPI’s Silver Jubilee Cup at the institute’s 2016 Awards for Planning Excellence.

Thirteen other winners were also announced during the event at London’s Milton Court and Concert Hall, including those in two new categories: International Award for Planning Excellence and Volunteer Planner of the Year.

Plymouth City Council’s ‘Plan for Homes’ aims to deliver 5,000 new homes over five years. The homes will be built on councilowned land identified and released for development and the scheme will target institutional investors to attract funding to build the necessary infrastructure.

The council is working with the local community, councillors and private companies in pursuit of its plan to be “one of Europe’s most vibrant waterfront cities where an outstanding quality of life is enjoyed by everyone”.

Roisin Wilmott, RTPI awards adviser, said Plymouth’s plan is an “innovative” solution to the city’s housing problems.

“It is a comprehensive city-wide planning framework that considers a range of issues including land release, infrastructure and delivery. The very high quality of finalists this year made selecting the winners in each of the

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City planners aim to cast Plymouth as “one of Europe’s most vibrant waterfront cities”

categories adopted at national and county levels challenging, but and its principles are being rolled out the high quality elsewhere in the country. of this entry Nature Kenya executive director Paul made it stand Matiku told The Planner that building out.” trust among communities was crucial to Phil Williams, RTPI president, added the scheme’s success because the that the plan addresses the area’s serious planning process had to contend with housing issues by designating half the ethnic clashes in the delta, leading to the homes it wants to deliver as affordable. deaths of 120 people, as well as terrorist Kenya’s Tana River Delta land use plan attacks by Al-Shabaab. and strategic environmental assessment The delta has also been beset by (SEA) has won the severe droughts and fierce legal RTPI’s inaugural battles between developers and Plymouth City Council International local people over land rights. won three awards on Award for Planning “Through this process local the night: Excellence. people discovered they had The rights,” he added.

Silver Jubilee Cup groundbreaking Wilmott said: “This Excellence in Planning scheme – Kenya’s outstanding entry strongly to Deliver Housing – first integrated addressed all of the criteria and Plan for Homes spatial plan and SEA the judges were impressed by the – is a framework to entry’s ability to draw inspiration Local Authority Planning Team protect one of Africa’s from other planning projects and of the Year most important wetlands. tailor them to their unique situation.

It should support In doing this they have left a legacy for livelihoods, resolve land future planners in the area.” conflicts and create economic n More information about the award opportunities in ecotourism, winners can be found here. food processing and resource www.theplanner.co.uk/news/plymouthdevelopment. city-council-wins-big-at-rtpi-awards The scheme has been

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PLAN UPFRONT

AND THE WINNERS ARE: EXCELLENCE IN PLANNING FOR BUILT HERITAGE Winner: Nottingham Heritage Strategy Roisin Willmott, RTPI awards adviser, said the project put heritage at “the heart of placemaking” yet was still “underpinned by sound economic growth principles”.

Commended: Pontypridd Lido Restoration

EXCELLENCE IN PLANNING TO CREATE ECONOMICALLY SUCCESSFUL PLACES Winner: University of Southampton Boldrewood Innovation Campus 2005-2015 The judges, Wilmott said, were particularly impressed by the “rigorous focus on the end occupier, resulting in a place that has not only provided educational infrastructure and public realm improvements to the Southampton City Region, but is a catalyst for significant regional inward investment”.

EXCELLENCE IN PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY AND WELL BEING Winner: Hadleigh Park Olympic Mountain Bike Legacy Project “The community support and ownership of this project shone throughout this submission,” said Wilmott. “The outcome is inclusive and will provide commercial and economic benefits, while bringing joy to the community.”

EXCELLENCE IN PLAN MAKING PRACTICE Winner: London Legacy Development Corporation Local Plan 2015-2031

planning that got everyone on board.

The project also has replicable lessons in flood-risk management and urban design that could be applied to the re-engineering of other rivers.”

International Award for Planning Excellence Winner: Tana River Delta Land Use Plan and Tana River Delta Strategic Environmental Assessment (Kenya) Commended: Seychelles Strategic Land use and Development Plan (Seychelles) Semporna Marine Spatial Plan (Malaysia) Post-disaster Reconstruction Plan of Caojia Village, Baoxing County (China)

YOUNG PLANNER OF THE YEAR Winner: Emma Lancaster Wilmott said: “Emma is committed, proud and passionate about her role in the planning profession. She is a strong ambassador in promoting how planning can make a difference to communities and the economy.”

Commended: Adele Maher

Commended: Planning Policy Division, Department of the Environment Northern Ireland

EXCELLENCE IN PLANNING FOR THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT Winner: Revealing the Roch Wilmott said that all the elements of this project have truly captured the public’s imagination. “It is set to benefit the citizens of Rochdale for years to come, thanks to inclusive

Residents in Cornish town St Ives have voted to ban the building of second homes as part of its neighbourhood plan referendum.

Town councillors and local residents put together the St Ives Area Neighbourhood Plan after a period of more than two years of gathering evidence and holding consultations.

The plan, voted in by 83 per cent of voters in St Ives, Carbis Bay, Lelant and Halsetown, outlines a proposal that means new housing projects would only get planning permission if homes are reserved for full-time residents.

The aim of the proposal, the plan states, is to “safeguard the sustainability of the settlements in the St Ives Neighbourhood Development Plan area, whose communities are being eroded through the amount of properties that are not occupied on a permanent basis”.

The number of second homes in St Ives totalled 25 per cent in 2011, an increase of 67 per cent since 2001, according to the plan, while over this same period, housing stock in the plan area “grew by 962 or 16 per cent, but the resident population grew by only 270 or 2.4 per cent and the number of resident households grew by less than 6 per cent”.

Therefore, residents were asked whether they agreed that new housing should be designated as “principal homes”.

RLT Built Environment Limited is seeking permission to judicially review the decision made by Cornwall Council to support the publication of the St Ives Area Neighbourhood Plan and put it to a referendum in the town.

VOLUNTEER PLANNER OF THE YEAR Winner: Joanne Harding Since 2003, Joanne has “reinvigorated” the North West Region’s Young Planners programme, taking an active involvement in organising events, Wilmott explained.

“She has tirelessly promoted planning at career events and at universities, and has been actively involved with the governance of the RTPI whilst developing her own career and working full-time.”

Commended: Richard Hammersley

Wilmott said: “The judges were particularly impressed by the way it actively seeks out the views of young people. The plan’s genuine emphasis on sustainable development, particularly energy, sets it apart from the other entries.”

St Ives votes to ban second homes

EMPLOYER AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE Winner: Cornwall Council

SMALL PLANNING CONSULTANCY OF THE YEAR Winner: HTA Design

PLANNING CONSULTANCY OF THE YEAR Winner: Iceni Projects

Merger creates Northern Ireland’s biggest housing association Northern Ireland has a new housing association – formed by the merger of Fold and Helm – which has stressed the new entity would be better placed to build more social housing.

Subject to due diligence and the necessary approvals, both association boards have considered and approved an outline business case for the merger, which will create the province’s largest housing association.

The new organisation will manage 12,000 homes, provide services for about 30,000 households and employ close to 1,000 staff.

In its first five years the new social enterprise is forecast to increase its assets to £1.25 billion, its turnover to £90 million, while investing around £325 million in the local construction and contracting industry.

Helm Housing Association board chair Liz Cuddy said: “In times of record levels of housing need a new and financially stronger provider will be better placed to build more homes, right across Northern Ireland. We look forward to working with colleagues at Fold in the coming weeks and months to bring this about.”

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NEWS

Analysis { HOUSING AND PLANNING ACT

Housing bill gets Royal Assent as Lords withdraw amendments

By Laura Edgar Last month, the Housing and Planning Bill gained Royal Assent to pass into law.

Both the House of Commons and House of Lords made a number of concessions, amendments and counter-amendments during the ping-pong procedure before the wording of the act was agreed upon.

Key policies of the Housing and Planning Act Starter homes are required in new developments Lord Bob Kerslake reluctantly withdrew his amendment on starter homes during a ping-pong session. The amendment would have meant that where a local authority can demonstrate need for other types of affordable housing it would be able to meet all or part of the starter homes requirement by delivering alternative types of affordable housing.

But housing minister Brandon Lewis said the amendment would “totally undermine” a commitment made in the Conservative Party’s election manifesto last year.

Baroness Williams of Trafford, Conservative, and sponsor of the bill, reassured the Lords that the government is “completely committed” to delivering a range of housing tenures and is consulting with the sector on the percentage requirement of starter homes.

Starter homes will be available for firsttime buyers between the ages of 23 and 40.

Neighbourhood right of appeal Baroness Parminter withdrew her amend-

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The government is “committed” to delivering a range of housing tenures and is consulting with the sector on the percentage requirement of starter homes

ment on the neighbourhood right to be heard.

It would have meant a local authority, or the secretary of state – when considering an application or permission in principle – would have to regard policies in an adopted or emerging neighbourhood plan.

Additionally, before making a decision, local authorities would have to give the relevant neighbourhood planning body 21 days to make recommendations, which must be taken into account – and if an application is passed against the recommendation of a neighbourhood planning body permissions can’t be granted until the secretary of state has been consulted.

Williams said that although the government could not support the amendment she understood “the advantage of an approach that is based on the existing call-in system and the constructive manner in which it was laid”.

She said the government is “willing to look at this issue further, and I hope that provides the reassurance to the noble baroness for her to withdraw her amendment”.

Right to Buy Kerslake’s amendment would have given the secretary of state the power to make an agreement with a local housing authority to reduce the amount the local authority has to pay from the sale of highvalue, vacant local authority housing.

The amendment would mean that any agreement between a local authority and the secretary of state must be sufficient to fund the provision of at least one new

affordable homes outside of Greater London, and two inside. It also gives a local authority the opportunity, where it can demonstrate a need for social rented housing in its area, to make the case for the secretary of state to consider.

Lewis called it a “wrecking amendment” and MPs voted 292 to 197 in favour of rejecting it.

Denying it was a “wrecking amendment”, Kerslake said he had to consider the bill in terms of “what I know about the outside world”.

Williams moved that the house should not insist on the amendment.

Pay to stay During the report stage in the House of Lords, members voted to limit increases on the amount of rent social housing tenants on a higher income can be charged.

The Lords decided the rent should not equate to more than 10p for each pound of a tenant’s income above the minimum threshold. The threshold for tenants considered to be on a high income was raised to £50,000 in London and £40,000 for the rest of England.

The government said a 10 per cent taper would be too low, but eventually did concede on the rate. It introduced a taper of 15 per cent on every pound above the minimum income threshold earned by a social housing tenant.

The threshold for tenants considered to be on a high income remained at £31,000 nationally and £40,000 in London. These will be reviewed each year so that they stay in line with the Consumer Price Index.

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PLAN UPFRONT

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REACTIONS FROM THE INDUSTRY

“The institute welcomed the priority afforded to housing by the government when it introduced the now Housing and Planning Act 2016.

“On seeing the detail of the bill, we sought to improve it around a number of key issues and while we helped to secure an amendment we still have concerns about aspects of the act. Its implementation is now the focus for the government and many of our members.

“Our members in local authorities are already working in a severely resourceconstrained environment and we will be doing what we can to support them during the implementation. Planning must be adequately funded to deliver the government’s ambitious housing plans in the act.”

Trudi Elliott, RTPI chief executive

“The act has been widely criticised for its changes to affordable housing. Some of these, including the extension of the right to buy to housing associations, will be felt acutely in rural areas where the supply of genuinely affordable homes is lower, wages are lower and property prices are higher.

“We are heartened that the Lords persuaded the government to exclude starter homes from rural exception sites.

The government has also pledged to exclude national parks, AONBs and rural areas from the forced sale of council homes – though we await the vital detail the government has pledged to provide in regulations.

“A neighbourhood right of appeal would have given local communities real power to influence development plans in their area, and we believe that this is still essential in order to provide a fairer planning system. We are encouraged that so many peers and MPs sought to support the proposal.

Paul Miner, planning campaign manager, Campaign to Protect Rural England

“The most significant changes brought about by the Housing and Planning Act 2016 are the right of social housing tenants to buy their homes from housing associations and registered providers and the introduction of starter homes, which will enable first time-buyers between the ages of 23 and 40 years of age to buy homes at a discount. The starter homes provisions will be welcomed by the house building industry.

“However, the most significant challenge will continue to be the delivery of up-to-date local plans throughout the country and the conflict arising between engaging local communities and the government’s intervention imposing centrally prepared policies.”

Jay Das, head of the planning team at Wedlake Bell

Elections 2016: The results On 5 May, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London voted in the 2016 elections.

Here, The Planner takes a look at the results and the manifesto pledges of the winners.

SCOTLAND

and building an extra 20,000 affordable homes in its manifesto, Together For Wales.

Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones was re-elected as first minister after a LabourPlaid Cymru deal was struck.

NORTHERN IRELAND

The Scottish National Party (SNP) won its third election victory in a row. The SNP won 63 of 129 seats, losing six seats.

The Conservatives won 31 seats, gaining 16, while Labour lost 13 seats, winning 24.

The Liberal Democrat Party has five seats.

Following the results, party leader Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that she would form a minority government, saying her aim is to “persuade, not divide”.

In its manifesto, the SNP pledged to create a Rural Housing Fund, with investment of £25 million over the next three years, to build new, affordable homes. The party would bring forward a Planning Reform Bill that would be based on the recommendations made as a result of the current planning review.

The manifesto, Moving Scotland Forward, outlines the party’s commitment to increasing low-carbon transport and travel in Scotland, and there are also plans to refresh the National Transport Strategy.

WALES The Welsh Labour party won the most seats in the Assembly election, while Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood takes the Rhondda seat – something that has been described a shock win.

Labour won 29 seats, losing one. Plaid Cymru won 12 seats, gaining one. The Conservative party lost three seats, winning 11, while UKIP won seven seats.

The Liberal Democrats hold just one, having lost four.

Labour outlined plans to protect social housing by ending the Right to Buy scheme

The Democratic Unionist (DUP) remains the largest party in the Assembly. Party leader Arlene Foster will continue as first minister.

DUP remain unchanged in the Assembly with 38 seats out of 108. Sinn Féin has 28 seats, losing one, and the Ulster Unionist Party has 16 seats.

The Social Democratic and Labour Party lost two seats and has 12 seats, and Alliance Party Northern Ireland has eight seats.

In Our Plan For Northern Ireland, the DUP is committed to delivering 8,000 social and affordable housing units by 2020 as well as establishing funds aimed at tackling energy efficiency and urban regeneration.

LONDON Labour candidate Sadiq Khan has been elected as the Mayor of London and was formally signed into the role at a Southwark Cathedral ceremony.

Khan won 56.8 per cent of the vote (1,310,143), with Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith winning 994,614 votes, after both the first and second choice votes had been counted. Sian Berry finished third and Caroline Pidgeon was in fourth place.

The new mayor stood down as Labour MP for Tooting.

In A Manifesto For All Londoners, Khan said the housing crisis is the “single biggest barrier” to prosperity, growth and fairness facing the capital today. He outlined plans to make half of all homes built in London to be “genuinely affordable” to rent or buy and he plans to set up ‘Homes for Londoners’ to “break the house building logjam”.

Government wins appeal over affordable homes and small sites policy The Department for Communities and Local Government has won its appeal over a ruling that a planning policy for affordable housing requirements for smallscale developments was unlawful.

In November 2014, housing minister Brandon Lewis announced in a written statement that for

developments of 10 homes or fewer, local councils would not be able to impose affordable housing or Section 106 contributions.

West Berkshire Council and Reading Borough Council joined forces to challenge this proposal.

In July 2015, Mr Justice Holgate quashed the decision to adopt the new

policy by way of written ministerial statement and the relevant parts of the relevant parts of the National Planning Practice Guidance (NPPG).

The Court of Appeal has concluded, in a joint ruling from Lord Justice Laws and Lord Justice Treacy, and with the agreement of the Master of the Rolls, that the grounds of appeal should succeed and it must be allowed. n The full report can be found at: www.tinyurl. com/planner0616-smallsites-policy

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NEWS

Analysis {

A residential development at Golspie Street in Govan

POVERTY, PLACE AND INEQUALITY

Government can’t help the poor if it neglects ‘place poverty’ – RTPI

By Laura Edgar The RTPI’s new report has warned that many national and local policies are failing to reduce poverty because they ignore how well-planned local environments with good services and transport can help to lift people out of poverty.

Poverty, Place And Inequality: Why Place-based Approaches Are Key To Tackling Poverty And Inequality sets out the problems the UK, and especially England, is facing.

First, national welfare policies have put “too much emphasis” on addressing individual factors behind poverty, including low skills and poor education, and not enough attention has been paid to improving places.

Secondly, local policies don’t tackle physical and social deprivation enough as an “integral part of housing and growth initiatives”.

Local plans don’t reference issues of poverty According to a recent RTPI survey of 100 local plans across the UK, conducted in February 2016, 40 per cent do not make any specific reference to issues of poverty, social exclusion and inequality, while many devolution deals don’t reference these issues either.

The institute said the government’s “sink estate” regeneration programme acknowledges the link between local environments and life chances, but it does not yet tackle wider issues such as transport and community needs, “and it is not funded properly”.

Trudi Elliott, RTPI chief executive, explained that many of the root causes of deprivation and social inequality are

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bound up in the poor quality of neighbourhoods – “places that have no employment and lack community amenities, are poorly connected or simply run down”.

“Good planning,” Elliott said, “is the one tool in our hands that can make places increase people’s opportunities and help lift them from poverty.”

She said devolution in the UK is giving local authorities, as well as new mayors, the opportunity to adopt a “more holistic approach” to planning and improve the places that people live in.

“From putting housing in the right location to designing better bus services, we’d like to see planning at city, county and regional levels tackle physical and social deprivation more directly as a core part of housing delivery and growth deals, supported by social services that address local needs.”

Poverty, Place And Inequality includes a number of case studies that represent the change in physical and social environments that have had a “positive impact” on people and “show an understanding of the environmental dimensions of poverty.

Community-led regeneration The report cites the Central Govan Action Plan (CGAP) as an example. It is a 10-year, community-led, planning partnership and investment framework that aims to guide the physical regeneration of central Govan.

Since 2006, £88 million has been invested through the framework, resulting in the physical transformation of the area.

At the same time, the report says, the quality of life has risen and a “sense of positive and lasting change in a community and place” has been instilled.

The Ocean Estate, in Stepney, Tower Hamlets, is among the 10 per cent most

The Ocean Estate is a key stage in Tower Hamlets council’s bid to build 5,590 low-cost homes over the past five years

deprived areas in England. According to the report, residents were disillusioned with past attempts at regeneration in the estate but did want the area to be improved.

Report author Victoria Pinoncély, research officer at the RTPI, said the estate is an example of “successful regeneration”.

She explained: “It involved local residents and alongside refurbishing 1,200 council properties and building more than a thousand mixed-tenure homes, it provided new retail and community facilities, including a community centre offering an extensive GP service, housing services, space for community groups, and play areas.”

Additionally, minimum place standards tools, such as the Place Standard tool adopted in Scotland, which aims to “support the delivery of high-quality places by providing a framework for the assessment and improvement of new and existing places”, can help to address environmental poverty. n The report can be found here (pdf): www. tinyurl.com/planner0616-rtpipoverty

I M AG E S | F L I C K R J O H N L O R D / T I M C RO C K E R / L E V I T T B E R N S T E I N

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PLAN UPFRONT

Anglesey s.106 agreement seals £120m resort project A £120 million holiday resort scheme at Holyhead on Anglesey has been signed off following lengthy negotiations over the detail of the Section 106 Agreement between developer Land & Lakes (Anglesey) and the county council.

The planning application was the largest ever handled by the local authority.

A leisure park will be built with 500

lodges and cottages at Penrhos Coastal Park, a further 315 lodges at Cae Glas, and 320 homes in the Kingsland area.

Some of the new accommodation will house workers if a new Wylfa nuclear power plant is built on the island.

Talks on a package of measures worth £20 million to mitigate the impact of the scheme have taken two years.

Go-ahead for golf course despite loss of ancient woodland

Mitigation has been proposed by the applicant in the form of soil relocation and compensatory replanting to enhance woodland links throughout the estate.

The Woodland Trust mounted an email campaign hoping to persuade the planning authority to refuse the project.

The Forestry Commission also voiced concern at the loss of the woodland.

The application for full planning permission has been referred to the council’s Kincardine and Mearns Area Committee for the agreement of conditions for the development.

Aberdeenshire councillors have approved proposals for a championship golf course designed by golf legend Jack Nicklaus to be built on the Ury Estate to the north-west of Stonehaven.

The scheme also includes a 90-home development.

Controversially, an area of ancient woodland would have been destroyed to make way for some of the new homes and part of the course.

Officers had recommended that the project should be refused. But members voted 45 to 20 to give the scheme – proposed by the FM Group – the go-ahead.

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New broom plans ‘root and branch’ review of Irish planning The incoming minority Fine Gael government has agreed a programme that includes a ‘root and branch’ review of the planning system and building standards.

It has pledged to end the use of hotels and bed-and-breakfast accommodation for families by delivering 500 new “rapid delivery” homes.

The document setting out the agreed programme says finance for councils would be linked to their ability to deliver in terms of housing, and a new ‘Help to Build’ funding scheme for the development of affordable housing would be set up.

The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) is being urged to be more ambitious in its delivery of housing and use its expected surplus to invest in infrastructure including housing.

The completion of unfinished housing estates would be achieved by 2017 in a move set to cost €10 million.

The document says a new town and village renewal scheme would be rolled out.

Wind farm planning guidelines would be updated within three to six months to offer a “better balance between the concerns of local communities and the need to invest in indigenous energy projects”.

Reports recommend the effective break-up of the Department of Environment and Local Government.

In its place there would be a Department of Housing, Homelessness and Local Government, based in the Custom House.

The environment functions are likely to be subsumed in a new-look version of the old Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. It would become a much bigger department and would probably be known as the Department of Climate Change, Energy and Communications.

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CORRESPONDENCE

I Inbox

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

Peter Foulsham — The proposed Garden Bridge at Waterloo is far too small in scale for an attraction predicted to have 7.1 million visitors a year.

It is a Skinny Lizzy, a very thin bridge except for two wider areas that accommodate small gardens either side of the middle narrow section.

The comparable very successful New York High Line [a 1.45-mile-long New York City linear park built in Manhattan] is five times larger and is located to one side of Manhattan, not in the central area. Congestion is experienced on the High Line in the narrower sections.

The [former] Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s press statement of 19 December 2014 “It will create a stunning oasis of tranquillity in the heart of our city” is completely false – or as he might say “bonkers”.

This proposed bridge is in the very centre of our national capital, a world city – and it should be far bigger in scale – at the very least five times larger.

And the location is not appropriate, even less so taking into account the predicted growth in London’s population both residential and tourist, which is a great challenge for London’s planners. Future tourist policy must locate any future attraction away from London’s central area.

This proposed scheme for this bridge must be stopped to prevent a Very Big Embarrassment for London.

Two minutes with Nicholas Falk DR NICHOLAS FALK is an economist, planner, urbanist, founding director of Urbed and joint author of the Wolfson Economic Prize-winning Uxcester Garden City.

Falk is developing ideas for a new suburban/urban light rail system called Swift Rail What is Swift Rail?

It’s a light rail system for medium-sized towns and cities with growth potential. It uses existing lines and stations and light, fast trains to help create a service that runs frequently. It’s linked with housing development and enables people to get to jobs quickly – without using a car.

Where did the idea come from?

If we are to extend mediumsized towns and cities – places like Oxford, Gloucester and York – we need to find an alternative to the car. These sorts of towns tend to be junctions with railway lines going in three or four different directions, and often a range of stations around them that have been closed. Other countries have focused on local rail services. But railways in Britain have tended to be fragmented [and geared to intercity travel].

Local rail is not much used, although a Metro system has been successful in Manchester and Newcastle.

Why go against the grain and advocate Swift Rail?

It makes sense to encourage people in places that are reasonably dense to use mass transit. A tram or bus will carry many more people than a car.

And the railway is already there.

But don’t we already have branch line services and wouldn’t Swift Rail simply mess up their timetables?

An awful lot of places could

benefit from a more frequent service. What’s odd about the British approach is that we run trains from one end of the country to the other rather than make more frequent local trains. Branch lines in Britain tend to be used infrequently.

There’s a lot of capacity.

Branch lines also tend to use a converted bus called a Pacer, a heavy train that accelerates and brakes slowly.

An underground train, such as one of old District Line stock, will accelerate and brake more quickly, spending less time in the station. This allows for a more frequent service.

How do you get Swift Rail up and running?

I was struck by what goes on in continental countries, but also by what happened with the Docklands Light Railway. This was extended not with a grand plan but by starting where it was easiest and extending a bit at a time until it has joined Docklands and parts of South London together.

You start by picking places that are reasonably high density but have the capacity to take train services so you take some traffic off the roads.

You might also look to bring in isolated council estates where people struggle to get to jobs.

It’s about branding, too.

Look at London with the Overground – by tarting up the stations, buying some trains, and running a more frequent service, they’ve increased use by 600 per cent.

So why hasn’t it happened?

Most people l in Britain seem ignorant of what goes on in the rest of Europe, and are used to the idea that the only way people travel is by car. Railways themselves are obsessed with the problem of long-distance trains and electrification, and it’s hard for them to be promoters of new ideas.

But when I wrote Good Cities, Better Lives with Peter Hall, the message was again and again that this is the only way to do things – to build settlements within reasonable distance [of jobs] and upgrade the infrastructure so that people don’t rely on their cars.

It requires collaboration between the public and private sectors, and transport planners to understand economic development and housing, and everyone to understand urban design.

Surely stations and trains are expensive. Who would pay?

A station isn’t that expensive.

We’re talking about costs that are well within the capital budget of major projects. You lay down a condition that if you are building more than, say, 1,000 houses – you’ve got to contribute to a substantial upgrade of public transport services. Providing you have the principle that you link development to infrastructure upgrades, then you can make it viable and it overcomes a lot of the opposition because the existing population sees a lot of the benefit.

Is there a cost to not investing in these kinds of local transport offerings?

You can argue that in Britain everything is quite impossible and all we do is produce studies and never build anything. I like to think that at some stage either we become a third world country or we remain in the urban galaxy of nations in that we actually build and grow, and in places that are sensible and well connected.

I’m hoping that if Swift Rail can make progress in a few cities then the idea will spread.

It’s a concept of our time and it meets future needs.

Peter Foulsham

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CHRIS SHEPLEY

O Opinion When the nanny state really doesn’t know what’s best I spend some time waiting for trains. So would you if you used Great Western Railways.

A good deal of this time is spent listening to a computer issuing various instructions.

Sometimes it’s apologising, with sincerity, for delays.

But otherwise it nannyishly tells me what to do. Without reference or relevance to my situation, that of other passengers (as I quaintly call them), or the world in general.

I was told the other day to fold buggies and prams before boarding, to beware of slippery surfaces due to wet weather, and to refrain from feeding the pigeons. In the absence of babies, birds or rain, I thought the computer could have saved its breath.

I was then instructed to mind the gap between the train and the platform edge (something I’ve managed to achieve for a few decades now), mind my luggage, and let people off the train first.

There was a warning that doors would be shut 30 seconds before departure to enable a prompt getaway, even on trains that were already 20 minutes late, and an instruction to brush my teeth and wash behind my ears so as not to disturb other passengers. (I may have dreamt that bit).

Sometimes there is a real emergency – for example, after the Hatfield rail tragedy, when the system fell into a kind of black hole. Timetables became irrelevant. I was at my local station one morning amid a vast crowd of hopeful travellers. The staff had no idea whether any trains

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“SOME PEOPLE THINK THIS IS A CONSPIRACY TO WEAKEN PLANNING AS A SOCIAL GOOD, BUT I’M MORE OF A COCK­UP THEORIST” were coming, or where they might be going if they did materialise. But after a long period there was a bingbong, and ears were agog as the computer cranked into action. To an astonished silence, it informed the seething mass of humanity squeezed onto the platform that it was forbidden to use skateboards on the station.

I am reminded of this by the current antics of the Department for Communities and Local Government. In recent years it has been issuing instructions to local

government with a similar incessant, insistent and nannyish frequency. Many of these instruct them to do utterly trivial things. Others advise on things they need no advice about, like developing around commuter hubs, or brushing their teeth and washing behind their ears. (I may have dreamt that bit).

Sometimes there is an emergency, presently to do with housing, and the undesirable situation that in this advanced Western country with, the chancellor tells us, a thriving economy, lots of people can’t afford to buy or rent a home. This upsets me. But recently there has been frantic binging and bonging, and from the government computer have emerged urgent vaguenesses about sink estates, blindingly obvious exhortations about brownfield land, damaging

contrivances about permitted development, menacing wafflings about zoning, illinformed burblings about garden cities, misdirected fury about under-delivery, magisterial stupidities about upward extensions, perpetual recalculations about assorted targets, blame-shifting blather about the green belt, addictive compulsions about competition, and (before the supply of adjectives is exhausted) stuff about CIL, starter homes, local plans, revising the NPPF, permissions in principle, registers, cooling-off periods, neighbourhood forums, and not skateboarding on the platform.

Just as announcements on the station only occasionally refer to trains, so those from the government rarely refer to positive house building measures. There is much tweaking of process and folding of buggies. But no strategic assessment of the need for housing, where to put it, and how to ensure that people can afford it.

Some people think this is a conspiracy to weaken planning as a social good, but I’m more of a cock-up theorist. I think it’s just a mixture of incompetence, impetuosity, ideology and incomprehension.

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

23/05/2016 10:51

Quote unquote FROM THE RTPI AND THE WEB “Sustainability should be fundamental.

It has to be a fundamental [part of development], not just an add-on”

“How does a country get to the point where the average age of a first-time buyer is 38?”

TALKING ABOUT THE EXTENSION TO BICESTER NORTHWEST BICESTER GARY YOUNG, PARTNER, FARRELLS

PAUL BARNARD, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING AND INFRASTRUCTURE, PLYMOUTH CITY COUNCIL

“New garden cities do not have to look like Letchworth. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about being innovative like they were when Letchworth was designed” DAVID AMES, DIRECTOR, LETCHWORTH GARDEN CITY HERITAGE FOUNDATION

“We look at the history and geography of a place. Most places exist because of its geography. The next thing is a place’s history. A place is like a book. A story. It’s a narrative.

Each part of it is a chapter.

It’s continually being written.

When you write a new chapter it should make sense in the context of the rest of the book”

“I think development is an organic process, therefore it is sensible to think about life itself. It’s like growing a garden.

You start by planting the seeds, then you nurture the plants and eventually it grows and it will give you, if you are lucky, a good crop” DR NICOLAS FALK, URBED VISITING PROFESSOR, THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND

“Sadly we still too often hear the glib, lazy criticisms of planning and planners, coming from those who ought to know better. That is why it is important for us to celebrate the achievements, and there are so many really impressive achievements, of planning at its best. That is what we are doing through these awards.”

NICK RAYNSFORD, FORMER PLANNING MINISTER, SPEAKING AT THE RTPI AWARDS FOR PLANNING EXCELLENCE

TALKING ABOUT DEVELOPMENT AND THE PLANNING OF IT ROBERT ADAM, DIRECTOR, ADAM ARCHITECTURE

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

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

O Opinion

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Paul Miner is planning campaign manager at the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)

The New Homes Bonus was introdu introduced in 2011 by the coalition government following political pledges to allow communities to gain more benefit from new development. Since then £3.4 billion of funding has been allocated under the scheme, with a further £1.46 billion to be spent in 2016/17.

Its flaws start from the current method for calculating bonus payments. Payments are made when new houses are built and match the level of council tax raised for a period of six years. This has favoured areas with higher house prices, as calculations use the national average council tax for properties within the relevant council tax band, with both the tax and bonus payments rising in line with property values.

A frequent criticism is that the bonus has been funded by money formerly given to local government through centrally devised funding formulae considering issues such as social need in the local authority area. In July 2014 a Financial Times probe said the scheme has been geographically and socially regressive in its distribution. It said: • London, the South-East, the South-West and East Anglia have reaped £177 million more than they would have done without the bonus – to the detriment of authorities in the Midlands and the North; and

Jamie Ratcliff is assistant director of programme, policy and services in the Greater London Authority’s Housing and Land Directorate

Lesson from America

Does the New Homes Bonus work well with our p planning system?

• The 50 most deprived councils have lost out on £111 million – the 50 least deprived have gained £96m.

The bonus works against government pledges to create a Northern Powerhouse and to prioritise reuse of brownfield sites. Many such sites are in the North and need investment to make development economically viable.

Conversely it appears to encourage councils such as Bedfordshire, Coventry and Durham to plan for largescale housing in the green belt, undermining the gove r n m e n t’ s pledge to protect it.

Ministers are considering proposals for reform published in December, but the changes needed are far more fundamental.

Some current elements such as specific support for affordable housing and reuse of empty homes could be broadly retained.

Greater priority should be given, with support from other government schemes, to delivering brownfield site regeneration and genuinely affordable social housing. Otherwise, the scheme should only support schemes that accord with an agreed local or neighbourhood plan.

The New Homes Bonus should continue to encourage house building but only when it is good-quality development supported by the local community.

“THE 50 MOST DEPRIVED COUNCILS HAVE LOST OUT ON £111M – THE 50 LEAST DEPRIVED GAINED £96M”

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rec Jamie recently undertook a transatlantic job swap with Linda M Wheaton, whose thoughts about England were featured in the April issue of The Planner.

The Californian planning system differs greatly from England’s. It relies mainly on ‘zoning’ to designate use for an area.

With ‘permission in principle’ proposed in the Housing and Planning Bill, the English planning system could be moving towards something similar, which would remove the need for an increasing number of applications to be decided by councillors.

But California still faces obstacles to building enough homes. The process takes considerable time, in part due to complexities in the system that include the California Environmental Quality Act, which seems to give a charter of disruption to NIMBYs and rival developers. There are a variety of local ordinances: one in San Francisco says any height increase on the bay front requires a positive referendum from city residents.

Concerns about gentrification and affordability are as common in San Francisco as in London.

Last autumn a law was proposed to stop housing development in a changing area close to downtown unless it was 100 per cent affordable. It was defeated, but sparked debate about the need for homes of all tenures.

I expected to see significant private sector-led regeneration.

But most was led by the public sector. I saw transport and sportsled regeneration in Sacramento and placemaking on a grand scale in San Francisco at a former naval base (‘The Shipyard) and an artificial island (‘Treasure Island’).

The local tax structure means Tax Increment Financing models are common, and they show the potential for the planned devolution of business rates in England to unlock similar innovation.

Resources for affordable housing in California have reduced in recent years, but there is strong vision, integration and engagement with the funding available.

Most comes through Low Income Housing Tax Credits, but there are also programmes such as the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Fund which links funding for transport and affordable housing together.

An advantage of the Californian system of delivering affordable housing is that it has political consensus. Funding through tax credits – effectively an offset against future tax liabilities as opposed to actual government expenditure – means programmes enjoy strong support across the political spectrum.

Overall, I found the experience of working there most beneficial and would strongly encourage anyone involved in housing development to seek out similar learning opportunities.

“CONCERNS ABOUT GENTRIFICATION & AFFORDABILITY ARE AS COMMON IN SAN FRANCISCO AS IN LONDON”

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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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Lucy Furlong is a poet, teacher and creator of the poetry maps Amniotic City and Over the Fields

The art and meaning of land use

“Art is a fundamental f part of the public realm. In their work, artists express ideas, attitudes and beliefs. Often, these are central to politics, society and economics and, through artistic expression, they gain different resonance and reach.”

So said Nicholas Serota, writing in 2013 under the heading ‘Global Citizenship: a reminder of art’s role in society’ about a series of events at the Tate coinciding with that year’s G8 meeting. The quote explains why it is important to take into consideration artistic responses to a place when considering what to do with land, but there’s more to it than that.

Creative practice is concerned with offering new perspectives and making meaning.

There is a negotiation and a desire to understand by engaging – this is especially true for writers and artists concerned with making work that comes directly from place, the landscape, from nature.

Psychogeography, a term coined by Situationist Guy Debord in 1955, is “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”.

Artists engaged in this pursuit will be making work in their chosen medium, whether that is writing, sculpture or sound,

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which engages with and reflects the ways in which the environment affects them.

These responses to place must be considered when determining what to do with land. Our land is where our culture and knowledge began.

Artist Andy Goldsworthy’s work featured on a recent BBC4 programme about landscape art, Forest, Field & Sky: Art Out Of Nature. He lives in Cumbria, and he sees the landscape as “a place to be challenged and to learn”.

His Tilberthwaite Touchstone Fold, one of a series of outdoor sculptures which use the traditional sheepfolds that have fallen into disuse as farming has modernised, uses local slate and ancient dry stone wall building techniques. These combine with the elements to activate and illuminate each of four embedded sculptures at different times of the day.

Work made by artists as a form of collaboration with the landscape, using the elements and the materials found in the land, acknowledging the perpetual flux and change of the landscape – all of these must be used as pointers when considering what to do with land. Artists are mediators: the land speaks and we must listen to it.

“ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO PLACE MUST BE CONSIDERED WHEN DETERMINING WHAT TO DO WITH LAND”

See Lucy’s poetry map, Over The Fields, at www.lucyfurlong.com

Witness Dzumbira is a postgraduate student in urban and regional planning at Stellenbosch University

Gardening for growth in South Africa’s townships

As the effects of climate change become manifest in Southern Africa, the need to rethink urban livelihoods is an imperative. In South Africa, where there is already huge income inequality and poverty, severe drought is intensifying socio-economic and political risk.

The country has recently seen agitation for Communist-style wealth redistribution and xenophobic attacks.

Such events point to the crumbling of urban livelihoods as economic growth stalls. And globalisation exposes local industries to cutthroat competition.

In South Africa the morphological structure of urban centres worsens the prospects of the poor.

Poor black suburbs are located far from economic opportunity.

Legislation and policy are trying to ‘integrate’ former white and black urban centres, but work must be done to enable indigent communities to control their economic destinies.

Urban centres the world over are susceptible to natural and economic shocks, but the damage caused and time taken to recover reflect local institutional and economic structures.

One way to provide ‘shock absorbers’ is to facilitate small entrepreneurial initiatives. We suggest adding small-scale urban gardening initiatives to the likes of carpentry, welding and street trading. Supported by municipalities, these would be undertaken

in backyards and unattended open spaces in townships.

Such initiatives can assist with the dietary needs of communities and help household budgets. In time, households could sell surplus produce. In the long run, it could breed a new class of smallscale urban entrepreneurs.

Is this proposal in sync with South Africa’s policy frameworks?

It is. chapter 2 of the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (Act 16 of 2013) describes the principle of efficiency, which requires that decisions be taken that minimise negative financial, social, economic or environmental impact on the poor. There is also the principle of spatial sustainability, requiring land management that results in viable communities; and the principle of spatial resilience, which promotes land use management systems that ensure sustainable livelihood in communities most likely to suffer economic and environmental shocks.

As the government fails to attract foreign investment at levels to match unemployment, there is a need to consider ideas such as urban gardening as longterm empowering initiatives.

“IN THE LONG RUN, IT COULD BREED A NEW CLASS OF SMALL­ SCALE URBAN ENTREPRENEURS”

Witness is a member of the Commonwealth Association of Young Planners. We’ll be looking at sustainable development around the world in the run-up to the UNHabitat III conference in October

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I N T E R V I E W D R A LFO N S O V EG A R A

HE AD THE

ARCHITECT, PLANNER, SOCIOLOGIST, ECONOMIST, POLITICAL SCIENTIST… ALFONSO VEGARA BRINGS THE FULL SCOPE OF HIS KNOWLEDGE TO BEAR ON THE CREATION OF ‘POLYCENTRIC’ CITY CLUSTERS THAT CAN COMPETE WITH THE WORLD’S MEGACITIES. HERE HE TELLS SIMON WICKS WHY THE FUTURE LIES IN ‘INTELLIGENT TERRITORIES’

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D For someone who didn’t grow up in a city, Alfonso Vegara is more than making up for lost time. A child of rural Alicante in southern Spain, he didn’t get a proper taste of urban life until heading north, to Navarra in the Basque Country, to study architecture in his late teens.

“From the moment I began studying [in Pamplona], I immediately discovered that the scale of the city was fascinating for me,” he recalls. “But I saw the architectural school as a very isolated approach to the city, and at that time a lot of the universities in Spain were beginning a programme of urban economics, so I decided to combine my education there with the university of Valencia [some 500km away], where this programme was beginning.”

He continues: “By combining these two things I tried to discover a key point, which is the competitiveness of cities, territorial and economic. I did my [city and regional planning] PhD on this relationship between territory and economics, and what the key components of competitiveness are at the scale of cities.

POLYCENTRIC POLYMATH PHOTOGRAPHY B E N RO B E RT S

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“Traditionally economists were discussing competitiveness in relation to countries, but not to cities – and this fascinated me.”

It’s a full answer to a simple question “Reinventing the (“Why do you study cities?”) and one that city is a permanent task, and planners winds across a varied terrain. We’ve quickly need to have a very established that Vegara is an enthusiast for important role in cities, a polymath [he also has a sociology the future of cities. degree], and a man of considerable scope.

Our profession The modern term for his approach to urban runs the risk of becoming irrelevant planning might be ‘holistic’, a word that pepif we are not pers his conversation. And it’s not just in his providing solutions work that he’s so variegated. When I ask to this challenge, which city he lives in, Vegara names four: as economists and politicians are” Madrid, Bogota, Singapore and Mexico City.

“I try to enjoy being mobile,” he smiles.

Mobility is essential to Vegara’s approach to city planning. He thinks in terms of ‘territorios inteligentes’ – smart territories – wrapped around ‘polycentric’ city clusters. These are places with clear identities of their own that nevertheless collaborate financially, technically, commercially, educationally and politically to compete with the world’s ‘megacities’ – London, New York, Beijing. It’s a way of enabling medium-sized cities to become more than the sum of their parts. Given that it’s these cities that are predicted to see the greatest growth in coming decades, it makes sense to focus resources here, says Vegara.

Megacities, he observes, “have a lot of disadvantages in terms of transportation and pollution, and they are losing competitiveness. Medium-sized cities, when they are connected, when they have the opportunity to define their own urban profile, they can really be relevant at a global scale.”

C V

HIG HL IG HT S

DR A LFONS O V EG A R A Education: Degrees in: Architecture, University of Navarra, 1979; Regional and Urban Economy, University of Valencia 1979; Urbanism (City and Regional Planning), Navarra 1983 (PhD); Sociological Politics, University of Madrid 1988 Born: Jacarilla, Alicante, 1955 Timeline:

1979­88 Professor, Department of Urbanism, University of Navarra, Pamplona

1983­92 Professor, Department of Urbanism, Polytechnic University of Madrid

1994 ECTP-CEU

Highly Commended for Basque Country Territorial Planning Guidelines

1997 Visiting professor, City and Regional Planning Department, University of Pennsylvania

1997

Founded Fundación Metrópoli, Madrid

European Urban and Regional Planning Awards,

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2002 Adviser to Urban Redevelopment Authority, Ministry of National Development, Singapore

2003­06 President of ISOCARP (International Society of City and Regional Planners)

2006 ECTP-CEU European Urban and Regional Planning Awards

winner for Basque Regional Strategy

2008

ECTP-CEU European Urban and Regional Planning Awards winner for EcoCity of Sarriguren

2015 World Smart City Awards Innovative Idea Award winner for the Caribbean and Santanderes Diamond project in Colombia

He urges planners to see beyond traditional city boundaries and into broader territories of shared geography, culture and commercial interest. “When you think of the scale of the city, the municipal boundary, or at the scale of the traditional region, sometimes the opportunities and challenges are outside of these boundaries," he says. "So we need a new kind of leadership, where vision and creativity will be fundamental to understand these new areas that are becoming the economic powers of the world.”

At this point it sounds extremely theoretical.

But Vegara has form as a practical planner, having won awards for schemes enacted in the Basque Country, Singapore and Colombia. He’ll be sharing his experiences at the RTPI convention, addressing the challenges to planners of the globe’s growing urban population.

Planning as rehabilitation Vegara’s first significant exploration of the city cluster model – and its potential to ‘rehabilitate’ regions – occurred in the Basque Country where he studied and taught. His Basque Regional strategy envisaged Bilbao, San Sebastian and Vittoria-Gasteiz as nodes within a single territory, connected physically and strategically.

“For years we were working with different political sensitivities to create this first diamond with three capitals,” he explains. “Connecting the three cities was a challenge. But the time distance between Bilbao and San Sebastian (100km apart) will now be only 22 minutes. This was the first example of creating a super-city, but now we are promoting this worldwide.”

What aided the venture (part of a long-term regeneration post-Franco) was a shared sense of identity. “It was a very interesting case of the Basque country trying to recapture their identity, and using their territory as a main factor of identity and feeling of belonging,” says Vegara, adding: “Territory is a main component of identity.”

He immediately goes on to talk about his work in Singapore where, again, new transport links have knitted cities within wider regions. Here, the ‘rehabilitation’ has involved criss-crossing civic and political boundaries between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur – cities with a history of poor relations. High-speed rail between the two opens up an enormous area to tens of millions of people; connectivity reduces discord and promotes collaboration.

But Colombia is where Vegara’s polycentic city is seeing its fullest expression. The ‘Caribbean diamond’ is a network of 10 cities in a territory of 14 million people. High-speed rail, regional transit systems and digital infrastructure are all being used to connect inland and coastal areas in a way that enables all to benefit from ports that offer a trading gateway to the “Grand Caribbean

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Singapore: Four layers of a smart city Vegara has close ties with Singapore, maintaining a home there, advising the Ministry of National Development and working with that ministry’s Centre for Liveable Cities to develop and execute ideas around ‘intelligent territories’ and city clusters.

“One of the places that is dealing in a more holistic way with this concept of the ‘smart city’ is Singapore.

We’ve been helping Singapore for 15 years in different ways. They are a smart nation – a city-state – and there are four layers:

(1) The physical layer – the physical structure of the

city, the environmental system, etc. It is key. You can have a fantastic application for the efficiency of a transport system but if the physical structure is not appropriate, even if you have good technology, you don’t have a good chance.

(2) Broadband connectivity – having a digital infrastructure that allows you to develop different institutions, etc.

(3) The idea of open data – having access to data.

Singapore now has 11,000 databases that are open to the public to accelerate innovation.

(4) People, education, and application. This is a

much more holistic approach. We need to go beyond smart. We need to discover the intelligence of the territory through leadership, participation, and how the technology can help.

and the rest of the world”.

“Given Columbia’s turbulent history, a key thing to implement in a country severely lacking in road infrastructure and transport is digital technology, which is very inexpensive and you can implement immediately,” Vegara explains.

“So you don’t need a generation to build a road or a train system. Digital technology and education will accelerate the process of connecting universities, individuals, cities, departments. It's helping a lot.”

Considerable resources have been brought to bear on its creation – from Microsoft, experimenting with new technology via its Next Cities Lab, and from the Colombian national bank Findeter. But such complex ventures stand or fall on the strength of city leadership, Vegara suggests.

“Imagine working at the same time with 10 different political parties and trying to discover the singularities of each of the cities. The key is the quality of the people leading the institutions.

We're seeing a new generation of leaders [in Colombia] without corruption, with commitment to their own objectives and the credibility to ask the private sector to contribute to public objectives." But, he adds, "With 10 cities you cannot hope that every city will run the same way, so you'll have an asymmetric process. Some will grow rapidly; for some, nothing will happen.”

“This idea of creating a polycentric structure will be crucial in the future for increasing the importance of medium-sized cities”

A lot of technology will help with improving quality of life, but without serving that holistic vision of the city, technology will lack sense. In five years’ time people will not talk about smart as the panacea, they will talk about other things. They will talk about the values that the planning profession has been cultivating for centuries – this idea of having a vision of a city in their own context with a participatory process of sharing this nation. And then to identify how the technology can help to realise this vision in a much more humane approach.”

Polycentricity in the UK There is synchronicity here with the UK’s own shift towards city regions.

In a hyper-connected world subject to intense population pressure and competition for resources, clustering is arguably a rational step. “Today for cities, it's not only important to understand your singularities," Vegara stresses. "You also need to understand the context of how cities are developing, and how other cities around the world are positioning themselves, to define your strategic position.”

His work also dovetails with October’s UN-Habitat III conference in Ecuador, which will set the direction of travel for sustainable urban planning for the next 20 years. His schemes are on point, but he has a warning for planners. “The cities that I know are more creative and more successful have two levels of organisation: A planning department that runs with daily activities, but they also have another department thinking for the future.

“This idea of reinventing the city is a permanent task, and planners need to have a very important role in the future of cities,” he concludes. “Our profession runs the risk of becoming irrelevant if we are not providing solutions to this challenge, as economists and politicians are.”

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I N T E R V I E W A LFO N S O V EG A R A

“Everything is mobile in a global economy. The only fixed things are your place, your historical centre, your weather, your identity, your landscape, your idiosyncrasies. These are the only ways to differentiate yourself in a globalised and standardised world. Territorial policies are more important than sectorial policies.

“All our professional life has been focused on trying to discover how cities can structure their identity and identify their vocation. A city cannot try to do everything – it needs to define its own specific orientation, its own identity.

And this needs to be done in a participatory way.”

DR ALFONSO VEGARA

Alfonso Vegara will be giving the opening address at the RTPI Planning Convention on 28 June, on the theme of Better planning solutions: The art of the possible.

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YOUR GUIDE TO THE RTPI PLANNING CONVENTION 2016

T H E

P R O

Forecasters predict that the UK population will hit 70 million by 2030, so planners are under unprecedented pressure to deliver places that accommodate this growth. But how do they go about it?

Titled Better planning solutions: the challenge of growth, this year’s RTPI Convention on 28 June will see a host of planning and built environment experts tackling the conundrums of growth.

8.30 Breakfast briefing – ask PINS

How do we ensure that housing is affordable, well located and supports economic growth? What sort of transport and energy infrastructure is most desirable and achievable? Where will the money come from? Here’s our guide to the day, with highlights.

9.30 Presidential welcome The RTPI's 2016 president Phil Williams, introduces the themes of the day.

10.00 Keynote address – The infrastructure challenge What kind of investment is needed to build a genuinely sustainable national energy infrastructure? National Infrastructure Commission chair Lord Adonis outlines the challenge, and potential solutions.

£100m

cash to be spent on infrastructure by 2020

low res

10.55 Introducing the housing challenge “It’s about trying to get more sustainable, cheap, efficient transport in a more integrated way to reduce that burden.

Housing is key, but its location is critical.”

PHIL WILLIAMS

Phil Williams on the issues facing housing development in the UK.

9.40 Opening address – Better planning solutions; the art of the possible Fundación Metropóli founder Alfonso Vegara on what planners can learn from international projects when planning for sustainable development. Read our interview on pages 18-23.

A chance to put your questions directly to the Planning Inspectorate’s new chief exec Sarah Richards and her colleague Mark Southgate, director of major applications.

66%

8.30

9.30

9.40 of the world’s population predicted to be urban in 2050

10.00

10.25 10.25 Morning break and networking

10.55 11.05 How well have we done in accommodating growth Jo Davis, senior director at Bilfinger GVA, discusses the challenge of delivering housing for the UK’s growing population.

11.05

11.20 The value of the plan “The key ingredients of a pioneering approach [to plan-making] – securing political and stakeholder buy-in and the importance of proactively managed relationships.”

PAUL BARNARD

What makes a great plan?

Paul Barnard, assistant director of strategic planning and infrastructure at Plymouth City Council, knows better than most – his council has picked up multiple awards for its city and housing plans.

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11.35 Panel: What can be done better?

11.20

Chief planner Steve Quartermain chairs an open debate on how we can better plan for more housing. With Shelter’s Toby Lloyd, AECOM’s Andrew Jones, Yolande Barnes of Savills and Dulwich and West Norwood MP Helen Hayes.

“The solution to meeting our housing needs is to build more homes across a wide range of tenures, not pricing some of our most committed and hard-working tenants out of their homes.” HELEN HAYES MP, DULWICH AND WEST NORWOOD

11.35

12.50 Lunch and networking

12.50

I M AG E S | C I C E RO G RO U P / I S TO C K / P E T E R S E A R L E / S H U T T E R S TO C K

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G

For more information and to view the full programme, visit: www.theplanningconvention.co.uk

G R A M M E 2.00

3.15

3.45

2.00 Pick a panel discussion from a choice of four: 1. Can we ever have a fair deal on land?

2. How do we keep the lights on?

3. Building quality into design

4. Smart city – hype or happening?

Is the current system sufficient to capture land value needed for infrastructure? How might it be improved, and can we learn from elsewhere? Panel discussion with European Council of Spatial Planners president Joris Scheers, WYG’s head of planning Steven Fidgett, Rebecca Sudworth of Peabody, and land writer and researcher Andrew Wightman.

As the growing population puts more demand on energy infrastructure, how can planners help to balance energy needs with the need to cut carbon emissions?

Discussion featuring Alex Herbert, head of planning at Tidal Lagoon Power, Giles Scott, head of national infrastructure consents at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and Hugh Ellis, TCPA head of policy.

Planners are under pressure to approve new housing schemes.

But how do you ensure that housing is well designed and meets the needs of communities?

With Bartlett professor Matthew Carmona, Ben Bolgar, director of the Prince’s Foundation, and Eileen Thomas, chair of the RTPI’s Urban Design Network.

Can cities be smart and inclusive and sustainable? What lessons can be learned from current tech city hubs? With RTPI policy officer Joe Kilroy, and Peter Madden OBE, chief executive of Future Catapult Cities

“Planning should be about constantly reassessing needs, positively promoting sustainable development and providing for development in a manner that places least stress on transport and essential infrastructure.” STEVEN FIDGETT

3.15 Afternoon break and networking

“Whilst there are added complications for neighbourhood plans in urban areas, that does not mean their distinctiveness should be lost with new development” BEN BOLGAR

4.00 4.15 Empowering planning in Scotland 4.00 Do we need a ‘Great North Plan?’

4.15

Scotland’s chief planner John McNairney discusses the ‘game-changing’ review of the Scottish planning system.

Ed Cox, director of think tank IPPR, asks: can a northern economic powerhouse happen without a Great North Plan?

3.45 Ministerial address Andrew Jones MP, parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, delivers the government view.

4.30 Speed presentations: The future of planning Punchy presentations from seven young planners showcasing their thoughts on the future of the profession. With: n Viral Desai, RTPI Young Planner of the Year 2015 n Lucy Seymour-Bowdery, young planner representative on the RTPI board of trustees n Pádraig Collins, UCC Planning School (Cork) graduate n Lotti Wilkinson, University of Cardiff graduate n Lisa Proudfoot, University of Dundee graduate n Kate Hogarth, Cape Town University graduate n Sean Peacock, Newcastle University graduate

4.30

5.30 Ethics under pressure

5.30

6.00

Quod director Sue Willcox, American Planning Association president Carol Rhea and the RTPI’s director of professional standards, Rosslyn Stuart, question whether ethical standards can be maintained in an increasingly international and drastically underresourced planning arena.

“Strategic spatial planning is vital to securing sustainable economic growth in the UK” LUCY SEYMOUR BOWDERY

6.00 Presidential address Phil Williams explores the opportunities for planning over the next 12 months. With closing comments from RTPI chief executive Trudi Elliott.

Shhh... A little birdie tells us that housing and planning minister Brandon Lewis will also be speaking at the convention.

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CI T Y D E V O LU T I O N

Devolution of powers to city regions and combined authorities is supposed to usher in an age of rationally organised local government. But the picture is piecemeal, ďŹ nds Mark Smulian

A PATCHWORK OF POWER I L L U S T R AT I O N | P E T E R C ROW T H E R

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MARK

SMULIAN

A GOLDEN AGE for planning, or a blizzard of P45s?

Austerity has unleashed the twin processes of local government devolution and reorganisation, which intertwine and bring promise and threat.

Some planners are about to participate in an exercise of devolved powers wider than any local authority could have previously imagined.

Some, though, may ďŹ nd their council vanishes in an unpredictable changing of boundaries.

Councillors and planners have long called for devolution, arguing that localities can make better decisions about local strategic plans and infrastructure investment than can someone in Whitehall.

They have found a perhaps surprisingly receptive ear in chancellor George Osborne, who has sanctioned several devolution deals and encouraged applications for others.

These have so far been in the main conurbations and a few shire areas, and almost all involve powers over strategic

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CI T Y D E V O LU T I O N

planning, transport and infrastructure.

According to one’s view, Osborne either genuinely believes unleashing local power will better encourage economic growth, or thinks it will dump unpopular decisions on someone else.

Some groups of councils have happily formed combined authorities, in which they will jointly exercise devolved powers while retaining their normal day-today ones. Elsewhere, loudly acrimonious disputes have arisen.

The Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 contained measures to make forming combined authorities easier (for example, for most councils to proceed if one or two dissented.)

These also allowed for reorganisation of councils and, whatever ministers intended, some districts sensed an opportunity to abolish their county council and join their neighbours to form new unitaries.

They argued that the two-tier system, which still covers most of England, was confusing and expensive, and unitary councils would perform better – a proposition that predictably antagonised the counties.

Two possibly conflicting processes are thus in progress – devolution from Whitehall to councils voluntarily grouped into combined authorities, and the creation of unitary councils in two-tier areas.

Just to make it more confusing, places can be affected by one, both or neither of these potentially radical changes.

“IN BIG CITIES AND PREDOMINATELY URBAN AREAS IT MAKES GOOD SENSE TO HAVE AN ELECTED MAYOR … WITH RURAL AREAS ITS LESS CLEAR THAT WOULD WORK EFFECTIVELY AND THERE ARE OTHER MODELS LIKE CABINETS”

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HIGHER POWERS Catherine Staite, director of the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Local Government Studies, foresees “a golden era for planning, freer from central government control” in devolution, with combined authorities able to plan across larger areas for infrastructure, transport and housing.

“Planning has been difficult for local authorities because almost everything has some cross-boundary dimension, so councils have to work together and combined authorities would make that easier.”

The RTPI’s policy head Richard Blyth is “pleased that things seem to be moving from simply telling councils they should co-operate on planning to the incentive ‘there might be something in it for you’, which is when chief executives begin to prick up their ears”.

Devolution began in Greater Manchester, where the 10 boroughs had a long history of collaboration and no one disputed its boundary.

The combined authority’s devolved powers include a long-term transport budget, bus franchising, a £300 million housing fund, and extra money for infrastructure if it hits economic growth targets.

It will produce a plan to manage the supply of employment and housing land, and the roads, rail and utilities needed to deliver this, drawing on a land commission that will identify surplus public sites.

The combined authority has described this plan as “the overarching development plan within which Greater Manchester’s 10 local planning authorities can identify more detailed sites for jobs and homes in their own area”.

Greater Manchester has, in return, had to agree to the government’s insistence on an elected mayoralty to exercise the devolved powers, although one who is more ‘first among equals’ with the 10 borough leaders than enjoying the almost untrammelled power of the Greater London mayor.

Ben Harrison, director of communications at the Centre for Cities think tank, says the government’s rigid insistence on elected mayors in every devolution deal has caused unnecessary difficulties.

“PLANNING HAS BEEN DIFFICULT FOR LOCAL AUTHORITIES BECAUSE ALMOST EVERYTHING HAS SOME CROSS­ BOUNDARY DIMENSION, SO COUNCILS HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER AND COMBINED AUTHORITIES WOULD MAKE THAT EASIER”

“In big cities and predominately urban areas it makes good sense to have an elected mayor and that the post is important to prioritising investment,” he says.

“With rural areas it’s less clear that would work effectively and there are other models like cabinets.”

The RTPI is working with the Institute for Public Policy Research North think tank on a ‘great North plan’ for devolution, explains Blyth.

“We both felt there were some important aspects that were not getting airtime,” Blyth says.

“There is more to the North than city centres. It has considerable natural assets, a lot of room, water, potential for nuclear and renewable industries.

“Also, a lot has been done to encourage co-operation from city regions but less on, for example, how Liverpool and Manchester should cooperate, and on things that affect the whole region.”

UNEDIFYING WRANGLING Other conurbations enviously saw Greater Manchester’s deal and wanted their own.

One was agreed for the Liverpool city region after the offer was improved sufficiently to persuade the other councils – which feared domination by Liverpool – to drop their objections to a regional elected mayor.

Tyne & Wear became part of a wider North-East devolution deal, but Gateshead later withdrew owing to concerns about a mayor and the money on offer. Neighbouring Tees Valley has

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Unity from the bottom up? secured a separate deal.

The West Midlands suffered months of disputes about membership before settling on an urban core of Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, plus a rather random collection of districts as associate members – Redditch and Tamworth have joined, but not Bromsgrove and Rugby, for example.

Sheffield city region, based on South Yorkshire, secured a deal, but an accidental effect was that Chesterfield and Bassetlaw opted to join it rather than the putative Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire combined authority, despite each being in the respective county concerned.

The Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire devolution bid is in trouble, having been on the brink of being signed this spring when Chesterfield and Bassetlaw defected, High Peak decided to seek associate status with Greater Manchester, and Amber Valley, Erewash and South Derbyshire opted out over cost issues.

Leeds city region has been the most problematic of the conurbations, despite securing a limited devolution deal last year, because its economic footprint includes the districts of Craven, Harrogate and Selby, and North Yorkshire County Council declines to surrender its highways and transportation powers over this trio to the city region, halting progress.

Harrison says: “We still need to get the big city combined authorities right. In particular the Leeds city region is very important to the country’s economic performance because of its growth prospects and position in the Northern Powerhouse.”

The Leeds impasse provoked North Yorkshire to seek a separate devolution deal with York and East Riding councils, but not Hull, which is locked in a bitter boundary dispute with surrounding East Riding.

Disharmony on the north bank of the Humber perhaps convinced North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire, on the south side, to work instead with Lincolnshire County Council, a combination that secured a devolution deal in the Budget.

That also saw a proposed deal for East Anglia, but the government forced Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council to join with Norfolk and Suffolk county councils.

No sooner had the government said it would entertain local authority reorganisation proposals than Oxfordshire districts urged that the county council should be replaced with unitaries, which, because of existing joint working, would spread into neighbouring counties.

There would be four new councils: Oxford City; West Oxfordshire and Cotswold; Cherwell and South Northamptonshire; South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse.

Oxfordshire County Council reacted with hostility, as did Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire, which faced losing territory. The latter became yet angrier when the remaining districts said that if South

Northamptonshire was leaving they might as well form unitaries too.

Districts in Buckinghamshire, Dorset and Kent have also promoted unitaries and the contagion is unlikely to stop there.

Local government’s last fundamental reorganisation in 1974 saw Whitehall impose boundaries. This time the bottom-up approach may yield reorganisation by consent, or cause disorderly acrimony.

Tony Travers says: “We have ended up with something more like a wholesale reorganisation of local government from the bottom up, partly because of arguments from Conservative MPs that [combined authorities meant] the government would be creating three tiers of local authorities.”

He thinks the future may

“THERE IS MORE TO THE NORTH THAN CITY CENTRES. IT HAS CONSIDERABLE NATURAL ASSETS, A LOT OF ROOM, WATER, POTENTIAL FOR NUCLEAR AND RENEWABLE INDUSTRIES” The former pair are trying to unstitch this, arguing that East Anglia is too large an area and the extra money involved would be diffused rather than focused on Cambridge’s acute housing problems.

Cornwall last year secured the first single-county devolution deal, its poor economic position and cultural singularity helping to convince ministers of its case.

Elsewhere, devolution ranges from work amicably in progress to unedifying wrangling. Bristol, Bath and the surrounding area are negotiating a deal, as are Leicestershire and Worcestershire.

But both Essex and Hampshire have been hit by their respective urban souths wanting separate devolution deals from what they see as the largely rural norths,

be unitaries – either new or existing – that also belong to combined authorities.

Catherine Staite is a supporter of unitaries.

She argues that “there are too many councils and too many local politicians in too little territory”.

She adds: “I don’t think central government will want to impose reorganisation, but I don’t think it can be entirely left to councils either to ‘find a friend’.”

Staite suggests local government should create the design principles for new councils and “then see what that gives you.”

while two rival bids cover the area around Brighton and Hove.

Given these complex stand-offs and knotty negotiations, the future of local government is far from clear. But there does seem to be a natural deadline by which authorities have an incentive to sort out their arrangements.

Prominent local government commentator Professor Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, thinks devolution has coincided with the change by 2020 to councils being part-funded by retaining business rates, giving them an incentive to encourage development.

This means that devolution to cities and city regions should be of considerable interest to planners – particularly in an era in which the planning profession is being encouraged to release the forces that drive economic growth.

“A lot of the combined authorities proposed have planning powers,” notes Travers, “and it’s happened at the same time as economic pressures on planning have increased, with business rate retention and the New Homes Bonus bringing land use planning and economic planning closer together.”

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R T P I A W A R D S : S I LV E R J U B I L E E C U P

CASE ST UDY

A PLAN FOR PLYMOUTH

Cargo 1 and Cargo 2 – a residential and commercial development in the Millbay area of the city (main image and far right)

AWARDS: SILVER JUBILEE CUP, EXCELLENCE IN PLANNING FOR HOUSING PROJECT NAME: PLAN FOR HOMES KEY PLAYERS/PARTNERS: PLYMOUTH CITY COUNCIL, PLYMOUTH HOUSING DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP, HOMES AND COMMUNITIES AGENCY, DEVELOPERS, HOUSE BUILDERS, CONTRACTORS, LAND OWNERS, LOCAL COMMUNITIES

BY M A R K S M U L I A N

Almost every council wants to deliver more new homes and quickly, but barriers of funding, planning, land availability, public opposition and the house building industry’s capacity can impede this.

Plymouth City Council decided that it needed something radical to secure the amount of housing needed for the city’s growth plans, and its solution in its Plan for Homes has won the 2016 RTPI Silver Jubilee Cup. The project also won the Excellence in Planning for Housing Category in May’s RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence, and Plymouth carried off the Local Authority Planning Team of the Year award to boot.

The Plan for Homes seeks to secure 22,700 new homes by 2031, of which at least 30 per cent will be affordable.

These targets have been set against an economic backdrop of some 18,600 expected new jobs over the same period, during which the city’s population is projected to grow from 258,000 to more than 300,000.

Plymouth’s growth is centred on Western Europe’s largest naval base, one of the country’s largest science parks, an impor-

30

tant marine sector and the general commerce of the principal city of England’s far south-west.

Paul Barnard, assistant director for strategic planning and infrastructure, explains: “Our strategic plan, which has been in place since 2007 is very progrowth. The council is keen to accelerate delivery of housing and that is where the Plan for Homes came in.”

There were three main ways in which the council could help to increase the speed of house building: clearing obstacles where possible from the 6,151 homes that had planning permission but on which no work had started; finding council land suitable for house building; and offering a £50 million loan facility for affordable homes.

“THE PLAN IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE MAJOR CONTRIBUTION PLANNERS ARE MAKING TO TACKLE THE NATION’S HOUSING CRISIS”

PA C E Y D E L I V E RY The plan’s breakthrough innovation, however, is in the way it deals with European Union rules when procuring buyers for council land.

In less than 18 months detailed searches by officers had found some 138 acres of available land owned by the council on 33 sites. These could accommodate 1,600 homes, ranging from a 60-acre site suitable for 550 homes down to patches of land that would take a handful of selfbuild units.

But there was a snag; if the council issued specifications for each, the resulting procurement of a developer would have had to go through the lengthy Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) public procurement process, when councillors were instead looking for speed in construction.

“The innovative thing was we used the planning system to release land,” says Barnard. “We produced two-page site planning statements that set out what we wanted to see, and because the planning system is public policy, and so not subject to EU procurement rules, we were able to

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J U D G E S’ C O M M E N T S What they said about the Plan for Homes “Plymouth’s Plan for Homes successfully addresses the serious housing issues in the local area, looking to deliver a large number of houses, half of which will be affordable. The plan is an example of the major contribution planners are making to tackle the nation’s housing crisis ” – Phil Williams, RTPI president “The Plan for Homes is an innovative solution to Plymouth’s housing problems […] The very high quality of finalists this year made selecting the winners in each of the categories challenging, but the high quality of this entry made it stand out” – Roisin Willmott, RTPI Cymru director and awards adviser

avoid going through them.

“The way we did it, because we did not specify requirements as landowner, it was not subject to OJEU.” Each statement would describe the site concerned and state what the council would consider appropriate for it.

Developers would then submit a proposition for however many homes they felt viable, and once one was accepted planning gain would be negotiated in the normal way. Bids submitted were thus always compliant with planning policy.

A developer might, for example, bid £5 million for a site and offer 35 per cent affordable housing while another might

“SWEEPING STATEMENTS ARE MADE ABOUT PLANNING DELAYS, BUT THE REAL STORY IS THAT EVERY SITE HAS AN ISSUE AND IF YOU CAN TARGET THAT ISSUE YOU CAN SAY, ‘IS THERE A WAY TO SOLVE THIS?’ ”

offer £4 million but 50 per cent affordable housing.

Councillors could then make a political decision between the two depending on their judgement of whether the higher capital receipt or higher amount of affordable homes was the priority.

“We got loads of land into the market very fast,” recalls Barnard.

This strategic land review was a mammoth task, but among the sites found were 40 that Barnard doubts would otherwise have had their housing potential noticed.

Another departure from usual practice was that dedicated housing and plan-

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R T P I A W A R D S : S I LV E R J U B I L E E C U P

THE PLAN FOR HOMES IN FIGURES

5,000

New homes in Plymouth over five years from 2014/15

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Council-owned sites with contracts in place 840 Affordable homes out of 1,650 being built on 32 city sites

£50m

Affordable housing loan facility for registered providers, co-operatives and community land trusts

971

Completions so far; 894 homes under construction

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Long-term empty homes brought back into use A vision for Ker Street, with Devonport Town Hall and the Devonport Column at the far end

ning officers were attached to each site to move them quickly through the planning process.

The Homes and Communities Agency was supportive, helping to develop bids under the affordable housing programme.

The council also encouraged smaller local builders to take on sites in the 10-20 units range, so adding their capacity to that of volume house builders who would take on larger ones.

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Custom-build homes planned for city council sites

I N T E RV E N T I O N S W I T H I M PA C T For the stalled homes with permission, officers reviewed all the sites and contacted landowners and developers to discuss whether the council help unlock them.

Measures included renegotiated Section 106 requirements for infrastructure and developing funding bids.

“There were always myriad different reasons for them not starting construction, from finding Japanese knotweed through to not having finance for junction improvements required to develop the site,” says Barnard.

“We in some cases acquired the sites and in others were able to revise some applications.

“For example, perhaps a junction improvement was required at the

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Eco homes in Garrison Close, Devonport

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PLYMOUTH WAS HEAVILY TARGETED BY THE LUFTWAFFE IN ‘THE PLYMOUTH BLITZ’ IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR. MUCH OF THE CITY CENTRE AND CLOSE TO 4,000 HOMES WERE DESTROYED

The original Plan for Plymouth Being a major port and naval base, Plymouth was heavily targeted by the Luftwaffe in ‘the Plymouth Blitz’ in the Second World War. Much of the city centre and close to 4,000 homes were destroyed. The city’s

beginning, but maybe the highways network could cope sufficiently for that to be built a bit later, and that can be quite significant for cash flow on smaller sites.”

He adds: “Sweeping statements are made about planning delays, but the real story is that every site has an issue and if you can target that issue you can say, ‘is there a way to solve this?’”

In an ideal world the council would grant aid affordable housing construction, but with this being unaffordable it instead set up a £50 million revolving fund.

The council can borrow from the Public Works Loans Board at low rates and then lend money on to affordable housing developers at a cheaper rate than they could otherwise obtain. When repaid, the money is used for further projects.

Plymouth’s housing land problems are compounded by it being constrained by the sea and the River Tamar on two sides, Dartmoor to the north, and with expansion readily available only to its east.

There are three growth areas where

redevelopment was planned by Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Plymouth’s city engineer James Paton Watson in their 1943 Plan for Plymouth (which Abercrombie produced simultaneously with his reconstruction plan for London).

The plan envisaged a zoned city centre influenced by the Beaux Arts’ ‘City Beautiful’

the vast majority of 22,700 new homes will be located: at Derriford around the science park and hospital; the 200-acre Plymstock Quarry and 5,000 homes Sherford new town to the east; and the city centre and waterfront.

POLITICAL CONSENSUS The Plan for Homes was developed with an unusual degree of cross-party political support. Until last month’s local elections, the balance of power between the Labour and Conservative parties was held by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). With neither major party willing to work with the latter, a formal LabourTory ‘working arrangement’ had governed the city. (A Conservative-UKIP coalition has since taken control.)

“Plan for Homes has been bipartisan, though there are issues on individual sites, but as an officer it’s been really productive for members to challenge us while they share a recognition of the scale of the housing challenge”, says Barnard.

Like many cities, Plymouth has issues I M AG E | G E T T Y

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style, Lutyens’ plans for New Delhi and the formation of Welwyn Garden City.

The plan did not receive universal approval and required the city council to compulsorily purchase bomb-damaged and non-bomb-damaged buildings and to control all development. Work began in 1947. By 1964, more than 20,000 new

homes had been built, turning what had been a high-density city into a lower-density settlement with a more suburban character.

James Paton Watson always considered housing to be the most important aspect of the plan.

Source: Plymouth City Council

of affordability and public resistance to building.

Although property prices are nothing like those of London, a factor of 6.5 times the average salary of only £20,000 is needed to buy a lower quartile house.

To try to overcome this, the council has run local versions of the Homes for Britain campaign “to shout about housing and get housing out there as an issue”, says Barnard.

“It’s very serious. How does a country get to the point where the average age of a first-time buyer is 38?

“Part of the reason is a lack of supply.

That is partly funding and partly political will to deliver housing in the face of sometimes strong local opposition. There are still inevitable public objections to house building, though support too.”

n For a well-informed account of the Plan for Plymouth and its implementation, read the Municipal Dreams blog: www.tinyurl.com/planner0616-plymouthplanning

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INSIGHT

Career { D E V E L O P M E N T C CAREER DEVELOPMENT: HOW TO BENEFIT FROM ENTERING AWARDS

A variety of built environment awards are handed out every year by organisations such as the RTPI and RIBA. Is this just backslapping, or are there genuine benefits to be gained from entering projects for awards?

David Blackman weighs up the pros and cons delivering better quality environments.

For winners – and even those shortlisted – there may be a variety of benefits, ranging from the glow of recognition to a higher profile among potential clients and investors.

But entering for awards can be a daunting prospect. There’s no guarantee of success and, of course, preparing applications can be time-consuming.

Is it worth it?

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Team building

A fillip for the team is one of the chief benefits of winning or even being shortlisted for an award. Martin says: “For the individuals involved, it was hugely positive to get some recognition from inside and outside the organisation that we have done a good job. On an individual level, it has hugely boosted morale.”

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More work

lThe benefits

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Higher profile

“When you’re doing the day job you just get on with it” says Helen Martin (above), head of planning at Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council.

However, while presenting her department’s work on regenerating Dudley town centre to colleagues at the authority, she realised that the team had achieved something that deserved wider recognition.

“We’ve created an environment where there is private sector interest and they are now starting to pick up the baton,” she says.

Add the way the council involved the local community and Martin felt there was a strong case for submitting an application to last year’s RTPI Awards.

Her hunch was correct. The team carried off the award for Excellence in Planning for Built Heritage at last year’s ceremony, a reward for 15 years of hard work in the town centre.

The RTPI Awards, alongside those organised by the likes of RIBA and RICS, acknowledge planning’s role in 34

Winning awards is always a good calling card when seeking investment or trying to attract top-quality talent to your organisation.

Martin says her department has secured a higher profile following its success at last year’s RTPI Awards.

“Inside the organisation it has massively helped to increase the profile of the planning service. It’s given us more visibility, so it’s easier for people to understand why we are here and what we do.

“Particularly if you work in development management you tend to get the bad press and senior managers find out about things when they have gone wrong or people complain,” she continues. “It’s quite nice to have a good news item which helps people see why we have planning policies and development management.”

And this can only help when battling to maintain existing services, she adds: “It does help to defend your service from losing resources because people understand the importance of it.”

For those working in the private sector, the big incentive when entering awards is the prospect of winning new contracts. Riette Oosthuizen heads the planning team at architect HTA Design, which won last year’s RTPI Excellence in Planning for the Natural Environment award for its work on Hanham Hall, Barratt Homes’ flagship zero-carbon housing scheme in the Bristol outskirts (below).

She believes that the award has bolstered the practice’s credibility when competing for jobs against the larger commercial consultancies.

“It’s been fantastic because we are a small planning practice and we quite often come up against the big commercial practices when we are

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+ Is my project worth entering for an award?

Craig y Deryn primary school

“IT’S GIVEN US MORE VISIBILITY, SO IT’S EASIER FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND WHY WE ARE HERE AND WHAT WE DO” trying to win work. This type of exposure has meant a lot for us.”

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Good marketing

Winning a high-profile award will showcase your organisation’s work to a wider audience by generating publicity.

Aled Lloyd, head of planning at the Snowdonia National Park Authority, says that winning a UK-wide award (see box) helped get across the message that planning can be a positive activity.

“We tend to be seen as rejecting most applications, so this was a good opportunity to showcase that we do approve good new developments, which are sustainable, in the national park. People appreciate that we need good-quality development in this rural area and are now more prepared to adapt their plans.”

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Appraising the organisation

A rigorous awards application process can give organisations an incentive to appraise how they are doing their job, a luxury often not available on a day-today basis, providing a new perspective.

Martin says: “It gave us time to reflect on what we had achieved, how it worked and why it was successful.”

lThe costs A word of warning: entering awards can be a time-consuming process, which can distract attention from bread-and-butter activities.

Being shortlisted for an award will often generate additional demands for material.

But at least in the case of the RTPI Awards, Snowdonia’s Lloyd says the application process was “straightforward” and “quite enjoyable”, with the whole team pitching in to help.

Some organisations enter every award process going, while others never trouble the judges. The danger of the latter course is that good work never gets the recognition it deserves. The flipside is that those who enter in a more scattergun fashion are seeking recognition for doing their job. So how do you know that your project is worth entering for an award?

Snowdonia’s Aled Lloyd felt that, although the authority’s Craig y Deryn primary school project was small-scale, it deserved wider recognition. The scheme on the

edge of the village of Llanegryn had to overcome hurdles, involving as it did the consolidation of four existing schools onto a single site.

Its confidence boosted by winning the Wales Planning Award, the national park authority submitted an application for the 2015 UK-wide awards, in which it won the Excellence in Planning for Community and Well-Being category.

“We looked at the criteria in a detailed way and considered that we met them, which pushed us to go for it,” says Lloyd.

“ALWAYS BACK UP CLAIMS WITH EVIDENCE, ESPECIALLY WHEN SEEKING TO DEMONSTRATE INNOVATION OR A BENEFICIAL IMPACT”

lAwards: Top tips for success (1)Read the criteria It may sound obvious, but focus on what the judges are actually asking for in the judging criteria.

Another thing to bear in mind for those entering more than one award is that it’s not good enough to copy and paste from one form to another – the judges will notice.

Helen Martin says: “You can’t just simply resubmit, you have to totally unpick it. Everybody has different criteria, so you have to start from scratch. And always

back up claims with evidence, especially when seeking to demonstrate innovation or a beneficial impact.

asked a non-planner to look at our submission, which was quite useful.”

(2) Keep it simple

And if you don’t win first time, don’t give up. The trick is to learn from the process. Lloyd insists that it is worthwhile for any organisation, no matter how small, to enter for the RTPI awards. “Don’t be put off by the big authorities; small authorities have as much chance as anybody else. The criteria are relatively clear – go for it.”

Make sure the submission is succinct, clear and easy to understand. Too many award entries are stuffed with corporate jargon. Aled Lloyd says Snowdonia followed this mantra when submitting its successful entry for last year’s RTPI awards. “We didn’t use too much planning jargon. We

(3)Don’t be put off

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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 LEISURE

180-berth marina would detract from boating experience ( SUMMARY An inspector has refused permission for a 180-berth marina near Slapton Lock, Buckinghamshire, after finding that the visual impact of the development would constitute an “unwelcome intrusion” into the rural scene affecting both boat users and walkers. ( CASE DETAILS Inspector Christina Downes noted that although the appeal site was not within any specific designated landscape, it was largely rural in appearance and was a popular walking location.

Downes argued that the effect on the visual amenity of the site in relation to the enjoyment of walkers would be “high adverse” and not mitigated in the long run. She expressed a view that boat travellers would also have a high sensitivity to change, and that while a marina would not be an unexpected feature, a development of this scale would “considerably diminish” the experience “that boat travellers and walkers could reasonably expect to enjoy”.

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A 180-berth marina near Slapton Lock would be an “unwelcome intrusion” into the rural scene, said the inspector

( CONCLUSION REACHED The inspector accepted that the Grand Union Canal, on which the appeal site is located, is an “important recreational resource”, and that the proposed marina could encourage longer stays on the canal and attract more people onto the waterways.

But she found the appellant’s argument that there was a proven need for more moorings in the area to be weak, as no evidence of a need for a marina of the proposed size had been submitted.

Appeal Ref: APP/ J0405/W/15/3137059

HOUSING

Clark rejects 650 homes and local centre in Cheltenham ( SUMMARY Communities secretary Greg Clark has supported an inspector’s decision to refuse permission for a substantial mixed-use scheme in Leckhampton, Cheltenham, after determining that residual cumulative transport impacts of the scheme would be severe. ( CASE DETAILS The proposal, submitted

by Bovis Homes and Miller

Homes, included plans for up to 650 dwellings and a 1.94 hectare local centre comprising a potential GP surgery, offices, a primary school and other key facilities.

Clark concurred with the reporting inspector’s assessment that the residual cumulative effects of the development proposed would increase demand for use of sections of the highway network that are already operating at over-capacity levels, thus contributing to a “severe impact on a wider area of Cheltenham” as traffic is displaced. In line with national planning policy the scheme should therefore be refused on transport grounds.

The secretary of state agreed that if all the planning applications for sites that make up the Gloucester City Council, Tewkesbury Borough Council and Cheltenham Borough Council emerging Joint Core Strategy proposed Strategic Allocation were to result in housing in excess of the expected figure, that would not necessarily be harmful “in the context of the government’s desire to boost significantly the supply of housing”.

But Clark did take issue with the loss of locally valued landscape that would incur.

He accepted that although the appeal site does not lie within a designated area,

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Turning the grade II listed Kirk Mill into a hotel would have significant public benefits

it has an “intrinsic charm” that gives it value, and he concurred with the opinion that it “would be sad” if Leckhampton fields, which the appeal site partly covers, were to be developed “in preference to some less interesting but designated green belt land”. ( CONCLUSION REACHED Clark acknowledged the importance of various views from the adjacent Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, including field patterns in the view from Leckhampton Hill, which “may have inspired Lewis Carroll to think of a chess board in writing his book Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There”, but determined that these views would be largely unharmed by the development.

He accepted that Cheltenham Council was unable to demonstrate a fiveyear supply of housing land, and that the development would equate to roughly a one-year supply for the area.

But he found that the social and economic benefits of the scheme did not outweigh the identified harm.

Appeal Ref: APP/ B1605/W/14/3001717

Fourteen wind turbines could be absorbed into the Sperrins Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with no risk of cumulative impact

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Evishagaran wind turbines can be absorbed into landscape ( SUMMARY Fourteen wind turbines have been allowed at the townlands of Evishagaran and Cruckanim, near Dungiven in Northern Ireland, after a commissioner decided that the turbines could be accommodated in the landscape of the Sperrins Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (SAONB). ( CASE DETAILS Commissioner JB Martin noted that the SAONB contains “large expanses of moorland penetrated by narrow glens and deep valleys”. Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council’s main concern with the scheme was its intrusion into what it considers to be an area of “empty wilderness”, having a particular impact on the character of the Benbradagh summit.

But Martin noted that there was human intervention in the vicinity, including several roads and concrete bases of former buildings. He accepted that the proposal

would introduce prominent features into the landscape, but found that this existing human element reduced the sensitivity of the landscape.

The council said approvals for wind farms in five other areas of the Landscape Character Area had “reached capacity in terms of accommodating wind energy development without overwhelming the landscape”. But Martin found that the degree of separation between these developments and the position of the appeal proposal within the wider area meant that the landscape could absorb the scheme with no risk of cumulative impact. ( CONCLUSION REACHED The commissioner accepted that the SAONB is a key tourist asset, and took note of the council’s referral to a survey by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland that indicated the unwillingness of mountaineers to spend money in areas they considered were spoilt by industrial scale wind farms.

But the council acknowledged the limitations of the survey, and did not produce evidence on the likely impact of the appeal proposal on its stated expenditure figures for tourism, tourism-related employment or a particular tourist asset in this area.

Appeal Ref: 2014/A0169

MIXED DEVELOPMENT

Listed mill-tohotel conversion approved ( SUMMARY Permission has been approved for the change of use of the grade II listed Kirk Mill in the village of Chipping, Lancashire, to create an 18-bed hotel and spa, plus outline permission for 60 residential dwellings split over two adjacent sites.

The scheme also includes the demolition of existing industrial buildings and the erection of a wedding venue, trailhead centre, ‘kids’ club’ and cricket pavilion. ( CASE DETAILS Inspector Tim Wood noted that Kirk Mill is a former cotton-spinning mill dating from 1785, whose historical significance stems from its rarity as a surviving Arkwright-type mill. The building has been vacant for many years and is acknowledged to be in a state of considerable disrepair.

The removal of an added 20th century dust extraction tower was found to be a positive element to the scheme, as was the scheme’s rebuilding of dilapidated sections of the mill.

Although Ribble Valley Borough Council was critical of the proposed use as a hotel

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DiF { D as it gave rise to extensions and the sub-division of upper floors, Wood countered that there would inevitably be some alterations in the reuse of such a building, and that the “significant benefit” of bringing this “important listed building back into beneficial use”, helping to safeguard its long-term survival, outweighed this issue.

The removal of various industrial buildings on site to be replaced by designs “more consistent” with the area was viewed as another benefit, which would positively impact the wider Kirk Mill Conservation Area and the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, within which the appeal site lies. ( CONCLUSION REACHED Wood did not consider that the proposal’s position next to existing housing at the edge of Chipping village would lead to the coalescence of the two settlements, but he agreed that the degree of separation would be reduced.

Similarly, while the proposed housing would lie outside of the council’s agreed settlement boundaries, Wood found that the significant public benefits arising from the reuse of the site would outweigh this conflict.

Appeal A: APP/T2350/W/15/3119224

HOUSING

Neighbourhood plan conflict sees 120 homes refused ( SUMMARY Communities secretary Greg Clark has refused permission for 120 homes and additional works including a sports

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DECISIONS IN FOCUS pavilion in Hambrook, West Sussex, after deciding that the location of the scheme would undermine the emerging Chidham and Hambrook Neighbourhood Plan (NP). ( CASE DETAILS Clark noted that the NP had not yet been examined when inspector Michael J Hetherington first ruled that the appeal should be dismissed. As the plan has now been examined, Clark gave greater weight to the degree that the proposal conflicted with the plan by proposing development outside of the defined settlement boundary.

As the appeal site also lies outside of the settlement boundary as laid out in the Chichester District Local Plan: Key Policies 2014-2029 (LP), Clark agreed that it would conflict with the LP’s settlement hierarchy. He also agreed that the addition of 120 housing units could not be considered “small scale” in the context of a settlement the size of Hambrook, representing as it does a 12 per cent increase in housing numbers.

Clark agreed with Hetherington that Chichester District Council’s assessment that there would be a “high level of change” was more realistic than the appellant’s

Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment, which identified the magnitude of landscape change to be “low”. ( CONCLUSION REACHED Clark ruled that granting the appeal would be at odds with the “shared neighbourhood planning vision” as supported by the National Planning Policy Framework, and would “fundamentally undermine confidence in the neighbourhood planning process” that had taken place in Chidham and Hambrook thus far. Subsequently, he dismissed the appeal.

Appeal Ref: APP/ L3815/W/15/3004052

COMMERCIAL

Newmarket development would not harm the horse-racing industry ( SUMMARY Permission has been granted for a racehorse training establishment and the erection of up to 63 dwellings

The mixed development at Kentford would support the council’s aims to retain racing related facilities in Newmarket

at Meddler Stud in the village of Kentford, Newmarket, after an inspector decided that the development of land formerly in use as a stud farm would not harm the horseracing industry (HRI). ( CASE DETAILS Inspector Nick Palmer noted that the Meddler Stud was originally 100 hectares, with just 7.16 hectares remaining.

Most of the buildings associated with this use have been demolished and the land has been sown with wheat.

While the site can therefore be considered to be in lawful agricultural use, the HRI use on the site having been abandoned, Palmer argued that this did not overcome the purpose of Forest Heath District Council’s policy DM49, which seeks to retain adequate land in Newmarket and the surrounding area for HRI purposes.

The HRI is recognised as being of prime economic and cultural importance to Newmarket; the proposal would result in 4.93 hectares being lost to HRI use and does therefore not accord with the development management plan.

However, Palmer acknowledged that there were a number of limitations to the site in relation to HRI use, including its limited size for stud purposes. The appellant’s evidence relating to two failed attempts to run the site for uses since 2001 support the evidence of the limitations of the site. ( CONCLUSION REACHED Palmer noted that the site is not currently in operational HRI use, and that the proposed racehorse training establishment would provide a “modern facility that would

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An inspector said wakeboarding facilities in Hemingford Grey would not make enough noise to worry local residents

be attractive to trainers setting up new businesses.”

Appeal Ref: APP/ H3510/W/15/3070064

HOUSING

Unilateral undertaking is not compliant with CIL regulations ( SUMMARY Redrow Homes NW has been given permission for a part re-plan to 174 dwellings at an existing approved development in Bangor, north-west Wales, despite an inspector disagreeing with the cascade mechanism for affordable housing included in the appellant’s Unilateral Undertaking (UU). ( CASE DETAILS Inspector Declan Beggan noted that the re-plan was proposed to increase the number of dwellings approved for the site from 245 to 266.

The appellant’s UU would provide a cascade approach to affordable housing provision, whereby affordable units would first be offered to a registered provider who would offer the units with intermediate tenures. If these tenures are not taken up the units would be offered for sale to a ‘qualifying person’ as an affordable housing unit. If no offer is received the unit would be disposed of on the open market and the developer would pay the council an off-site commuted sum.

Beggan said the 24-30 week timeline proposed for this process was not a sufficient period of time to I M AG E S | G E T T Y

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identify affordable housing demand related to the site, and that to permit a UU that tied the provision of affordable units to this time scale would be unreasonable.

Beggan also found that any requirement for the UU to provide a commuted sum to the council to use for off-site provision would run contrary to the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2012, as it would be possible that if the stage is reached in the cascading mechanism where there is no need for affordable housing on the site, it could be argued that a financial contribution is not necessary. ( CONCLUSION REACHED After concluding that the UU should therefore be given little weight, Beggan considered that a condition suggested by the council to secure 35 per cent affordable housing was acceptable, and allowed the appeal.

The inspector also ruled that because the council had not requested necessary information from the appellant before the determination deadline, the appellant should be awarded the cost of appeal proceedings.

Appeal Ref: APP/ Q6810/A/15/3134548

LEISURE

Wakeboarding facilities would not generate harmful noise ( SUMMARY Lakeside Lodge Golf Centre has won an appeal against Huntingdonshire District Council to install a wakeboarding cable and erect changing rooms at its site in Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, after an inspector ruled that the council could not adequately demonstrate that the scheme would be unacceptably noisy for a nearby dwelling. ( CASE DETAILS Inspector DM Young noted the lake that the appeal site abuts has been used, on and off, for private water skiing for around 30 years, but that in the case of this appeal the council had cited concerns about the noise generated by the associated rescue boat, cable motor, shouts from participants and congregated spectators, and vehicles using the access road.

Young said a noise survey submitted with the initial application concluded that the use of a rescue boat would not materially increase noise above the measured ambient levels

and background noise generated by traffic on the nearby A14. Based on the evidence available, Young concluded that the other identified concerns would not generate enough noise to be detrimental to the living conditions at the nearest residence – a cottage 100 metres away.

At the hearing, a discussion was held about the significance of the NPPF’s support of rural leisure developments as opposed to the provision of tourist and visitor facilities, which should be supported “where identified needs are not met by existing facilities in rural service centres”. A “significant number” of local residents had opposed the proposal on the basis that the appellant’s business plan failed to demonstrate an identified need. ( CONCLUSION REACHED Young said the physical activity inherent in the proposal meant that it should be considered a leisure development as opposed to a visitor attraction, meaning that there was no requirement to prove either a need for the development or that it would be financially viable.

Appeal Ref: APP/ H0520/W/15/3132500

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LLegal landscape FIRST DIBS FOR LONDONERS New Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has pledged to give “first dibs” on housing to Londoners.

Khan said he would expect developers to market new homes to Londoners first, to prevent wealthy international investors buying properties and using them as “asset lockers” rather than homes. Matthew White looks at how and whether it would be possible for Khan as mayor to do this.

The planning system is not generally concerned with property ownership. Because planning permission runs with the land, it is the land use planning implications of development that are relevant, not who will own or occupy the development once it is built.

Thus, a planning permission was quashed by the High Court where planning conditions required new homes only to be occupied by people on the housing waiting list, and granted them security of tenure for 10 years, because this was so fundamental a departure from rights of ownership (R v Hillingdon LBC, ex p Royco Homes Ltd [1974] QB 720).

On the campaign trail, Sadiq Khan explained that he would achieve his objective through Section 106 Agreements. But such agreements, and what you can use them for, are tightly constrained by the law.

Section 106(1) of the Town

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Matthew White and Country Planning Act 1990 provides that a planning obligation may only: (a) Restrict the development or use of land; (b) Require specified operations or activities to be carried out in, on, under or over land; (c) Require land to be used in any specified way; or (d) Require a sum or sums to be paid to the local planning authority.

Advisers should always pay heed to these provisions because the courts do quash obligations that fall outside the specified categories. In 2013, the High Court quashed a planning permission where an obligation prohibited the owner from applying for a parking permit. This was held not to be a valid s.106 obligation because it did not

meet the requirements of any of sub-paragraphs 106(1) (a)-(d) (Westminster City Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Mrs Marilyn Acons [2013] EWHC 690 (Admin)).

Using an agreement to control the marketing of sales of new homes is therefore fraught with difficulties because it does not obviously fall within any of the categories in section 106(1). Even a Grampian-style obligation, for example – restricting the use of the development until a marketing strategy approved by the council has been complied with in full – would be at risk of being unenforceable as a device designed to circumvent the statutory restrictions.

It seems that the only way to achieve Khan’s policy would be through an agreement under a general

“CONTROLLING WHO IS ENTITLED TO BUY AND SELL HOMES IS AN ISSUE THAT GOES MUCH DEEPER THAN A CATCHY CAMPAIGN SLOGAN”

power such as section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972, or a voluntary commitment such as the ‘Concordat’ promoted by Boris Johnson and already signed up to by more than 50 developers.

This is not just a London issue. In May, residents of St Ives voted in a referendum to prevent developments of second homes. New houses will only be granted planning permission if they are reserved for people who would live in them full-time and who do not have another home elsewhere. This is essentially the same issue as the Mayor of London’s “first dibs” policy: both are concerned with homes that are unoccupied for long periods of the year. A local developer has already challenged the legality of the referendum.

There are fundamental planning issues at stake here, including the vitality and viability of our cities, towns and villages. But it is very difficult to regulate a purchaser’s intentions when they buy a home, let alone enforce a minimum occupation requirement.

It is perhaps not surprising that planning powers are inadequate, given that the root cause of the problem is not in planning itself.

Land and housing are freely traded without the ownership restrictions commonly encountered in other countries. Controlling who is entitled to buy and sell homes is an issue that goes far deeper than a catchy campaign slogan – and is almost certainly beyond the Mayor of London’s powers to change.

Matthew White is head of planning at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP

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LATEST POSTS FROM THEPLANNER.CO.UK/BLOGS

B LO G S The Court of Appeal’s recent judgment in R(Gerber) v (1) Wiltshire Council and (2) Terraform Power Inc and Norrington Solar Farm Ltd is a blunt reminder on the importance of promptly filing judicial review applications

L E G I S L AT I O N S H O R T S ‘Especial speed’ in judicial review Katie Scuoler

The claim concerned the grant of permission for a 22 ha solar farm in Broughton Gifford and was filed almost a year outside the relevant period. The council had complied with the statutory publicity requirements; the High Court judge nonetheless granted an extension of time for bringing the claim. The claimant owned the grade II* Gifford Hall near the site. The developer advertised and held two public exhibitions before submitting the application. The council then posted newspaper, online and site notices.

The claimant, Daniel Gerber, only realised the site was being developed once works began and wrote to the council to object to the impact on the setting of his property. His complaint was rejected and he waited five months to file a claim for judicial review (by which time the developers had spent £10.5 million installing the solar farm).

High Court decision Despite the exceptional delay in bringing the claim, the High Court granted an extension of time and quashed the grant of planning permission.

Justice Dove held that assurances given in the council’s Statement

of Community Involvement (SCI) had created a legitimate expectation that Gerber would be personally notified of the planning application, which the council breached.

That he needed time to assimilate all the issues and ‘incomplete’ advice received from his first legal advisers was treated as a reasonable explanation for the delay. c He was required to quash the permission, given failures to consult English Heritage (as was) to properly deal with heritage impacts and to properly screen the application for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) purposes.

Appeal decision The first instance decision led to concern that a planning permission was not “safe” even when the challenge window had passed. The Court of Appeal rejected this approach and the judgment makes clear that once permission is granted a developer is entitled to rely upon it.

This case is nonetheless a blunt reminder that: c Compliance with statutory notice procedures is essential, but the courts will rarely impose more onerous requirements based on legitimate expectation. Care is still needed to ensure that commitments in SCIs have been honoured. c Prompt legal action to challenge the grant of planning permission is required in all cases,

unless very special reasons can be shown.

“Especial speed” is required where an objector has been involved throughout the planning process. c Extending time for bringing a legal challenge should not be allowed simply because an objector did not realise what has happening, where statutory notice requirements are met. c Failure to deal properly with EIA and heritage issues can be fatal, where claims are timely. Even where there are acknowledged breaches of EIA and heritage duties, the effects of exercising the discretion to quash must be considered. c Quashing of a permission is a discretionary remedy.

The Court of Appeal stated it would not have quashed the permission given: the significant delay in bringing the claim without good reason; the prejudice to the solar farm operator (including investment and dismantling costs totalling £12 million); and the lack of real damage to the Gerber’s interests. c The longer the delay after the grant of planning permission the greater the risk and extent of hardship and prejudice to developers if the consent is subsequently set aside.

An application to appeal to the Supreme Court is pending determination.

Katie Scuoler is an associate at Dentons

Judge backs Boris on Norton Folgate plan The High Court has backed a decision by the former Mayor of London to approve a development in a city conservation area.

Tower Hamlets Council had rejected the proposals for the Norton Folgate development in East London after receiving 550 objections.

The former mayor won the case despite errors being made during the planning process.

Mr Justice Gilbart said he would “never forget” reading a transcript of the mayor’s comments during one meeting. Although he didn’t go into detail, he said that “it warms the cockles of my heart”.

In January, Johnson bypassed the council and used his powers to intervene, announcing he intended to grant both planning permission for the development and listed building consent.

The Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust asked the High Court to rule that Johnson has acted unlawfully as statutory criteria governing the use of his powers were not met.

Mr Justice Gilbart’s decision has paved the way for seven buildings comprising office space, retail units and residential dwellings.

SAVE presses on with Lime Street battle SAVE Britain’s Heritage has received permission from the Court of Appeal to go ahead with its challenge to the demolition of more than 10 historic buildings on Lime Street in central Liverpool.

Liverpool City Council granted planning permission for demolition in 2015.

SAVE has challenged the decision on heritage grounds and several other organisations, including the Merseyside Civic Society, have also raised objections to the £35 million plans for student flats.

Lord Justice Lindblom QC granted the Order to Appeal, saying: “I accept the appeal has a real prospect of success, and in any event that matters raised on the interpretation and application of the guidance… are important enough to afford a compelling reason for the appeal to be heard.”

The appeal was due to be heard in late May.

Court of Appeal backs council on CIL charging policy Tandridge District Council has defeated a challenge brought by a developer in the Court of Appeal over its decision to adopt a development and a Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) charging schedule.

The case considered whether it was lawful for a local planning authority to adopt a development plan document and a CIL charging schedule to support a core strategy prepared under national planning policy for housing land supply that has been superseded by the National Planning Policy Framework.

Developer Oxted Residential argued that the council should not have adopted Tandridge Local Plan Part 2: Detailed Policies in July 2014 and the charging schedule.

Mr Justice Dove dismissed both challenges in the High Court, and the developer appealed to the Court of Appeal. This was also dismissed. The council said the result vindicated its approach to put in place policies to protect the character of the district and restrict inappropriate green belt development.

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Plan ahead P

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

Time for change?

This year’s Joint Planning Law Conference will see a call for a slowing of the rapid-fire changes to the planning system, as organisers Mary Power and Rory Joyce tell Martha Harris “Each year the conference focuses on the legal and legislative changes made to the planning system that affect the ability of practitioners, developers, lawyers and local authorities to deliver the homes and infrastructure that we need,” says PowerHaus Consultancy director Mary Power.

The 2016 chair of the Joint Planning Law Conference (JPLC) adds: “This year there have been so many changes to the system and we as practitioners are constantly having to update ourselves with what they are, what are the implications, and how we find a route through.”

The conference, an annual event jointly run by the RTPI, RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors), the Law Society and the Bar Council, is a highlight of the calendar for many planners, lawyers and others with a professional interest in the built environment.

Also known as the Oxford

“THIS YEAR THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY CHANGES TO THE SYSTEM AND WE AS PRACTITIONERS ARE CONSTANTLY HAVING TO UPDATE OURSELVES” 42

Mary Power: “We’ll examine those areas that affect most large-scale applications”

Conference – because it’s always held at an Oxford University college – it consists of talks from leading academics and professionals spread over three days. The conference always aims to be as up to date as possible on the issues affecting planning.

A key concern discussed by conference organisers this year was the need to slow the changes being made to the planning system, reveals Brunel Planning’s Rory Joyce, a RICS conference committee member.

“We’ve noticed that there is a groundswell of opinion which suggests that if we were to slow down the changes being made, we as planners and others that engage with the system – whether that be barristers or lawyers – can actually make almost any system work if you give us time,” he explains.

As a result of new governments taking “wellmeaning measures” to review central systems, practitioners can be left scrambling to keep up with changes.

“We need to let things bed in, because with all the systems we have had, at the end of the day it is practitioners that make it work,” says Joyce.

This year’s presentations and discussions will also touch on topics such as transparency in planning and the delivery of affordable housing (see box).

“We’ll examine those areas

Rory Joyce: “Give planners more time to make the system work”

that affect most large-scale applications on both the local authority’s side and the practitioner’s side, and discuss where the changes are going to affect you for the next 12 months,” says Power.

Aside from being a useful CPD opportunity, the conference aims to foster continuing discussion and debate between peers on the issues raised.

“It’s deliberately a residential weekend, so there is more time to consider the issues much more fully”, explains Joyce.

The Chatham House Rule is engaged to ensure that people freely discuss their issues with the system, and the changes they would make to it.

Continued discussion is encouraged throughout social activities, which this year include two black-tie dinners and a historical and literary walking tour of the city. Attendees will also receive copies of all the papers presented at the conference.

Aside from these, and the opportunity to network with

peers in a social setting, the aim of the conference is for attendees “to leave saying ‘I haven’t just learnt something about where we are with planning, I’ve thought much more deeply about it, and I’ve formulated some ideas about where we might be going next’,” says Joyce.

“As an attendee you’ll be thrown together with barristers, QCs, local planning authority members, and keeping that dialogue going is extremely beneficial,” Power adds. “It is a very valuable experience.”

THE PROGRAMME State of the nations: Supply, demand and pricing in the UK – Yolande Barnes, head of world research, Savills Local plans – an outside in view Keith Holland, director, Intelligent Plans and Examinations Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

Planning reform: a view from the coalface – James Fennell, chief executive, Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners Access all areas? Transparency in the planning arena – Rebecca Warren, partner, Pinsent Masons LLP Environmental judicial review – Richard Moules, Landmark Chambers The future of CIL and S106 Agreements - Beverley Firth, partner, Mills & Reeve LLP Achieving and assisting regeneration – Pat Hayes, executive director, regeneration and housing, London Borough of Ealing Legal update – Richard Ground QC, Cornerstone Barristers

C O M I N G T O G ET H E R What: Joint Planning Law Conference Where: New College, Oxford When: Friday to Sunday, 16-18 September 2016 Find out more and book: tinyurl.com/Planner0616OX-1609

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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.

LONDON 8 June – Housing and employment: Needs and targets Plan-makers must objectively assess needs for housing and economic land uses. This briefing and workshop aims to fill some gaps in the guidance and go further to help make and deliver sound policies on housing and the economy.

Venue: The Hatton (etc Venues), 51-53 Hatton Garden, London Details: tinyurl.com/ planner-0616-LO-0806 9 June – An introduction to the planning system This masterclass will give elected members, administrators and support staff a wider understanding of the planning system.

It includes an update on changes proposed in the Treasury’s Fixing The Foundations document.

Venue: Prospero House (etc Venues), 241 Borough High St, London SE1 1GA Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-LO-0906 14 June – Project management for planners This seminar has been developed to meet the needs of everyone who has to manage projects, tasks, or assignments to meet tough targets under time and resource constraints.

Venue: Prospero House Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-LO-1406

SOUTH EAST 9 June – Heritage planning This event covers aspects of heritage in the planning process. Confirmed speakers include: chair, Martin Small of Historic England; Debbie Dance of Oxford Preservation Trust; Ananya Banerjee from Boyer; Gill Butter of Oxford City Council; Dr Noël James of the Historic Towns Forum; and Roger Thomas of Historic England.

Venue: TS Eliot Theatre, Merton College, Oxford Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-SE-0906

SOUTH WEST 2 June – Strategic planning in the SouthWest In 2015, the RTPI commissioned Bilfinger GVA to carry out a study on the location of recent planning permissions for housing to provide new mapping and analysis to ensure that the housing debate also focuses on the sustainability of their locations. This roundtable will discuss the findings.

Venue: Bilfinger GVA, St Catherine’s Court, Berkeley Place, Bristol, BS8 1BQ Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-SW-0206 30 June – Planning and transport: Another turn of the wheel In association with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. An event for professionals and interested parties in the South-West from planning and transport perspectives.

Venue: University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-SW-3006

EAST OF ENGLAND 16 June – Viability made simple A half-day conference on development management and forward plans.

Venue: Hughes Hall College, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB1 2EW Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-EE-1606

EAST MIDLANDS 14 June – Effective communication skills This personal skills masterclass addresses your need to be listened to in conversations, in meetings

DON’T MISS Sir Patrick Geddes Commemorative Lecture 2016: Copenhagen – a city for people This year’s lecture is given by Tina Saaby, who has been Copenhagen’s chief city architect since September 2010. A graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture in 1997, she is now responsible for defining architectural guidelines and visions based on the City of Copenhagen’s Architectural Policy. She has many years’ experience as an architect, partly as partner of the architectural firm Witraz Architects in Copenhagen, and she is a former vice-president of the Danish Architects Association and also a visiting professor at Sheffield University.

Date: Wednesday, 15 June Venue: Surgeons’ Hall, Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DW Details: tinyurl.com/planner0616-SC-1506

and at public events such as inquiries.

Venue: Nottingham Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-EM-1406 15 June – EMYP visit to the regeneration scheme at Castleward Regeneration at Castleward is a key component of the Derby Cityscape Masterplan. It will deliver 800 homes, commercial retail space, primary school and community spaces on a 30-acre site close to Derby city centre.

Venue: Compendium Living 63 Canal St, Derby Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-EM-1506

WEST MIDLANDS 21 June – Ethics, mediation and negotiation This event will explore the values and principles that lie behind our approach to ethics, mediation and negotiation, and their application in planning.

Venue: The Bond, 180-182 Fazeley Street, Birmingham B5 5SE Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-WM-2106

YORKSHIRE 15 June – Designing liveable places This explores the principles for making good places and how the design and planning process can help to deliver liveable, high-quality, sustainable settlements.

Venue: Leeds Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-YO-1506

NORTH EAST 13 June – Infrastructure delivery for economic growth This one-day conference considers a range of factors that contribute to the delivery of new infrastructure, necessary to stimulate the delivery of sustainable regional and intra-regional economic growth in the North.

Venue: Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE1 4EP Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-NE-1306

NORTH WEST 14 June – Writing skills for planning professionals This practical masterclass focuses on helping you to plan your document, write fluently without a struggle, and to polish your work.

Venue: The Studio, 51 Lever Street, Manchester, M1 1FN Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-NW-1406 15 June - Housing: Residential Development in the North-West This event examines the latest housing projections and growth implications across the North-West from Cumbria to Cheshire, plus the emerging Greater Manchester spatial strategy.

Venue: DLA Piper, 101 Barbirolli Square, Bridgewater, Manchester Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-NW-1506 23 June – Town centres – what next?

This event provides an update in retail trends and

associated sectors and what implications these have for town centres.

Venue: Pinsent Masons, Manchester M3 3AU Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-NW-2306

WALES 08 June – APC Briefing Cardiff This event will provide anyone undertaking an APC with an essential briefing on what’s involved, what you need to include and how you present it.

Venue: Cardiff City Hall, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3ND Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-WA-0806 9 June – Wales Planning Conference 2016: A new planning landscape for Wales – delivering positively Speakers include David Rudlin of Urbed, winner of the Wolfson Prize, , and Morag Ellis QC of Francis Taylor Building.

Venue: Cardiff City Hall Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-WA-0906

SCOTLAND 8 June – Forth replacement crossing update This event will provide an update on the delivery of Scotland’s biggest transport infrastructure project, as it enters its final stages.

Venue: FRC Contact and Education Centre, South Queensferry EH30 9SF Details: tinyurl.com/ planner0616-SC-0806

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NEWS

RTPI { How well do you handle ethical challenges?

ANDREW CLOSE MRTPI, HEAD OF CAREERS, EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Consider this scenario: a local government planner is asked to handle an application submitted by a former school friend and is concerned about the appearance of bias to members of the public. What would you do? What about when a private consultant rents office space from a former client, a developer, while sitting on a community advisory group that is promoting site allocations owned by the developer?

These are just two examples of the many situations where a professional planner must take reasonable precautions to prevent a conflict of duty from arising. In the first instance, requesting that another colleague handles the application is recommended, and this advice is contained in new guidance on ethics, which the Institute has recently published for RTPI members.

RTPI news pages are edited

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

Ethics often comes up in the Professional Development Plans my team reviews through annual CPD monitoring and is a key area for discussion for membership candidates. It is among the eight CPD priorities set out by the Institute last year to support RTPI members to reflect and update key skills and knowledge.

We recognise that ethics also has an international dimension for RTPI members, and we also accredit a number of planning degrees outside of the UK and Ireland.

In April the RTPI President and Chief Executive attended the American Planning Association’s conference, which discussed ethics in planning. ‘Ethics under Pressure’ is a session at this year’s RTPI Planning Convention.

I recently sat on a Professional Association Research Network discussion panel and found out that one accountancy accrediting body requires all new practitioners to pass an online training module in ethics as part of their membership process.

Currently, my team is reviewing the Institute’s Policy Statement on Initial Planning Education with universities to ensure that it is fit for purpose for employers and graduates.

Planning degree courses already cover ethics within the learning outcomes and introduce the role of a reflective practitioner. It is also highlighted in the talks we give on an annual basis to students to promote the profession.

All this activity forms a wider strategy to ensure that we have a pipeline of well-trained planners. Other projects include the RTPI bursary scheme to attract new entrants from other degree disciplines, and the apprenticeships training scheme as an alternative study pathway. Our careers strategy is four-fold: raising awareness in schools, maintaining quality training routes, supporting professional development – all crucially supported by volunteers to help inspire the next generation.

Three new practice advice notes for members: The Institute’s careers strategy: • Ethics And Professional Standards covers issues including ethical challenges, conflicts of interest, accuracy of information, diversity, and offering planning services to the public.

• Starting Your Own Private Practice supports planning consultants from the essentials of business plans to how to assess professional strengths.

• Continuing Professional Development provides a stepby-step approach to maintaining skills and making CPD achievable through 30 minutes a week.

Chartered planners act in the public interest and therefore consider and weigh up the expectations of existing communities, future generations and decision-makers including employers, clients and politicians. Tensions can often arise when trying to reconcile these interests. The Institute recognises this goes to the heart of a career in planning and therefore assesses two linked, but distinct, professional competencies to gain membership: understanding of ‘ethical challenges’ and the core demonstration of ‘professionalism’.

The new guidance highlights that an ethical challenge is generally recognisable by the need to ask the “But, what if…?” question, and a feeling of awkwardness or tension around how to respond. How you conduct yourself and are accountable in such a situation is the mark of a professional.

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INSPIRING NEW PLANNERS

UTILISING MEMBERS’ EXPERTISE

OVERSEEING HIGH QUALITY EDUCATION & TRAINING

SUPPORTING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & STANDARDS

The Institute is grateful to the volunteers who act as Ambassadors for the profession, devoting time researching interesting case studies, talking to students, running workshops and attending careers open days. See below for more information on ethics, CPD and attracting ‘future planners’. n www.rtpi.org.uk/futureplanners n www.rtpi.org.uk/ethics n www.rtpi.org.uk/cpdpriorities

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Editorial E: rtpinews@rtpi.org.uk

RTPI (switchboard) T: 020 7929 9494

Registered charity no.

262865 Registered charity in Scotland SCO37841

3 POINT PLAN A planner explains how they would change the English planning system

Hannah Budnitz Independent Transport Planner, Go-How CHAIR OF THE RTPI TRANSPORT PLANNING NETWORK Planning is or should be about making great places. Transport planning is responsible for many of the public spaces between and around land uses that create a sense of place. Transport planners reshape existing places as well as designing new ones. Transport choices are key to whether places are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.

So land use planning decisions around location, design and mix of uses need to take full advantage of transport planning expertise, which requires communication and ideally service integration, particularly at the local level between departments and tiers of government. That’s why devolution is the silver lining to the budget cuts affecting local services. It offers the chance to bring together land use and transport planning and the power to take more strategic action. If devolved authorities had more tax raising and borrowing powers they could ensure transport/planning teams have the freedom to innovate and the funding to implement innovative, locally relevant solutions.

YOUR INSTITUTE, YOUR QUESTIONS Why should I attend the Young Planners’ Conference on 14-15 October this year?

CHRISTOPHER JESSON, SENIOR TOWN PLANNER, PLANNING AND DESIGN GROUP, EAST MIDLANDS YOUNG PLANNERS

KIM BOAL, PLANNER, MID & EAST ANTRIM BOROUGH COUNCIL, RTPI NORTHERN IRELAND CHAIR OF YOUNG PLANNERS This year the Northern Ireland Young Planners have put together an engaging programme on the theme of ‘Planning for Change – Shaping our Future’. An exciting line-up of speakers will explore ways that planning can shape places through innovative thinking. Hosted at the Europa Hotel in Belfast, the conference is the ideal development and networking opportunity for young planners from across the UK and Ireland. And why not make a weekend of it? Belfast has taken great strides in recent years to realise its potential as a tourist hotspot, and planning has played a key role in this. You can fly to Belfast from most UK airports, and there is a direct train link from Dublin.

Come and sample the NI Young Planners’ hospitality. n See: http://rtpi.org.uk/events/young-planners-conference-belfast-2016/

1 Integration: Walking, cycling, public and shared transport; sustainable transport options make land use development sustainable

2 Devolution: Municipal and metropolitan government bodies can deliver quality places, but they need more comprehensive tax­and­spend powers

3 Innovation: The best way to address planning challenges from housing to climate change may be found through experimenting and risk­taking

POSITION POINTS

SPACES TO THINK JOSEPH KILROY, POLICY OFFICER

Centre for London’s Spaces to Think points out that London’s spatial form is changing to facilitate the growth of the knowledge economy. As the RTPI discusses in Planning And Tech, firms are revaluing proximity and locating in dense, multi-use, transit accessible urban spaces. This has led to the development of new innovation districts – clusters of cutting-edge anchor institutions and companies that connect with start-ups, business incubators and accelerators.

While this growth is generally welcome, Planning And Tech makes a series of recommendations as to how planners can facilitate the growth of the knowledge economy, but also how to ensure that it benefits the local economy without creating ‘tech ghettoes’.

n Spaces to Think: http://centreforlondon.org/ publication/innovationdistricts/ n Planning And Tech: www.tinyurl.com/planner0616planning-tech

HOUSE BUILDING AND PLANNING House building in Britain grew the slowest in almost three years in the first quarter of 2016, according to a RICS report. The RTPI has long highlighted the problem of under-resourcing planning departments and this slow growth is proof that drastic reduction of budgets since 2010 has adversely affected delivery. We all want more homes built, but local authorities can only help to achieve this if they are adequately resourced. If the government believes fee flexibility (from alternate providers) can speed things up, then local councils themselves should be allowed to introduce flexible fee pilots, something the RTPI is championing. Increasing the capacity of the specialist Advisory Team for Large Applications can also provide extra support to councils.

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NEWS

RTPI {

CHARTERED MEMBERS JOINED JAN­MAR 2016

FOCUSING ON THE WORK OF PLANNING AID ENGLAND

‘Volunteering for PAE is a brilliant opportunity and great learning experience’

Planning Aid England (PAE) provides the opportunity to help individuals and communities engage with the planning system.

Our volunteers, some 650 at present, are at the heart of everything we do. We aim to provide a wide variety of opportunities for planners at different career stages, as some of our volunteers explain: “Volunteering for PAE is a brilliant opportunity and great learning experience! I have been able to engage local people in the town planning process and, in working alongside experienced planners, I have learned a lot about applying planning theory in practice and potential career paths” – Gabrielle Appiah, planning student “I volunteer for PAE principally to help people, and because I think it is important to promote our sector and reach out to all. Volunteering for PAE is also an objective of my CPD” – Oliver Scott, chartered planner “Volunteering for PAE has been fundamental for me to start understanding the UK Planning system and get into the job market” – Massimiliano a Prato, international planner recently relocated to London

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NEW MEMBERS

“Since retirement, I have continued to volunteer for PAE so that I can extend my involvement with the profession and help more people in their engagement with the world of planning” – Richard Hammersley, retired chartered planner *Richard was recently commended for his dedication to volunteering at the RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence, Volunteer Planner of the Year category There are many different ways to volunteer for PAE, be this ‘in the field’ supporting local community engagement and consultation events; providing remote support, including assisting with casework and reviewing guidance and publications; and on occasion working alongside PAE staff in London on research or other development projects. n Join us today: www.rtpi.org.uk/ planning-aid/

Congratulations to our newly elected Chartered Members between JanuaryMarch 2016 “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” – Phil Williams, RTPI president.

Jonathan Ainley Grace Harriet Allen Josh Ashwin Luke Ian Bennett Clara Blagden Robert Booth Susannah Boyce Andrew Browning Jack Brudenell Chun Yip Chan Nicholas Coombes Francesca Dance Dominic Dear Samuel Guy Deegan Emma Kathryn Fawcett John Michael Fleming Carly Francis Jenna Victoria George David Michael John Glover Peter Griffiths Fiona Hunter Lisa Anne Kirby-Hawkes Jenna Langford Lerato Krystle Marema Katherine Marks Oliver Munden Amy Joanna Naylor Sharon O’Connell Scott O’Dell Claire Ann Potts Gary Robin Rice Kevin Matthew Richards Rebecca Sanders Leo Alexander Scarfe Christopher Schiele Kenneth Taylor Clara Thompson Richard Turner Edward Thomas Patten Tyrer Luke Vallins Amanda Vernon Joseph Ward Sarah Watts Stuart Wells Jonathan Owen Wilks Thea Wilson Mthandazo Zulu

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RTPI Y ACTIVIT E PIPELIN Current RTPI work – what the Institute is doing and how you can help us JOIN US AT THE PLANNING EVENT OF THE YEAR An exciting speaker line-up with leaders, policymakers and the brightest minds in planning are excited to be sharing their personal insights, best practice and topical case studies with you at this year’s Planning Convention. The programme will also include a new Speed Presentation session on ‘The Future of Planning’, and an optional ‘Ask PINS’ Breakfast Briefing, at which delegates will have the opportunity to put their questions to the Planning Inspectorate and to understand the latest professional and procedural elements of PINS’ range of casework.

Don’t forget to look out for the convention video on our website. In a short video interview, our chief executive Trudi Elliott will tell you about the focus of this year’s convention, how delegates can make the most of their attendance, and the convention highlights. n To book your place for the Planning Convention on 28 June in London, visit: www.theplanningconvention.co.uk. Prices from £195+VAT

COULD YOU HELP LEAD OUR INSTITUTE AND PROFESSION? The RTPI elections open for nominations on 27 June. We want the widest possible range of members, including recently qualified planners, students and licenciates, to be active across our governance structures. We are looking for a range of different life and work experiences, diversity, new ideas and a desire to make a difference.

Standing for election is your opportunity to shape the future of the RTPI. n Visit www.rtpi.org.uk/about-the-rtpi/governance/ to find out how to apply

THE 2016 YOUNG PLANNERS’ CONFERENCE IS COMING TO BELFAST BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW This year’s Young Planners’ Conference programme is themed ‘Planning for Change – Shaping our Future’, and has been designed to offer something for everyone, no matter where you practice or in what sector. The topics and speakers have been carefully selected to encourage new thinking, provide an overview of what’s happening across the UK and help you to explore your career.

Belfast is a buzzing capital that is moving forward culturally and economically.

Having undergone significant change in recent years, it is the perfect place to explore the future planning challenges facing the UK and how the profession can adapt to modern trends and thinking. Book now to make sure you don’t miss out on this fantastic CPD and networking opportunity. n Visit: rtpi.org.uk/events/young-planners-conference-belfast-2016/

DO YOU KNOW AN ORGANISATION THAT WANTS TO GROW ITS OWN PLANNERS? Do you want to grow your own talent, widen access to the planning profession, and benefit from the dynamic and energetic contribution of young people?

Then why not join the colleges and employers already participating in the Town Planning Technical Support Apprenticeship and offer an opportunity to a young person? n For more information visit: www.rtpi.org.uk/apprenticeships or careers@ rtpi.org.uk

RTPI SHORTS

MAKE THE MOST OF RTPI PLUS By being a member of the RTPI, you have access to RTPI Plus, a portfolio containing money-saving discounts, designed to support you personally and professionally.

There is no sign-up process, or any extra charge to access these benefits – you are automatically eligible by virtue of your membership. At a time when every penny really does count, RTPI Plus has been designed to make your membership even more rewarding.

The benefits available to you are categorised under the headings Lifestyle, Travel, Insurance, Advice and Work & Business. To ensure that the benefits remain competitive, the benefits on offer are regularly reviewed. New and seasonal discounts are introduced to ensure you can take advantage of the savings as early as possible.

A lot of the benefits are backed by one of RTPI Plus’s price promises – a provider price promise, which means you should be getting the best possible price or offer that the company makes available, or a National Price Promise, which means that you should be getting the best possible price in the UK, for the given product or service. The collective buying power of the membership has been harnessed to bring you, wherever possible, prices which we believe are very hard to beat!

You can calculate the level of savings you will make by using the straightforward online ‘savings calculator’.

This highlights the services on offer, enables you to enter current levels of expenditure on any given item or service and then calculates the typical levels of savings that you will make.

This puts the information at your fingertips and demonstrates the real value of the benefits on offer.

Accessing RTPI Plus couldn’t be easier. Simply log in to www.rtpi.org.uk/ RTPI Plus is available to the following membership classes: b b b b b

Chartered member; Fellow; Legal member; Legal Associate; or A retired member in one of these classes.

RTPI HELPS SECURE AN AMENDMENT TO THE HOUSING AND PLANNING BILL The RTPI helped to secure an amendment to a key provision of the Housing and Planning Bill.

Baroness Williams of Telford, the ministerial lead on the legislation, agreed that the bill should be changed to make it clearer what was meant by the ‘qualifying documents’ that would be used to grant permission in principle.

The Institute argued for more clarity to prevent an Act of Parliament permitting any document created by the secretary of state to grant blanket permission across England.

The RTPI has campaigned actively on this issue, with meetings across the political parties in the House of Lords, to try to secure the change.

We extend our thanks to Lord Shipley, the Liberal Democrat peer, who put forward our case and our suggested amendment, and to Lady Williams for listening to the arguments.

The bill passed into law on 12 May and became the Housing and Planning Act 2016.

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INSIGHT

Plan B P

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

NO FOSSE, NO BOTHER A very modern consequence of the free-for-all provision of public services is that some local authorities have refused to sit back and watch their services taken over by privateers.

Instead, they’ve stuck their entrepreneurial caps on, created their own commercial ventures, and tendered to provide public services on behalf of other authorities.

This can lead to geographic contortions. For example, Cornwall Council (that’s Cornwall in the south-west of England) has proudly announced a joint venture with Nottinghamshire County Council (that’s Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands of England) to provide highways and fleet management services, in Nottinghamshire.

The distance by road between the respective authorities’ county towns (Truro and Nottingham) is 299.7 miles, according to Google Maps.

That’s if you take the short

Nottingham

route of the A30, M5, and a wiggle around Birmingham via the M42 to get onto the A42 to Nottingham. If you skip the M5 – let’s say it’s a particularly busy day for commuting between Truro and Nottingham – then the distance stretches to 336.9 miles.

The joint venture company is to be called Via which, Cornwall Council helpfully reminds us, is the Roman word for ‘road’. Anyone who knows about the history of highways in the UK will know that Via is at an immediate disadvantage because the Romans didn’t build a road from Nottingham to Truro.

If they had, Via’s engineers could skip the wiggle around Birmingham and chunter straight on to the heart of town.

Alternatively, they could use their new found powers to extend the Fosse Way, which

Truro o

REMOTE­CONTROLLED COUNCILS The South-West has a track record in the remote provision of public services. For example, Eve Barisic, Conservative county councillor for Newton Abbot North in Devon (17.1 miles from the Fosse Way terminus via the A380), lives in Roscoff in France.

Roscoff is on the northern tip of Brittany, a commuting distance of 154.3 miles from Newton Abbott – or roughly seven hours seven minutes by ferry and car.

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Elected in 2013, when still resident in Newton Abbot, Barisic has resisted calls to resign on the grounds that she provides a good service to her constituents even while not living among them, or even close by. Or even in the same country. Or the same land mass.

She does qualify for an attendance allowance of more than £10,000, though, providing she pitches up at a meeting at least once every six months.

ran from Lindum (Lincoln), via Ratae (Leicester), (Leicester) which is quite close to Nottingham, and all the way down to Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter). This is about 87 miles from Truro and can be reached via a renamed A30 Fosse Way extension.

At the Northern end, Via’s people could convert the Leicester/Nottingham M1/ A453 link into the Fosse Way northern extension to complete their historical journey. The

But Eve Barisic is small beer compared with Brian Riley. An Independent county councillor representing Hadleigh in Suffolk (he was Conservative until the Tories kicked him out), Riley lives in Raleigh, NC. That's NC for North Carolina. In the United States. Of America.

The commuting distance between Raleigh, North Carolina, and Hadleigh, Suffolk, is so far that Google doesn’t bother giving a distance. It measures it in time instead – one day, six hours. We don’t know whether Riley makes any use of the Fosse Way during his rare sojourns to these shores, but we think it unlikely.

Like Barisic, Riley soldiers gamely on in the face of calls

Fosse Way route does tally up to cient 345.8 a rather ineffi inefficient 345 8 miles, mile but it’s scenic in parts.

No doubt Via’s engineers are aware of this alternative traditional route and its exact length. But, given that Fosse is the Roman word for ‘Ditch’, they may want to toss the idea into a roadside channel and concentrate on improving Nottinghamshire’s highways network. Or is it Cornwall’s?

We’re really not sure.

for his resignation. He even maintains a blog, ‘A better way for Hadleigh’, to talk about local issues – which, one assumes, he picks up on the grapevine, as his attendance record is reportedly among the worst in the council.

Riley also, we read in his local newspaper, collects an annual attendance allowance of more than £10,000.

Would it be specious of Plan B to suggest that either of these public servants may be motivated as much by the 10 grand available for attending the odd meeting as by an attachment to the ideals of public service? Mind you, since we’re writing this column from the moon, we’re hardly in a position to criticise.

n Back on the road again Tweet us - @ThePlanner_RTPI 23/05/2016 14:03