Town & Country Planning Journal – January-February 2023

town & country planning The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association

January–February 2023

Volume 92

• Number 1

• Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places • Jeff Bishop and Trevor Cherrett on community-powered devolution • Hugh Ellis and Celia Davis on local planning and climate change

information and subscriptions

Town & Country Planning The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association ISSN 0040-9960 Published bi-monthly January–February 2023 Volume 92 Number 1

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Town & Country Planning is the Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England under No. 146309. Registered Charity No. 214348 Copyright © TCPA and the authors, 2023 The TCPA may not agree with opinions expressed in Town & Country Planning but encourages publication as a matter of interest and debate. Nothing printed may be construed as representative of TCPA policy or opinion unless so stated.

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Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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contents Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

• Volume 92 • Number 1

regulars

features

On the Agenda Fiona Howie: Ploughing on with levelling up 4 Andrew Pritchard: TCPA Annual Conference 2022 6 Appreciations 8 Time & Tide Hugh Ellis and Celia Davis: Western promise 10 Bird’s Eye View Catriona Riddell: More reform, but little chance of better delivery 17 & Country Planning?

Richard Wakeford: Engaging rural communities in planning for housing 20 Off the Fence David Lock: Project Skyway 67 Going Local David Boyle: Why some councillors can be so pompous 68 Legal Eye Bob Pritchard: Time for a change?

70 Power Lines Mark Bramah: Hydrogen — is it the net-zero energy silver bullet?

IBC Inside America Mike Teitz: Thy sins shall find thee out

Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places 23 Long-term strategic intervention for ‘held-back’ places Peter Hetherington on why urgent action is needed for places that are not so much ‘left behind’ as ‘held back’ 28 Types of ‘left-behind places’ in the EU15 Sanne Velthuis, Danny MacKinnon, Andy Pike and John Tomaney on the distinct circumstances and needs of different kinds of struggling places 32 ‘Left-behind’ neighbourhoods and the Big Local story Daniel Crowe on Local Trust’s research on ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods 36 The business case for place Andy Hulme on the North West Business Leadership Team’s work on ‘left-behind’ towns and cities Feature articles 38 Community-powered devolution? We’ve been here before …

Jeff Bishop and Trevor Cherrett on local government attempts to bring rural communities ‘onside’ 43 Ecosystem services and community involvement Sally Roscoe on the involvement of local communities in ecosystem services management 47 Peatland restoration in the UK Peter Jones on UK peatland restoration plans, initiatives and projects 53 The urban/rural green infrastructure conundrum Ian Mell and John Sturzaker on green infrastructure aims and aspirations and rural planning 59 Levelling up begins at ground level James Derounian on an audit of activity in English and Welsh Parish, Town and Community Councils 62 Green infrastructure — policies, strategies and challenges Peter Jones on green infrastructure and green infrastructure strategies and policies

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Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places, pages 23–37.

Cover illustration by Clifford Harper. chcliffordharper@gmail.com Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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on the agenda TCPA Chief Executive Fiona Howie on key current issues in the policy landscape and the work of the TCPA

ploughing on with levelling up

As was predictable, but still fairly frustrating, the government published its consultation relating to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the proposed National Development Management Policies just days before Christmas. The consultation was perhaps not quite what many people had expected. It was originally referred to in policy information published alongside the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill back in May 2022,1 and was meant to be the Department’s ‘vision for the new National Planning Policy Framework, detailing what a new Framework could look like, and indicating, in broad terms, the types of National Development Management Policy that could accompany it’.

It was also stated that the government would use the consultation to set out its position on planning for housing, ‘as well as consulting on delivering the planning commitments set out in the British Energy Security Strategy’.

What was published2 was a slightly odd mixture of very specific tracked changes to the text of the NPPF to take forward the concessions that the Secretary of State had committed to in response to concerns raised by Conservative backbenchers when the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill was at Report Stage, with a long list of other policy areas that will be considered as part of a further consultation, later in 2023!

Readers of Town & Country Planning will be very aware of the impact that uncertainty has on the planning system and plan-making, and reports of Local Plans being withdrawn and delayed continue to grow3 as local planning authorities grapple with the implications of proposed new policy wording.

With the prospect of further consultation on the NPPF, it seems that uncertainty is likely to persist even after the government confirms its intentions following this current consultation.

What we can be more confident about is that, with the Rt Hon. Michael Gove MP back at the helm of 2

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the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, levelling up is once again a clear government priority. In late January the Secretary of State delivered a speech to the Convention of the North4 in which he made clear that the Levelling Up White Paper was ‘more important than ever as a guide to government action’.

A strong theme of the speech was the importance of improving places’ resilience. Much of the early part of the speech was on economic resilience, but other factors were eventually recognised as essential.

Mr Gove stated, for example: ‘And of course for those communities to be genuinely resilient, to attract and to retain the talent necessary to flourish, and to maintain economic competitiveness and generate further innovation, there need to be safe streets and ordered public spaces, an attractive natural environment and a beautiful built environment, cultural richness and respect for heritage — the civic infrastructure that reflects the pride people have in the place they call home.’

Perhaps unsurprisingly in light of the current emphasis on devolution, he argued that the best way to make sure that these public goods are aligned is by having ‘strong, accountable local civic leadership’.

For me, the most interesting part of the speech was the recognition of the role of ‘active government’.

Specifically, Mr Gove recognised that the original approach to enabling the Docklands area of London taken by the Treasury — of cutting taxes and deregulating — did not enable a thousand flowers to bloom. Instead, he pointed to the essential role of the London Docklands Development Corporation, working with relevant government agencies and other partners, to assemble and remediate land, build new transport links, and commission new housing and cultural facilities. This recognition of the potentially positive role of government intervention seemed like an important shift in narrative.

Empowered local leadership and communities are essential, but the right kind of targeted government intervention is also important if we are to level up the country, as articles in the Special Section of this issue of Town & Country Planning make clear.

on the agenda

And as levelling up continues to be talked about, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill continues its passage through the House of Lords. The Bill had its Second Reading in January, and a key theme of many contributions to the debate was that, while the ambition of levelling up was positive, the Bill, in its current form, is a missed opportunity5 — a view echoed in Peter Hetherington’s article in this issue.

Two themes that were raised repeatedly were health and climate change. In relation to the latter, the Rt Hon. Chris Skidmore MP’s Net Zero Review report, Mission Zero,6 was referred to a number of times. The important role of the planning system is raised throughout the report, in relation to both delivering infrastructure and enabling places to deliver net zero. A number of the recommendations echoed the evidence that the TCPA submitted to the review, including calling on the government to introduce ‘a statutory duty for local authorities to take account of the UK’s net zero targets, based on a clear framework of local roles and responsibilities’; to ‘provide guidance, reporting mechanisms, and additional capacity and capability support to enable local authorities to better monitor and report their net zero progress’; and to ‘reform the local planning system and the NPPF now’.

In the Second Reading debate, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath highlighted that ‘our planning system could have been a huge lever for contributing positively to net zero and environmental targets but, as far as I can see, the Bill skates over this’. A number of peers also noted that the detailed proposed changes to the NPPF currently being consulted on did little to make progress on this important issue either. The TCPA continues to push for amendments that would rectify this and hopes that the government might be more open to such suggestions following the publication of Mission Zero than it was at Report Stage in the House of Commons.

The need to tackle health inequalities was the other theme of particular note, not least due to the intervention from Lord Crisp, who is currently helping to drive the Healthy Homes Private Members’ Bill through the House of Lords. But as the Lord Bishop of Carlisle argued, health inequalities are defined as ‘avoidable, unfair and systematic differences in health between different groups of people’ and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill should be seen as an opportunity to address some of the wider determinants of health, including housing and transport. Lord Crisp also stated that ‘it is remarkable that the Bill itself contains not a single practical measure which would support communities either in the short-term battle with the cost of living crisis, or to secure their long-term health and well-being’.

The role of the planning system in relation to tackling health inequalities is an issue that we will continue to raise in relation to the Bill and will also be a core theme in our response to the NPPF consultation.

As was the case for many members of the House of Lords in the Second Reading debate, the TCPA supports the ambition of levelling up. Indeed, as highlighted in Peter Hetherington’s article, while we might not have used the phrase we have been encouraging thought about how to tackle inter- and intra-regional inequality for many years. The big challenge is how we move the levelling-up agenda from an appealing soundbite to tangible policies and action. Peter Hetherington’s article gives some suggestions for immediate practical steps forward.

• Fiona Howie is Chief Executive of the TCPA. Notes 1 See the ‘Wider improvements to planning procedures’ section in Levelling Up and Regeneration: Further Information. Policy Paper. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, May 2022. www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-upand-regeneration-further-information/levelling-up-andregeneration-further-information#wider-improvementsto-planning-procedures 2 National Planning Policy Framework: Showing Indicative Changes for Consultation. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/levelling-upand-regeneration-bill-reforms-to-national-planningpolicy; and Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Reforms to National Planning Policy. Consultation Document. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/ consultations/levelling-up-and-regeneration-billreforms-to-national-planning-policy/levelling-up-andregeneration-bill-reforms-to-national-planning-policy 3 See, for example, Planning Data Update 2023. Savills, Jan. 2023. www.savills.co.uk/research_ articles/229130/338073-0; and I Tidswell: ‘Start me up — but then you stopped: the continuing cost of local plan delays’. Planning Matters blog entry. Lichfields, 30 Jan. 2023. https://lichfields.uk/blog/2023/january/30/ start-me-up-but-then-you-stopped-the-continuing-costof-local-plan-delays/ 4 M Gove: ‘Levelling Up Secretary’s speech to the Convention of the North’. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 25 Jan. 2023. www.gov.uk/ government/speeches/levelling-up-secretarys-speechto-the-convention-of-the-north 5 Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. Second Reading.

Hansard, Vol. 826, 17 Jan. 2023. https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2023-01-17/debates/ F96D0E18-4948-47BD-B762-3CF90D695C3A/LevellingUpAndRegenerationBill 6 C Skidmore: Mission Zero: Independent Review of Net Zero. Final Report. Independent Review of Net Zero, Jan. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/publications/ review-of-net-zero Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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TCPA annual conference TCPA Chair Andrew Pritchard reports on the proceedings of the TCPA’s 2022 Annual Conference, held at the end of November

we’re back … !

The TCPA held its first in-person Annual Conference since 2019 on 24 November 2022 in the leafy surroundings of Regent’s University London. It was great to see so many new and familiar faces, and I am sure that I was not alone in reflecting on how much had changed over the three years since we last came together. It was also my first Annual Conference as Chair of the Association since taking over from Mary Parsons at the summer AGM. The event, which was sponsored by Peabody, Grosvenor and AECOM, drew speakers and delegates from across the country, and the room was comfortably packed throughout the whole day.

The very topical theme was ‘Unpicking ‘levelling up’: what does it mean for place-making?’ Despite scepticism about the current government’s approach, the need to address the UK’s gross spatial inequalities, highlighted by, among others, the UK2070 Commission,1 is now part of the political mainstream. Whatever the outcome of the next general election, ‘levelling up’ looks likely to remain a key driver of government policy.

To set the scene, the first session featured presentations from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Chief Planner, Joanna Averley, and the TCPA’s own Dr Hugh Ellis.

Joanna explained the relationship between the Levelling Up White Paper,2 the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (LURB)3 and the government’s planning reform agenda. Not surprisingly, questions focused on the ongoing challenges facing local authorities and the politically contested nature of some of the proposed changes to planning. Indeed, earlier that same week, the government had to pull a vote on the LURB because of a rebellion by 50 Tory MPs on the vexed issue of housing targets.

TCPA Director of Policy Hugh Ellis gave a typically thoughtful and robust presentation which captured the mood of the room, contrasting the ambitious rhetoric of the White Paper with the reality of permitted development and the ‘crisis of identity’ enveloping the profession following years of marketled reforms and austerity.

The next session brought the debate down to place, and two places in particular: Stoke-on-Trent, and Thamesmead in London. The Conservative Leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Councillor

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Abi Brown, gave a passionate account of the challenges and opportunities facing the six towns that make up her city, and the transformational projects that she has been able to progress with financial support from the government’s Levelling Up Fund. Councillor Brown was not uncritical of the government’s approach to supporting non-metropolitan urban areas, but was very much speaking from a ‘glass half-full’ perspective. Her presentation also demonstrated the importance of strong local leadership in delivering positive change in places where decline has become normalised.

John Lewis, Executive Director of Thamesmead Peabody gave a perspective from a place with a very different history and set of challenges.

Conceived in the 1960s, Thamesmead was never able to realise its original vision despite its location, and is now in need of significant regeneration and renewal. John outlined Peabody’s exciting plans for growth and redevelopment since becoming Thamesmead’s major landowner, and some of the progress made so far. He also highlighted how basic improvements such has reducing litter can have a very positive impact on people’s perceptions of a place.

Following a networking lunch, TCPA Vice-Chair Catriona Riddell built on this theme and led a session on ‘pride in place’, featuring insightful contributions from Indy Johar, Executive Director of Dark Matter Labs, Jo Harrop, founder and Director of social enterprise PLACED, and Sarah Scannell, Assistant Director, Planning with Birmingham City Council. There followed a wide-ranging discussion that touched on the nature of the ‘public interest’, local democracy, and local leadership.

Nichola Rochfort, Senior Community Engagement Manager with Grosvenor, then gave a fascinating presentation on the analytical research that Grosvenor has undertaken into public attitudes to place and how this has been used to inform development and investment priorities. The work resonated with delegates, and questions focused on how the approach could be rolled out more widely, resources permitting.

The key-note speaker was saved for the final session, and I was delighted to introduce the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty. He

TCPA annual conference

started by highlighting the very positive role that planning has played in promoting public health: ‘If you look back over the last 50 years, probably more has been done for public health by proper planning [...] than almost any other intervention other than vaccination rates. Your professional skills are driving a lot of the change.’

It is increasingly rare for a public official to speak so positively about planning and planners — and it was perhaps a timely reminder that planning as a government function was first established by the health ministry. But he also highlighted that many patterns of ill-health are persistent and remain stubbornly unresolved: ‘If you look at a map of child mortality in the 1850s, and mortality during Covid, they are almost the same. This suggests we have failed to understand the drivers in ill-health and tackle them.’

Of particular concern is the impact of the built environment on air quality and obesity — both issues highlighted by the TCPA’s own work on healthy homes and ’20-minute neighbourhoods’.

Professor Whitty had some interesting reflections on his time at the heart of government during the Covid pandemic: ‘In health we realised a few decades ago a lot of what we were doing was wrong: now we base what we do on evidence. In government that hasn’t happened; people think they are doing good with no evidence.’

Listening to this I found myself wondering about the extent to which the numerous government planning reforms of the last 10-15 years had been based on sound evidence, as opposed to perhaps ‘received wisdom’, expediency, or political ideology.

He also argued that government can be risk-averse and that one of the positives from the pandemic was that it demonstrated how bold decisions can be taken when necessary without the feared legal consequences, citing the sharing of data that took place across government departments as an example.

Responses to Professor Whitty’s presentation were made by Trina Lynskey, Chair of the DeptfordFolk parks group, Lucy Carraz, Government Sector Lead for AECOM Buildings + Places, and Lourdes Madigasekera-Elliot, Public Health Strategic Lead: Creating Healthy Places, for East Sussex County Council. Understandably, there was a huge amount of common ground, with an emphasis on understanding the impact of place on ‘lived

experience’ and the every-day choices made by people. The challenges of the ‘school run’ were highlighted as a particular example. There was also a call for planners to be more assertive about promoting measures that are known to reduce health inequalities. Perhaps we have become too cautious and anxious to avoid anything that could be seen as controversial?

‘In health we realised a few decades ago a lot of what we were doing was wrong: now we base what we do on evidence.

In government that hasn’t happened; people think they are doing good with no evidence’ All four speakers then came together for a question and answer session. The discussion was thoughtful and engaging, and reinforced the sense that the cause of good planning can only be strengthened by closer alignment with the public health agenda.

In truth, we could have kept talking for much longer, but I had to draw the event to a close and let people take their chances with the trains — transport being an area where ‘levelling up’ is very much required.

Pritchard is Chair of the TCPA’s Board of Trustees •andAndrew Director of Policy & Infrastructure with East Midlands Councils. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 Make No Little Plans: Acting at Scale for a Fairer and Stronger Future. UK2070 Commission, Feb. 2020. https://uk2070.org.uk/2020/02/26/uk2070-final-reportpublished/ 2 Levelling Up the United Kingdom. Levelling Up White Paper. CP 604. HM Government, Feb. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-up-theunited-kingdom 3 As introduced into Parliament on 11 May 2022—see www.gov.uk/government/collections/levelling-up-andregeneration-bill

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appreciation

John Zetter — an appreciation

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Graeme Bell OBE TCPA Vice-President

Michael Dower — an appreciation Peak District National Park

John Zetter BA, DipTP, FRTPI, one of the TCPA’s great supporters and one of its Vice-Presidents, died in October 2022 at the age of 82. When I was CEO of the TCPA, John was leading the research group at the Department of the Environment (DoE) and managing this important work with distinction.

Many civil servants work in the shadows, but he was as well known outside the Civil Service as he was within. Outgoing and gregarious yet modest and unassuming, positive and encouraging as well as generous and kind, and curious and enquiring, not least about the environment at both the local and the global dimensions, he was a man who cared deeply about issues that should concern us all. Importantly and unusually, he was someone who could see the big picture as well as having a keen desire to discover the detail.

As a young boy he lived through the London Blitz and the austerity of the late 1940s. Later, with a father working in the Colonial Service and posted to Cyprus, John was frequently on boats and trains travelling across Europe to and from boarding school with his brother Roger. This encouraged his internationalist outlook,which he maintained throughout his life.

After a geography degree at Nottingham University he qualified as a planner and worked in local authorities and the newly established Countryside Commission, and then joined the DoE, where he rose quickly to a senior level. He was appointed Head of the International Affairs section of the DoE in the late 1970s and later Head of Urban Affairs at the OECD in Paris from 1982 to 1986. The Paris posting suited his character, experience and outlook down to the ground. With a Prime Minister at home perhaps not endearing the UK to some of our international partners, it was the patient diligence of John and his colleagues who helped keep our diplomatic channels open abroad.

It was only natural that John would be drawn to the International Federation for Housing and Planning

(IFHP). He served on its Executive, was ultimately appointed Vice-President, and would have been President if his ill health had not intervened.

John was never one to be despondent, but he was increasingly dismayed at the way that the welfare state has been gradually dismantled and the role of public service and the public sector devalued. The Brexit referendum — and the result — saddened him deeply, and we can only imagine what he would make of recent reports that leaving the EU is proving to be a big, costly mistake.

At the TCPA, he served on Policy Council and the Board of Trustees for over 30 years, a voice of calm reason in sometimes difficult times. Of major importance was his assistance in accessing funding through EU research programmes. This was a financial lifesaver for the Association for 20 years. It also gave the TCPA access to a European network of local authorities and universities that endures post-Brexit.

We owe him a deep debt of gratitude.

If research and intelligence-gathering sounds like a dry, dusty topic — and, yes, it can be — we also remember John for his laugh and his great sense of humour. He was terrific company. Many of us in the planning profession not only mourn the passing of an outstanding talent in his field and a true public servant but also the loss of a very good friend. Our thoughts are with his wife Elizabeth, his brother Roger (also a planner), and the family.

The planning world, and society in general, has lost a visionary, in the form of Professor Michael Dower.

Personally, we are saddened by the loss of a longstanding colleague and friend. Michael was — literally and metaphorically — a towering figure in the fields of rural planning and sustainable and community development.

appreciation

A few years back, one of us asked Michael to introduce himself to a group of students. About 45 minutes later he paused and started the presentation proper! The reason being that he had such pedigree and such an amazing CV to communicate.

Michael was the son of John Dower, the ‘father’ of English and Welsh National Parks; and grandson of Labour politician and government Minister Sir Charles Trevelyan. From memory, we are sure that Michael also said that he had the idea for ‘conservation activity holidays’ — adopted by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV) and the National Trust — on which volunteers undertake hedge-laying, bracken removal, and other practical environmental projects.

Michael worked early in his career at the Dartington Amenity Research Trust — a Devonbased think-tank, where one of us would see him there every quarter when putting together the Community Council of Devon magazine, Village Green. He moved to be National Park Officer for the Peak Park; and then on to the post of Director General of the countryside quango, the Countryside Commission (that was). In all these jobs his abiding passion was for social, economic and environmental action, driven by local communities. Michael was the founder-chairman of Rural Voice, an unlikely alliance of countryside organisations that made a real impact at a time when the policies of the Thatcher government were challenging many aspects of rural life. For some years he served on the TCPA’s Policy Council.

Latterly he worked at the University of Gloucestershire. Michael was a key mover in the European Council for the Village and Small Town, a ginger group for community-based rural development across Europe. He was passionate about the possibilities for transfer of practice among communities and across nations.

He was a formidable, yet kindly advocate and activist for rural communities. His incisiveness, dynamism, insight — and singing(!) — will be greatly missed. Our abiding image is of Michael leading group-singing by delegates at an EU conference, as we sped across the Greek countryside in a bus!

Dr James Derounian National Teaching Fellow, Society of Local Council Clerks, De Montfort University

David M Clark Former Chief Officer, NCVO (Rural)

The TCPA’s vision is for homes, places and communities in which everyone can thrive. Its mission is to challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone.

Informed by the Garden City Principles, the TCPA’s strategic priorities are to: Work to secure a good home for everyone in inclusive, resilient and prosperous communities, which support people to live healthier lives.

Empower people to have real influence over decisions about their environments and to secure social justice within and between communities.

Support new and transform existing places to be adaptable to current and future challenges, including the climate crisis.

TCPA membership The benefits of TCPA membership include: a subscription to Town & Country Planning; discounted fees for TCPA events and conferences; opportunities to become involved in policy-making; a monthly e-bulletin; and access to the members’ area on the TCPA website.

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Contact the Membership Officer, David White t: (0)20 7930 8903 e: membership@tcpa.org.uk w: www.tcpa.org.uk

TCPA policy and projects Follow the TCPA’s policy and project work on Twitter, @theTCPA and on the TCPA website, at www.tcpa.org.uk

• Affordable housing • Community participation in planning • Garden Cities and New Towns • Healthy Homes Act campaign • Healthy place-making • New Communities Group • Parks and green infrastructure • Planning reform • Planning for climate change Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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time & tide Despite crippling budget cuts, local government is way ahead of Whitehall in planning for climate change, say Hugh Ellis and Celia Davis

western promise While these positive decisions are of course welcome, it is clear that progress here has been made despite the English planning system, which so often fails to facilitate sensible decision-making in the face of the climate crisis. The damaging decision by the Secretary of State to approve the UK’s first new coal mine for 30 years sends a clear message on the priority given to cutting After months of anxious waiting, the inspector’s greenhouse gases by this government. reports for the Bath and North East Somerset Meanwhile, the evidence that a well resourced (B&NES) Council and Cornwall Council Local Plans and functional planning system is essential to provide rare cause for celebration. Both councils delivering against legal requirements on climate chose to review their plan policies through the lens change continues to stack up. of climate emergency declarations that commit Chris Skidmore MP’s comprehensive Net Zero their authorities to reach net-zero carbon by 2030 Review clearly recognises the vital role of the (far ahead of the national 2050 target). After similar planning system in achieving the UK’s legally binding policies in West Oxfordshire were watered down by net-zero targets and acknowledges that, in its current the Planning Inspectorate earlier this year,1 it is with form, the system hinders, rather than enables, great relief that the ambitious net-zero policies put climate change mitigation. forward by B&NES and Cornwall have been found While the recommendations of the review could sound. undoubtedly be more ambitious, there is an Both inspector’s reports provide helpful clarity urgency to them that rings true — ‘Government where outdated Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) should reform local planning and the National and Written Ministerial Statements have created Planning Policy Framework now’;4 and the call for more ‘clarity, certainty, consistency, and continuity’ confusion and been used as leverage by some from government will be recognised by many,4 developers that are keen to delay their inevitable although a fifth ‘c’ of ‘capacity’ may feel like a obligations to build homes fit for a carbon-neutral future. The inspectors for B&NES and Cornwall have glaring omission to many currently working in the public sector. agreed with the position advocated by the TCPA, In late 2022, the TCPA carried out a survey of local Rights Community Action, and others — that planning authority officers to inform training to be councils are able to set their own targets for carried out in partnership with the Environment energy efficiency above national standards.2 Local authorities in England can now be confident that Agency. The responses to questions on barriers to well evidenced policies that go beyond minimum delivery on climate change came as little surprise. national standards to address the climate challenge The vast majority (86%) reported that insufficient can be found sound. staff capacity and resources were impacting their Particularly striking are some of the conclusions authority’s ability to implement planning policies on of Inspector Griffiths on Cornwall’s Climate flood risk and climate change. Only 2% felt that Emergency Development Plan Document, which capacity and resources were not impacting their clearly accepts the justification for a Local Plan authority in this way. Other barriers highlighted contributing to accelerated action on climate change: by the survey include tension with other policy ‘While I acknowledge that there are still those who priorities (such as housing delivery) and lack of express scepticism, the scientific community and access to expertise. The results also point to a governments worldwide fully accept the dangers shortage of skills and knowledge on issues key to posed by climate change, and the need for urgent climate change adaptation, including evaluating action to address it. In that context, it seems to me SuDS (sustainable drainage systems), natural flood that it would be perverse to criticise the Council management, climate change allowances, and for attempting to do too much, too soon.’ 3 safeguarding land.

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time & tide

Barriers and opportunities in delivering net zero and climate resilience In the coming months, the TCPA will be working with the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) on a research project to understand in more detail the barriers and opportunities in delivering net zero and climate resilience through the planning system.

The research, commissioned by the Climate Change Committee, will focus on the significant variations between local authorities in how climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and objectives are being implemented, and how barriers to implementation can be overcome.

Stakeholders engaged in planning for climate change, particularly those involved in local planning, will be invited to contribute to this research through a survey and stakeholder roundtables.

If you would like to find out more or contribute to stakeholder engagement, please email Celia Davis on celia.davis@tcpa.org.uk

The need and appetite for training and CPD is clear, but more must be done to urgently address the well documented crisis5 of resourcing and capacity across planning departments.

Will last summer’s High Court ruling that the government’s Net Zero Strategy is in breach of the Climate Change Act give the impetus needed to speed up action on climate change? If the current consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is anything to go by, it seems we could be on course for yet more delay.

It is now clear that the most significant effect of the proposed NPPF revisions is to stall plan-making across England, meaning that even where ambitious policies on climate change are coming through the system, these is a risk that they will be held up owing to back-pedalling over housing numbers.

Longer-term proposals for the NPPF point to a future carbon target regime. This could be a very positive development, but signalling this for future consultation is yet another failure to act with the urgency required.

As the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill continues its passage through Parliament, amendments that would strengthen the role of planning in addressing urgent climate change challenges through legislation continue to be rejected by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove. There is a clear opportunity in the House of Lords to strengthen the obligations on plan-making and decision-making by welding together the provisions of the Planning and Climate Acts.

Regardless of the national policy vacuum on planning for climate change, the TCPA continues to work with partners and local authorities to advocate and promote the role of planning and planners in addressing this urgent issue, and is publishing the fourth edition of the joint RTPI and TCPA Guide for Local Authorities on Planning for Climate Change.6 The new edition brings the guidance up to date with recent legislative and policy changes, reflects

current best practice, encourages local authorities to be ambitious, and will be accompanied by an online case study hub, encouraging planners to take inspiration from those leading the charge elsewhere.

While instability in Whitehall and the rollercoaster of planning reform provide a backdrop of continued uncertainty, it is important to plan for eventualities that are certain. The climate is changing. It is changing at a rapid and frightening pace, with farreaching consequences for all communities. The imperative to plan for and mitigate against these changes has never been more urgent.

Hugh Ellis is Policy Director and Celia Davis is a Projects •andDrPolicy Manager at the TCPA. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 See the TCPA blog post from 6 Jul. 2022: H Ellis: ‘The Planning Inspectorate’s assault on an exemplary Net Zero planning policy fuels the climate crisis’. https://tcpa.org.uk/pins-assault-on-an-exemplary-netzero-planning-policy/ 2 See P Lewis: Report to Bath and North East Somerset Council. Planning Inspectorate, 13 Dec. 2022, para. 85. https://beta.bathnes.gov.uk/sites/default/ files/2022-12/EXAM24%20Inspectors%20Report.pdf; and P Griffiths: Report to Cornwall Council. Planning Inspectorate, 10 Jan. 2023, para. 167. www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/10pmiq1e/appendix-1cornwall-climate-emergency-dpd-final-report-1.pdf 3 Report to Cornwall Council (see note 2), para. 32 4 C Skidmore: Mission Zero: Independent Review of Net Zero. Final Report. Independent Review of Net Zero, Jan. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/publications/ review-of-net-zero 5 See, for example, T Porter: ‘The planning system is at crisis point’. Planning Resource, 5 Dec. 2022 6 A launch event will be held online on 21 Feb. 2023 — see https://tcpa.org.uk/event/webinar-launch-of-thetcpa-and-rtpi-planning-for-climate-change-guide-newedition/ Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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bird’s eye view As they stand, the latest proposed changes to the planning systems are likely to further weaken the delivery of new homes in the right places, says Catriona Riddell

more reform, but little chance of better delivery

There are probably very few people who believe that the current statutory planning system works well, is fair, and delivers good outcomes for people and places. The dilemma that we have had for the last few years is how much of it can be thrown up in the air in order to improve things without, at the same time, disrupting delivery of the very things it is aimed at supporting — especially providing the new homes that we need, building economic and climate resilience, and delivering the right infrastructure.

The last time a major reform was implemented was in 2010, when the coalition government tore up the rule book just as we were emerging from a worldwide economic recession. It has taken years to recover, and many would argue that we never have, especially those within the public sector who also suffered from the major austerity cuts to resources.

The government acknowledges that things are not perfect but has decided not to undertake the root-and-branch planning reform that an earlier Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, believed is needed.

In his 2020 proposed reforms1 he promised ‘to do what too many have for too long lacked the courage to do — tear it [the planning system] down and start again’, introducing ‘Radical reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War’.

Instead, the current government is proposing to make changes to the existing system, building on what has already been set in motion through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (the Bill), with the clear intention of putting local communities at the heart of the planning system.2 The overall policy objectives set out in the consultation document published just before Christmas frame the proposals and, in themselves, are admirable.3 They are aimed at ‘building beautiful and refusing ugliness’; securing the infrastructure needed to support development; improving local community engagement in planning; providing 10

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better environmental outcomes; and delivering the right homes in the right places. The problem is that the changes proposed in both the consultation document and in the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) published alongside it are very unlikely to deliver all of these objectives, and in some ways will stand in defiance of doing so.

The sceptics among us will argue that it is simply an election manifesto leading up to both the local elections due to take place this May4 and the general election which will have to take place before the end of 2024. Given that most of the timescales for implementing the changes will be in the longer term, many could be short lived if the Conservatives lose the next general election. But in the meantime, the proposed reforms, especially some of those that will be part of the earlier transition period,5 could potentially bring the whole system to a halt.

In the lead-up to, and then since the start of, the formal consultation, a number of local planning authorities have already paused or withdrawn their emerging Local Plans to consider what the reforms could mean for them, some even at a very late stage in the process6 — and these are just the ones that have said something formally: there are likely to be many others on a deliberate ‘go slow’ until things become clearer, especially as they now have until June 2025 to get their plans through the current system, rather than the previous deadline of December this year.7 Housing provision in local planning

In terms of internal inconsistencies within the consultation document, housing is probably the best place to start — and the main one. A key objective of the government is to ‘deliver more homes in the right places, supported by sustainable and integrated infrastructure for our communities and our economy’3 and, specifically, to deliver the 2019 general election manifesto ambition of providing 300,000 new homes a year. According to government statistics, approximately 230,000 new (net) dwellings were delivered in 2021–22.8 While this is 10% more than the previous year and much higher than has been delivered for some time, the target of 300,000 new homes has not been met since the heydays of council housebuilding in the post-war decades which ended in the mid-1970s.

Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

bird’s eye view

‘It will be a brave council that goes down the road of meeting its needs in full if it involves the loss of Green Belt land when they have effectively been handed a ‘get out of jail free’ card’

So what is the plan of action to change things?

Putting aside the fact that the planning system is not the only factor that influences housebuilding rates, progress on plan-making through the ‘planled’ system across England has been very slow.9 Successive governments have attempted to speed things up, and the current government is no different.

Key proposals in the Bill include a mandatory 30-month timescale for Local Plan preparation and the introduction of new National Development Management Policies, both of which will be implemented through the full 2024 reforms.

Changes to the way that housing provision in Local Plans is managed will probably also help to speed things up. Since the NPPF was introduced in 2012, local housing targets have been the main obstacle for many local planning authorities in progressing Local Plans, especially those that are heavily constrained by Green Belt. Now, thanks to the so-called Conservative rebel MPs, led by Theresa Villiers, the government has clarified that the national standard methodology for assessing housing needs was never intended to be mandatory and should be considered by local planning authorities as an ‘advisory starting point’ for developing their Local Plan target.10 Proposed changes to the tests of soundness set out in the draft revision of the NPPF and applied by

inspectors at the Local Plan examination should also help.11 Local planning authorities will no longer have to treat the standard methodology target as a minimum or ‘justify’ their plans on the basis of the technical evidence presented, allowing for a more flexible, vision-led/evidence-informed (as opposed to evidence-led) strategy to be developed.

In addition to the messaging around housing numbers, the proposed changes to the NPPF also send a very clear message that Green Belt should not be used unless the local planning authority considers that meeting housing needs in full provide exceptional circumstances for releasing Green Belt land. While this has always been the case,12 the proposed new explicit reference to the fact that ‘Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period’ will impact on how the exceptional circumstances test is applied by local planning authorities. Vitally, it makes it absolutely clear that the responsibility for the decision to release Green Belt rests fully with the relevant local planning authority and is not enforced through national policy.

All of these subtle but important changes should help councils to engage with local communities in a much more positive and proactive way and therefore Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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speed up the plan-making process, but they also come with significant political risks. It is often easier to blame the government for the Local Plan housing target and a need to release Green Belt land than it is to take responsibility for difficult decisions — see, for example, the foreword in the recently submitted Spelthorne Local Plan, in which the Leader of the Council states that the plan preparation process has: ‘been divisive, bruising and at times unpleasant. It has fractured communities and turned councillors against each other. The reason for the acrimony is easy to discern: the government’s brutal housing targets which eclipse everything else in the Planmaking process. Forget the semantics that it is a ‘housing need’ figure; it is for all practical purposes a rigid target. Every statement by an MP that it is not mandatory looks increasingly vacuous as authority after authority has seen their plan fail at the housing number hurdle.’ 13 Politically, from now on it will be a brave council that goes down the road of meeting its needs in full if it involves the loss of Green Belt land when they have effectively been handed a ‘get out of jail free’ card.

‘While these reforms might allow more local community participation and influence over plans, they will inevitably result in a significant reduction in the number of new homes we plan for’ Strategic planning for housing delivery

The combination of all of these changes might just help to take some of the heat out of planning and allow local communities to finally feel engaged in the process and more accepting of development.

Job done, right? But this was also the philosophy behind localism when it was introduced after the 2010 general election. One of the government’s keen advocates of localism and the ‘Big Society’, and the main architect of the 2012 NPPF-based system, was Greg Clarke MP. In a speech to the TCPA’s Annual Conference in November 2010, he promised that ‘if local people have a chance to voice an opinion, and to see and feel the benefits of development, they have reasons to say yes’.

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There is no doubt that localism over-promised the role that local communities could play in both planmaking and planning decision-making. We have arguably ended up with a much more centralised system than pre-2010, with local communities feeling even more disengaged in the process. This is why Theresa Villiers and her colleagues have argued that the system needs to be rebalanced in favour of local communities and why they have fought so hard to get the changes they deemed necessary through the reforms. Who would blame them when the message they hear from their communities is that planning is all one sided and local residents do not have any say in what happens to the places they live in?

The changes proposed will undoubtedly be welcomed by many local planning authorities that have been embroiled in divisive battles with their local communities over planning. But, while these reforms might allow more local community participation and influence over plans, they will inevitably result in a significant reduction in the number of new homes we plan for. The only way, therefore, in which the government’s aim of achieving its target of 300,000 new homes a year will not be viewed as a pipedream is through its approach to strategic planning.

There are two main proposals for strategic planning set out in the reforms, the first and most important being the revocation of the duty to co-operate. Support for abolishing this legal requirement was initially set out in the 2020 Planning White Paper and was one of the few proposals that was overwhelmingly well received and that has therefore been taken forward through the current proposed reforms.

Most of the charges against the duty have been around the fact that it is a process-driven mechanism and does not necessarily deliver good strategic planning outcomes, especially in relation to meeting housing needs. In 2016, the government-appointed Local Plan Expert Group concluded that the duty to co-operate ‘was not effective in ensuring agreement between neighbouring authorities about the distribution of housing needs and that this was one of the most significant constraints to effective plan making’.14 The government is therefore proposing to replace the duty with a new ‘alignment policy’ ‘to secure appropriate engagement between authorities where strategic planning considerations cut across boundaries’.15 This will be tested at examination and will, in theory, be more flexible to manage than the duty to co-operate. Under the proposals, inspectors would have the ability to amend Local Plans and address any strategic planning weaknesses, therefore

Benjamin Elliott on Unsplash

bird’s eye view

As a result of the proposed changes, strategic planning mechanisms needed to ensure that unmet needs are ‘mopped up’ are now likely to be even weaker than they are at present

allowing a plan to be found sound — whereas, currently, failure to comply with the duty to co-operate is the ultimate sanction on local planning authorities, as the plan-making process then has to start again.

However, this misses the point of why failure to meet the duty has such an extreme penalty attached. Inspectors are (usually) only examining one Local Plan at a time. ‘Strategic matters’ are, by their very nature, issues that impact on more than one local planning area, which is why inspectors cannot fix strategic planning failures retrospectively at examination. Therefore, for the proposed new alignment policy to be successfully implemented, all planning strategies and strategic planning matters of all the relevant local planning authorities would have to be examined together.

This is not impossible and, in fact, is something that the Planning Officers Society has been advocating for some time.16 It has been done before when one Local Plan directly impacts on another — for example, over the Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Local Plans.17 However, unless the inspector is examining a joint Local Plan which covers the whole strategic planning area, this would require all relevant councils to be at the same or similar stage in their plan-making process, or to be part of a strategic framework provided through a combined authority Spatial Development Strategy (SDS) in which strategic matters have already been addressed.

Which leads to the second main proposal for strategic planning. The government is encouraging the preparation of new ‘voluntary’ local authority joint SDSs, in addition to those prepared by

combined authorities. I have written about these before and have set out the case that, unless these become mandatory, the chances of many (if any) of these being progressed are very slim. Added to the fact that, outside of London, only one combined authority is currently preparing an SDS, it is clear to see that this model is not going to be the panacea that the government thinks it will be.18 In the absence of this context, the job of establishing how strategic matters can be fixed through the examination process (for example where Local Plan housing targets are significantly below the government’s assessment of need for an area) becomes a lot harder. The likelihood is that all that the inspector can do is leave any unmet needs to be addressed through a future review of the plan.

Again, this has already happened in some areas where the local planning authority has met the legal requirements of the duty to co-operate but there are still unresolved strategic matters.

Birmingham is a good case in point. Examining its 2017 Local Plan, the inspector accepted that the city was reliant on its neighbours within the (two) adjoining housing market areas but, because of the stage that the neighbouring authorities were at in their respective plan-making, the unmet housing needs could not be redistributed. Although Birmingham City Council is now updating its Local Plan, it is clear that this issue still has not been resolved, especially as the joint Local Plan being prepared in the adjoining Black Country has fallen apart.19 Getting more from larger towns and cities?

So in summary, many local planning authorities are likely to reduce the housing provision they are planning for, especially in Green Belt areas around the main cities; and the proposed strategic planning mechanisms needed to ensure that unmet needs are ‘mopped up’ are now likely to be even weaker than they are currently. The government has one last trick up its sleeves to ensure that, overall, housing needs are met and the target of 300,000 new homes a year can be achieved — and that is to make sure that the largest towns and cities across England do even more.

In 2020 the government set out plans for the 20 largest towns and cities across England to deliver a 35% uplift on their own needs, as set out in the standard methodology. This was based on the assumption that they were the areas that were more able to accommodate new homes and offer more sustainable opportunities, particularly in relation to transport. This requirement is currently set out in Planning Practice Guidance,20 but the Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Table 1

Twenty largest towns and cities with a required 35% housing uplift, and current plan-making status — summary as of January 2023 Urban area with a 35% uplift

National policy constraints

Local Plan status

Birmingham

Green Belt

Bradford

Green Belt

Bristol

Green Belt

Brighton & Hove* Coventry

South Downs National Park Green Belt

Derby

Green Belt

Kingston upon Hull* Leeds

None

Local Plan (2017) being reviewed to address the existing city’s shortfall and to address the uplift, but the uplift is unlikely to be accommodated within the city Local Plan (2017) being reviewed, but evidence base suggests the uplift is unlikely to be accommodated within the city or city region Local Plan (2011/14) being reviewed, but basing local housing need on its own assessment, which is around 77% of the standard methodology + uplift Local Plan (2016/22) only meets 44% of pre-uplift objectively assessed need, so the uplift is very unlikely to be met within the city (or wider area because of national constraints) Local Plan (2017) — unmet need was redistributed to other local planning authorities within the Coventry and Warwickshire housing market area. Local Plan review began end of Dec. 2022 and will have to address the 35% uplift, but the council is currently considering an alternative approach to local housing need based on ‘exceptional circumstances’ Core Strategy (2017). New plan being progressed, with a Regulation 18 draft due to be published in ‘spring 2023’, but it is not clear whether the uplift will be accommodated within the city or city region Local Plan (2017) not currently being reviewed

Leicester

None

Liverpool

Green Belt

London

Green Belt

Manchester

Green Belt

Newcastle upon Tyne Nottingham

Green Belt

Plymouth*

None

Reading Sheffield

None Green Belt

Southampton*

Stoke-on-Trent

New Forest NP nutrient neutrality Green Belt

Wolverhampton

Green Belt

Green Belt

Green Belt

Core Strategy partially reviewed (2019) and aims to meet objectively assessed need, but pre-uplift. Further partial review just initiated, which will consider housing provision, including the uplift Core strategy (2014) being reviewed and the Regulation 19 Local Plan (Jan. 2023) includes provision for around 50% of needs (including the uplift) to be provided by neighbouring authorities (agreed via a Statement of Common Ground) Local Plan (2022) aims to meet its objectively assessed need in full, but pre standard methodology + uplift. Liverpool City Region SDS aims to meet city region needs in full, but based on existing Local Plans and so does not take account of the uplift London Plan (SDS) (2021) does not meet its (pre-uplift) objectively assessed need, but has a policy requirement to work with wider South East authorities. No progress so far Joint Local Plan (Places for Everyone) currently being prepared for authorities across Greater Manchester and aims to meet objectively assessed need, including the uplift, within the city region. Currently at examination Joint Local Plan (2015) with Gateshead not currently being updated, although it was reviewed in 2020 (pre-uplift) with the conclusion that it did not need to be updated Core Strategy (2014) is aligned with neighbouring authorities within the city region.

Nottingham City Council now working with neighbours to develop a Greater Nottingham Strategic Plan. Consultation on a preferred approach (Jan. 2023) aims to meet Nottingham’s needs in full, including the uplift, within city region Joint Plymouth and South West Devon Local Plan (2019) which was prepared pre standard methodology + uplift. A review of the plan is now not expected until 2024 Local Plan (2019) pre-uplift, with no current plans for review Core Strategy (2012) being replaced with a new Local Plan. Regulation 19 plan published for consultation Jan. 2023, but does not aim to meet its local housing need and there is no agreement from neighbouring authorities to help Core Strategy (2015). New plan currently being prepared, with Regulation 19 version due for publication in 2023, but with the Regulation 18 proposed ‘capacity-led’ approach, with only around 63% of local housing need uplift being met Reviewing Local Plan to replace existing joint Core Strategy with Newcastle-underLyme after the latter pulled out of a joint plan review in 2021. Issues and Options consultation held in 2021, but no progress since Part of Black Country Joint Local Plan, but review has now been abandoned since Dudley pulled out owing to disagreements about housing numbers and distribution

Uplift being addressed and Local Plan Uplift being addressed but Local Plan reached at least Regulation 19 stage not sufficiently advanced to provide confidence that it will be met * National policy constraints are those referred to in the NPPF, but some areas also have absolute constraints owing to their coastal locations Urban areas are those proposed by the government in the 2020 NPPF but also confirmed in the current consultation on planning reform3 Uplift not being addressed/no evidence that uplift is currently being addressed

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bird’s eye view

government is proposing to elevate it to national policy status through an amendment to the NPPF.21 Furthermore, this also makes it clear that the ‘uplift should be accommodated within those cities and urban centres themselves unless it would conflict with the policies in this Framework and legal obligations’.

This approach is not going well, and there does not appear to be much progress in many of these areas (see Table 1). This is largely due to the fact that these towns and cities were already running out of options, already had challenging housing targets, and were therefore relying on their neighbours for help, especially in areas where the town or city has tight administrative boundaries and/or is surrounded by Green Belt.

‘The limited levers provided by the duty to co-operate are likely to be replaced with an even weaker mechanism for strategic planning ... but, with one or two small but significant amendments to the Bill, something could be salvaged’ In other areas there are absolute barriers to growth — for example, at Brighton and Hove there is the English Channel on one side and national policy constraints in the form of the South Downs National Park on the other. Brighton and Hove Local Plan was therefore already aiming to meet only 44% of its housing needs. The proposed reforms will clearly make it even harder for such areas to deliver on their needs and to work proactively with their neighbours to secure help.

Salvaging something from a weakened system

So where does that leave us? In all likelihood we will now see housing targets in Local Plans across England plummet, certainly in the next couple of years. The limited levers provided by the duty to co-operate are likely to be replaced with an even weaker mechanism for strategic planning, coupled with a system that relies almost entirely on voluntary co-operation, with very few, if any, carrots or sticks employed. The places that are expected to do much of the heavy lifting are already exhausting their options internally and can no longer rely on their neighbours for help.

The government has one last chance of saving this. There is no longer an expectation that anything near what we had pre-2010 in terms of an effective approach to strategic planning is on the horizon, but, with one or two small but significant amendments to the Bill, something could be salvaged. Making the preparation of an SDSs mandatory for all combined authorities as well as for all ‘city regions’, including the 20 largest towns and cities, would go a long way. This would also require strong negotiations with existing combined authorities to change or enforce existing strategic planning powers, setting out the case for a more robust approach to strategic planning to help address key issues such as housing delivery, strategic transport, climate change, and levelling up.

Without this, the government may well win some votes back through the reforms, especially in the Home Counties. But the country would lose a golden opportunity to address many of the key challenges it faces, and there is very little chance of the planning reforms delivering the policy objectives set out in the consultation document — especially the delivery of the homes we desperately need.

Catriona Riddell is Director of Catriona Riddell & Associates, •a Vice-Chair of the TCPA, and Strategic Planning Specialist for the Planning Officers Society. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 Planning for the Future. White Paper. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Aug. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-forthe-future 2 Update on the Levelling Up Bill. Statement UIN HCWS415, by Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 6 Dec. 2022. https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/writtenstatements/detail/2022-12-06/hcws415 3 Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Reforms to National Planning Policy. Consultation Document.

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/ consultations/levelling-up-and-regeneration-billreforms-to-national-planning-policy/levelling-up-andregeneration-bill-reforms-to-national-planning-policy See Chapter 2 — Policy objectives 4 In May 2023, 152 district councils, 46 unitary authorities and 33 metropolitan districts will be holding elections — see www.local.gov.uk/about/our-meetings-and-leadership/ political-composition/local-government-elections 5 The reforms will be undertaken in two stages: the first will be through proposed changes to the NPPF which will come into effect for those plans currently being prepared but not yet at the Regulation 19 publication stage in spring 2023; the second through a full review of the NPPF following Royal Assent for the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, with the new system to be implemented in 2024 Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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6 Mole Valley Local Plan has been found sound by the planning inspector, but the local authority has since asked the inspector to recommend that all Green Belt sites be withdrawn from the draft plan — see Mole Valley District Council’s ‘Latest news and updates’ webpage, at https://futuremolevalley.org/latest-news-and-updates/ 7 In March 2020 the government set a deadline of December 2023 for all plans to be adopted. In December 2022, the deadline was changed to June 2025 to allow local planning authorities to progress Local Plans under the current system and before the reforms are fully implemented 8 Housing Supply: Indicators of New Supply, England: July to September 2022. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/housing-supplyindicators-of-new-supply-england-july-toseptember-2022/housing-supply-indicators-of-newsupply-england-july-to-september-2022 9 According to the consultation document (Chapter 1, para. 6) fewer than half of local authorities have up-todate Local Plans (i.e. adopted in the past five years) 10 ‘Villiers secures planning reform to give local communities a greater say in what gets built.’ Tweet by Theresa Villiers MP, 6 Dec. 2022. www.theresavilliers. co.uk/news/villiers-secures-planning-reform-give-localcommunities-greater-say-what-gets-built 11 See proposed changes to para. 35 of the NPPF in National Planning Policy Framework: Draft Text for Consultation. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/levelling-up-andregeneration-bill-reforms-to-national-planning-policy 12 A legal challenge to the 2019 Guildford Local Plan made it clear that the decision on whether there are exceptional circumstances to changes to Green Belt boundaries through a Local Plan rests with the decision-maker (i.e. the local planning authority) — see Guildford Borough Council’s ‘Challenges to the 2019 Local Plan’ webpage, at www.guildford.gov.uk/ article/25152/Challenges-to-the-2019-Local-Plan 13 Pre-submission Spelthorne Local Plan (Reg 19) Consultation: Pre-submission Local Plan 2022–2037.

Spelthorne Borough Council, Jul. 2022. https://spelthorne.inconsult.uk/SDLPR19/ viewCompoundDoc?docid=12837908 On the advice of the Planning Inspectorate, the foreword to the plan was taken out prior to formal submission for examination 14 Local Plans: Report to the Communities Secretary and to the Minister of Housing and Planning. Local Plans Expert Group, Mar. 2016. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508345/ Local-plans-report-to-governement.pdf 15 And see Chapter 12 of Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Reforms to National Planning Policy (see note 3) for a summary of wider proposed reforms to the system 16 Planning for a Better Future: Our Planning Manifesto for the Government. Planning Officers Society, Dec. 2022. www.planningofficers.org.uk/news/planning-for-abetter-future-our-planning-manifesto-for-thegovernment

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17 See Cambridge City Council’s ‘Local Plan review: About the examination’ webpage, at www.cambridge.gov.uk/ local-plan-review-about-the-examination 18 See C Riddell: ‘Wanted — a proactive, positive approach to strategic planning’. Town & Country Planning, 2002, Vol. 91, Jul.-Aug., 233–37 19 In October 2022, the three local planning authorities preparing the joint Black Country Local Plan issued a joint statement saying that ‘The four local planning authorities in the Black Country have been working together on a joint plan for the area to 2039. It is with regret that we are unable to reach agreement on the approach to planning for future development needs within the framework of the Black Country Plan’ — see Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council’s ‘Dudley Local Plan’ webpage, at www.dudley.gov.uk/residents/ planning/planning-policy/dudley-local-plan/ 20 See Step 4 — Cities and urban centres uplift, in ‘Housing and economic needs assessment’. Planning Practice Guidance. Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Dec. 2020. www.gov.uk/guidance/housing-and-economicdevelopment-needs-assessments 21 See the proposed new para. 62 in Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Reforms to National Planning Policy (see note 3). There still does not appear to be any evidence supporting the case for the 35% uplift, which remains completely arbitrary

& country planning?

Richard Wakeford on the challenge of community engagement in planning for new homes in smaller country towns

engaging rural communities in planning for housing

I have been pondering how development plan preparation engages those who live in smaller towns.

Would a different approach earn more supporters for our national town planning process? Could more be done to help communities recognise what lies behind the need to build ever more homes; and why they are often delivered in packages of 100 or more, in a common distinctive style?

Weekly headlines in Planning Resource regularly report large residential developments permitted on appeal (or not!), because the relevant borough as a whole cannot (or can) demonstrate a five-year supply of sites for new dwellings. For a smaller town community, however, a planning application for 100 new homes or more is hard to appreciate as justified to meet local needs.

Even in smaller towns, new homebuilding often happens in increments of 50 or more. Those incremental additions, each in their own house style, can stand out against the built character of the original town, where, in the past, new buildings were more often delivered singly, or in small groups. After all, the core of the town will be a complete mixture of individual buildings dating from different ages, altered to meet the needs of those living there over many years. And around it, developers’ new housing schemes from a single style book struggle to mesh with the character of that place.

Some years ago, I was considering whether to buy a not yet built new home in a historic Cotswolds town. I told the agent that it was hard to put down a deposit on the new house without actually seeing it. No problem, he responded, I could go for a viewing of an identical house, just built near Wrexham!

This uniformity of house style in some housing developers’ schemes can damage the reputation of our town and country planning system.. Given the significant influence that the planning system can

exercise over the type, scale and design of buildings, are there not ways to encourage the larger housing developers to fit better with the already built locality?

One answer could be Town and Village Design Statements prepared in advance of development plans, especially if fully reflected at the local level in Neighbourhood Plans. Over the last few years, successive Ministers have dabbled with the idea of requiring greater collaboration with communities (some kind of local zoning — even down to the street level) to make the concept of (yet another) new development at least less unattractive.

If extensive new housing developments are not appreciated as the best way to meet the needs of the town, is there an alternative? Borough-wide Local Plans tend to set out strategic considerations and identify strategic sites for delivery, taking account of evidence offered by developers wanting to build at scale. But in a bottom-up way, perhaps Neighbourhood Plans could be a more creative option in finding smaller development schemes better suiting the physical character of the place?

Would such an incremental approach help the community to be more open to new housebuilding, and even positively contribute to the assessed borough needs? On the other hand, would building smaller numbers of new homes at a time result in a less cost-effective housing product? Or perhaps, once a strategic decision has been made to permit development in principle, and a new service road and infrastructure is installed, plots could be sold to individuals to commission the new homes?

For many people in smaller towns, however, there is a lack of understanding why any new homes are needed at all — and why in their backyard? In the main, developers find it very difficult to win support in a locality for significant numbers of new homes.

But it is possible: in Berkshire, for example, one town prepared a Neighbourhood Plan which set out both a scheme for new housing and, linked with it, a new road to relieve traffic pressure in the centre of the place; the new homes proposed in the plan would also make the place much more pleasant for all the community.

Reflecting on my own experience in Neighbourhood Plan preparation, I would be worried that proposing new roads might create much angst across local Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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& country planning?

communities. Our town has a few bypass champions, but the scale of new development needed to fund such a road might well turn the community against the draft plan, leading to a failure to get it through the necessary local referendum. Reflecting on this conundrum, I think that local authorities are fortunate not to need to put their district-wide development plans to a referendum!

Let us consider the case of a place that the former Countryside Agency would have defined as a ‘market town’. It has a population of around 6,000 — and a long history. There is a selection of mainly independent stores, albeit fewer than in past decades, as well as food and drink outlets servicing residents and visitors. The town hosts primary and secondary schools, a branch library, and new parks (partly funded by new housing developments).

Nearby there are business units providing job opportunities. All around the town is countryside, mostly designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty — a landscape of national importance, to be protected for the current and future generations.

Almost every development proposal — in the plan or not — needs to be considered for its impact on nationally designated landscape.

Our nationally driven town and country planning system must provide for both development and conservation — in towns and (to a degree) in the countryside around them. It must aim to meet the goals of local residents and businesses, while providing for new jobs and homes — both affordable and less affordable, on a scale reasonably required to meet the local share of national needs. But for many in rural communities there is a significant challenge: why does the town or village need any new development at all? What are the pressures that the planners say need to be addressed? Where

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Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

is the evidence of need — at least in the locality — and why should our town be challenged to meet it?

From a background in public policy delivery aimed at achieving sustainable development, this local challenge continues to fascinate me. Our growing society clearly needs more places to live and work, while conserving the rural setting for agriculture, forestry, and recreation. How can all this be done while also moving swiftly to net zero?

In such towns, here is a juxtaposition of built and natural heritage (‘town and country’ if you like), but few tools embracing both together. Should the development plan process deliver sustainable development in the town and surrounding countryside — growth that respects the character of the town itself, and its setting?

From a strategic perspective, the need for new housing development is clear. People are living longer here (and in so many places), and staying independent longer. Younger people are growing up and many do not want to leave town. The modest homes they aspire to are expensive, partly because people from elsewhere are investing in second homes (thus incidentally adding pressure for new housing, impacting on the very countryside that attracted them). And other houses are no longer available because their owners are now letting them to visitors. A recent Freedom of Information request by Dr James Derounian (also a contributor to this journal) established that in Winchcombe there were 45 ‘self-catering holiday units and premises’ currently assessed for business rates as holiday lets in and around the town.

The nation continues to pursue economic growth.

Our national population continues to grow. So, what could be the most creative, sustainable way to plan locally to embrace that growth? How can a town take

& country planning?

account of all the pressure for physical development?

Our town is essentially bedded in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; and even the slice of countryside around the town not so designated is protected by Local Plan policies. In the town centre there is an extensive Conservation Area and many individually listed buildings.

So, which bodies are influencing town and country planning in such contested places? There’s the local planning authority, of course; its councillors and professional officers deliver development plans designed to show how best to deliver local needs in ways that respect national laws and guidance. The AONB Board provides more detailed intelligence to help decisions to respect the landscape. Some years ago, the town council produced a built development design guide; and more recently local people voted positively to put a formal Neighbourhood Plan in place to help shape local development.

Development plans under town and country planning legislation should be the respected touchstone for the community. But they seem to take a very long time from start to finish. There is hardly time to implement the final version before it’s time to start to work on the next one. I find the nature of our planning system therefore quite difficult to defend to the man or woman on the street. How can the community ‘own’ a plan when the next one is just over the horizon?

Of course, some residents take the view that all the needs for new housing development should be delivered elsewhere in the borough — and not in our AONB-designated, Conservation Area hearted town. Each time the review and updating of the Local Plan comes near, there’s a sense of siege.

And ultimately, inevitably, another new ‘estate’ emerges, with homes all clearly aligning with an overall design sense. Incremental growth often comes in big increments. Along the way, residents forget that new housing developments can deliver local benefits too. For example, Countryfile’s Adam Henson recently opened a new park largely funded by the town council, but facilitated by a significant housing development.

How well are development plans, neighbourhood plans and other devices informing and delivering the needs of our market town, and for that matter all similar places across the nation? How might we judge the success of our town and country planning system (in its wider sense) — in shaping our place and its setting to meet the needs of residents, visitors, and the local business sector? I would be very keen to hear from similar town councils that have dared to publish such a local assessment of

the effectiveness of local planning — an objective account of local needs, and of the action taken to address them, perhaps as a key feature of their annual public meetings.

Perhaps those meetings should include an assessment of local housing needs and how they might be met, to benefit all in society, especially those in special need. Too often, communities see new housing proposals as driven purely to benefit the building companies, when a good appreciation of the need for housing is also needed. To adopt a term used by our current government in England, this is surely an element of ‘levelling up’. Land is a national asset, and the government’s goals should include incentivising the very best use of it for the benefit of all in the nation; so a key question is how town councils and local planning authorities could best explore the potential of the nation’s long established town and country planning processes to shape and deliver that agenda.

In respect of the levelling-up agenda, I was struck by a useful article by Jo Lavis of Rural Housing Solutions, focusing on the need for homes that people can afford in rural communities.1 As she says, delivery depends on multiple nationally devised regulatory and funding regimes, operated by different national and regional administrations, operated locally by a range of different bodies and ultimately accountable to more than one Secretary of State at the national level. How can a joined-up approach be taken locally – at the level of our town?

It is sometimes a real challenge for local councillors to influence delivery of the homes and other developments that do actually meet both the evidenced current and future needs of their community, and their share of the national and regional needs. A crucial role is to engage their communities in those needs and work with developers and local and national government bodies to achieve outcomes that their communities can take pride in. But it’s not easy, not least because for so many people the details of the town and country planning system are a complex mystery.

Planners need to be determined communicators!

Richard Wakeford, formerly Chief Executive of the •Countryside Agency, is an Honorary Life Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. The views expressed are personal.

Note 1 J Lavis: ‘More affordable homes must be delivered if Levelling Up is to happen in the countryside’. Guest Blog. ACRE, Jul. 2022. https://acre.org.uk/guest-blogmore-affordable-homes-must-be-delivered-if-levellingup-is-to-happen-in-the-countryside/ Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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off the fence David Lock on why we need to talk about a proposed long-distance network of dronebased delivery ‘superhighways’

project skyway cheaper to have their ‘inventory’ (supplies of parts) stored at the place they were made (at the maker’s expense) or in the trailers of a column of HGVs trekking along the motorways arriving ‘just in time’ to be used. Supermarkets were in the forefront, too, needing to have thousands of products sent to a regional warehouse from which mixed loads could be delivered to the individual outlets at dawn.

It can be an eye-opener to stumble into a world of This astonishingly sophisticated revolution was special interest and find a huge industry, supported one that took place mostly out of sight from the by thousands of seriously committed enthusiasts public, who took it for granted that their supermarket with a shared perspective on life (for example, would have fresh supplies every day (while at the motor racing, aircraft and flying, country pursuits, same time moaning about the heavy lorry traffic on music festivals, and classic buses, to name but a the roads and why ‘they’ needed all these huge few). Sometimes we enthusiasts for one of these warehouses everywhere!). worlds may also enjoy others, limited only by the Meanwhile, fuelled by our strategic failure to time we have available, the cash to hand, and the modernise our antique industrial and manufacturing tolerance of friends and family. base, it became commonplace to assemble Special interests can also draw followers away from products such as cars using components actually reality and accountability. When huge sums of money manufactured in parts of the world where that could are made available for research and development be done more cheaply. Even when we realised by a very tight circle of enthusiasts, there is a what a dreadful error this was in terms national tendency for them to neglect the need to grow economic planning, we still failed to substitute their constituency of support, and thus to make us those imports by manufacturing them here: jump when they emerge, nearly fully formed, into there was always a cheaper source in the world, the daylight: examples are driverless cars and somewhere, if you didn’t care about the local lorries; delivery robots that will trundle to your door working conditions and environmental impacts of with an order from Kentucky Fried Chicken or that cheapness. whatever (at least, that’s what is possible in Milton Brexit also made a difference to the lifeline that is Keynes); and neighbourhood nuclear plant. the HGV industry. Market forces generally had led One such specialist world is that of drones. While to many HGV drivers in the UK being drawn from we weren’t looking, at the Farnborough Air Show on poorer nations in the EU. Since Brexit, many of those 19 July 2022 the government announced Project drivers have left. The system for recruiting and Skyway.1 According to Ian Crosby, writing in Dronelife, training new UK-based HGV drivers was disrupted by this is: Covid and administrative sloth. Annual salaries for ‘the largest and longest network of drone HGV drivers are now in the range £32,000-56,000 per superhighways in the world. [It] will connect cities annum, and the shortage of drivers is somewhere and towns across the country, enabled by a between 45,000 and 70,000. consortium led by UTM (Unified Traffic Management) All of the above has encouraged investment in solution provider Altitude Angel, alongside BT, EE, drone delivery systems to avoid using HGVs. The and various UK tech start-ups. Over the course of drone industry had grown at a spectacular rate (not the next two years, this group will develop 165 miles least for military applications) and was ready to of drone superhighways, linking airspace above respond. The urgent need improve air quality in Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, older towns and cities was also a spur.

Coventry, and Rugby’.2 In summary, therefore, there has been the coincidence of the rising need to move large The idea of dedicated airspace corridors for drones qualities of stuff around the UK (and in trade with was predictable for those of us involved in planning other countries), while trying to reduce the for the logistics industry. The inexorable rise of HGV manpower employed and the air quality impacts of traffic around the UK really took off in the 1980s, all that transport. Drones are ready to be part of the when manufacturers realised that it was so much solution.

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Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

off the fence

David Lock Associates after Altitude Angel

Coventry

Oxford

Rugby

Cambridge

Milton Keynes

Bentwaters

Reading

Southampton

Diagrammatic rendition of Project Skyway, and possible extensions

Land use and economic development

In land use terms the superhighway concept will require drone port facilities at the major feed points (let’s coin them ‘droneports’), where we should expect demand for large logistics buildings and an upgraded local highway system to serve them.

We have seen this with multi-modal freight centres on railway networks. There is also talk of requiring smaller drop-off sites for parcels to be lowered and picked up while the drone stays airborne.

Some of the local planning authorities for areas that are to be hosts to all this see wider economic development potential: ‘The plans for [Project Skyway] were proposed as part of the Department for Business, Energy & Strategy (BEIS) Innovate UK programme which aims to support business growth through the development and commercialisation of new products, processes, and services. The Skyway superhighway network aims to help unlock the huge potential offered by unmanned aerial vehicles and be a catalyst to enable growth in the urban air mobility industry.’ 3 Towns and cities on the superhighway will enjoy boasting rights. The announcement ‘is excellent news for the town’, said Councillor Tony Page, Reading’s Lead Councillor for Climate Strategy and Transport: ‘Reading has always been at the forefront of technological advances and has long had a reputation for unrivalled connectivity and as the centre of innovative IT and technology. I’m also

pleased that this ambitious project is being spearheaded by a Reading based company. This project will put Reading at the forefront of an initiative which has huge potential. As a Council, we strive to ensure our town’s economic growth goes hand-in-hand with achieving our climate goals.

The potential access to ‘green’ transportation here complements our own strides towards zero carbon, as well as unlocking the economic potential of harnessing this new technology.’ 4 Hardware, safety, noise, and visual impact

Apart from the droneports and delivery/pick-up pads, the hardware for Project Skyway is presented as being digital, and the implication is that it is physically invisible. But this doesn’t sound wholly resolved: ‘Skyway partners will collaborate to deploy a ground-based, networked DAA [detect and avoid] solution, where possible on existing infrastructure, which is hooked up to Altitude Angel’s global UTM [unified traffic management] system, which ‘stitches’ data from multiple sources together in real-time to create an ultra-high-resolution moving map of the low-altitude sky. Skyway does not rely on drones carrying specific onboard sensors to ‘see’ other aerial traffic: instead, it proposes to put higher-power, better sensors from multiple manufacturers on the ground, along a sensor network, which in turn is then processed in real-time to provide guidance. This means drones don’t need to compromise payload, range or efficiency and can ‘tap into’ even higher resolution data, from multiple sensors, from the ground-based network.’ 3 (Emphasis added.)

Drones are covered by regulations overseen by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). You must be registered, not endanger anyone with your drone, and at present always have it in your sight. The government has been working with the CAA, which has been given £2.6 million in funding for future flight projects and to develop the framework for drones for various uses, including commercial.5 The intention is that ‘the superhighway will be able to support fully automated drone flights beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) from any drone company which completes a series of basic technical integrations which, crucially, don’t require specialist hardware on-board the drone’.6 The amount of noise depends on the size of the drone and the means of propulsion. Currently, the large drones (for military uses) are propellor driven, like all drones, but make a high-pitched sound which is apparently annoying even when flying at their typical high altitude (and before they hurt you).

Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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off the fence

The noises of the variety of types of drones we shall see, perhaps at lower heights along Project Skyway, are not yet clear.

Cranfield University Senior Lecturer Simon Jude speaks of drones generally when he says: ‘People’s knowledge and attitudes might change if they know what [the drone] is being used for. If it’s an emergency medical support, you’re probably going to be a lot more accepting of the noise. So what happens if you get multiple [drones], or an agricultural use where you might get a number of drones collecting and saving data all at once? I live in a rural location, a very quiet location, and it might annoy me more than if you were in a city or an urban landscape where there’s lots of other noise.’ 7 He will be concerned to learn that Project Skyway appears likely to route drones away from urban areas.

The degree of visual impact has to be ‘not yet known’, as the number of drones, their variety and range of payload are factors that are not yet clear.

Currently, larger-payload drones fly in the range of 18,000–30,00 feet (5,500–9,000 metres) above ground,8 but perhaps those heights are a military rather than environmental imperative.

So what?

This subject is an important one. As explained by Richard Parker of the consortium leaders Altitude Angel: ‘The capability we are deploying and proving through Skyway can revolutionise the way we transport goods and travel in a way not experienced since the advent of the railways did in the 18th century: the last ‘transport revolution’.’ 9 Note, ‘travel’ means possibly for people, too.

Second, this isn’t a sci-fi fantasy. Drones cannot be disinvented and are in widespread use. The technological drivers might have been military at big scale, and for survey and security work at smaller scale, but the use of drones is now a thread through human endeavour.

Third, this project has land use implications. But while land use is our root, it is not our whole span of interest. Everything is connected, and planners are helpful panoptic people.

Last, it is so silly that more effort is not being taken to carry us all along with this blossoming technology. Project Skyway should be exposed to the light and properly exposed to public discussion.

To jump from present specialist silos straight to Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) procedures (which would be the predictable path) 22

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would be unnecessarily aggressive. It would not be a vote-winner for people to hear of an imminent scheme for unmanned drones loaded with unknown stuff, controlled by unknown persons for unknown purposes, to be buzzing through the air above their home or their countryside rambles. We need to talk about it.

David Lock CBE is Strategic Planning Adviser at David Lock •Associates and with colleagues has maintained a deep involvement with the logistics industry since commencement of the consultancy in 1988. He is a Vice-President and former Chair of the TCPA, and lives close to outlined routes of Project Skyway at the Milton Keynes spur. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 Announced by Kwasi Kwarteng, then Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, a Department made into three on 7 Feb. 2023. The government statement on Project Skyway has not been rescinded 2 I M Crosby: ‘The world’s largest drone superhighway: UK’s Project Skyway’. Dronelife, 19 Jul. 2022. https://dronelife.com/2022/07/19/the-worlds-largestdrone-superhighway-uks-project-skyway/ 3 ‘Farnborough 2022: UK funds Project Skyway ‘drone superhighway’ under UKRI research grant’. Unmanned Airspace, 18 Jul. 2002. www.unmannedairspace.info/ uncategorized/farnborough-2022-uk-funds-projectskyway-drone-superhighway-under-ukri-research-grant/ 4 Quoted in ‘The world’s largest drone superhighway: UK’s Project Skyway’ (see note 2) 5 See C O Sladden:’ World’s first drone superhighway to be built in UK’. Verdict, 20 Jul. 2022. www.verdict.co.uk/ worlds-first-drone-superhighway-to-be-built-in-uk/ — where there is reference to the BEIS Drone Ambition Statement, in which the government sees the potential that drones could contribute £45 billion to the UK economy, with over 900,000 drones in the skies by 2030, carbon emissions reduced by 2.4 million tons, £22 billion in net cost savings, and 650,000 associated jobs 6 See ‘UK consortium reveal blueprint to build 165 mile drone ‘Superhighway’ ’. News Story. Altitude Angel, 24 Mar. 2022. www.altitudeangel.com/news/ukconsortium-reveal-blueprint-to-build-165-mile-dronesuperhighway 7 Quoted in ‘Skyway Project is drone ‘superhighway’ ’.

Security Journal United Kingdom. https://securityjournaluk.com/skyway-project-is-dronesuperhighway/ 8 Wikipedia tells us (for which thanks) all the bands of heights for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) — drones — from which the writer guesses these to be relevant to Project Skyway: NATO type, 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) altitude, up to 50 kilometre range; Tactical, 18,000 feet (5,500 metres) altitude, about 160 kilometre range; and MALE (medium altitude, long endurance), up to 30,000 feet (9,000 metres), range over 200 kilometres. See https://tinyurl.com/2rrd4uym 9 Quoted in ‘165-mile ‘drone superhighway’ to be built in UK’. News Story. Flyer website, 18 Jul. 2022. https://flyer.co.uk/165-mile-drone-superhighway-to-bebuilt-in-uk/

Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places

long-term strategic intervention for ‘held-back‘ places

Peter Hall on Unsplash

Places in need of ‘levelling up’ are not so much left behind as held back; but, either way, action — using the proper tools and delivery mechanisms — is urgently needed, says Peter Hetherington

‘Divisions between England’s stronger regions, particularly the South East and Eastern, and the less favoured parts of the North and the Midlands are widening rather than narrowing. England languishes as the poor relation [in Europe] — a country with an increasingly powerful capital and struggling regions…’ 1 Almost exactly 20 years ago, this observation served as the introduction to a high-profile TCPA conference — ‘England: A Fractured Nation’ — which

drew a wealth of speakers from the North of England and beyond. Has anything changed? The conference was held six years into a Labour government — which was so obsessed with creating four large ‘Growth Areas’ in the Greater South East that the TCPA successfully lobbied for a broader approach embracing the North; and the ‘Northern Way’ was born, brainchild of the then John, now Lord, Prescott.

The TCPA played its part then and has been consistent since then in highlighting the plight of Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places areas labelled successively ‘forgotten England’ and ‘left-behind places’ — although, on reflection, a more appropriate label might be ‘held-back places’.

The TCPA’s Planning Out Poverty report of 2103,2 highlighting the difficulties of four areas (an isolated housing estate in inner-city Leeds; the challenging Anfield area of Liverpool; a sidelined former mining town, Shirebrook in Derbyshire; and the deprived Tottenham Hale area of North London), should have been enthusiastically grasped by any government, with its ambitious call to use New Town legislation to create ‘Community Development Corporations’ in run-down areas, provided they had local support.

But, by then, austerity was taking root in local government, hitting the poorest areas the hardest.

Far from using modest spending to revive decaying areas, the government scrapped the Housing Market Renewal Programme in places like Anfield. It then inflicted substantial cuts in local government services, disproportionately hitting the poorest areas.

More recently, another Conservative government has woken up to the challenges in ‘held-back’ areas.

‘Levelling up’ has entered the political lexicon — taken to mean boosting economies to the level of some relatively more prosperous areas — and has been grasped by Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary Michael Gove with some enthusiasm.

At the time of writing Mr Gove is expected to shortly announce the creation of a modest, £700 million Community Wealth Fund — operated independently of Whitehall and drawing on the proceeds of forgotten or dormant bank accounts— to help renew some of the most deprived parts of England.3 While this would be a small step forward, a much broader, strategic programme is clearly

Current MP:

Conservative

Labour

needed — and that certainly was not displayed in the second, £2 billion round of ‘levelling up’ funding announced on 19 January, with more than a hint of political opportunism, based on the discredited system of competitive bids, creating winners and losers. Successful bids ranged from a conference centre to a refurbished Art Deco cinema, a boost for 20 rugby clubs, and an Eden Project of the North in Morecambe.

In the circularity of the enduring debate on the North-South divide what has substantially changed after 13 years of Conservative government — aside from Boris Johnson acknowledging that his party’s success at the last general election in the so-called ‘red-wall’ seats in the North and the Midlands was, at least partly, a cry for help in towns that overwhelmingly voted for the UK to leave the EU in 2016? Johnson briefly embraced ‘levelling up’ — a catchy slogan big on hype and short on substance; only a tiny proportion of the first round of ‘levellingup funding’ has been spent.

As Lord (Bob) Kerslake, former head of the Civil Service — and previously Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council — told me recently, the subsequent Levelling Up White Paper might say the right things ‘but it’s very weak on execution’. Published a year ago, it had four policy objectives: boosting productivity, pay, jobs and living standards by growing the private sector; spreading opportunities and improving public services; restoring a sense of community, local pride and belonging; and empowering local leaders and communities.4 All well and good. But the tools and delivery mechanisms which might have aided execution were all abolished by a deconstructionist Secretary

Independent

Least deprived 20%

£136 m

Second-least deprived 20%

£202 m

Middle 20%

£256 m

Second-most deprived 20%

£348 m

Most deprived 20%

£421 m 0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

£, million Total levelling-up funding allocated by constituency, deprivation quintile, and MP party Source: Financial Times calculations based on information from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (allocations) and the House of Commons Library (constituency and deprivation), within R Wright, O Hawkins, M Stabe and J Williams: ‘Sunak defends UK levelling-up funding despite claims of unfairness’. Financial Times, 19 Jan. 2023. www.ft.com/content/45cdbf60-26c3-420e-b1ad-fa4529f9d346

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Anton Velchev on Unsplash

Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places

‘Where, you might sensibly ask, is the local, regional and national delivery mechanism capable of pushing a bold ‘levelling-up’ agenda? Bluntly, there isn’t one ...’

of State for Communities and Local Government after 2010: Eric (now Lord) Pickles gloried in scrapping eight Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), as well as aligned Government Offices for the Regions (GORs) — the latter creations of a previous Conservative government — while abolishing a valuable regional planning apparatus.

At their best, the RDAs were powerful bodies — especially when they applied sensible regional planning, allied with targeted business intervention and land (and community) renewal. They were armed with decent funds and lobbying clout, and were willing, as Bob Kerslake recalled, to partner local government and provide extra capacity where necessary. And, above all that, the country had a national regeneration body, English Partnerships — again, as the name implied, a partnering organisation — which used its skills as a further tool to help depressed areas. As Kerslake notes (and he was Permanent Secretary for a time in Pickles’ department), valuable capacity was lost in the name of austerity: ‘You had more of what I call ‘local agency’ then; you had more capacity than you do now and … there were a whole set of organisations around providing that local capacity — and also, of course, EU funding. There were a lot of different routes and the council’s role [in his case Sheffield City Council] was to bring things together — there were things to stitch and we had the capacity to do the stitching.’ 5 Until relatively recently, identifying ‘left-behind’ or ‘held-back’ places — more accurately, as Kerslake says, ‘former industrial towns, and areas under-

performing economically’ — has proved challenging.

As set out in a separate article in this issue of Town & Country Planning, the national charity Local Trust, formed initially with a £217 million endowment from the National lottery Community Fund in 2012, has taken a lead, using consultants to identify the areas most in need of renewal.6 Its 2019 research identified 206 left-behind wards (electoral divisions) in England with a total population of almost 2.2 million (since updated to 225 wards) — former mining areas of the North East, largely East Durham and South East Northumberland; swathes of Greater Manchester and Merseyside, often outlying housing estates and satellite towns; high concentrations of deprivation in South and West Yorkshire, from former mining areas to outlying estates; seaside, satellite and New Towns in the East of England; and, in the South East, more seaside towns around the coast of Kent and Hampshire.

Researchers commissioned by Local Trust stress that the ‘left-behind’ label can be equally applied to post-war social housing estates — ‘not the communities that have traditionally been the focus of debate about deprivation’6 — on the periphery of cities and towns. Overall, Local Trust notes that the deterioration in prospects for ‘left-behind’ places is ‘doubtless related to austerity and the cuts in public services and welfare benefits it ushered in … these areas have suffered disproportionately’.6 With local government hollowed out after 13 years of austerity (Eric Pickles argued that councils had ample funds in reserve to cope), some local authorities are now close to technical insolvency, while, in a few, finances have collapsed (the Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places government’s response is to allow them to borrow more, saddling them with even more debt). Legally, they cannot go bankrupt. But Lord Kerslake is in no doubt that some authorities could collapse.

So where, you might sensibly ask, is the local, regional and national delivery mechanism capable of pushing a bold ‘levelling-up’ agenda? Bluntly, there isn’t one. Kerslake’s critique of the government’s levelling-up approach — weak on execution — stands out like a sore thumb — or, rather, like a redundant colliery, derelict factory, or run-down neighbourhood.

What is needed, he insists, is ‘comprehensive, long-term intervention’.

As a general election gets closer — most likely next year, but who knows in this febrile political climate? — it is surely time to take stock and address an area in which the TCPA has displayed considerable prescience, highlighting the plight of areas too easily labelled ‘forgotten’ or ‘left behind’ (and, yes, I too casually used these pejorative labels in the past) when others were either indifferent or obsessed with what my friends at Newcastle University’s Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies have labelled ‘city centricity’.

‘The current system of local government funding is broken, with wealthy areas capable of generating much more in council tax revenue than poorer ones, mainly in the North ...

But the State clearly has a wider role: namely, harnessing both the funds and the expertise available in all corners of government to address ’held-back’ places’ I have long contended that these areas in desperate need of ‘levelling up’ represent one of the greatest social and economic challenges facing Britain: the other side of the coin to the (important) new communities and Garden Cities debate — namely comprehensive renewal. And this is an issue for the Labour Party, too, which has not yet developed a coherent ‘levelling-up’ narrative. As Lord Kerslake says: ‘If there’s a challenge to Labour, it would be that its line of focus is on cities … they didn’t do enough for the surrounding towns.’ He uses his old Sheffield stamping ground as an example: ‘It had some counter-balancing — two universities, for instance — and a service sector, whereas if 26

Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

it you’re in [nearby] Barnsley it was the whole industry [mining] that went. We struggled with the relationship between the city and the surrounding areas. And the question you might want to ask is: have they [the government] done anything to change the story?’ 5 Today, Barnsley underlines how austerity has bitten into the social and economic fabric of a oncethriving town; alarmingly, its plight is replicated in countless other places, which had hardly recovered from a 1980s recession before the Cameron government decided that town halls must shoulder a disproportionate level of cuts after 2010, far more severe than anything endured by Whitehall. Sir Stephen Houghton, veteran Leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, says the last decade of austerity has cost the council a staggering £1 billion in lost government funding — with youth clubs, early learning and child centres closing and libraries disappearing, as well as half the council’s staff.7 Far from ‘levelling up’, this strikes me as ‘levelling down’ with a vengeance. Houghton says that the current system of local government funding is broken, with wealthy areas capable of generating much more in council tax revenue than poorer ones, mainly in the North.

While the expected £700 million Community Wealth Fund is a start, it clearly falls short of the £2 billion that Local Trust has identified from unclaimed assets — such as dormant bank accounts, shares, pensions, and insurance policies — that could be used to kick-start targeted intervention.

But the State clearly has a wider role: namely, harnessing both the funds and the expertise available in all corners of government to address ‘held-back’ places. Is it time, perhaps, to enlist the help of the Crown Estate, a well run commercial institution, with considerable expertise, which belongs to the reigning monarch ‘in right of the Crown’? With assets of £15.6 billion it ranks as one of Britain’s largest property enterprises, with a Central London portfolio, retail parks outside the capital, and farmland. It owns the seabed up to 12 miles from the coast, ‘the value of which has surged since 2021, thanks to the lucrative lease of seabed rights to develop offshore wind projects’.8 Revenues from the Crown Estate go the Treasury, which then makes a fixed annual payment to the monarch — the so-called ‘sovereign grant’. In 2016 it was decided that the slice of Crown Estate revenue going to the monarch should increase from 15% to 25%, mainly to allow for the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace. Significantly, King Charles has now asked the Treasury to use the surging profits for the ‘wider public good’ rather than directing them to the royal family.9 This will involve reducing the sovereign grant.

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Box 1

Practical steps forward

• Build a new public-private civil society agency,

rather than the politicised and competitive Levelling Up Fund, to supplement the additional £700 million from dormant bank accounts in the expected Community Wealth Fund, to begin the task of addressing ‘held-back’ areas. It could embrace the expertise of, and additional funding from, the Crown Estate — making it eventually a multi-billion pound agency dedicated to partnering local enterprises in former industrial areas, inner cities, and seaside towns.

• Revive the TCPA’s idea of using New Town

legislation to establish Community Development Corporations, where there is local demand and initiative, as floated in the Association’s Planning Out Poverty report from 2013 — beginning with a pilot scheme in the north of England.

• Create a new regional planning framework,

joining up land use, housebuilding, renewal and transport programmes, as a matter of urgency (embracing combined authorities where appropriate), on the basis that local government, rather than Whitehall, understands local priorities.

• Address the deepening financial crisis in local

government (too many councils are close to the edge), with at least a commitment to a new, fair funding deal for town and county halls, overseen by an independent local revenue distribution board, similar to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

and help to turn round places too long either sidelined or ignored by successive governments.

Might King Charles lend a sympathetic ear? Let the conversations begin to address the ‘comprehensive, long-term intervention’ advocated by Lord Kerslake and others — rather than the piecemeal, populist allocation of ‘levelling-up’ money, a chunk of which (on past record) probably won’t be taken up anyway.

Hetherington is a Vice-President and past Chair of •thePeter TCPA, and acted a Guest Editor for this short collection of articles. His latest book, Land Renewed: Reworking the Countryside, is published by Bristol University Press. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 ‘England — A Fractured Nation’. TCPA/Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (Newcastle University) Conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, Mar. 2021 2 Planning out Poverty: The Reinvention of Social Town Planning. TCPA, Oct. 2013. https://tcpa.org.uk/resources/planning-out-poverty/ 3 P Foster: ‘UK ministers poised to launch £700 m fund to rebuilt poorer areas’. Financial Times, 31 Dec. 2022. www.ft.com/content/bbc15ba8-a954-4587-8858b5a92ed71372 4 D Harari and M Ward: Levelling Up: What Are the Government’s Proposals? Research Briefing. House of Commons Library, Feb. 2022. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/ CBP-9463/CBP-9463.pdf 5 Personal communication 6 Left Behind? Understanding Communities on the Edge.

Local Trust, Sept. 2019. https://localtrust.org.uk/insights/research/left-behindunderstanding-communities-on-the-edge/ 7 ‘The unfair system punishing Northern town halls’.

The Northern Agenda podcast, 5 Jan. 2023, available at https://open.spotify.com/episode/5igqfgGjht4Hvap9jnl1AE 8 A Hill: ‘Queen Elizabeth II: inside the royal finances’.

Financial Times (FT Big Read), 9 Sept. 2022. www.ft.com/content/00d91c28-88eb-47a6-8b9694f33a8a97f6 9 S Coughlan: ‘King Charles to divert Crown Estate windfall to ‘public good’ ’. BBC News, 19 Jan. 2023. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64319323

Why not go further? The UK is now in recession.

A new wave of austerity looms. No arm of the State — and that includes the monarchy and the wider royal household — can be immune from a financial crisis which will surely engulf an incoming government (which will have to shoulder cutbacks cynically delayed by this government).

To address the challenges of ‘held-back’ areas, perhaps it is time to consider a new national regeneration or civil society agency — supplementing a Community Wealth Fund — blessed with some of the expertise of, and even funding from, the Crown Estate and other monarchical outposts such as the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. It might be a small step, but at least it would represent the start of a co-ordinated drive to reduce regional inequality Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places

types of ‘left-behind places’ in the EU15

Clifford Harper

Loose and catch-all use of the term ‘left-behind places’ risks obscuring the distinct circumstances and needs of different kinds of struggling areas, say Sanne Velthuis, Danny MacKinnon, Andy Pike and John Tomaney

The term ‘left-behind places’ has emerged as a key leitmotif of international debates on geographical inequalities since 2016. ‘Left behind’ acts as a shorthand label for places experiencing economic stagnation or decline, particularly former industrial districts and rural areas marginalised by the concentration of skilled knowledge-economy jobs in cities. Remedying the problems faced by places ‘left behind’ features prominently in the UK government’s levelling-up agenda.

Strong international interest in ‘left-behind places’ reflects their emergence as hotbeds of political discontent and populist voting, evident in patterns of support for ‘Vote Leave’ in the UK, Donald Trump in the United States, the Rassemblement National (National Rally) and Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in 28

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France, and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany.1 Different terms for disaffected and disadvantaged areas have gained currency in different countries, however: ‘left-behind places’ in the UK, ‘forgotten’ territories in France and Italy, ‘Abgehängte Regionen’ (suspended regions) in Germany, and ‘legacy’ cities, ‘rustbelt’ and ‘frostbelt’ in the US. The concept of ‘left-behind places’ is distinctive in evoking a negative image of local and regional decline or stagnation. In this sense, ‘left-behind places’ can be seen as the opposite of the dynamic and prosperous ‘competitive global city-regions’ and ‘learning regions’ that have been prominent in recent urban and regional studies and policy. The UK government makes this distinction between

Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places

Cluster 1: Long-term economic prosperity Cluster 2: High growth Cluster 3: Economic and demographic stability Cluster 4: Economic decline and deindustrialisation Cluster 5: Demographic decline and ageing Cluster 6: Disconnected, high poverty No data

N 0

200

400

600

800

1000 km

Fig. 1 The six clusters and their spatial distribution across the EU15 Source: Data from the European Commission’s ARDECO database and the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion (ESPON). Spatial units used are NUTS3 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, level 3)

places described as ‘steaming ahead’ and those being ‘left behind’ in its Levelling Up White Paper.

Prior to the recent upsurge of interest in ‘leftbehind places’, economically lagging and declining towns and regions were largely ignored in the city-centric debates on global competitiveness and learning.2 In fact, their marginalisation has arguably been compounded by a policy fixation on large

cities and metropolitan areas as the main engines of economic growth, based on the economic theory of agglomeration, which emphasises the benefits of urban density and scale. As such, the ‘left-behind places’ concept is significant in drawing attention to the problems of such places in relation to processes of geographical divergence and polarisation that have become too acute to ignore.3 Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places Table 1

Descriptions of the six clusters Cluster

Label

Description

1

Long-term economic prosperity

Levels of GDP per head substantially above the national level; employment and population growth exceeded national growth from 1991 to 2017; high rates of net migration, including among young adults; low to modest growth in GDP per head; relatively high levels of poverty

2

High growth

GDP per capita initially below the national level, but very high GDP growth for 1991 to 2017; substantial employment and population growth, in part driven by high net migration; low rates of poverty and relatively low old-age dependency ratios

3

Economic and demographic stability

Slight underperformance on both national levels of GDP per capita and per-capita GDP growth; population growth broadly in line with national rates; modestly positive net migration overall but negative net migration among young adults; low levels of household poverty

4

Economic decline and deindustrialisation

Strong decline in per-capita GDP relative to the country overall; strong shrinkage of the industrial sector# as a share of regional employment since 1991; low economic growth; positive net migration between 2014 and 2018, particularly among young people

5

Demographic decline and ageing

GDP per capita below the national level; weak economic growth relative to the country overall; modest to strong decline in employment and population from 1991 to 2018; net out-migration among younger age groups; high old-age dependency ratios

6

Disconnected, high poverty

Low levels of GDP per head; low economic growth; tendency towards population decline; very high rates of household poverty; low accessibility of key everyday services (as proxied by high travel times to the nearest shop or supermarket)

Source: Authors’ research # Defined as manufacturing; mining and quarrying; electricity, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply; and water supply and remediation activities

Different kinds of ‘left-behind places’

Yet, while the concern with ‘left-behind places’ has focused renewed attention on the gap between prosperous and struggling places, as demonstrated in the UK government’s concern with levelling up, the term is often used in a rather loose and catch-all manner that risks obscuring the distinct circumstances and needs of different kinds of struggling places.

While they share some common characteristics, there are different kinds of ‘left-behind places’, with different configurations of predicaments and potentials. A wide variety of places are subsumed under this overarching label, from small rural 30

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communities experiencing population decline and brain-drain, to former industrial cities adapting to structural change.4 In lifting the lid on the category of ‘left-behind places’, our ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council), ANR (L’Agence nationale de la recherche) and DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) funded project, ‘Beyond Left Behind Places’, is seeking to uncover the distinctive circumstances and development pathways of such peripheralised places, overcoming the tendency to characterise different kinds of places as ‘left behind’. This variety of ‘left-behind places’ matters to spatial policy such

Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places as levelling up in the UK because interventions and institutions need to be tailored to the distinctive conditions in different kinds of ‘left-behind places’ to have any chance of success. The predicament of being ‘left behind’ in Hackney demands a different response from that in Hartlepool.

attuned to their varying characteristics and needs.

The UK government’s levelling-up agenda lacks such an analysis of the differentiated predicaments of ‘left-behind places’ as it wrestles with the tension between national, top-down interventions targeted at particular types of places and decentralising more powers and resources for such places to determine A typology of ‘left-behind’ (and not-so-‘lefttheir responses in more autonomous, bottom-up behind’) places ways.

As part of the project’s aim to demonstrate the Our further analysis of the trajectories of ‘leftvariety of different kinds of ‘left-behind’ places, we behind places’ over time shows that some places conducted a cluster analysis of all NUTS3 regions in have been ‘left behind’ for many decades, while the EU15,5 using a range of economic, demographic other places have more recently fallen behind. This and social indicators covering the period 1991 to raises important policy considerations for the UK 2018. The cluster analysis identifies groups of government’s levelling-up agenda and other national regions that are internally similar to each other, States about the balance between addressing based on how they perform on these input long-standing disparities and preventative efforts indicators. in regions ‘at risk’ of falling behind. It also raises Our analysis suggests that EU15 regions can be questions about what is more important in shaping divided into six clusters (see Fig. 1), each with their popular feelings of discontent and being ‘left own set of broad characteristics, described in behind’: comparative conditions in the here and Table 1. Of these, three clusters (4, 5 and 6) could now, or changes in the relative fortunes of places be described as ‘left behind’ because they generally over time? have lower levels of economic development, have had lower rates of economic growth compared with • Dr Sanne Velthuis, Professor Danny MacKinnon and Professor Andy Pike are in the Centre for Urban and Regional their country overall, and have not experienced Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University, UK, particularly strong employment and population and Professor John Tomaney is with the Bartlett School of growth.

Planning, University College London, UK. The research

‘This variety of ’left-behind

places’ and their challenges and potential development pathways mean that such places need policies and institutions attuned to their varying characteristics and needs’ But, crucially in terms of identifying different kinds of ‘left-behind places’, these three clusters also differ from each other in important ways.

Relative economic decline, often coupled with pronounced deindustrialisation, is the distinguishing feature of cluster 4. Cluster 5 is characterised by a longer-term and persistent economic gap to the national level of economic development, alongside population shrinkage and evidence of an ageing population structure. And cluster 6 is composed of regions with particularly high levels of household poverty, as well as a relative inaccessibility of key everyday services.

This variety of ‘left-behind places’ and their challenges and potential development pathways mean that such places need policies and institutions

informing this article is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), grant reference ES/V013696/1, in conjunction with L’Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR) and DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under the Open Research Area scheme. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 A De Ruyter, R Martin and P Tyler: ‘Geographies of discontent: sources, manifestations and consequences’. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy & Society, 2021, Vol. 14 (3), 381–93 2 A Rodríguez-Pose: ‘The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it)’. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy & Society, 2018, Vol.11 (1), 189–209. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/85888/1/Rodriguez-Pose_ Revenge%20of%20Places.pdf 3 R Martin, B Gardiner, A Pike, P Sunley and P Tyler: Levelling Up Left Behind Places: The Scale and Nature of the Economic and Policy Challenge. Regional Studies Association, 2021 4 A Pike, V Beal, N Cauchi-Duval, et al.: ‘ ‘Left behind places’: a geographical etymology’. Regional Studies, 2023, Vol. 57 (forthcoming) 5 The EU15 — members of the European Union following its 1995 enlargement — comprised the following 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom

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‘left-behind‘ neighbourhoods and the big local story

Local Trust

Daniel Crowe explains why Local Trust has undertaken research on ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods and outlines some key findings — what and where they are, and the implications for levelling up, placed-based funding, and regeneration

Local Trust is England’s biggest place-based funder, an independent trust responsible for the National Lottery Community Fund’s largest ever endowment of £217 million. It was set up in 2012 to administer and support the Big Local programme, the most significant example of building community confidence 32

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and capacity at the hyper-local level that the country has ever seen, with 150 disadvantaged communities each capitalised with patient, long-term and unrestricted funding of around £1.2 million.

Importantly, the areas identified for funding were not just experiencing socio-economic deprivation,

Local Turst

Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places

Map of ‘left-behind’ areas In England

falling within the 20% most disadvantaged areas as measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), but uniquely they were also Lottery ‘coldspots’ — areas that had not received their fair share of funding. The aim of the Big Local programme is to support and invest in these communities and improve the lives of the people living there, not through the traditional approach of top-down state interventions, or parachuting in professionals to

construct short-lived initiatives and then disappear when the ‘funny money’ runs out, but importantly — and radically — through funding resident-led community action over the course of a decade and more.

The outcomes of the programme reflect the ethos of an approach that is rooted in trust: trusting local people to know best what is needed for their local community, granting them the money and Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places resources needed to make a difference, and giving them the power to take the decisions over how to spend it. The four overarching programme goals are therefore deliberately broad: • Communities will be better able to identify local needs and take action in response to them.

• People will have increased skills and confidence, so that they continue to identify and respond to needs in the future.

• The community will make a difference to the needs it prioritises.

• People will feel that their area is an even better place to live.

assets, low levels of community engagement and poor digital and physical connectivity experienced worse outcomes across a range of metrics, from health to employment and education, when compared not only with the national average but also with other deprived areas.

As a foundational piece of research, it was intended as a contribution to the growing debate around how to improve the prospects of places that — through no fault of their own — have increasingly been referred to as ‘left behind’. While recognising that the term is contentious (and is shorthand for those economically disadvantaged areas overlooked or ignored by policy-makers and As Local Trust began working on the ground with investors — and, perhaps paradoxically, like ‘levelling local people, community groups and other stakeholders up’, can also mean different things to different to support the creation of resident-led Big Local people), for the work of Local Trust, and the Allpartnerships, it found that in some communities it Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for ‘left-behind’ was harder to kick-start the process than others. neighbourhoods for which it serves as secretariat, These were the places that had low levels of it means a very specific cohort of communities. community capacity, reflected in a lack of social Overlaying the CNI (referenced in the Levelling infrastructure that underpins modern life and Up White Paper as an objective way of measuring which many of us take for granted — the open and social capital) with the IMD led to the identification accessible spaces and places for people to meet of 225 wards that are not only among the most and come together, such as libraries, community 10% deprived in the country, but are also in the centres, parks, pubs, and leisure facilities. They also 10% of areas with the highest levels of community had lower levels of the groups, organisations and need. Often found on the periphery — on the edge institutions that connect people with each other and of towns and cities, in isolated and rural former to opportunities, and which help to build and support colliery communities in the post-industrial North bridging, bonding, and linking forms of social capital. and Midlands, or scattered along the English coast — they are communities for which local centres for employment, shopping and services are (or feel like they are) a long way away, and which, The observable economic owing to poor or expensive public transport and lack decline and disinvestment in of car ownership, can be rendered inaccessible.

Research carried out for the APPG has shown just left-behind areas, together how uniquely vulnerable ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods with growing social isolation are, suffering as they do from a deficit in social infrastructure and correspondingly less scope for and fraying of the social communities to take positive action to counter local fabric, underlines the need to challenges. From experiencing the biggest impact of Covid-19, to exposure to the threats posed by develop social infrastructure climate change and being uniquely vulnerable to the in these areas cost of living crisis, ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods lose out. For example, to date, ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods have received fewer grants per Local Trust began to dig further, exploring the vital 10,000 population than other deprived areas and role that social infrastructure and social capital play England as a whole. In terms of the amount of in the sustainability, prosperity and wellbeing of grant-funding from key charitable grant-funders local areas. Following foundational research with between 2004 to 2021, ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI) and received £7.77 per head — less than half the the creation of the Community Needs Index (CNI) proportion received by other deprived areas (£19.31) as a cutting-edge approach to measuring social and below the English average as a whole (£12.23).2 Fig. 1 on the next page shows the number of infrastructure at the hyper-local level in 2019, grants from key grant-funders per 10,000 population Local Trust published Left Behind: Understanding Communities on the Edge.1 Reflecting Local Trust’s to ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods, other deprived experience with the Big Local programme, it areas and England as a whole, based on data demonstrated how communities that were not collected by grants data charity 360Giving on all only deprived but also suffered from a lack of civic grants and the amounts given by UK funders.

‘

’

’

’

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Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places

19.31

Grant funding, £ per head

20

15 12.23

10

7.77

5

0 ‘Left-behind’ neighbourhoods

Other deprived areas

England

Fig. 1 Grant funding, in pounds per head Source: 360Giving GrantNav data from 2004 to May 2021

The figures are based on the location of the recipient organisation and include grants from 88 funders.

The costs of missing out and the impacts of worse outcomes are likely to be significant. For example, APPG research found that tackling health disparities will not only improve lives but will also bring significant savings to the taxpayer. If the health outcomes in local authorities that contain ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods were brought up to the same level as in the rest of the country, an extra £29.8 billion could be put into the country’s economy from the resultant savings.3 In 2023 Local Trust will be seeking to quantify the failures to invest in ‘left-behind’ areas and their implications for public sector spending, as well as what targeted support to communities to address local issues can achieve as a preventative measure in terms of reducing demand on public services.

This work will build on the findings of a study conducted by Frontier Economics for Local Trust which, using conservative estimates, shows that a £1 million investment in community-led social infrastructure in a ‘left-behind’ area could generate approximately £1.2 million of fiscal benefits and £2 million of social and economic benefits over a 10-year period.4 The observable economic decline and disinvestment in ‘left-behind’ areas, together with growing social isolation and fraying of the social fabric, underlines the need to develop social infrastructure in these areas. Not only is this morally the right thing to do, but it is a prerequisite for any other government levelling-up interventions, focused on local economic development, to have any chance of success.

That is why in recent years Local Trust has led work with partners across the public, private and social sectors to campaign for a new investment vehicle: the Community Wealth Fund (CWF). Inspired by the ethos, approach and principles of the Big Local programme, and informed by lessons learned from previous regeneration initiatives, as explored

in the key research Local Trust commissioned from the University of Cambridge,5 the CWF would invest over the long term (10-15 years), directly at the hyper-local level, in social infrastructure and community-led confidence- and capacity-building.

As a new mechanism for investing in ‘left-behind’ areas, providing targeted, patient and unrestricted support beyond the electoral cycle and the changing priorities of local and central government, it could be a game-changer in terms of how we approach community renewal and neighbourhood regeneration.

At the time of writing, the government is expected to announce whether it will support this approach through the use of dormant assets funding early in 2023.

Daniel Crowe is Policy and Parliamentary Manager at Local •Trust.

The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 Left Behind? Understanding Communities on the Edge.

Local Trust, Sept. 2019. https://localtrust.org.uk/insights/research/left-behindunderstanding-communities-on-the-edge/ 2 ‘Left Behind’ Neighbourhoods: Community Data Dive.

OCSI, Nov. 2020. www.appg-leftbehindneighbourhoods.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2021/06/APPG-Community-DataDive-Report-for-APPG-S7.pdf 3 Overcoming Health Inequalities in ‘Left Behind’ Neighbourhoods. All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on ‘Left Behind’ Neighbourhoods, Jan. 2022. www.appg-leftbehindneighbourhoods.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Overcoming-HealthInequalities.pdf 4 The Impacts of Social Infrastructure Investment.

Frontier Economics, for Local Trust, Jun. 2021. https://localtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/ Frontier-Economics_the-impacts-of-socialinfrastructure-investment.pdf 5 Achieving Local Economic Change: What Works?

Cambridge University Department of Land Economy, for Local Trust, Oct. 2019. https://localtrust.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Achieving-local-economicchange_Oct_2019.pdf Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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the business case for place

North West Business Leadership Team

Andy Hulme explains why and how the North West Business Leadership Team has been considering the role that business can play in helping to shape towns, cities and other places, especially those regarded as ‘left behind’

For over 30 years the North West Business Leadership Team (NWBLT) has brought together senior leaders in and of the North West to harness the positive power of business for the good of the region. We are an independent business voice, connecting and helping to shape opportunities to drive positive change.1 We cover a range of sectors, including manufacturing, chemicals, property, banking and professional services, with members distributed across the North West of England.

In recent months members of NWBLT, working with the UK2070 Commission, have been reflecting on the role that business has in helping to shape towns, cities and other places, especially those regarded as ‘left behind’. The aim of our work, to be published in March 2023, is to give a business perspective and a rationale for business to get involved in place-shaping initiatives.

It is important to recognise that business is only one of the groups that make up local communities, but often a group that is overlooked in discussions around place. Through our collective experience, we want to make a case for greater involvement in place for and by business; to demonstrate that, by 36

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helping to build and support positive relationships, both business and place can benefit.

Our work was also prompted by a recognition that for some time public sector partners have been faced with reduced resource and institutional capacity. This impacts on their ability to deliver the day-to-day help and support that business needs — and also on their ability to deal with the additional challenge of trying to access competitive funding competitions designed to help boost place and ‘level up’, or major projects the like of which might only rarely pass through an economic development or planning team’s desk. We wanted to consider how the private sector can help through genuine partnerships and collaboration in place.

Why places matter to business

Our starting point was a discussion on why place matters to business. We recognised that, although business comes in many shapes, sizes and forms and while many businesses consider their footprints to be global, all businesses have something to bring to the local places in which they have a physical presence, even those operating in a mainly digital

Special Section: Action for ‘Held-Back’ Places market. Many places owe their very foundation to particular businesses or industries — such as Port Sunlight (Unilever), Oldham (cotton), or Nelson (textiles).

Why particular businesses are located in particular places is a result of many different factors: history, access to raw materials, supply chains, talent, markets, and the personal loyalty of business founders or owners, to name just a few. Some businesses are located where they are because they are the result of foreign direct investment or financial incentives such as Enterprise Zones.

Places need business and businesses need places — whether as somewhere to make and sell products and services, somewhere to source the talent and resources they need to succeed and grow, or somewhere to do business with other businesses and develop new ideas and markets.

expertise and perspectives of both. For example, board members taking a communications lead in some towns have been working directly with the council communications team to broaden their understanding of how messages are landing.

Others have taken advantage of the specific skill sets of people around the table to troubleshoot problems arising.

Evaluation of projects supported through another initiative, the Regional Growth Fund, highlighted the value of having capable project leaders and strong co-operative partnerships. This was particularly important when looking to address challenges faced during project development and delivery.

There is often an expectation that business can lead, playing a ‘pivotal role’ in regeneration. However, in many ‘lagging areas’ part of the economic challenge is a lack of established anchor businesses with the time, resources and expertise to get Understanding barriers for business involved. engagement, and looking beyond them Additional learning from the Regional Growth The nature of NWBLT members is to support, Fund was that many of the successful projects get involved, and add value where they see a were ‘catalysed and led by the pro-active efforts of definite need and rationale. This includes positive local authorities …’.2 However, how can places that engagement with initiatives around place. But many lack the internal resources or experience to deal with competitive bidding for government funding businesses do not see that rationale — and so we give themselves a chance of being successful? A thought it worth considering why many companies number of studies in recent months have highlighted do not engage in these types of conversations, the amount of wasted time and effort expended by especially those looking to draw them in to placelocal authorities unsuccessful in bids for place-based based initiatives. Is it because they are concerned funding, making a difficult situation even worse. that they are just ‘talking shops’ or that they will Even for places that do succeed in securing end up tied up in procedure and red tape? Is it funding, there is a growing body of evidence because businesses tend to focus on delivery and suggesting that opportunities to invest and deliver find some of the upfront ‘forming and storming’ improvements to place are being hampered by a too abstract? Or do they just not have the time and perceive a risk that they might be wasting their lack of resources, often combined with the impact of construction inflation and the challenging own resources? timescales for getting government funding spent.

The answer, unsurprisingly, seems to be a combination of these factors. But is it not important A partnership approach with the private sector, including developers, could be one option to for companies to weigh up the pros and cons and find some time? Places provide the employees that address this issue.

Businesses can help by providing objective companies need to thrive and grow, so is there not challenge to ideas and proposals for improving value in engaging with schools, colleges and other training providers to talk about the skills and attributes places, especially in helping to establish what the real benefits of a project might be and whether it that the company is looking for in future workers?

Are there not efficiencies to be gained from cultivating provides value for money. positive relationships and creating a more enabling Andy Hulme is Head of Innovation and Growth at the North environment for ‘doing business’ from an ecosystem • West Business Leadership Team. The views expressed are that sees the value of a company being there? personal.

Benefits of business involvement

Anecdotal feedback on the 100-plus initial bids to the Towns Fund suggests that the best submissions were those that were able to demonstrate meaningful engagement with, and leadership by, business.

Learning from Towns Funds boards has shown that there are several ways in which private sector board members and local authority officials are working alongside one another to leverage the

Notes 1 See the North West Business Leadership Team website, at www.nwblt.com/ 2 Regional Growth Fund Evaluation: Case Studies.

Summary Report. BEIS Research Paper 2022/007, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, May 2022. https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/1090957/regional-growth-fundcase-studies-report.pdf Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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communitypowered devolution? we‘ve been here before …

While Michael Gove’s recent backing for ‘community-powered devolution’ represents another round in central government’s repeated but hitherto largely unsuccessful attempts to ‘devolve’ decision-making to involve local ‘communities’ in some way, Jeff Bishop and Trevor Cherrett examine some local government attempts to bring rural communities ‘onside’, why they are not working, and ways in which they might better succeed One would have thought that local authority officers and members, faced with all the pressures on local government that there are today, would be desperate to try to find ways to ensure that local people support it as they try to face off those pressures, notably increased centralisation. But if anything, it appears that local authorities are still seen by many local people as mere functionaries or intermediaries on behalf of Whitehall instead of champions for their residents and places, with a consequential and sometimes even serious loss of trust.

Before considering how best to give rural communities a voice in collaborative decision-making, this article starts by outlining two key procedural examples of devolution, one concerning local government generally and one concerning planning, drawn from the authors’ personal experience. In both these examples we are mindful that ‘communities’ comprise complex networks of people who are not all in agreement about everything! Not surprisingly, simplistic, top-down attempts to ‘consult the community’ are not likely to bear fruit, unless ways can be found to engage these complex networks in meaningful ways.

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Local government devolution The first procedural example, about local authority practice more generally, has been rumbling around for many years — local government ‘decentralisation’ or ‘devolution’.1 From around the mid-1980s, mostly in urban settings in places such as Islington and Newcastle upon Tyne, some of this was fairly radical, involving the establishment of a number of fully staffed neighbourhood offices and the devolution of some services and budgets — and decisions on using them — to neighbourhood level.

That more radical approach was not greatly successful. Most neighbourhood offices have closed, attempts to engage perhaps 25,000 people in a ‘neighbourhood’ barely got past the ‘usual suspects’, and, most importantly, the intention that local priorities could, in the language of the time, ‘bend’ main programmes and budgets proved illusory. Worse, neighbourhood-based systems, and their locally based staff, were first in line when financial cuts loomed.

The basic principle was, however, picked up by other authorities, such as Bristol City Council and Wiltshire Council and, more recently, Cornwall Council,2 the new unitary Somerset Council, and

Eloise Salmono Unsplash

Collaborative approaches to planning — in urban as well as rural areas — are neither easy nor cheap, but ‘there is an urgent need to create spaces in which people can argue their differences without rancour, and where the ‘bottom’ can meet the ‘top’ on equitable terms’

others. Many such authorities are unitary rural authorities concerned about the long physical and psychological distances from and between constituents, especially in contrast to their former district councils. We are not aware of any that have set up a network of localised offices; the usual format being something like Area Boards or Committees.

In Wiltshire, for example, there are 18 Area Boards, each one holding delegated powers and devolved budgets to facilitate community action at a local level.

Such Boards and Committees have faced the problem of getting through to sometimes even larger numbers of people than in the examples above; perhaps 40,000 per area for Somerset. In Bristol, the use of very formal committees resulted in around 70 excited and hopeful people attending an opening area meeting, with that figure reducing in some cases to single figures after a year or two because of the off-putting bureaucracy. While the numbers attending are still reasonably large and stable in Wiltshire, that is because the majority of attendees are parish or town councillors. But that raises questions about the representativeness of their local councils and whether they could and should ‘raise their game’ to engage local constituents.

Very importantly, there is also a danger of decisions on spending being made for no other reason than because a few people from that specific part of the neighbourhood were present at the meeting — and, bluntly, shouted loudest. In one instance, about improving a community play area, was it really the case that play areas generally, and that particular play area, were part of a coherently argued, evidence-based policy to which everyone in that neighbourhood had contributed? Almost

certainly not; it’s that familiar ‘usual suspects’ problem again. Who is the ‘community’?

Although it appears from limited recent experience that the authorities attempting devolution are genuine in their commitment to it, the jury is still out on some of the more recent formats. However, importantly for this article, planning issues are most definitely not part of the remit for Area Boards or Committees.

This is said to be on the basis, perhaps quite reasonably, that nothing other than planning would ever get discussed if it were part of an Area Board’s remit!

So now let’s consider the planning side of the devolution coin — and once again some history is needed.

Planning devolution

In the mid-1990s, Jeff Bishop and a colleague were helping the Countryside Commission to find ways to improve design quality in rural areas.

As a result, what emerged was Village Design Statements (VDSs),3 to be produced primarily by local communities, and potentially able to gain real weight as Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG).

The idea was remarkably well received — over 2,000 have been drawn up — and things moved on to Town Design Statements (TDSs), as well as urban equivalents. There was, however, some negative feedback, not about the statements as such, but because they did not address all those other issues that rural people wished to raise about their area (always traffic and transport, but also anti-social behaviour, loneliness, and so forth), and so could not be used to secure support for priority local initiatives.

In the early 1990s, the Countryside Agency (as it was by then) responded by developing Parish and Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Town Plans,4 intended to cover those other issues.

However, the way that such plans were launched appeared to promise that they could become adopted by local planning authorities as SPG, thus gaining status and clout alongside other statutory land use plans. Hundreds of communities then set off to produce their Parish or Town Plan and were surprised, often angered, to be told by planning officers that they were not proper land use plans and so would have virtually no status at all. This was exacerbated by the core method used to underpin plans — basically a single questionnaire seeking community opinions, ideas and aspirations, often ending with nothing more than unevidenced wish lists; a reason then used (understandably) by authorities as a whole, not just planners, to say that such plans could not be acted upon.

Further annoyance and anger then followed, and this remained the case for many years, and then became a key issue again with the introduction of Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs).5 These are tightly constrained in their format and content to established land use issues, and the process is extremely lengthy, highly bureaucratic, and very demanding on voluntary time, although, as with VDSs and TDSs, they can secure a good level of legal clout by being linked to Local Plans.

design code to go along with their Local Plan, and it must be developed with extensive community engagement at all stages, probably via Parish and Town Councils where they exist. Yet there is barely any mention in the national guidance to suggest how any code might link to NDPs, and not even one word about how they might link to existing or potentially new community VDSs or TDSs. The view from local level

Now imagine all of the above from the perspective of a community wishing to build a new meeting hall. How can we get agreement about the site?

Could we add it to our emerging NDP; should we talk to person X? The site is in a Conservation Area, so what are the requirements for the design?

Will it meet our Design Statement or the council’s emerging design code; should we talk to person Y? And where do we go for advice, support, access to funding, and so forth; might we chat to person Z? (And note that persons X, Y and Z may not even know each other!)

Is it any surprise, in this context of totally un-joined-up thinking, that local people — and Parish and Town Councils — have for so long been confused, annoyed and even angry about what hits them from the top down?

This ‘grass roots looking up’ idea then takes us to the recent article in Town & Country Planning by Is it any surprise, in this context Patsy Healey,7 whose long-term work has, of course, stressed that there are other approaches — of totally un-joined-up thinking, notably collaborative planning — that can help produce win-win outcomes but which, in order to that local people — and Parish achieve this, depend on ways of ensuring, as far as and Town Councils — have for so possible, equal voices, equal involvement and ideally equal power in any given situation. long been confused, annoyed Healey’s article was linked to her book Caring for and even angry about what hits Place, 8 about her experiences in her own small town of Wooler in Northumberland. She points out them from the top down? that, while those at authority level understandably seek a single point of contact at local level — ‘a’ community — in fact, of course, ‘there are multiple Once again, NDP advisers regularly find groups and networks doing many different things, themselves talking to communities who want to often unaware of, or bumping uncomfortably against, use their potential plan to tackle myriad other issues, including traffic and transport, but who then each other’, inevitably raising again the question raised earlier about the democratic legitimacy of get annoyed when told that their NDP cannot Parish and Town Councils. Yet this need not deny address such issues. Even worse, on some what Healey calls ‘our shared future as neighbours occasions communities have already carried out a in a particular geography’. Despite — or perhaps Parish/Town Plan type survey and produced their because of — recent and massive globalisation, wish list for ‘everything’, only to be told that the NDP cannot address ‘everything’. Their annoyance is there is strong evidence of a continuing sense of then even greater after having committed so much ‘place attachment’, and not just in rural areas.

Healey also points out that ‘policymakers [ … ] apparently wasted time and expense. had little understanding of how to communicate If this is not confusing enough, just as some with residents and of what people might feel and Parish and Town Councils have moved on from the care about’, to which was added concern over the days of Parish/Town Plan surveys and are now apparent ‘failure of national and local government to considering whether an NDP might be the best give rural areas [ … ] sufficient attention’; both are approach, the government has published the issues that ring bells with the experience of the two National Model Design Code.6 This lays down a requirement on all planning authorities to produce a authors here.

‘

’

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She also describes the challenges and difficulties (if also the successes) as some town initiatives struggled to deal with a huge variety of frequently changing government and other agencies and their staff over a period of years — and not just in local government; the point applies to the health service, the police, and others. And such challenges were particularly significant as the Wooler people started to develop their NDP, and in the conflict around the election of new parish councillors. Those mainly involved experienced the frustration of discovering what an NDP could and could not achieve.

All of which demonstrates (as have many other experiences for these authors) not so much top meeting bottom but all too often a ‘passing in the night’ in which top and bottom completely miss each other.

This is no argument for shifting power structures completely and for local people choosing, as Healey says, to ‘go it alone’. Top and bottom should not miss each other because ‘groups of people in a locality cannot take on making a contribution to future-shaping without significant inputs from formal government’. And this cannot just be about planning. The RTPI’s recent report, Rural Planning in the 2020s,9 focuses on several themes that need to be addressed, such as climate change and changing demographics. This is all perfectly correct, but the report then adds that ‘a lot of what happens in the countryside is beyond the control of local planning’.

to which the top down will commit itself to respond with positive good will. This might well be assisted by intermediate but independent organisations such as county-wide rural community councils (only mentioned by Healey in passing).

The new unitary (and geographically huge) Somerset Council is on its way to doing exactly this — but not in isolation. Having field staff in place is part of its ‘devolution’ strategy, which it calls ‘Local Community Networks’ (LCNs), with staff not floating around in an uncertain limbo, but working alongside area ‘networks’ based on meetings with, mainly, Parish and Town Council representatives, and with some potential for devolving departmental budgets in line with locally determined priorities.

But now two provisos. First, the Somerset approach is still about fairly ad hoc ideas and initiatives (not necessarily well evidenced) that come up from local level and have to try to meet (but might miss) corporate strategies, budgets, and priorities. There is no equivalent to those strategies at local level to balance those from higher authorities and agencies. Secondly, the LCNs still cannot address planning issues.

A possible solution here may soon emerge from an initiative being undertaken in Wales. (Wales is a step ahead of England with its requirement for authority level ‘Well-being Plans’, which deal with some, but not all, of those wider, non-planning issues that Parish and Town Plans were first developed to address.) Conwy County Borough Hints at ways forward Council (CCBC) officers are supporting some sort of The difficulties facing a more ‘bottom-up’ approach very local plans for four of their towns. In their case to planning are not new, of course. In 2008, the challenge has been how to explain to local community planning researchers in Ireland put people the difference between Place Plans (the forward a ‘collaborative approach to decision-making’ equivalent of Neighbourhood Development Plans) which sought to bring together stakeholders with and Community Plans (and some other options). different needs and beliefs to work together in a This is incentivised by the fact that funding for local process of ‘integrated area planning’.10 Rather than initiatives is available only for places with some sort seeing planning as a mechanistic process owned by of plan in place. CCBC brought in Planning Aid experts, collaborative planning principles are applied Wales (and one of the authors of this article) to to actively engage a wide range of community manage this process participants. At the same time, their findings fully Briefly, the approach being taken was to start acknowledged that local conditions of place and with what might be called ‘pre-plans’ — which society will vary hugely and will call for locally flexed CCBC termed ‘Kickstarters’. Working closely with approaches. They will also crucially depend on good the local authority, each community, and not just will among all participants, especially the agencies the Community Councils (the Welsh name for of government and State.

England’s Parish and Town Councils), prepared a Once again Healey picks this up in Caring for long list of initial issues, ideas and aspirations on Place, arguing strongly that ‘those in government ‘everything’. The next stage was a workshop at should give much more priority to the ‘street-level’ which officers from the relevant departments staff — those who are out and about ‘getting to explained their current position on their own plans know’ and becoming a known person’; ideally with and strategies, and then sat with each town group community development training. Agreed. She also and suggested which issues might best be dealt argues that ‘investing in such frontline staff may in with through a Place Plan or Community Plan and the end save resources through interventions which maybe which might best be taken forward by local avoid problems escalating into acute crises’. Agreed. people alone.

This is all about creating a space in which local Communities can then make a coherent decision people and activists from the bottom up can talk to about which approach to take on whatever issues people who know about the top down, discussions they believe to be most important, and about the Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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best plan type to follow to deliver on those issues.

Communities will then be briefed on exactly how to ensure proper community engagement on their selected plan or plans, on what evidence is needed to underpin those plans, and on how to access that evidence. This will be supported with general and very practical guidance on engagement and evidence collection.

When whatever plans the authority and the towns in the CCBC area choose to take forward are complete, the authority will have robust, evidencebased proposals on which to make sensible judgements about local priorities, in balance with their own. This will also help the authority with that often awkward problem of explaining why an ad hoc idea from just one or two people — the usual suspects — cannot necessarily be given priority.

Does this case study from Wales give hope that we can at last move beyond top-down versus bottom-up to a genuine and constructive meeting of top-down and bottom-up?

This collaborative approach, if developed more fully, would be a positive response to a suggestion in the RTPI’s Rural Planning in the 2020s report9 that ‘an integrated national governance framework is needed to more successfully deliver on the scope for rural areas to act as sites for adaptation’, ‘delivered by a broad partnership of community, public, voluntary and private interests’. It would then be, as Healey suggests, ‘one strand in a search for ways to re-invent what democracy means [ … ] to enable citizens’ voices to be heard more strongly in the design and delivery of government actions at all levels’. And, by the way, for urban as well as rural communities.

If all this sounds enormously time-consuming and costly, especially in an era of continuing austerity, it is important to remember that (unpublished) research carried out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has suggested that drawing up Parish or Town Plans in England has involved, on average, 4,500 hours of voluntary time. Accessing something of that order of contribution for the four towns in Conwy would be an enormous addition to the Borough Council’s time budget for any of their own plans or strategies! Moreover, much help could be provided at modest cost by independent community agencies such as (in England, and as Somerset is already pursuing) rural community councils and trusts, which can occupy and facilitate, in both directions, that space between the ‘top’ and the ‘bottom’.

Nobody would suggest that this approach is easy or cheap. But in an era where arguably the market economy has atomised communities as ‘consumers’, and social and cultural divisions have been made toxic by populist politics, there is an urgent need to create spaces in which people can argue their differences without rancour, and where the ‘bottom’ can meet the ‘top’ on equitable terms.

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The Levelling Up White Paper makes great reference to ‘communities’, but does not say what they are or how they can be better engaged. Keir Starmer’s recent call for stronger devolution to local authorities11 would be a step in the right direction if action were to include genuine engagement with local communities.

Planners know much about genuine community engagement, and at a time when — in the authors’ estimation — English planning has reached new depths of chaos and confusion, the collaborative approach outlined here is surely a better way forward than much current practice; especially if we are to help to restore planning’s sinking public reputation and avoid even worse conflict in the years ahead.

Jeff Bishop is Associate Director with the Place Studio •urban design and place-shaping consultancy, and Trevor Cherrett is a member of the TCPA Policy Council and Chair of the Wiltshire Community Land Trust. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 D Burns, R Hambleton and P Hoggett: The Politics of Decentralisation: Revitalising Local Democracy.

MacMillan, 1994 2 For example, see Cornwall Council’s ‘2022 Cornwall Devolution Deal’ webpage, at www.cornwall.gov.uk/ people-and-communities/2022-cornwall-devolutiondeal/ 3 For background, see ‘An introduction to Village Design Statements’. Archived webpage. https://web.archive.org/web/20070707180136/http:// www.countryside.gov.uk/LAR/Landscape/CC/ landscape/village/introduction.asp 4 For further information, see Parish Plans: Guidance for Parish and Town Councils. CA 122. Countryside Agency, Jul. 2004. Available at www.stratford.gov.uk/ doc/173559/name/Parish%20Plans%20Guidance%20 for%20town%20and%20parish%20councils.pdf/ 5 For further information, see Locality’s ‘Neighbourhood planning’ webpages, at https://tinyurl.com/4p4dry8h 6 National Model Design Code. Part 1—The Coding Process. Part 2—Guidance Notes. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jun. 2021. www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-modeldesign-code 7 P Healey: ‘‘Localism’ and the varied practices of community activism’. Town & Country Planning, 2002, Vol. 92, Jul-Aug., 257-61 8 P Healey: Caring for Place: Community Development in Rural England. Routledge, 2022. All further quotations are taken from the book, not the Town & Country Planning article 9 Rural Planning in the 2020s. RTPI Research Paper. RTPI, Jul. 2022. www.rtpi.org.uk/policy-and-research/ research/rural-planning-in-the-2020s/ 10 C Lynch, C Corcoran, C Horgan, P Keating, et al.: Integrated Area Planning — A Collaborative Approach to Decision-Making. Tipperary Institute, 2008 11 A New Britain: Renewing Our Democracy and Rebuilding Our Economy. Report of the Commission on the UK’s Future. Labour Party, Dec. 2022. https://labour.org.uk/page/a-new-britain/

ecosystem services and community involvement

mifl68 — CC BY 2.0

The involvement of local communities in ecosystem services management is crucial to achieving socially and environmentally just outcomes, says Sally Roscoe

Overlooking part of Freetown

While it may not be immediately evident, the provision of ecosystem services and community engagement are inherently interlinked. The contributions of ecosystems, via their natural capital, to the wellbeing and quality of life of nearby residents have direct implications for communities.

When seeking to manage these services to sustainably enhance their benefits, there is much to be gained from consulting communities. Essentially, those who interact with their natural environment

on a regular basis are likely to be those who are the most familiar with how it impacts their community.

This indicates a need for a horizontal approach that enables the meaningful utilisation of local knowledge in decision-making. There are many examples of this being done globally, and, while all regions have a unique ecosystem and set of challenges, there is merit in looking overseas for best-practice case studies from which we can learn.

Perhaps an unexpected example of this arises from Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Sectors

• Education • Health • Water • Solid waste management • Sanitation/liquid waste management • Urban planning and housing • Urban mobility • Skills development • Market • Recreation and community centres • Other

Availability

Accessibility

Rating 1 (very poor) – 10 (excellent)

Acceptability

Quality of contact

Average = overall assessment

Fig. 1 Methodology used to assess Freetown’s governance sectors Image adapted from Freetown City Council’s ‘Transform Freetown process’ webpage7

Freetown in Sierra Leone — a city that has recently undertaken extensive community-led planning for its ecosystem services management through its Transform Freetown plan. This article considers the merit of this approach and how it can translate into the planning system in England.

Community involvement and the English planning system

In England, we commonly hear that involving local people in the planning process and the management of their community resources is imperative in achieving development that is both socially conscious and environmentally sustainable.

The government-produced Plain English Guide to the Planning System1 clearly states that ‘planning is more effective when the people it affects are an integral part of the process’. As commendable as this statement may be, it must be upheld by policy that is both practical and widespread to have any influence in how the country’s planning system operates.

However, that is not to say that there is a substantial lack of policy on the involvement of individuals and communities in local decisionmaking. The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 exemplifies this, particularly in Section 215, as it gives local authorities the ability to serve notices to landowners or occupiers in cases where amenities are adversely affected by the condition of their land.2 This provision was designed to enable 44

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local authorities to promote the maintenance of attractive and successful places that people want to use. Additionally, the Localism Act 2011 granted communities the right to create their own Neighbourhood Development Plan alongside the ‘right to challenge’ — giving community organisations such as community groups, parish councils and local authority employees the right to express an interest in managing a local authority service.3 These are laudable steps, yet it is debatable whether they are enough to enable community voices to be heard and to empower communities to contribute to the overall improvement of their environment and local services. Ecosystem services are especially difficult to quantify, which imposes additional challenges in creating policy that ensures that they are adequately conserved and equitably distributed.

Despite these policy efforts, there is a shortage of concrete suggestions as to how we can achieve these ambitions. More entry points are needed to allow for the needs of communities to enter a planning system that is both fragmented and complex.

The planning process relies on the establishment of collaborative relationships between various stakeholders to ensure that local interests are met and resources are fairly managed. To maximise effectiveness, it is crucial that these relationships are recognised early in the planning process. Yet many people are unfamiliar with their local planning

Table 1

Results from Freetown’s assessment of the quality of contact Sector

Quality of contact Average

Best

Worst

Education

4.4

8.3

1.3

Health

2.7

6.0

1.0

Water

2.9

7.0

1.0

Solid waste management

2.2

6.7

1.0

Sanitation/liquid waste management

2.7

8.0

1.0

Urban planning and housing

2.6

8.3

1.0

Urban mobility

3.1

7.3

1.0

Skills development

1.8

6.3

1.0

Market

2.6

7.0

1.0

Recreation and community centres

2.4

10.0

1.0

Rating of 1 indicates complete lack of service Source: Freetown City Council’s ‘Transform Freetown process’ webpage7

procedures, and planning departments are often severely under-resourced.4 This poses a challenge for many local authorities, and, while it is recognised that community-led approaches can be compelling, implementing them may seem, at best, daunting and, at worse, unattainable.

Ecosystem services management in Freetown, Sierra Leone

However, this does not mean that further integration of community involvement into the management of their own common resources and services is impossible. If we look outside UK boarders, to a perhaps unlikely illustration in a city over 3,000 miles away, we can find examples of this being done in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Many of Freetown’s residents directly rely on the ecosystem services provided by their natural environment to sustain themselves, yet a previous lack of city planning has led to inefficient and dangerous land use, creating environmental hazards.5 The government has recognised this in its Transform Freetown plan, and community inclusion and participation is central to the process. In all the city’s targets and initiatives for environmental management, community engagement is prioritised — whether it be through mapping community needs, improving environmental awareness, increasing local vegetation coverage, connecting stakeholders, or partnering with local environmental enforcement agencies.6 This emphasis on community involvement can be found throughout Freetown’s governance structure. Needs assessment processes begin with communities before reaching ward level and the city council; and, in addition, working groups

with multiple stakeholders have been formed to establish priorities and plans of action for each sector.7 The quality of contact was also assessed in each sector using the metrics of availability, accessibility and acceptability in a series of workshops held in each of Freetown’s 48 wards.7 The methodology used in this approach and the subsequent results are displayed in Fig 1 and Table 1.

There are many practical benefits to undertaking such a community-driven approach. Residents are empowered as stewards of their local environment, particularly as the government directly approaches community groups to gain a thorough understanding of the impact on their services. This creates an ethos of collaboration that applies the local knowledge of the city’s residents within decision-making.

Undertaking a horizontal approach such as this is not only inclusive but has the potential to enhance its impact and facilitate innovation that is free from vested interests.

Connecting this approach to England

It may seem that undertaking an approach similar to that of Freetown’s anywhere in England is nearly impossible to imagine, owing to the differing nature of each region’s climate, governance structure and historical context, among several other contrasting elements. However, this does not mean that there are not meaningful lessons that can be learnt.

When strong community relationships are established early in the planning and development process through meaningful community outreach, local needs will subsequently be framed as a priority throughout the entirety of the process.

This can be done through the creation of contact Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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points for residents, facilitating community-facing workshops which provide an accessible way for residents to raise their concerns and continual engagement with those who most strongly rely on the services, among many other benefits.8 Monitoring the delivery of services is also key in maintaining accountability and ensuring that local satisfaction remains a priority, even after the planning process is complete. Creating a culture in which local needs and knowledge are emphasised is key in achieving effective community-led planning.

There are examples of local government in England that have already undertaken a participatory approach. For example, Salford City Council has established a system for community planning that allows for community committees to generate action plans, consult on spending, and commission services from any providers in the sector.9 Approaches similar to Salford City Council’s will likely stem from committed councillors and officers who recognise the importance of meeting community needs through open and honest collaboration.

In addition to the importance of community engagement, it is also widely acknowledged that environmental justice implications are deeply connected to the provision of services, particularly ecosystem services, and this rings as true in England as anywhere else. The most deprived communities tend to be located within lower-quality natural environments, which in turn offer fewer environmental amenities, alongside greater environmental burdens.10 Consequently the most socially deprived communities may be the least likely to benefit from the potential of ecosystem services.

In England, a survey of 325 local authority districts found that the most deprived residents tended to be in urban areas with lower levels of natural capital, along with those in rural upland and coastal districts.10 Given this, the importance of resilience-focused approaches in ecosystem services management, such as those undertaken in Freetown, is clear.

It is evident that, while community-led management of ecosystem services that is rooted in environmental justice can promote sustainability within the planning system, it is impossible to ignore the challenges of implementing such approaches. That is not to say that it is impossible.

Decreasing budgets for local authorities create challenges, but arguably this too demonstrates the need for increased community collaboration, especially given the high standards of service provision that are expected by residents. Community collaboration will enable locals to have more power in land management. After all, no-one understands their local environment better than those who live and interact within it daily.

• Sally Roscoe is a Projects Assistant at the TCPA. The views expressed are personal.

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Notes 1 Plain English Guide to the Planning System.

Department for Communities and Local Government, Jan. 2015. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/955850/Plain_English_guide_to_the_planning_ system.pdf 2 Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Section 215. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/8/section/215 3 A Plain English Guide to the Localism Act. Department for Communities and Local Government, Nov. 2011. www.gov.uk/government/publications/localism-act2011-overview 4 The Role of Local Communities in the Planning System. Briefing Paper. Local Government Association, May 2018. www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/ documents/LGA%20briefing%20-%20the%20role%20 of%20communities%20in%20planning_HoC_%20 230518.pdf 5 Transform Freetown: An Overview 2019-2022. Freetown City Council, Jan. 2019. https://fcc.gov.sl/wp-content/ uploads/2019/01/Transform-Freetown-an-overview.pdf 6 ‘Environmental management: Targets & initiatives for environmental management’. Webpage. Freetown City Council. https://fcc.gov.sl/transform-freetown/ transform-freetown-clusters/resilience/environmentalmanagement/ 7 ‘Transform Freetown process’. Webpage. Freetown City Council. https://fcc.gov.sl/transform-freetown/ transform-freetown-process/ 8 Integrating Community Engagement and Service Delivery — Pointers to Good Practice. Local Government Improvement and Development, Sept. 2010. www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/ integrating-community-eng-8f0.pdf 9 Statement of Community Involvement. Salford City Council, Oct 2020. www.salford.gov.uk/media/395841/ adopted-sci-october-2020.pdf 10 K Mullin, G Mitchel, N RizwanNawaz and R D Walter: ‘Natural capital and the poor in England: Towards an environmental justice analysis of ecosystem services in a high income country’. Landscape & Urban Planning, 2018, Vol. 176, 10–21. www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S0169204618301002

peatland restoration in the UK

Anne Nygard on Unsplash

Peter Jones looks at some of the peatland restoration plans, initiatives and projects within the UK

Within the UK peatlands cover some 12% of the land area

Peatlands provide a vital range of ecosystem services, including carbon storage and climate change mitigation, flood alleviation, water storage and purification, and important wildlife habitats. As such, they have an important contribution to make to sustainable development, but recognition of ‘their great importance to society has been a slow awakening’.1 Within the UK, peatlands account for 12% of the land area,2 but an estimated 80% of these peatlands are in a damaged or deteriorating condition.1 More positively, the Glasgow and Clyde Valley Green Network’s Clyde Peatlands initiative, launched in June 2022, is just one of a number of current peatland restoration plans, initiatives and projects within the UK. This article outlines a number of these ventures and offers some reflections on peatland restoration.

Peat and peatland characteristics

The International Peatland Society defines peat as ‘the surface organic layer of a soil that consists of partially decomposed organic matter, derived mostly from plant material, which has accumulated under conditions of waterlogging, oxygen deficiency, high acidity and nutrient deficiency’.3 However, there is little detailed consensus on the definition of peat.

Although it typically consists of 50–60% carbon, with much smaller amounts of hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorous and oxygen, and does not have more than 35% of dry mass weight, its physical properties, including its degree of composition, water content, specific density and bulk density, can vary more widely. Peat is resistant to mould and microbes because it is a sour fibre by nature, and contains some alcohol-based natural impregnating toxins.

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Peatlands are terrestrial wetland ecosystems in which waterlogged conditions prevent plant material from fully decomposing. Globally, peatlands are found in 180 countries,4 spanning a wide range of environments, including naturally forested peatlands in Europe, tropical peat swamp forests in South East Asia, permafrost areas in Russia and Canada, and high-mountain peatlands in the Himalayas and the Andes. The world’s largest peatlands include the Hudson Bay Lowland and the Mackenzie River Valley in Canada, and the West Siberian Lowland in Russia.

In temperate, boreal and sub-Arctic regions, low temperatures during the long winters reduce the rate of decomposition, and peat is formed mainly from sphagnum mosses, herbs, shrubs, and small trees, while in the lowland humid tropics peat is largely derived from the leaves, branches, trunks, and roots of rain forest trees, under constant high annual temperatures.

In addressing the benefits of peatlands, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) claimed that: ‘as iconic landscapes peatlands offer breathing spaces for millions of people, support livelihoods and provide a sense of place for many communities.

The peat itself harbours a rich palaeo-ecological and historic archive with preserved artefacts from past human societies and a wealth of information about our changing environment, land management and climate. Peatlands are important source catchments for drinking water and also have a role in the regulation of water flows. They also support species and habitats that depend on often extreme, waterlogged conditions and are of international importance for biodiversity conservation.’ 4 Perhaps more tellingly, the IUCN reported that ‘peatlands are the world’s largest terrestrial carbon stock — storing at least 550 gigatonnes of carbon globally — more than twice the carbon stored in all the world’s forests’,4 and thus have a vital role to play in ameliorating and mitigating climate change.

Within the UK peatlands cover some 12% of the land area, and while they are principally in some of the more remote parts of the country (for example in the Flow Country stretching across Sutherland and Caithness in the North of Scotland), they are also found around some major cities — for example around Manchester and Liverpool. Peat has been accumulating for over 10,000 years within the UK, but its rate of formation is very slow.

There are three broad types of peatlands in the UK: blanket bog, raised bog, and fen. While blanket bog is rare globally, it forms the most extensive peatlands in the UK, largely, but not exclusively, in upland areas, and is mainly composed of bog vegetation, fed only by rainfall, and is nutrient poor and acidic. Raised bogs, found mainly in lowland 48

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areas of the UK, are localised domes of peat rising above the surrounding land, while fens are fed by mineral-rich ground or surface water and they can contain a range of vegetation, including cotton grass, sedges, reeds, and mosses.

Only an estimated 20% of the UK’s peatlands are still in a near natural state, and, here, damaged peatlands are a significant source of net greenhouse gas emissions. Over the years, a number of factors have been responsible for damage to, and the deterioration of, peatlands. Factors at work include drainage for agricultural improvement and commercial forestry, grazing, burning to encourage new heather growth for game management and for livestock, commercial extraction to provide peat for gardening, and localised peat extraction, particularly in the Scottish Islands and Northern Ireland for fuel.

The majority of the lowland peatlands have been drained and are under often intensive agricultural use. Where lowland peats have been reclaimed for intensively managed agriculture, often with pumped drainage schemes, as found to the east of Southport in West Lancashire, peatland surfaces have dropped several metres, and this can lead to increased flood risks and soil erosion.

Peatland plans, initiatives, and projects

Peatland restoration plans, initiatives and projects cover a wide variety of scales, and embrace a wide range of management measures that look to restore the original form and function of peatlands, and their habitats, to favourable conservation status. The major measure for peatland restoration is the management of site hydrology, which helps to control emissions of greenhouse gases. Other measures can include covering bare peat areas with vegetation, blocking drains to raise the water table and return the waterlogged conditions, re-introducing mosses into areas where they have been lost, and the control of burning and grazing.

Traditionally, the aim and specific objectives of peatland restoration projects and initiatives are set out in a management plan, which would have a timetable for its implementation and a means of monitoring its effectiveness.

The Glasgow and Clyde Valley Green Network’s Clyde Peatlands initiative is looking to deliver ‘large-scale peatland restoration across the eight local authorities that make up Glasgow City Region’.5 The initiative has three elements, namely ‘carbon’, ‘connectivity’, and ‘community’.6 First, the focus is on ‘large scale bog restoration to reduce emissions and lock up carbon, particularly in the upland areas around Glasgow City Region’. Secondly, connectivity is concerned with the ‘restoration of a rich and diverse wildlife habitat and the creation of a permeable landscape that allows species to move freely through and between peatland habitats’, and thirdly the accent is on ‘creating local opportunities for people to learn about the importance of bogs

Rosser1954. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lenzie_Moss_-_boardwalk.JPG

Lenzie Moss in East Dunbartonshire

and to provide volunteering opportunities in practical restoration’.

Within the area covered by the Clyde Peatlands initiative, a number of small-scale peatland restoration projects have been under way for some time, and these projects have been showcased by the Glasgow and Clyde Valley Green Network. At Whitelee Wind Farm near East Kilbride, for example, ScottishPower Renewables committed to restoring 900 hectares of previously forested blanket bog and 1,700 hectares of drained blanket bog. Restoration techniques include ground-smoothing the deforested areas and blocking the drained areas to encourage re-colonisation by peatland species.

Lenzie Moss in East Dunbartonshire is a lowland raised bog which had been degraded by historic peat extraction. Over the past 20 years East Dunbartonshire Council and the Friends of Lenzie Moss have worked in partnership to improve the condition of the bog in order to provide habitats for wildlife and important bog-building plants, and improvements in access have helped to create an important outdoor space for informal recreation for local communities.

The government’s England Peat Action Plan7 offers ‘a blueprint for how we will take action to ensure our peatlands are functioning healthily for the needs of wildlife, people and planet’. It also claims that: ‘Peatland restoration will enable our peatlands to meet their Net Zero contribution, but also contribute to wider environmental goals. Where it is not appropriate to restore lowland peat,

we will develop new responsible management measures to make sure the topsoil is retained for as long as possible and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.’

In focusing on delivery, the England Peat Action Plan aims to: ‘Secure our peatlands’ carbon store so they meet their contribution to Net Zero by 2050 [ ... ] Deliver Natural Flood Management and improve water quality, to increase drought resilience and the sustainability of our water supplies. Protect and restore peatland habitats so that they are healthy well-functioning ecosystems, rich in wildlife. [ … ] Drive private investment in peatland restoration through natural capital markets that allow the accreditation and sale of the ecosystem services that healthy peatlands can provide.’

The largest initiative within the Action Plan is the Great North Bog, an ambitious landscape-scale peatland restoration initiative which covers 7,000 square kilometres of peatland soils across Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Derbyshire, takes in four National Parks and three Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and includes some 90% of the upland peat in England. The Pennine PeatLIFE project, for example, funded by a number of partners, including the European Union, the Environment Agency and Yorkshire Water, is delivering over 1,300 hectares of peatland restoration in the North Pennines, Yorkshire Dales and the Forest of Bowland. Here, new restoration techniques Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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North Pennines AONB Partnership, Yorkshire Peat Partnership and Moors for the Future Partnership

have been pioneered to respond to the unique climatic conditions.

By way of contrast, the Lancashire Mosslands Project was established ‘to address concerns about the fate of lowland raised bog habitat in North West England’, and the aim is ‘to restore and reconnect these sites, helping to reconnect people with their peatland heritage’.8 These peatlands, originally covering 28,000 hectares, have been reduced over the years owing to continuing urban development, intensive agriculture and peat extraction, and just 7,500 hectares remain spread across Lancashire, Greater Manchester, and Merseyside. Led by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust, the project has employed a range of measures, from the purchasing and leasing of land and the establishment of management agreements to re-levelling, scrub removal, and ditch re-profiling, in order to conserve bog habitats and the variety of the wildlife within them.

Wales’ first National Peatland Action Programme looks to address six ‘priority themes’, namely

‘peatland erosion’, ‘peatland drainage’, ‘the sustainable management of blanket peatlands’, ‘the sustainable management of lowland peatlands’, ‘the restoration of afforested peatlands’, and ‘the gradual restoration of our highest carbon emitting peatlands’.9 In physical terms the aim is to deliver 600–800 hectares of restoration per annum over the lifespan of the project across a range of land uses on both private and public land. More specifically, the New LIFE for Welsh Raised Bogs project10 is the first restoration programme for raised bogs (indeed, for any peatland habitat) in Wales. The programme, which covers seven areas (including Cors Caron, at Tregaron, Cors Fochno, north of Aberystwyth, and Esgyrn Bottom, south east of Fishguard), will involve working in partnership ‘with local communities, landowners and contractors’ to improve the conditions of the peatland, remove invasive species and scrub, and introduce light grazing. Specific measures will include removing rhododendrons, cutting and removing some trees

The Great North Bog is a large-scale peatland restoration initiative being developed by the North Pennines AONB Partnership, the Yorkshire Peat Partnership and the Moors for the Future Partnership, together with the Northumberland Peat Partnership, Cumbria Peat Partnership, and Lancashire Peat Partnership

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in, or near, the bogs to encourage mosses to grow, and creating low-level banks of peat.

The Garron Plateau, in North Antrim, is the largest blanket bog in Northern Ireland, and a restoration project was launched in 2013 ‘to re-establish natural hydrological conditions and restore the function of the bog and its ability to sequester carbon, and to improve the quality and reliability of the water received at Northern Ireland Water’s Dungonnell treatment works which is supplied by the Garron catchment’.11 More generally, the focus has been on demonstrating what could be achieved at a landscape scale across Northern Ireland. The initial phase of the project (2013–2014) saw the establishment of a catchment management plan and work with farmers to reduce grazing densities and raise the water table, while in the second phase (2014–2019) a conservation action plan was developed to ensure that appropriate management continued to secure protection for the site. Peatland restoration projects are also under way in Northern Ireland at Tullychurry Forest in County Fermanagh, and at Ballynahone Bog and Glenullin Bog, both in County Derry.

Concluding reflections

While the detailed objectives of the various peatland restoration plans, initiatives and projects vary, a number of issues merit reflection and discussion. First, governments, governmental nature agencies and those organisations who currently lead on peatland restoration look to provide a positive image of their plans, projects and initiatives, but in reality, peatland restoration faces a number of challenges.

In examining the experiences of peatland restoration in Scotland, Novo et al.12 identified a number of challenges, including environmental challenges, challenges during restoration activities, and challenges with the funding process. Environmental challenges included those associated with both ‘present conditions’ and ‘past events’. Those associated with present conditions included problems caused by snow, heavy rain and strong winds, delays to work attendant upon bird nesting and the lambing season, and access problems for machinery in remote and/or steep locations. One of the major challenges identified during restoration activities were communications between some of the players in the process — for example between contractors and both landowners and peatland action officers — and were often seen to be particularly problematic when a number of partners were involved in the restoration works. Tellingly, the authors found that interactions between the challenges listed above often led to the slowing down, or partial completion, of restoration work, or resulted in completion to a lower standard.

Secondly, there are issues relating to the monitoring and evaluation of peatland restoration

projects and initiatives. Over a decade ago, Natural England emphasised that a programme of monitoring should be an important element in peatland restoration projects, and provided a review of the available techniques for such monitoring.13 Ideally, a monitoring and evaluation methodology should be both flexible and scientifically rigorous — flexible in that it can be used in a variety of restoration environments, and scientifically rigorous in that it should be unbiased and well controlled. Looking to the future, remote sensing and the employment of digital technologies may have an increasingly important role to play in monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of peatland restoration initiatives, but here cost factors may prove prohibitive.

That said, there are also problems with timescales.

On the one hand, pre-restoration monitoring procedures, to establish baseline conditions, should ideally be in place for up to two years, but securing the funding for such monitoring may pose difficulties.

On the other hand, Walker14 has suggested that while all peatland restoration projects are required to evidence their outcomes, ‘many struggle to design and adopt a robust monitoring programme — especially within the short timescales of most restoration projects in which baseline monitoring, capital works and post intervention monitoring must be completed, typically within a 2–5 year window’. Concerns about the timescale problems for monitoring and evaluation are underwritten by the reality that ‘peatlands form and respond to environmental change over decades to centuries, and at a landscape scale’.

Thirdly, a consistent underlying theme in peatland restoration is its role in facilitating the transition to a more sustainable future, and, in many ways, peatland restoration might be seen to epitomise nature-based solutions to climate change, biodiversity loss, and the deterioration of ecosystem services, which pose major challenges for sustainable development. However, support for nature-based solutions in tackling environmental problems is not unqualified.

Seddon et al.,15 for example, claimed that the potential for nature-based solutions ‘to provide the intended benefits has not been rigorously assessed’ and that ‘there are concerns over their reliability and cost-effectiveness compared to engineered solutions, and their resilience to climate change’, and they issued a warning that such concerns could result in ‘maladaptation, especially in a rapidly changing world where biodiversity-based resilience and multi-functional landscapes are key’.

They also expressed concern that enthusiasm for nature-based solutions to climate change mitigation ‘does not curtail or distract from the urgent need to rapidly decarbonize our economy, including through radical systemic change’.

Elsewhere, Seddon et al.16 also argued that nature-based solutions are ‘distracting from the Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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need to rapidly phase out use of fossil fuels and protect existing intact ecosystems’.

Finally, while peatland restoration is seen as offering an important contribution to sustainable development, and given that ‘the purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development’,17 it is conspicuous by its absence from the current version of England’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), although it does assert that planning policies should ‘not identify new sites or extensions to existing sites for peat extraction’, and that minerals planning authorities should ‘not grant planning permission for peat extraction from new or extended sites’.

In Scotland planning policies should ‘only permit commercial extraction in areas suffering historic, significant damage through human activity and where the conservation value is low and restoration is impossible’.18 In both Scotland and Wales the need to protect peatland is explicitly recognised in national planning policy, while England’s NPPF more generally emphasises the importance of ‘conserving and enhancing the natural environment’, including ‘sites of biodiversity’.

At the same time, in exploring how biodiversity targets have been incorporated in spatial planning policy in England, Wilson19 concluded that ‘biodiversity has been ‘mainstreamed’ in English spatial planning policy’. However, she also reported that there were ‘spatial variations in policy approach between protected sites and the wider countryside and urban areas’ and that ‘responsibility for biodiversity enhancement in the wider countryside and urban areas [rely] mainly on local policy and instrumental arguments that are likely to lead to tensions over the ‘replaceability’ of nature’.

Looking to the future, research designed to investigate local planning authorities’ perceptions of the importance of peatland restoration, and, where appropriate, if and how planning authorities had facilitated peatland restoration in contributing to sustainable development in both upland and lowland areas, deserves attention.

Peter Jones works in association with the School of •Business at the University of Gloucestershire. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 UK Peatland Strategy. IUCN UK Peatland Programme, 2018. www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/sites/ default/files/2019-07/2018_UK%20Peatland%20 Strategy_DIGITAL_3.pdf 2 UK Natural Capital: Peatlands. Office for National Statistics, 2019. www.ons.gov.uk/economy/ environmentalaccounts/bulletins/ uknaturalcapitalforpeatlands/naturalcapitalaccounts 3 ‘What is peat?’. Webpage. International Peatland Society. https://peatlands.org/peat/peat/ 4 ‘About peatlands’. Webpage. IUCN UK Peatland Programme. www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/ about-peatlands

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5 ‘Glasgow City Region’s peatlands set to help fight climate change’. News Release. NatureScot, 14 Jun. 2022. www.nature.scot/glasgow-city-regions-peatlands-sethelp-fight-climate-change#:~:text=Today%20sees%20 the%20launch%20of,the%20region’s%20Net%20 Zero%20ambitions 6 See GCV (Glasgow & Clyde Valley) Green Network’s ‘Clyde Peatlands: Addressing the climate and ecological crises’ webpage, at www.gcvgreennetwork.gov.uk/clyde-peatlands 7 England Peat Action Plan. HM Government, May 2021. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1010786/ england-peat-action-plan.pdf 8 See the IUCN UK Peatland Programme’s ‘Lancashire Mosslands’ webpage, at www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/projects/ lancashire-mosslands 9 National Peatland Action Programme 2020–2025.

Natural Resources Wales, Nov. 2020. https://cdn.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru/media/692545/ national-peatlands-action-programme.pdf 10 See Natural Resources Wales’ ‘New LIFE for Welsh Raised Bogs’ webpage at https://naturalresources. wales/about-us/our-projects/nature-projects/new-lifefor-welsh-raised-bogs/?lang=en 11 ‘Nature 2030 case studies — Garron Plateau Bog Restoration Project’. Webpage. MyNI, Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Sept. 2021. www.myni.life/nature/nature-2030case-studies-garron-plateau-bog-restoration-project/ 12 P Novo, M Sposato, C Maynard and K Glenk: Understanding the Experiences of Peatland Restoration in Scotland. Scotland’s Rural College, for ClimateXChange, Mar. 2021. www.climatexchange.org.uk/media/4857/ cxc-understanding-peatland-restoration-experiencesfinal-march-2021.pdf 13 A Review of Techniques for Monitoring the Success of Peatland Restoration. NECR086. Natural England, Sept. 2011. http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/ publication/46013 14 J Walker: Written Evidence. NSD0034. Presented to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change.

Swansea University, Sept. 2021. https://committees. parliament.uk/writtenevidence/38956/pdf/ 15 N Seddon, A Chausson, P Berry, et al.: ‘Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges’.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2020, Vol. 375, 20190120. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/ doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2019.0120 16 N Seddon, A Smith, P Smith, et al.: ‘Getting the message right on nature-based solutions to climate change’. Global Change Biology, 2021, Vol. 27 (8), 1518–46 17 National Planning Policy Framework. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jul. 2021. www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationalplanning-policy-framework--2 18 Scottish Planning Policy. Scottish Government, Jun. 2014. www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-planning-policy/ 19 O Wilson: ‘Putting nature centre stage? The challenges of ‘mainstreaming’ biodiversity in the planning process’. Journal of Environmental Planning & Management, 2021, Vol. 66 (3), 549–71. www.tandfonline.com/doi/ epub/10.1080/09640568.2021.1999219?needAccess=true

the urban/rural green infrastructure conundrum

John Sturzaker

Ian Mell and John Sturzaker look at how best to align green infrastructure aims and aspirations with rural planning when the land use, land value and composition of urban and rural landscapes differ so dramatically

Can expansive rural landscapes be considered as green infrastructure?

Should we consider all green and blue space as green infrastructure? Does urban green infrastructure have greater ecological or socio-economic benefits than its rural counterparts? Can we consider expansive rural landscapes as green infrastructure? And how do we plan for green infrastructure when the land use, land value and composition of urban and rural landscapes differ so dramatically?

The recently issued Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Research Publication Rural Planning in the 2020s1 raised a series of questions on how we conceptualise, write policy for, and create implementation and management practices that are appropriate to rural landscapes. The research project from which the publication arose was wide-

ranging, exploring various themes connected to rural planning, including current discussions of green infrastructure, its principles, and rural communities’, planners’ and the wider environmental sector’s understanding of the idea.

One of the findings of the project was that there is widespread appreciation of green infrastructure as a set of supporting networks of green and blue spaces providing benefits that include multi-functional places, improved access to nature, socio-economic and ecological benefits delivered through greening activities, and support for ecological and sociocultural connectivity between people, places, and habitats. This understanding is common across both urban and rural locations — but the project Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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highlighted a diversity of action in the application of these principles.

The research found that across the UK and Ireland, and indeed globally, there is variation in how green infrastructure is discussed, depending on whether the context is urban or rural. The knowledge and extent to which green infrastructure is integrated into policy is less prominent — although growing — in rural areas than in urban. Of course, rural areas include centres of employment, recreation, and energy production, and provide critical environmental resources that support biodiversity, climate change adaptation, and water management. However, policy around such themes appears to be disconnected from discussions of green infrastructure, perhaps because of a perception of ‘greening’ as an urban concept. This is problematic, as it threatens the socio-economic and ecological resilience of rural places.

One of the fundamental questions raised in Rural Planning in the 2020s is whether we should consider all green, blue or open spaces in rural areas to be ‘green infrastructure’. This strikes at the heart of green infrastructure research, as it fundamentally asks what green infrastructure is, what it does, and, in the case of rural areas, where can it be found.

From a review of definitions of green infrastructure, we can identify variation in how the concept is framed. For example, the European Commission defines it as: ‘a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services such as water purification, air quality, space for recreation and climate mitigation and adaptation. This network of green (land) and blue (water) spaces can improve environmental conditions and therefore citizens’ health and quality of life. It also supports a green economy, creates job opportunities and enhances biodiversity. [ … ] Green infrastructure planning is a successfully tested tool to provide environmental, economic and social benefits through natural solutions. In many cases, it can reduce dependence on ‘grey’ infrastructure that can be damaging to the environment and biodiversity, and often more expensive to build and maintain.’ 2 But in the UK the government states, in the National Planning Policy Framework, that green infrastructure is: ‘A network of multi-functional green and blue spaces and other natural features, urban and rural, which is capable of delivering a wide range of environmental, economic, health and wellbeing benefits for nature, climate, local and wider communities and prosperity.’3 Both definitions consider networks of green and/ or blue spaces located at multiple scales to be 54

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central to an understanding of green infrastructure.

Moreover, the EU proposition that green infrastructure is part of a strategic network of spaces suggests that it should be planned for across boundaries, whether administrative or urban-rural. In the UK the government is even more explicit in noting that green infrastructure is located in both urban and rural locations. However, when reflecting on policy and environmental and academic research, there remains a disconnect between the concepts of greening, green infrastructure, and landscape planning in rural areas.

Drawing on the definitions above to help answer our question ‘Are all green and blue spaces in rural areas green infrastructure?’, we could argue yes, the totality of the landscape should be considered green infrastructure — albeit defined as a set of large-scale elements. These landscape-scale networks may coalesce into a portfolio of ecological mosaics that highlight variability in the form, function, and connectivity of rural landscapes.

However, there is little in the academic and practice-based literature on rural green infrastructure, while there is a significant literature that only discusses green infrastructure as an urban concept.

This might be because it is easier to consider how issues of biodiversity loss, public health and wellbeing, water management and climate change should be addressed within a primarily non-green, urban context. When trying to do this at a landscape, regional, or even national scale, what can be viewed as green infrastructure becomes less certain. This is despite the understanding that framing ecological management at a landscape scale is a positive approach, as it respects factors such as migratory patterns, and enables water to be managed at the catchment scale.

Consequently, although one of the first published discussions of the concept of green infrastructure,

by Benedict and McMahon,4 promoted the role of landscape-scale conservation mandates, the spatial focus of what green infrastructure is and how it is researched has been more limited. This, in turn, might reflect the urban-centric focus of government policy, academic research, and environmental organisations.

Rethinking green infrastructure as a rural phenomenon

If we shift the focus of green infrastructure planning out of an urban and into a rural context, we can identify issues related to provision, management, funding and quality of — and access to — green spaces, as well as the big challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and water management that are shaping its use in planning policy and practice. Moreover, there is a need to consider the influence that high-quality rural green infrastructure has on health, recreation, economic growth, and quality of life.

Ian Mell

Ely Country Park in Cambridgeshire

Rural Planning in the 2020s argues that, to address these issues, we must reflect on green infrastructure as both a set of resources (for example forests, waterways, and grasslands) that meet ecological needs and as a set of thematic approaches (for example economic development and biodiversity management) to aid planning praxis in rural areas. This would require a more refined examination of existing agricultural, forestry and water management practices, aligned with an appreciation of how people interact with and gain benefits from rural spaces.

Such a change in mindset would not be simple to bring about. Existing land management practices in rural areas are grounded in knowledge of local environmental systems, often linked to national or global economic markets, and located within a framework of long-standing approaches emphasising the importance of continuity in rural land management.

However, agendas such as the former Countryside Agency’s Countryside in and Around Towns,5 the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD)6 and the European Landscape Convention (ELC)7 challenge narrow policy worldviews and support a more reflective discussion of green infrastructure principles, such as ecological and socio-cultural landscape connectivity, multi-functionality, access to nature for all, and planning for socio-economic

and ecological sustainability within rural planning.

The question we therefore need to ask is: ‘Why are these considerations less prominent in current rural policy?’

Challenging the legacy of rural politics in what has been called the ‘paternalistic countryside’8 might allow advocates of more environmentally focused practices to help shape policy. To achieve this, there is a need for an appreciation of rural land use that identifies synergies between historical and contemporary land uses, led from within rural communities, so that advocates can allay fears of change and highlight the benefits of green infrastructure.

It is therefore worth noting that high-quality examples of green infrastructure planning do exist in rural areas. For example, the first and second iterations of the Cambridgeshire Green Infrastructure Strategy,9 the strategic green infrastructure work being undertaken by the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) and Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire councils,10 the urban-fringe/rural planning for greater socio-economic and ecological connectivity in the Central Scotland Green Network11 and the thematic discussions outlined in the Derry and Strabane Green Infrastructure Plan 2019–203212 all illustrate an understanding of the principles, as Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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well as thematic framings, such as biodiversity, people and place, and climate change, which are shaping green infrastructure discourses.

What links each of these examples is the strategic leadership provided by local government officers and decision-makers who acknowledge the added value of embedding the spatial and elemental principles of green infrastructure into policy deliverables. In some cases, there is a legacy of working with the concept in local policy forums, cementing collaborative partnerships to address divergences in views about the focus of rural policy. However, this level of commitment to green infrastructure is not universal, nor is there consensus on what rural policy should focus on. In some locations, the legacy of agriculturally focused policy is particularly strong, limiting the discussion of alternative land management practices, such as conservation, rewilding, or ecosystem services thinking.

How we progress the planning of rural areas can therefore be constrained by ongoing conflicts between traditional land management and arguably more forward-looking alternatives. Moreover, the desire to continue delivering rural activities such as farming in a conventional way limits the consideration of alternative land management approaches.

emphasis placed on specific principles — such as the natural and ecological value of National Parks, or the use of Green Belts to restrict urban coalescence — which do not always align easily with the broader principles of green infrastructure.

It is also the case that these designations have become part of the ‘dogma’ of the UK planning systems,13 shaping land management and use over a prolonged period. Green infrastructure cannot be said to have the same legacy. Consequently, although practitioners, the public and politicians alike recognise designations such as the Green Belt or a National Park, if you were to ask the same people what green infrastructure is, they might give a vague list of landscape elements, benefits or functions, rather than a specific response.14 Designations are useful tools in protecting valued landscapes and spaces and can help to promote continuity in how rural areas are planned, offering an approach to planning that aims to maintain the ecological, socio-cultural and economic benefits associated with a specific environment. However, the rural areas of the UK are changing in the face of a range of forces, including climate change, demographic fluctuation, and increasing demands for housing and tourism (exacerbated by Covid-19).

Rural policy therefore needs to adapt. Thus green infrastructure, Nature Recovery Networks, Local Nature Partnerships and even rewilding efforts may become increasingly practical responses to How we progress the planning questions of future land management. The recent of rural areas can therefore discussions over whether Environmental Land Management Schemes will continue adds further be constrained by ongoing complexity to this discussion. conflicts between traditional Each of these alternative approaches to land management in rural areas is contested — especially land management and — but they offer opportunities to think arguably more forward-looking rewilding beyond existing siloed approaches to rural planning. alternatives They also provide the added value emphasised in historic environmental stewardship schemes supported by the EU and the Department for What relationship do designations have with Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by working rural green infrastructure? with land managers to develop more integrated An added area of complexity that is influencing approaches that align socio-economic and the way that green infrastructure is introduced into ecological benefits. Green infrastructure planning discussions about rural planning is the role of could be seen as the least controversial of these existing designations and their management. Could options, as it does not call for wholesale changes Green Belts, National Parks, Areas of Outstanding to existing management practices. Instead, it asks Beauty (AONBs) or Ramsar sites be classified as planners and land managers to think spatially, green infrastructure? Looking back at the definitions elementally and thematically, to consider what is above, perhaps yes, as some, at least, are of high possible rather than demanding immediate ecological and/or socio-cultural quality; and/or could wholesale change. help in delivering climate, biodiversity and water Such a transition in thinking continues to be management functions, as well as in providing access challenging in some quarters, as it can be viewed to nature and supporting economic and recreational as moving away from agricultural production or needs. They are also managed through an approach landscape protection as the most prominent land that prioritises protection over development. uses in rural areas. This is exemplified within However, there tends to be limited consideration discussions over food security and the rhetoric of of green infrastructure within current discussions of farming communities, which aim to rebuff any such designations. In some ways this reflects the attempts to remove land from agricultural production

‘

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Nick Fewings on Unsplash

The challenge is to explore how rural green infrastructure can complement existing activities or designations

to support climate mitigation activity.15 The challenge for green infrastructure advocates is therefore to explore how it can complement existing activities or designations while simultaneously offering alternative options that diversify rural planning practices.

One option to generate such support is the enhancement of a more effective dialogue between environmental organisations such as the Forestry Commission, large landowners, including the Crown Estate, and environmental charities and responsible authorities, such as CPRE —The Countryside Charity, Historic Environment Scotland, and Natural Resources Wales. If these bodies (and others) act as a ‘critical friend’ for green infrastructure in rural areas, it may be easier to foster engagement within rural planning that favours alternative approaches rather than simply maintaining the status quo.

Pathways to embedding green infrastructure into rural policy

As in urban areas, rural policy-makers are tasked with addressing a complex range of issues simultaneously, often within an overlapping mosaic of environmental and landscape designations. Rather than treating existing land uses as sacrosanct, working more effectively with a green infrastructure perspective may offer innovative ways to frame policy, placing the benefits for people and rural landscape management at the core of policy.

However, there has been a lack of joined-up thinking in a significant number of rural areas in the UK, where links have not been made between

green infrastructure and broader needs to address deficits in energy, food production, housing, or transport infrastructure. A joint spatial and thematic approach to strategic development that addresses landscape-scale issues across urban-rural boundaries is one way to do this — as was done through some Regional Spatial Strategies in England prior to 2011.

Moreover, ongoing compliance with the ELC and the WFD offers land management specialists pathways that can be followed to consider rural planning as a collaborative process.

Alongside discussions of how best to embed green infrastructure within rural planning, there is a need to consider whether a spatial, elemental or thematic approach to management would be more appropriate. Such considerations could take into account health and wellbeing, access, climate change, access to nature, and the economic cost of more sustainable rural management. Within these debates, how we perceive the alignment of existing land use practices with more strategic ecologically focused management is of paramount importance.

The evaluation of policy and practice for the Rural Planning in the 2020s project highlighted a need for local government, developers, the environment sector and existing land managers to consider how green infrastructure can be better aligned with rural praxis. The following considerations are central to future debates on green infrastructure for advocates working in rural areas: • the need for a more effective process of inclusion of green infrastructure within policy and practice across each nation of the UK and Ireland; Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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Planning Policy Framework. Ministry of Housing, • the scope for more effective use of contemporary 3 National Communities and Local Government, Jul. 2021.

environmental policy, guidance and standards to support policy dialogues across the UK and Ireland — for example, the 25 Year Environment Plan, the Environment Act 2021, the national Green Infrastructure Standards Framework (launched in January 2023), and the Nature Recovery Network in England, the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, and the growing number of city/city-regional green infrastructure strategies being developed in Ireland and Northern Ireland (as in County Wicklow, Dublin City Region or Belfast, for example); • the potential to re-examine environmental policy in rural areas to better appreciate where green infrastructure can be located within it — and in turn more fully align terminological variation, action and understandings of the added socioeconomic and ecological benefits associated with the concept; • the opportunity to promote a debate focusing on rights to landscape using the green principles of infrastructure connectivity, access to nature, and ecological networks to support different public, private, rural-industrial and residential community views within rural planning, management, and land use discussions; the • importance of greater alignment of water, biodiversity and climate change thinking within discussions on housing, socio-economic activities, and transport planning, so as to support socioeconomic and ecological thinking in rural areas; and • the promotion of a more detailed awareness of the regional variations associated with green infrastructure praxis across the UK and Ireland within rural locations (and across diverse landscape mosaics), so as to identify best practice in management, policy formation, and knowledge transfer.

Dr Ian Mell is with the Department of Planning and •Environmental Management, University of Manchester.

Professor John Sturzaker is with the Department of Psychology, Sport and Geography, University of Hertfordshire.

The views expressed are personal. The RTPI Rural Planning in the 2020s project was completed by a multi-institution team of academics from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales — comprising Amy Burnett, Aiden Bygrave, Jaime Cecil and Scott Copsey (University of Hertfordshire), Neale Blair (Ulster University), Neil Harris (Cardiff University), Nick Gallent and Iqbal Hamiduddin (University College London), Meri Juntti (Middlesex University), Leslie Mabon (Open University), Gavin Parker (University of Reading), and Mark Scott (University College Dublin), supported by an RTPI steering group.

Notes 1 Rural Planning in the 2020s. RTPI Research Paper. RTPI, Jul. 2022. www.rtpi.org.uk/media/11955/rural-planningin-the-2020s.pdf 2 ‘Ecosystem services and green infrastructure’.

Webpage. European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/ environment/nature/ecosystems/index_en.htm

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www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationalplanning-policy-framework--2 4 M A Benedict and E McMahon: Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities. Island Press, 2006 5 The Countryside in and around Towns: A Vision for Connecting Town and Country in the Pursuit of Sustainable Development. Countryside Agency/ Groundwork, Jan. 2005 6 D Hering, A Borja, J Carstensen, et al.: ‘The European Water Framework Directive at the age of 10: a critical review of the achievements with recommendations for the future’. Science of the Total Environment, 2010, Vol. 408 (19), 4007–19 7 M Roe, P Selman, I C Mell, C Jones and C Swanwick: Establishment of a Baseline for, and Monitoring of the Impact of, the European Landscape Convention in the UK. Defra Contract No. CR0401 (Comp. Code: WC0802).

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2009 8 P Lowe, T Marsden, J Murdoch and N Ward: The Differentiated Countryside. Routledge, 2003 9 Cambridgeshire Green Infrastructure Strategy.

Cambridgeshire Horizons, 2011. www.cambridge.gov.uk/media/2557/greeninfrastructure-strategy.pdf 10 West of England Joint Green Infrastructure Strategy 2020–2030. West of England Combined Authority/Bath and North East Somerset Council/Bristol City Council/ North Somerset Council/South Gloucestershire Council, May 2020. www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Joint-Green-InfrastructureStrategy-%E2%80%93-June-2020..pdf 11 M Hislop and A Corbett: Green Infrastructure Policies in the CSGN: A Review of Local Authority Policies on Green Infrastructure in Built Development. GCV Green Network Partnership, for Central Scotland Green Network Trust/Scottish Government, Apr. 2018. https://mainstreaminggreeninfrastructure.com/ resources.php?gi-csgn-scotland 12 Green Infrastructure Plan 2019–2032. Derry City and Strabane District Council, 2018. www.derrystrabane.com/getmedia/70ecf409-28a04262-9533-ca6ea6b75bd9/Green-InfrastructurePlan-2019-2032.pdf 13 For example, Green Belts were first proposed by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935 and codified in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, while the first National Park in the UK — the Peak District — was designated in 1951 14 See I Mell and M Whitten: ‘Access to nature in a post Covid-19 world: Opportunities for green infrastructure financing, distribution and equitability in urban planning’. International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health, 2021, Vol. 18 (4), 1527. www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1527, which provides an outline of the scope of elements, themes, scales and benefits that could be considered within discussions of green infrastructure 15 The ongoing debates regarding the expansion and rewilding of areas of the Wicken Fen site in Cambridgeshire is an example of how alternative land management practices have been opposed by local farming communities. They have quoted food security, flooding and economic reasons for their opposition, stating that the UK cannot afford to move away from traditional agricultural practices, even in the face of the projected impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss

levelling up begins at ground level

Kai Bossom on Unsplash

James Derounian reports on the findings of an audit that charted changes in activity in English and Welsh Parish, Town and Community Councils over the past 30 years — and considers what they might mean for levelling up

Over 30% of England is parished — ‘the sheer scale and historical pedigree of Town, Parish and Community Councils should give citizens, policy-makers and politicians serious pause for thought’

If it wasn’t for Jackie Weaver, and her 2021 spat in a Handforth Parish Council Zoom meeting that went viral, I probably wouldn’t get your attention with this article. She single-handedly did what many of us have tried and failed to do — namely recast the term ‘parish pump’ from a pejorative term to one that deserves genuine attention as a contributor to intended UK government ‘levelling-up’.

The sheer scale and historical pedigree of English and Welsh Town, Parish and Community Councils — collectively termed ‘local councils’ — should give citizens, policy-makers and politicians serious pause

for thought. For example, the umbrella body (the National Association of Local Councils — NALC1) represents 9,000 Parish and Town Councils and 80,000 councillors. Local councils are the first tier of local government and are statutory bodies; over 30% of England is parished. Together they form an influential grouping of grassroots opinion-formers.2 Over 200 such councils have been created over the past decade, including the first in London (serving Queen’s Park).

Furthermore, these councils have far outlived other agencies and quangos: they came into being Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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in 1894, as a result of a Local Government Act, and most of the civil functions of the Church of England and other bodies were transferred to these new councils. What is immediately apparent is that local councils — unlike so many political structures — are sustainable democratic units that continue 128 years after birth.

It is now 30 years since Parish and Town Councils in England: A Survey was published.3 The report was commissioned by the-then Conservative government to assess the activity or sleepiness of this tier of local government, and the research was based on a sample of 1,000 Parish and Town Councils across England. In response, the Rural White Paper of 1995 promoted the role of local councils. More statutory powers were awarded in 1997 and, following a second Rural White Paper in 2000, the Labour government invested in training for local councils and a ‘Vital Villages’ scheme, and promoted communitydriven Parish Plans.

Most significantly, the coalition government’s Localism Act 2011 gave a general power of competence to eligible local councils and introduced a series of ‘community rights’ that such councils are enabled to initiate action — for example, the production of community-generated Neighbourhood Plans must be led by a local council, where one exists. Other community rights include the better delivery of services, protection of community assets, and development of social enterprises.

‘The survey ... may encourage more of these ultra-local councils to emulate others already active in delivering for communities. It has shone a light on aspects of localism that constitute a plank of government policy, especially focused on levelling up’ It is clear that over time Parish and Town Councils have undergone a sea-change in terms of their numbers, finance, duties, and capabilities. In 1992, the first survey identified 8,159 local councils, with populations of less than 100 to over 40,000 — 83% represented under 2,500 people. There were 70,600 councillors (13,600 more than in 1967) — 27% of whom were women, 23% were under 45 years old, with only 17% aged over 65. Only 4% of local councils were run on party-political lines.

Local councils are self-financing bodies. They raise money in order to provide and support community services and projects. Their main income comes 60

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from the precept, a tax levied on local taxpayers in each parish. The level of precept depends on whether the council is tiny or big, active or comatose; and ranges from less than £500 to over £1,000,000.3 The 1992 Parish and Town Councils in England report established the services on which councils spent money in 1989/90: around half of the budget (47–56%) was spent on churchyards and burial facilities, signs and noticeboards, seats and shelters, outdoor recreation, open spaces, greens and commons, and village or community halls. Up to a third of the budget (28–33%) went on lighting, litter, war memorials, information services, local newsletters, competitions, and footpaths. The remainder (19–23%) went on community surveys, allotments, and roadside verges.

Has the scope and significance of local council activity changed over the last quarter of a century?

Are councils really taking on more diverse services, such as libraries and youth services, as a consequence of the severe constraints on principal authorities?

The estimated income of all local councils in 1989/90 was £123.2 million or 0.28% of all local government income; the average precept of local councils was £9,350, and the average council tax bill per charge-payer was £5.20 in 1990/01. In 2014/15 the government indicated that there were 8,813 local councils in England, raising a total precept of £388.8 million, with the average band D household paying £52.37.4 How do these statistics compare with today’s figures?

In 2020 I was able to play a role in bringing together the Society of Local Council Clerks and the Local Governance Research Centre to undertake an update of the original audit. A lot of things have happened to UK society, government and policy since 1992 (coalition government, austerity, Brexit, and Covid, to name but a few) which may have impacted on local councils and what they do for their communities. One surprise — at least to me — has been the inability of stakeholders to put their money where their mouths are: the National Association of Local Councils, the Local Government Association and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (and predecessors) have all said, at different times, how useful an audit would be … only to turn out their pockets and plead poverty. An electronic survey was undertaken in 2021.5 And so, to the 2021 findings. Compared with the 4% of local councils that reported being run on party-political lines. in 1991, in 2021 Parish and Town Councils were significantly more politicised, with 23% of all councils controlled by national parties (Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Plaid Cymru). And in terms of gender, overall, the representation of women councillors on local councils has stalled: male councillors now outnumber their female counterparts in 76% of local councils.

Just under half of local councils (45%) had councillors who were dual-hatted in 2021, serving also on either a district or a county authority. The overall number of councils with at least one councillor with a dual role has grown from the 34% recorded in 1991. And 11% of local councils had councillors with a triple representative role, holding office on local, district and county councils.

The post of clerk to the council is normally (and increasingly) occupied by a woman (74%); this compares with 1991, when 59% of clerks were women. Around 34% worked as full-time clerks, compared with 96% serving part time in 1991. The sector has become professionalised, with roughly a third of clerks holding an undergraduate (and a fifth postgraduate) degrees. Around 17% of councils had no training budget, and the profession lacks diversity: only 5% of clerks were aged 31–40, while most (39%) were 51–60 years old. This represents an imminent loss of retiring expertise. Shockingly, over half of local councils had experienced behavioural issues from councillors, such as bullying or disrespect towards other councillors or clerks, in the last four years.

On the positive side, 98% of councils had a dedicated webpage, with use also made of Twitter (27%), Instagram (13%), and YouTube (12%).

On the other hand, only one in ten local councils live-streamed meetings. Disappointingly, 77% reported that the local press did not attend council meetings.

Local councils today manage the stewardship of extensive community assets, including landholdings, buildings, and facilities. Approximately seven in ten local councils oversee the use of children’s playgrounds (68%) and parks and open spaces (62%), while almost two-thirds manage recreation grounds and sports pitches (60%) and 52% oversee the use of allotments.

Some 31% of local councils have completed a community-based Neighbourhood or Place Plan.

Of the two-thirds of local councils who had not completed a plan, a third (32%) were in the process of doing so. Over three-quarters of local councils (77%) worked or collaborated with other tiers of local government, i.e. district, county, or unitary authorities. Local council joint-working with housing associations, clinical commissioning groups, Local Enterprise Partnerships or central government departments was shown to be the exception rather than the rule.

Responses revealed the diverse financial experiences across local councils. Areas of expenditure identified varied from public clock maintenance, pest control and beach-cleaning through to support for a police community support officer and provision of community cafés and libraries, onto to grass cutting, youth services, and delivery of a Covid recovery fund. However, broadly speaking, spending by local councils coalesced

around four functional areas: the custodianship of local community assets; management of the public realm; support for communities; and the running costs of the authority itself.

So, what has been the value of such a survey?

It demonstrates the value of investing in the improvement and development of local councils, and shows how they have developed over the last 30 years. It may also encourage more of these ultra-local councils to emulate others already active in delivering for communities. It has shone a light on aspects of localism that constitute a plank of government policy, especially focused on levelling up. Furthermore, it provides evidence of work that still needs to be done to improve the performance of the sector.

In a direct parallel to the American poet, Longfellow, who wrote (about a girl) ‘when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid’, the 2021 portrait is of a varied sector — from the very professional good, to the moribund and dire. The update provides evidence to learn from, and disseminate, plus good practice and exemplars of local council activity and actions, to raise the quality of the majority.

James Derounian is National Teaching Fellow, Society •of Dr Local Council Clerks, at De Montfort University. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 See the National Association of Local Councils website, at www.nalc.gov.uk/?lang=_w 2 See ‘Who we are’. Webpage. National Association of Local Councils. www.nalc.gov.uk/about/who-we-are 3 Council Tax Levels Set by Local Authorities in England 2014–15 (Revised). Statistical Release. Department for Communities and Local Government, Jul. 2014. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335851/ Council_Tax_Levels_set_by_Local_Authorities__ Revised__August_2014.pdf 4 S Ellwood, S M Nutley, M Tricker and P Waterson: Parish and Town Councils in England: A Survey.

Department of the Environment. HMSO, Dec. 1992 5 Survey of Local Council Activity in 2021. Local Government Research Centre and Society of Local Council Clerks. Local Governance Research Centre, 2022

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green infrastructure —

policies, strategies and challenges Peter Jones looks at green infrastructure characteristics, strategies and policies, and considers the role and implementation of green infrastructure in planning and housing development The UK’s first ‘Green Infrastructure Week’, held back in April 2022, had an ambitious and wideranging focus in seeking to embrace and celebrate the technologies that will be ‘used to deliver the biggest gains in our global transition to net zero’.1 Green infrastructure (GI) is becoming an increasingly important element in Local Plans, and some housebuilding companies are emphasising the importance of green infrastructure in their development proposals and in helping to create a sense of place. This article outlines the characteristics of green infrastructure, illustrates a number of green infrastructure strategies and policies, and offers some summary reflections on the role and implementation of green infrastructure in planning and urban development.

communities alive and makes them great places to live in. It is a term used for vegetated areas such as parks, street trees and green roofs, that deliver a wide range of benefits for people and nature’.4 The TCPA defines green infrastructure as ‘a network of multi-functional green space and other green features, urban and rural, which can deliver quality of life and environmental benefits for communities’.5 Lennon suggests that while interpretations of green infrastructure may vary, what they share ‘is a belief in the ability and necessity of planning, designing, constructing, and managing nature to deliver desired benefits from particular ‘environmental resources’, be they watercourses, green open spaces or tree-lined streets’.6 Writing just over a decade ago, Wright suggested that while the ‘the idea of ‘green infrastructure’ has Green infrastructure experienced a quick emergence in planning policy’,2 Green infrastructure can mean different things to the concept was not new. Firehock has argued that different people, and Wright has argued that green the term itself ‘was first coined in Florida in 1994 infrastructure is ‘a contested concept’, in that ‘a in a report to the governor on land conservation single precise meaning of ‘green infrastructure’ is strategies and was intended to reflect the notion problematic because the concept is evolving and that natural systems are equally, if not more divided between environmental theory and socioimportant, components of our infrastructure’, and economic policy’.2 that the ‘the principles that form the basis for the That said, a number of definitions can be identified. concept have arisen from multiple disciplines’.7 Mell, for example, has claimed that the concept of The National Planning Policy Framework, for example, defines green infrastructure as ‘a network green infrastructure assimilated principles from of multi-functional green and blue spaces and other the Garden Cities movement to embrace ‘the natural features, urban and rural, which is capable of ideas of connectivity, accessibility and integrated delivering a wide range of environmental, economic, planning’ and the ‘linearity and connectivity across and between landscape (and administrative) health and wellbeing benefits for nature, climate, boundaries central to greenways planning to local and wider communities, and prosperity’.3 For NatureScot, Scotland’s Nature Agency, ‘green promote multi-functional ecological and recreational infrastructure is what brings our towns, cities and routes’, as well as ‘complementary principles 62

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James Francis on Unsplash

A wide range of environmental, social, economic and health benefits are claimed for green infrastructure

identified in landscape ecology and conservation research’.8 A wide range of environmental, social, economic and health benefits are claimed for green infrastructure. The environmental benefits are seen to embrace the protection and preservation of terrestrial habitats, improved air and water quality, enhanced biodiversity, and protection for geologically and geomorphologically important sites, as well as providing measures to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. Economic benefits claimed for green infrastructure interventions not only include economic growth and investment, stemming from the belief that businesses are able to attract and retain more motivated staff in greener settings and will enjoy greater productivity, but also enhanced land and property values, and the promotion of rural tourism. Social and health benefits include increased interaction with the natural environment and enhanced leisure and recreational opportunities, greater community cohesion, and improved physical and mental health.

Green infrastructure — policies and strategies

While commitment to the protection of the natural environment and the provision of green spaces has long been a consistent theme in planning, a specific focus on green infrastructure has been increasing, reflected in a variety of statements, policies and strategies within public sector planning. At the national level, Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Framework is designed to ‘help local planning authorities and developers meet requirements in the National Planning Policy Framework to consider GI in local

plans and in new development’, and to ‘support better planning for good quality GI and help to target the creation or improvement of GI, where existing provision is poorest and where there are opportunities for these important assets to be better managed for the environment and to deliver a wider range of multifunctional benefits’.9 More specifically, the Green Infrastructure Framework is underpinned by 15 principles,10 which collectively look to answer a series of ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions. In addressing the first of the ‘why’ questions, focused on securing ‘nature rich beautiful places’, for example, green infrastructure should, inter alia, ‘create and strengthen networks of habitats and reduce fragmentation’, ‘help deliver Biodiversity Net Gain requirements’, ‘Integrate with Local Nature Recovery Strategies and seek to contribute to the Nature Recovery Network’, and ‘be designed to deliver multiple benefits including landscapes that have a distinct sense of place’.

The first of the ‘how’ questions addresses partnership and vision, and here the focus is on working ‘in partnership, and [collaborating] with stakeholders from the outset to co-plan, develop and deliver a vision for GI in the area’, and to engaging ‘a diverse and inclusive range of people and organisations including citizens, local authorities, developers, landowners, communities, green space managers, environmental, health, climate, transport and business representatives’.

At the sub-regional level, the London Plan has stressed the importance of green infrastructure, requiring that ‘London’s network of green and open spaces, and green features in the built environment, should be protected and enhanced. Green Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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infrastructure should be planned, designed and managed in an integrated way to achieve multiple benefits’.11 More specifically, it states that ‘all development takes place within a wider environment, and green infrastructure should be an integral element and not an ‘add on’ ’. The London Plan also includes specific policies on the Green Belt, open land, open space, urban greening, biodiversity, and access to nature, trees and woodland, food growing, and geodiversity.

The overall aim of the West of England Joint Green Infrastructure Strategy,12 covering the Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol City, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire council areas, ‘is to secure investment in GI planning and provision, similar to that of other infrastructure’. The strategy has a number of objectives, including, inter alia: • ‘Providing key concepts and tools to enable a consistent approach to GI across the West of England.’

• Promoting the development and use of a GI evidence base for Local Plan development [and for] the development of projects/business cases to contribute to GI enhancement.’

• ‘Recognising the need to prioritise the planning, development of investment in, and monitoring of GI as part of the response to the climate and ecological emergencies, and to new duties including Biodiversity Net Gain and the delivery of Local Nature Recovery Strategies.’

• ‘Highlighting [how] organisations, communities, and partnerships can work collectively to create and sustain a fit for purpose GI network across the West of England.’

human activity and vehicle emissions), as well as a range of important ecological sites within the local authority’s jurisdiction, by ‘ensuring that new and existing communities have better access to highquality and local green and blue, spaces’.13 The implementation of this strategy will embrace a wide range of projects, including wayfinding, the planting of roadside wildflowers, tree planting designed to boost the district’s tree canopy cover, and the creation of new green spaces.

Within the private sector, many leading housebuilders and landscape consultancies have been employing green infrastructure policies and strategies as part of their development proposals for some time. Taylor Wimpey and Bellway, for example, developed a green infrastructure strategy as part of the public consultation exercise for its revised development proposals for some 2,200 new homes for land west of Stafford. This strategy sought ‘to ensure that the development is set within a strong landscape framework and provides easy access to recreation opportunities’.14 More specifically, the revised proposals included a number of footpath and bridleways radiating from a central park within a connected network of green infrastructure, within and beyond the development area itself, along with ponds and woodlands incorporated in a variety of spaces, as well as the enhancement of existing rights of way to improve access to green infrastructure.

Under the banner ‘Giving nature a home’, Barratt Developments, the UK’s largest housebuilding company, focused upon its Kingsbrook development of almost 2,500 properties, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and reported that ‘fifty per cent of The Joint Green Infrastructure Strategy identifies the development incorporates green infrastructure’.15 a number of ambitious outcomes, including improved Here, the green infrastructure included three parks, for leisure and to encourage biodiversity, boardwalks and better-connected ecological networks, greater and footpaths, designed to avoid disturbance to resilience to climate change, health and wellbeing wildlife, the planting of 50 black poplars (an for all, sustainable and local food production, the endangered species), and the development of creation and maintenance of valued healthy landscapes, and building a resilient economy. It also an amphitheatre to provide outside classrooms and local learning opportunities about nature for emphasises the importance of connectivity, and here ‘an interconnected system of vital landscapes local residents and children. The company also of scale’ is seen as ‘critical to building a sustainable highlighted its work in ‘greening infrastructure’ at its developments at Bilberry Chase, near Cannock future.’ At the same time, ‘well connected natural networks of wetlands, woodlands, grasslands, field in the West Midlands, at Hollygate Park at Cotgrave, near Nottingham, and at New South Quarter in boundaries and parklands’ are seen as ‘critical to provide habitat for wildlife and to sustain ecosystem Croydon.15 The 2B Landscape Consultancy has argued that services such as clean water, climate regulation, ‘green infrastructure is implicit in our holistic approach and crop pollination’.12 At a more local level, the Epping Forest District as landscape architects’, and that development Council area includes the ancient woodland of teams must ‘think of landscape not only in aesthetic Epping Forest, as well as a range of important terms but also as a vital component of living ecological sites. The council’s Green Infrastructure landscapes’.16 In advocating the increasing use of 13 green infrastructure, it suggested that it ‘is realised Strategy seeks ‘to ensure a strategic and holistic approach is taken to protecting, maintaining and through awareness and utilisation of techniques enhancing the ecology, landscape and heritage in such as sustainable drainage, and the value of the District.’ The strategy aims to protect Epping existing ecological corridors and habitats on a site.’

Forest (which is under threat from rising levels of More specifically, the Landmark Practice reported17 64

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Ian Thompson on Unsplash

on the important role of green infrastructure in the development of some 500 vacation homes in a leisure and residential development at Lower Mill Estate, near Cirencester in the Cotswolds.

can be seen to be involved. Where local authorities have planned and created green infrastructure, for example, they might be seen to have the primary obligations for maintaining — and monitoring — the continuing impact against claimed benefits. However, Summary reflections as their budgets are increasingly cut, so local The development, enhancement and protection authorities may find it difficult to discharge such of green infrastructure is widely seen to offer a responsibilities and justify expenditure on them, wide range of environmental, social, and economic given what may be seen as more pressing, and benefits, and is increasingly commending itself to politically charged, calls on their limited financial planning authorities and housebuilding companies, resources. but three sets of issues merit summary reflection.

Although many housebuilding companies have First, there is the issue of maintenance, in that designed and developed green infrastructure as the various benefits claimed for green infrastructure part of their planning proposals, it remains to be can only be achieved if it is effectively maintained, seen if, and how, they will assume responsibility for and here a number of themes can be highlighted. continuing maintenance and monitoring once the Ideally, green infrastructure should be designed houses have all been sold and the development with maintenance in mind, and the methods and completed. frequency of maintenance need to be considered For both local authorities and housebuilding prior to implementation. companies, there are attractions in encouraging Maintenance should also be undertaken in community and volunteer groups to take accordance with a long-term maintenance plan, responsibility for green infrastructure, and in some designed to maximise the original benefits of green situations this may work well; but whether such infrastructure development and enhancement groups will prove able to take responsibility in the projects. The specification and continued securing long term, and perhaps more significantly whether of resources and funding for maintenance are also they will have access to the necessary financial vitally important. resources to discharge such responsibilities, must Secondly, the issue of responsibility poses a remain open questions. major challenge for increasing the scale of green More generally, Zuninga-Teran et al.18 has argued infrastructure, and here various sets of stakeholders that some of the suggested benefits of green Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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infrastructure will not be realised until it is more fully mainstreamed into the built environment and design professions.

Thirdly, there is the thorny issue of how green infrastructure fits into sustainability aims. On the face of it, the development and enhancement of green infrastructure might be seen to be very much compatible with sustainable development, and local authorities, housebuilding companies and landscape consultancies generally couch their commitments to green infrastructure within a sustainability idiom.

However, many green infrastructure projects are often developed within the context of supporting and justifying growth and development. In the case of housebuilding, for example, such development involves the conversion of open land to the built environment, the continuing use of scarce natural resources, and, given the suburban, and often rural, nature of many new housing developments, dependence on motor car transport for journeys to work and school and for shopping trips, all of which might be seen to be at odds with the transition to a more sustainable future. Here, the title of Wilson Picket’s 1971 hit song, ‘Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You’, might be seen to offer a cautionary note!

Peter Jones works in association with the School of •Business at the University of Gloucestershire. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 The Green Infrastructure Week website is at https://greeninfrastructureweek.com/# 2 H Wright: ‘Understanding green infrastructure: the development of a contested concept in England’. Local Environment, 2011, Vol. 16 (10), 1003–19 3 National Planning Policy Framework. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jul. 2021. www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationalplanning-policy-framework--2 4 ‘Placemaking and green infrastructure’. Webpage.

NatureScot. www.nature.scot/professional-advice/ placemaking-and-green-infrastructure 5 ‘What is green infrastructure?’. Webpage. TCPA. https://tcpa.org.uk/what-is-green-infrastructure/ 6 M Lennon: ‘Green infrastructure and planning policy: a critical assessment’. Local Environment, 2014, Vol. 20, 1–4. www.researchgate.net/publication/272122666_ Green_infrastructure_and_planning_policy_a_critical_ assessment 7 K Firehock: A Short History of the Term Green Infrastructure and Selected Literature. 2011. Available at www.gicinc.org/PDFs/GI%20History.pdf 8 IC Mell: ‘Green infrastructure: reflections on past, present and future praxis’. Landscape Research, 2017, Vol. 42 (2), 135–45. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/ 01426397.2016.1250875 9 ‘How Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Framework can help create better places to live’.

Natural England Blog entry, 7 Dec. 2021. https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2021/12/07/ how-natural-englands-green-infrastructure-frameworkcan-help-create-better-places-to-live/

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10 Natural England Green Infrastructure Principles (Detailed Version, date January 2023). Natural England, Jan. 2023. https://designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk/ GreenInfrastructure/downloads/ GreenInfrastructurePrinciples.pdf 11 The London Plan. Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London. Mayor of London. Greater London Authority, Mar. 2021. www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/ files/the_london_plan_2021.pdf 12 West of England Joint Green Infrastructure Strategy 2020–2030. West of England Combined Authority, May 2022. www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2020/07/Joint-Green-Infrastructure-StrategyJune-2020-spreads.pdf 13 Green Infrastructure Strategy. Primer: Introducing Green Infrastructure. Epping Forest District Council, Apr. 2021. www.eppingforestdc.gov.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2022/02/GI_Overall_Final_0-2.pdf 14 Development Proposals for Land West of Stafford.

Taylor Wimpey/Bellway, Jan. 2015. www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/~/media/Regions/Midlands%20 Strategic%20Land/Land%20West%20of%20 Stafford/24028%20Consultation%20boards%20g.pdf 15 ‘Giving nature a home’. Case study webpage. Barratt Developments. www.barrattdevelopments.co.uk/ building-sustainably/taking-action/case-studies/ giving-nature-a-home 16 ‘Green infrastructure’. Webpage. 2B Landscape Consultancy. www.2bconsultancy.co.uk/greeninfrastructure.htm 17 ‘Lower Mill, Cotswolds’. Webpage. The Landmark Practice. https://thelandmarkpractice.com/project/ lower-mill-estate/ 18 A A Zuninga-Teran, C Staddon, L de Vito et al.: ‘Challenges of mainstreaming green infrastructure in built environment professions’. Journal of Environmental Planning & Management, 2020, Vol. 63 (4), 710–32

going local David Boyle on lessons from the Shoreham Poplar Front

why some councillors can be so pompous Shoreham Society

I live near the South Coast of England now, on the other side of the South Downs from the strange, elongated city that stretches most of the way between Brighton and Poole. The area around the railway line from Brighton is particularly built up. Probably the nearest part to me is Lancing, known internationally for Lancing College, whose Gormenghast towers are visible for miles. But Lancing by the sea is not nearly so wealthy as one might expect. It is now where Worthing meets Shoreham-by-Sea. In particular, the passage from Shoreham eastwards to Hove, now running through the collection of wharfs and other detritus from Shoreham Harbour, has been a little uncategorisable since Aelle, the Saxon leader, arrived there in the fifth century AD. Now that many of the old warehouses along the sea are no longer in use, and there is a great deal of flat open land opposite the harbour mouth, you can’t help noticing the complete absence of greenery.

Does this matter? Perhaps not when it was a port, but now that it is going to be filled with high-density housing, it will matter very much.

Which brings me to the Shoreham Poplar Front.1 There is one exception to the ‘grey rule’ along the harbour side on the A259: a 40 foot-high poplar tree standing next to a pub called the Duke of Wellington and a huge empty space which has been boarded up since the Civic Centre was demolished around 2016. The following year, Adur District Council (which works in partnership with Worthing Borough Council), gave itself planning permission to replace its old office block and then sold the site to Hyde Housing Association.

I’ve no idea why no-one has managed to put a spade in the earth on site in the last six years, but I expect everyone is blaming Covid. But now work seems even further off, because now there is a tree camp to contend with.

‘Tree-huggers’ has become a term of abuse in some circles — I have no idea why; it refers to the

The Shoreham poplar and the Duke of Wellington pub

courageous women of Uttar Pradesh in the 1980s, who wrapped their bodies around the trees to prevent loggers from chopping them down. Either way, those in the Shoreham camp are not conventional tree-huggers.

After the council voted, last autumn, not to impose any conditions on the developers, the group built a tree house to protect it, and now there is a waterproof tent at the foot of the tree. It is manned all the time. Pinned to the door is a fearsome solicitor’s letter, warning everyone that this is a habitation and that they should think twice about entering with ‘intent’. The camp is there because local people have seen the plan for the site, which was reduced from 11 storeys to four, and it assumes that the old tree won’t be there — although it can expect another 30 years of life.

No amount of offers by Hyde to plant replacement trees has persuaded locals that their much-loved tree is replaceable. Shoreham would certainly be poorer without it — its loss would transform that strip of land from a leafy, natural place into a sad, dull strip mall where traffic crawls along past the used-car showroom and the new luxury-yacht clubhouse.

‘We are going to need every tree and every creature that depends on them,’ said local zoologist Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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legal eye Bob Pritchard on adjustments to planning permissions and a useful LURB proposal

George. ‘Trees produce oxygen, clean the air and provide shade. To cut down any tree unnecessarily is sheer folly born of greed and stupidity.’

Trees are important, and not just for aesthetic reasons. We know, for example, from research carried out in Seattle, that when you plant trees in shopping streets the footfall goes up. And importantly we know — thanks to research in Dutch cities — that people recover faster in hospital when they see trees through the window. We know how important trees are for keeping people sane.

Unfortunately, too many of our newest places — take East Croydon, for example — appear to be going up as tall towers and there isn’t a green shoot to be seen. Are we in fact creating places in which the people living in them will go silently crazy?

So for those reasons I wish the people of Shoreham well with their quest to save their poplar tree.

But despite a petition signed by 3,000 people and now the efforts of the Shoreham Poplar Front,1 with volunteers sitting in their tent for 24 hours a day, the ruling Conservative Adur councillors have stood firm. So has Hyde Housing Association, although the drawings of the building replacing the old Civic Centre leave a great deal to be desired.

Why do councillors in ruling groups stand on their dignity in this way? In the mid-1990s, as Editor of Liberal Democrat News, I noticed a strange phenomenon: LibDem groups spent decades building up their power base in places such as Bromley, Tunbridge Wells or West Aberdeenshire, only to risk it all by refusing to back down from a crazy resolution involving trees.

So it isn’t just a Conservative problem, or a Labour one either (see Sheffield, for example) — any political group can fall foul of this issue. And it is often because they feel both embattled and a sense of ridicule from ‘hippies’ standing against them. It gives them a feeling of both groupthink and invulnerability.

But they are not invulnerable. This kind of pomposity, this standing on dignity, is for me the biggest barrier to the effective devolution of power.

Because it makes them look stupid.

time for a change?

Making necessary adjustments to planning permissions as schemes evolve can prove to be an uncertain and disproportionately difficult process.

As the Explanatory Notes to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (LURB) succinctly puts it: ‘the existing framework for varying planning permissions is often seen as confusing, burdensome, and overly restrictive by applicants and local planning authorities. Recent case law has compounded these issues.’ 1

In November 2022 the Supreme Court had an opportunity to clear up some of the confusion on the law governing amendments to scheme consents.2 The Hillside litigation centred on a site near Aberdyfi in Snowdonia with a long and controversial planning history. Planning permission had been granted back in 1967 for an estate of 401 dwellings.

The planning permission was accompanied by a masterplan, which specified the location of each house and the layout of the roads serving the development. However, the requirements of the 1967 permission were more honoured in the breach as none of the 41 houses built since the grant of permission reflected the requirements of the masterplan. In practice, the developers relied on a series of separate planning applications to develop the site.

In 2017, the Snowdonia National Park Authority decided that enough was enough and informed the David Boyle is co-founder of the New Weather think-tank and current site owner, Hillside Parks Limited, that it •Radix Big Tent, and is the author of Tickbox: How It Is Taking could no longer develop in accordance with the 1967 Control of Our Money, Our Health, Our Lives — and How To permission as it was not physically possible to carry Fight Back! (Little, Brown). The views expressed are personal. out the development in a manner consistent with the masterplan. This prompted Hillside to commence Note High Court proceedings seeking declarations that 1 The Shoreham Poplar Front website is at the 1967 permission remained valid and could be https://shorehampoplarfront.com/ relied on until the development was completed. The company was encouraged by the fact that a High Court order had already been secured back in 1987, 68

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legal eye

confirming that the 1967 permission could still be lawfully completed in accordance with the masterplan ‘at any time in the future’.

However, this time around both the High Court and the Court of Appeal decided that that it was no longer possible to rely on the 1967 permission.

This view has now been endorsed by the Supreme Court. It concluded that the effect of the 1967 permission was to authorise development as an integrated whole rather than as a series of discrete acts of development. This means that the starting point for interpreting a planning permission for a multi-unit development is that it does not authorise a set of permissions to construct each individual element of the scheme. Having said this, the Supreme Court recognised that a planning permission may include clear express provisions that provide for individual elements to be severable from the rest.

‘One of the more palatable proposals in the LURB is a new mechanism to better facilitate non-substantial changes to planning permissions ... this is a reform that could genuinely assist when it comes to promoting speed and certainty in planning decision-making’ The Supreme Court also endorsed the so-called ‘Pilkington’ principle,3 albeit with a health warning.

Pilkington provides that a planning permission does not authorise development if and when, as a result of physical alteration of the land to which the permission relates, it becomes physically impossible to carry out the development for which the permission was granted. However, the Supreme Court stressed that the Pilkington principle should not be taken too far. The benefit of a planning permission will not be lost if there are minor rather than material departures from it, which is of particular relevance when considering changes to large multi-unit developments.

The Supreme Court also cleared up one issue that had been causing a degree of anxiety for developers — namely that if a development cannot be completed fully in accordance with a planning

permission, then this does not render everything already built unlawful. This was a question that the Court of Appeal had left open, and if the judgement had gone the other way it could have necessitated a raft of retrospective planning applications for works that have already been consented.

One of the consequences of Hillside is that the common practice of securing amendments using ‘drop-in’ planning applications relating to parts of a development site could prove problematic (particularly in earlier phases), as it could result in the remainder of the original planning permission being physically impossible to carry out. While re-applying for planning permission for the entire development would de-risk the process, having to start all over again would place a disproportionate burden on both developers and local planning authorities.

So what can be done to address the shortcomings highlighted by the Supreme Court? As the Explanatory Notes to LURB point out, the basic problem is that the legislation governing amendments to planning permissions is not up to scratch. One of the more palatable proposals in the LURB is a new mechanism to better facilitate non-substantial changes to planning permissions. This would allow authorities to grant a new permission which is substantially similar to an existing permission and would mean that developers could secure scheme amendments without incurring the expense and risk of submitting a full-blown planning application.

Unlike many of the other proposals in the LURB, this is a reform that could genuinely assist when it comes to promoting speed and certainty in planning decision-making.

Bob Pritchard is a Legal Director at Shoosmiths. The views •expressed are personal.

Notes 1 Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Explanatory Notes.

House of Commons, May 2022. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/ cbill/58-03/0006/en/220006en.pdf 2 Hillside Parks Ltd v Snowdonia National Park Authority [2022] UKSC 30 3 Pilkington v Secretary of State for the Environment and Others [1973] 1 WLR 1527 CA

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power lines Mark Bramah looks at what may be next for hydrogen as a fossil fuel replacement in the UK’s energy supply following the Independent Review of Net Zero

hydrogen — is it the net-zero energy silver bullet?

Mission Zero, the Final Report of the Independent Review of Net Zero, led by Chris Skidmore MP, published on 13 January 2023,1 recommends 25 key actions that should be taken by 2025, including drawing up, by end of 2023, a 10-year delivery roadmap for scaling up hydrogen production.

The review recommends that there should be reform of local planning and the National Planning Policy Framework to introduce a net-zero test, give clarity on when local areas can exceed national standards, encourage spatial planning and Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs), and undertake a rapid review of local bottlenecks for net zero, renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in the planning system.

What appears to be a comprehensive review still lacks clarity on issues such as accelerating onshore wind and solar power and financing the retrofitting of the UK’s heat-leaking homes. Mission Zero is also ambivalent about the development of hydrogen for heating homes, despite a significant lobby to accelerate hydrogen production as the potential climate ‘silver bullet’ of infinite low-carbon energy.

So what is the future for hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels, and what are the implications for the planning system?

Superfuel or overhyped?

Who remembers the British Energy Security Strategy?2 It was launched with great fanfare in April 2022, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who stated in the foreword: ‘We’re going to produce vastly more hydrogen, which is easy to store, ready to go whenever we need it, and is a low carbon superfuel of the future.’

The strategy outlined proposals for nearly £350 million of investment in hydrogen technology 70

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in order to create up to 10 gigawatts of low-carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030.

The production of hydrogen is seen as a gamechanger when it comes to decarbonising heavy industry and transportation. Hydrogen can be used as a clean energy carrier, producing nothing but water as a by-product. But there are still serious doubts about its cost-effectiveness, the amount of energy required in its production, and potential harmful impacts on the climate despite being a low-carbon fuel.

When hydrogen is released directly into the atmosphere it can interact with other gases to produce a powerful warming effect, according to a study carried out for the government published in April 2022.3 Some experts suggest that hydrogen is up to 11 times worse than carbon dioxide for the climate.4 But hydrogen has its advocates, and LAEPs being developed for local authorities set out a number of scenarios in which hydrogen plays a significant role in decarbonising our energy system.

Local Area Energy Plans and the hydrogen revolution

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has published LAEPs for the 10 Greater Manchester district-level councils.5 The LAEPs, which have been developed by the Energy Systems Catapult (ESC), are part of work on the local energy market, with GMCA working in collaboration with the districts to draw up plans to increase energy efficiency and pave the way for the installation of new technologies, creating a low-carbon infrastructure that will support all 10 local authorities in the future.

The LAEPs set out a number of scenarios to achieve a net-zero energy system and are strikingly bold in terms of their scope and ambition. They provide an undoubtedly invaluable resource and evidence base to support Greater Manchester’s ambition to become carbon neutral by 2038.

In the case of Rochdale,6 the primary scenario is based on utilising measures within Rochdale’s control to achieve a net-zero energy system. These measures are insulation, heat pumps, district heating, electric resistive heating, solar PV (photovoltaics), wind turbines, hydropower, electric vehicles, and demand flexibility and energy storage.

Scharfsinn86/iStock

power lines

The net-zero opportunities offered by hydrogen technology come with many unanswered questions and unresolved issues

Delivering the primary scenario in Rochdale is estimated to cost a total of £7.3 billion, including a capital investment of £5.3 billion, with the remaining £2 billion spent on energy consumption.

The secondary scenario assumes that hydrogen for heating becomes available in Rochdale in 2030 through the HyNet North West Hydrogen Pipleline project.7 Delivering the secondary scenario is estimated to cost a total of £6.3 billion, with capital investment of £4.4 billion.

However, the LAEP notes that hydrogen is unlikely to be available in sufficient quantities to decarbonise Rochdale’s heating requirements. It also highlights that both the price of hydrogen and the extent of its associated carbon savings are not yet clear. There is also a risk that the planned hydrogen infrastructure will not materialise. Therefore, ESC has recommended that Rochdale should not rely on hydrogen to achieve net zero and considers doing so extremely risky, but also recommends that it should not be ruled out entirely.

‘Blue’ and ‘green’ hydrogen

There is major investment in the hydrogen infrastructure in the North West through HyNet,8 a low-carbon and hydrogen energy project, designed to unlock a low-carbon economy for the North West

and North Wales and put the region at the forefront of the UK’s drive to net zero. As well as decarbonising homes and industry, the project aims to create 6,000 local jobs and, by 2035, support 75,000 more across the UK. It is potentially a huge opportunity to develop a low-carbon technology, and could accelerate the transition to net zero.

However, there are still major doubts about deployment and the impact on the environment.

HyNet North West will, at least initially, be based on ‘blue hydrogen’ owing to its lower cost.9 But ‘blue hydrogen’ is to be created by splitting fossil fuels such as natural gas to create hydrogen and then storing the carbon dioxide produced through carbon capture and storage (CCS) offshore under the Mersey Basin. The longer-term aim is to move to using more ‘green hydrogen’, which is produced by the electrolysis of water and requires large-scale renewable energy generation to produce it in sufficient quantities and to drive down costs.

However, there are many concerns that the production of ‘blue hydrogen’ may harm the climate more than burning fossil fuel.10 So there is no certainty that hydrogen can be deployed at scale in time to meet the demands of a low-carbon economy, or to heat our homes; that hydrogen is less harmful to the environment than burning fossil fuels; or that Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

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hydrogen can be produced in a way that is less costly than other forms of low-carbon energy.

But what are the implications of the deployment of hydrogen technology for the planning system?

unanswered questions and conflicting issues. It will form part of the solution to the net-zero puzzle, but it is not the ‘silver bullet’ many of its leading advocates have been suggesting.

Hydrogen and the planning system

Mark Bramah is Climate Change & Sustainability Project •Manager at Rochdale Borough Council. The views expressed

The government’s Hydrogen Strategy, published in August 2021,11 identified one of the key barriers to the development of hydrogen technology as: ‘ … unexpected regulatory barriers, for instance relating to safety, planning, licensing or access to end use markets (for example, different regulations and regulators for households versus industry, transport versus heat). Such unforeseen barriers can significantly hinder early project development and related innovation.’

The government sought to address these barriers in the review of the National Policy Statements (NPSs) in 2021, which proposed that hydrogen infrastructure, CCS and other forms of low-carbon generation should not have their own technologyspecific NPS. Instead, the revised Overarching Energy NPS (EN-1)12 should be the primary basis for the Secretary of State’s decision-making for projects promoted to deliver such infrastructure.

So much of the major infrastructure development for the hydrogen economy is reserved for decision by the Secretary of State. However, the development of hydrogen technologies will have significant planning implications for local authorities.

One of the recommendations of Chris Skidmore’s Mission Zero Net Zero Review report of importance to local authorities is to expedite the use of renewables by working with regulators, devolved administrations, councils, industry and other key stakeholders to streamline planning to ensure that new renewable generation can come online as soon as possible. LAEPs will form the basis for the development of much local planning policy, but councils will also find that they are increasingly being approached by developers and investors about investment in ‘green hydrogen’ projects.

One such investment is in the development of hydrogen through solid waste by way of pyrolysis (the thermal decomposition of materials at elevated temperatures).

It will be important for councils to have in place robust local planning policies to evaluate proposals for new ‘green hydrogen’ plants in their areas and the potential to support the decarbonisation of the energy system and the local economy, including new skills and jobs.

There is clearly a major opportunity offered by hydrogen technology, but it comes with many 72

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are personal.

Notes 1 C Skidmore: Mission Zero: Independent Review of Net Zero. Final Report. Independent Review of Net Zero, Jan. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/publications/ review-of-net-zero 2 British Energy Security Strategy. Policy Paper, Apr. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/publications/british-energysecurity-strategy/british-energy-security-strategy 3 N Warwick, P Griffiths, J Keeble, A Archibald, J Pyle and K Shine: Atmospheric Implications of Increased Hydrogen Use. University of Cambridge/University of Reading, Apr. 2022. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1067144/ atmospheric-implications-of-increased-hydrogen-use.pdf 4 See L Blain: ‘Hydrogen 11 times worse than CO2 for climate, says new report’. New Atlas, 11 Apr. 2022. https://newatlas.com/environment/hydrogengreenhouse-gas/ 5 See the Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s ‘Energy’ webpages, at https://gmgreencity.com/tag/ energy/?post_type=resource_library 6 Local Area Energy Plan: Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

Energy Systems Catapult, for Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Jun. 2022. https://gmgreencity.com/resource_library/rochdalelocal-area-energy-plan/ 7 See ‘Project overview’. Webpage. HyNet North West Hydrogen Pipleline project. Cadent. www.hynethydrogenpipeline.co.uk/the-project/overview/ 8 See the Hyrdogen UK website at https://hydrogen-uk.org/hydrogen-in-the-uk/, and the HyNet North West website, at https://hynet.co.uk/ 9 Hydrogen Production: The Crucial Part it Plays in HyNet North West. Factsheet. HyNet North West, Jun. 2021. https://tinyurl.com/4jn2k5m7 10 B Friedlander: ‘Touted as clean, ‘blue’ hydrogen may be worse than gas or coal’. Cornell Chronicle, 12 Aug. 2021. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/08/touted-cleanblue-hydrogen-may-be-worse-gas-or-coal 11 UK Hydrogen Strategy. CP 475. HM Government, Aug. 2021. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/1011283/UK-Hydrogen-Strategy_web.pdf 12 Draft Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy (EN-1). Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Sept. 2021. www.gov.uk/government/ consultations/planning-for-new-energy-infrastructurereview-of-energy-national-policy-statements

inside america Mike Teitz on urban renewal and reparations for harms done to African-American descendants of slaves caused by government action

thy sins shall find thee out

‘Be sure thy sins shall find thee out’ — I first heard this sentence from the Book of Numbers 32:33 in primary school in a village in Hertfordshire. It came back to mind on learning about a recent hearing by a California State task force on reparations for harms done to African-American descendants of slaves caused by government action. The Reparations Task Force, established by the California State Legislature through Assembly Bill 3121 in 2020, is charged to place a dollar value on those harms. It has two years to produce its findings. Planners should have much interest in its work The list of five wrongs cited in the legislation includes: seizures of property by government programmes; devaluation in assessments of Black-owned property; housing and home loan discrimination; mass incarceration and policing; and health. There is plenty to ponder here, but for planners the key issues are zoning, property seizures under eminent domain, and discrimination in lending.

All of these are tied to urban renewal, especially under the US Housing Act of 1949. The idea of ‘blight’ to describe low-income and minority neighbourhoods was used as a justification for bulldozing large areas in inner cities, with consequent loss of modestly priced housing and local businesses. The scars of the process are still visible in San Francisco neighbourhoods such as the Western Addition.

So far, the Task Force has issued one report and two conclusions. One is that eligibility should be based on lineage to enslaved people, rather than race per se. The other is that the payment for discrimination should be $223,000. Precisely how that figure was arrived at is not clear. No-one is addressing the issue of wealth inequalities. With only seven months to go, much remains to be done. The time is short, and the Governor has vetoed a Bill to extend the deadline.

What responsibility does the planning profession have in all this? It is true that planners both helped to design, and participated in, urban renewal, although their influence on its actual form may have been more due to real-estate interests.

California had passed a State urban renewal law in 1945. Redevelopment of the Black Fillmore District in San Francisco had begun well before the 1949 Federal Act. It was supported by local planning officials and reform groups. After 1949, planning and redevelopment agency leaders, such as Edmund Bacon in Philadelphia, or Justin Herman in San Francisco, played a major role in the acceleration of the process. However, the thought processes and actions that led to urban renewal date back to the urban reform movements of the 19th century, especially to the efforts of housing reformers and new town advocates. Does the aim of relieving overcrowding and slum conditions inevitably lead to mass expulsion? Should we blame Ebenezer Howard?

Blame seems to be a popular item these days, but surely urban renewal is long dead and buried?

Apparently, that is not so. Urban renewal is alive and well. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul is actively supporting a proposal to rebuild Penn Station using the designation of the 12-block area around it as ‘blighted’. A major study has concluded that is the case, which means that eminent domain can be used to purchase buildings and land. An estimated 10,000 workers in 473 businesses and 206 residents in 128 apartments would be displaced. Development of eight towers in the area would help to pay for the $7 billion cost of rebuilding the station.

Not surprisingly, fierce opposition has arisen from area residents and local businesses. The atmosphere is redolent of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is backing the plan, which will provoke reaction especially from his AfricanAmerican constituents, among whom the memory of urban renewal goes deep. Given the power of the State over development in the city, together with developers who seek tax-exempt investments, it is likely that the project will go ahead. Penn Station will be rebuilt, which is much to be desired, but urban renewal survives.

Meanwhile, California moves to repair the sins of the past, but the difficulties are great. Although it has been estimated that over 75% of African-Americans support the idea of reparations, barely 30% of US adults do so. Gaining a consensus on the right thing to do will not be easy in the current political climate.

We have a long way to go before the conundrums of American planning are resolved.

•

Mike Teitz is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. The views expressed are personal.

Town & Country Planning January–February 2023

designing new communities for the 21st century

new towns: the rise, fall and rebirth

New Towns: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth

By Katy Lock and Hugh Ellis Published by RIBA Publishing, May 2020, HB, 192 pp ISBN 978 1859469286, £40

Often misunderstood, the New Towns story is a fascinating one of anarchists, artists, visionaries, and the promise of a new beginning for millions of people. New Towns: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth offers a new perspective on the New Towns record and uses case studies to address the myths and realities of the programme. It provides valuable lessons for the growth and renewal of the existing New Towns and post-war housing estates and town centres, including recommendations for practitioners, politicians and communities interested in the renewal of existing New Towns and the creation of new communities for the 21st century.

Available through the TCPA website £40 including postage & packing — 10% discount for TCPA members using the code MEMBER Visit www.tcpa.org.uk/shop/new-towns-the-rise-fall-and-rebirth