Town & Country Planning Journal – January-February 2024

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

January–February 2024

Volume 93

• Number 1

• Laurence Cummins on Biodiversity Net Gain opportunities and challenges • Tim Marshall on a planning revolution under the radar • Ian Wray on reinventing the mechanisms of strategic planning

information and subscriptions

Town & Country Planning The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association ISSN 0040-9960 Published bi-monthly Volume 93 Number 1 January–February 2024

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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, 2024 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 2024

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contents Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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On the Agenda Fiona Howie: 2024 — what lies ahead?

Time & Tide Hugh Ellis and Celia Davis: Postcards from the edge Talking Houses Georgie Revell: Time for national space and accessibility standards Bird’s Eye View Catriona Riddell: Surely... things can only get better Going Local David Boyle: Two films — were they the origin of localism in the UK? Reviews Legal Eye Bob Pritchard: Unfinished business Power Lines Mark Bramah: Can community energy become the catalyst for the local energy transition?

Europe Inside Out Olivier Sykes: Being professional in a turbulent world

Laurence Cummins on the opportunities and challenges in Biodiversity Net Gain, pages 22–27. Cover illustration

by Clifford Harper. chcliffordharper@gmail.com

• Volume 93 • Number 1

features 12

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A planning revolution under the radar Tim Marshall on the neoliberalising drive towards a dramatically changed planning system The uses of strategy — how the dismantled English planning system might be repaired Ian Wray on the erosion of strategic planning institutions and processes and how they can be reinvented Biodiversity Net Gain — understanding the opportunities and challenges ahead Laurence Cummins on Biodiversity Net Gain and how to make the most of its potential The Sycamore Gap tree — one tragedy among thousands Heather Rumble, Dean Bell, Adam Cormack, Kenton Rogers and Dannielle Sinnett on protecting our urban trees and old trees of special meaning and value ‘The scale of the challenge dwarfs the available resources’ — (un)affordable housing in the South West of England Katie McClymont, Hannah Hickman, Stephen Hall, Cat Loveday and Danielle Sinnett on findings from qualitative research on housing affordability issues Food-growing’s crucial role in tackling our greatest challenges Daniel Scharf on planning and agro-ecological enterprises and food-growing initiatives Bracknell — lessons in New Town centre regeneration Victor Nicholls and Emma Street on the regeneration of the town centre of the New Town of Bracknell Seeking out Edge City UK David Boyle and Lesley Yarranton on the ‘edge city’ phenomenon in the UK Planning practice in the social media age Peter Geraghty on care for planners’ working conditions and public and political discourse on planning French leave — a trip to Bordeaux Graeme Bell on strategic thinking in Bordeaux Countering the spatial lottery Ian Campbell on spatial planning for the greater good Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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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

2024 — what lies ahead? their environments can have profound impacts on their lives and opportunities over their life-course.’

While access to play and recreation facilities and nature is really important, our submission highlights that access to playgrounds and playing fields is not enough. Housing needs to be affordable and of a high quality. As our Healthy Homes campaign continues A common theme running across almost all the to illustrate, standards for new homes are fragmented On the Agenda pieces I have written over the last and do not guarantee that all new homes meet five years has been the challenge of uncertainty. residents’ basic human needs. A number of appalling Of course, there have been various reasons for that examples were illustrated through the photographs uncertainty, including a global pandemic. But it also taken by Robert Clayton and shared in the These Are feels like political instability and constant planning Homes photobook.1 The evidence also highlights the importance of good design in the built environment reforms have played a large role. That is not set to and how instrumental that can be in encouraging change in 2024. A general election presents both increases in daily physical activity, in promoting challenges and opportunities for the TCPA. health, independence and wellbeing, and in reducing While we will work to influence the priorities of the prevalence of chronic diseases. all political parties, I noted in my article in the As the Association has noted in relation to a range November–December issue the renewed interest of policy areas, including climate change, English shown by both the Labour and Liberal Democrat planning policy lags behind that in both Scotland and parties in new communities. We need to harness Wales. Both nations have national planning policies that enthusiasm but make sure that lessons from which explicitly recognise the role of planning in the past inform current thinking. What is more supporting population health and the reduction of challenging, however, is the lack of clarity around if and when we will see the secondary legislation and health inequalities2 and which will benefit children and young people not just as they grow up but draft policy that is needed to implement the new across their whole life-course. planning system created in the Levelling-up and Scotland’s National Planning Framework 4, for Regeneration Act 2023. Despite that uncertainty, example, includes an outline of six qualities of the Association will continue to work to champion and support the creation of healthy, sustainable and successful places and recognises that children and young people have important contributions to resilient places that are fair for everyone, delivered make to place-making. To support that, the Scottish through whatever planning system is in place.

In late 2023 the House of Commons Levelling Up, Government has developed the Place Standard tool, with versions for children and young people,3 to Housing and Communities Committee launched a new inquiry into children, young people and the built provide a framework to help structure conversations environment, looking into how better planning, building about place. It is also interesting to see that the Welsh and urban design in England could enhance the health Government has published a summary of the Future Wales national plan specifically for young people.4 and wellbeing of children and young people, while If there is a May election perhaps the Select also benefiting the population as a whole. The inquiry Committee’s report will never see the light of day — is very welcome, and we have submitted written evidence. The Committee will decide in due course and a response from government would be even less likely. But it is positive that the Committee has whether and when to publish the written evidence focused on this theme, and we hope that it will that they have received, but our evidence focused on the role of the built and natural environment as a make some powerful recommendations on national planning policy, and also on the need for a crosswider determinant of health, noting that: government commitment to child-friendly approaches ‘For children and young people, who are rapidly to policy- and decision-making. developing physically, emotionally and socially, 2

Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

on the agenda

While the looming general election will be the focus for many this year, 2024 is also the Association’s 125th anniversary. The first meeting of the Garden City Association was held on 10 June 1899, and so we will be celebrating throughout the year.

As part of the Association’s centenary back in 1999, a commemorative booklet was published.5 It suggested that the founder members of the Association would have found it inconceivable that the organisation would still be alive 100 years on.

But that is perhaps because the Association was founded to secure the creation of the first Garden City, as a model for others to follow. Over its 125-year history, the Association’s role has evolved, but the Garden City concept remains at its heart.

As our current strategy 6 makes clear, our founders sought to: ‘ … transform the way that places are created for the common good. This approach enabled the practical achievement of beautifully designed and sustainable places for everyone …’

The work of the TCPA therefore remains as important as ever. And while we look forward to reflecting on the huge amount that the Association has achieved since 1899, we will also look ahead to another 125 years.

• Fiona Howie is Chief Executive of the TCPA. Notes 1 These Are Homes. Photobook. TCPA, Feb. 2023. www.tcpa.org.uk/resources/these-are-homes-photobook/ 2 For Scotland, see National Planning Framework 4. Scottish Government, Feb. 2023. http://tinyurl.com/8jzk4ms3; for Wales, see Future Wales: The National Plan 2040.

Welsh Government, Feb. 2021. www.gov.wales/sites/ default/files/publications/2021-02/future-wales-thenational-plan-2040.pdf and Planning Policy Wales: Edition 11. Welsh Government, Feb. 2021. www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2021-02/ planning-policy-wales-edition-11_0.pdf 3 The Place Standard tool is available at www.ourplace.scot/place-standard-tool-children-andyoung-people 4 Future Wales: Our National Plan for Wales — to 2040.

Young People’s Summary. Welsh Government, Apr. 2021. www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2021-04/ future-wales-the-national-plan-2040-young-peoplesversion.pdf 5 1899 — 1999: Tomorrow & Tomorrow. TCPA, Jun. 1999. www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ first-hundred-years.pdf 6 Working to Secure Homes, Places and Communities Where Everyone Can Thrive: The TCPA’s Strategy January 2021 — December 2025. TCPA, Jan. 2021. www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ strategyfinal.pdf

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.

• • • • •

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 2024

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time & tide Despite the weakness of the COP 28 agreement and constraints imposed by a recent WMS, we have an obligation not to give up the climate fight, say Hugh Ellis and Celia Davis

postcards from the edge but what we do know is that the most extraordinary and radical action will need to be taken to save places such as Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Skegness and Hull from the fate which so obviously presents itself.

While the gathering on the beach in Lowestoft may have appeared bleak, it also offered a mixture of lessons and inspiration for our joint work together in combating climate change in 2024. On the one hand, There was a certain funereal character to the gathering it served as a reminder of just how disconnected of a handful of activists protesting on the beach at local communities are from the highly technocratic Lowestoft in Suffolk in early December. The town process of understanding and responding to flood is on the frontline of climate impacts, and the eyes risk and coastal change. Communities are bombarded of many of its residents had been on the COP 28 with probabilities and assessments of risk in a negotiations in Dubai. complex web of documents and designations, ranging Even before the final wording of that agreement from Shoreline Management Plans to plans identifying had been signed there was a sense of the gulf Coastal Change Management Areas, Strategic between the half-measures and warm words of Flood Risk Assessments, and climate change flood international agreements and the existential struggle risk allowances. Lay on top of that bankrupt local of real people in communities along the east coast authorities and an Environment Agency chronically of England. Of course, their struggle is as nothing short of staff and it is not surprising if people feel compared with that of the many island nation bewildered and helpless about their future. peoples whose lives and cultures are being Lowestoft has received investment to upgrade extinguished by our collective failure to radically some aspects of its flood defences, but, like many reduce carbon emissions and stabilise our climate. other areas, these defences are short-term and But they have this in common: in each case, people piecemeal solutions to the acute and systemic and places are becoming the collateral damage of problems of sea level rise and severe weather events. global political failures driven by the vested interests The result is that no-one feels confident in these of the petro-chemicals industry and the petro-states new measures or understands how long they will that it controls. defend the town. The British may exhibit the fine Given the weakness of the COP 28 agreement, it characteristic of hoping for the best, but we should is now scientifically inconceivable that we can stabilise recognise that all the components of a major disaster global temperatures at 1.5°C above pre-industrial on the country’s east coast are now in place — a levels. Pushing out beyond that to 2°C and above lack of investment in new flood defences, a lack takes us into new realms of scientific uncertainty — of investment in maintaining existing defences,

Bleak prospects — a message from Lowestoft

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Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

time & tide

institutional complexity, a lack of skills and resources, and, above all and most importantly, a complete failure of national leadership to prioritise planning for climate adaptation.

It was with the people of Lowestoft in mind that we read the latest version of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) issued in December 2023, which contains nothing of the long-promised review of policy on climate change — an issue that the government seems willing to kick repeatedly into the long grass.

Our sombre mood at the close of 2023 was magnified as we digested the repercussions of a new Written Ministerial Statement on Local Energy Efficiency Standards,1 which effectively bars local authorities from taking forward the sorts of innovative policy approaches to net-zero buildings that have been celebrated in Bath and North East Somerset and Cornwall. Many local authorities are advancing comparable policies and have invested considerable resources to demonstrate that they are both affordable and deliverable. This sudden curtailment of their opportunity to represent local priorities is a significant blow — an undemocratic act that will ultimately result in unnecessary carbon emissions and higher energy bills for residents from Oxford to Essex, Bristol to Cambridgeshire, and in many of London’s boroughs.

This is a betrayal both of local communities who have been pushing for local innovation to radically cut carbon emissions, and of our national statutory commitments to cut carbon emissions set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act. The curtailment of local action on climate change, married with the lack of an overarching priority in the NPPF to adapt to and mitigate climate change, means that our national planning policy effectively represents a death sentence for countless communities in vulnerable areas in England. It is simply not good enough to say that new versions of the NPPF to be adopted at some future date might finally get round to addressing effective climate mitigation and adaptation. Just as it is not good enough to repeatedly delay and weaken the obligations on housebuilders to deliver against our net-zero obligations.2 The climate science is absolutely clear that there is no time for such delays.

In any event, we can have no confidence that future national policy will prioritise climate action, given the chilling lack of interest from the current Ministerial team in the future survival of vulnerable communities.

The trip back from Lowestoft through that uniquely vulnerable landscape of the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts set off reflection on the kind of responses

that we will need to make in 2024 — responses ranging from the personal to the professional.

The young planner who asked if there is any hope at all for their generation needs an answer.

Let’s be clear that, despite the weight of climate anxiety across the generations, we have an absolute obligation not to give up. Instead, we must re-commit ourselves to doing everything necessary to secure a sustainable future. In doing so, we must recognise that as planners we have a special responsibility to help communities understand honestly and openly the scale of the challenges that they face. At the same time, we are obliged to use every last breath to provide hopeful pathways to build resilience to meet these challenges. The people on the beach at Lowestoft cannot afford to despair, and neither can we.

Both communities and the planners who serve them must be courageous in confronting the reality of climate impacts. We must be equally brave in challenging national government. If those in government refuse to help in this existential fight, then we must ignore them. In practice this means ensuring that plans and individual decisions are made through the lens of the climate crisis. It means taking risks to secure radical reductions in carbon emission and being clear that this is a life-and-death issue. We must be open and honest about the need for radical adaptation solutions in some places, including where necessary the relocation of whole communities to give them a sustainable future.

We must have the personal and professional determination never to give in and never to give up.

If ordinary people in Lowestoft have the guts to stand toe to toe with their future, then so should we.

2024 will present the greatest political, moral and technical challenge that town planners have ever had to deal with. We have to rise to that challenge, knowing that it is better to have fought and lost than to turn our back on the fate of future generations.

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

Notes 1 Planning — Local Energy Efficiency Standards Update.

Statement UIN HLWS120. Written Ministerial Statement to the House of Lords by Baroness Penn. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 13 Dec. 2023. https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/writtenstatements/detail/2023-12-13/hlws120 2 The UKGBC has highlighted key weaknesses of the Future Homes Standard, for example — see ‘Future Homes Standard draft sets energy efficiency standards lower than many homes built today’. News story.

UKGBC, 13 Dec. 2023. https://ukgbc.org/news/ future-homes-standard-draft-sets-energy-efficiencystandards-lower-than-many-homes-built-today/ Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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talking houses We need to call a halt to the postcode lottery on housing space and accessibility standards, says Georgie Revell

time to mandate national space and accessibility standards have mandated the NDSS, 8% recommend its use, and a further 28% intend to implement it.3 This means that soon at least half of new homes should be built to the sizes prescribed.

The 2015 Housing Standards Review also resulted in optional increased accessibility requirements, set out in Building Regulations Approved Document M: Access to and Use of Buildings.4 Approved Document M sets three tiers for accessibility: M4(1), Housing space standards are not statutory in England, which leads to disparities and all too often visitable dwellings (applicable to all dwellings); M4(2), accessible and adaptable dwellings; and inadequacies in housing developments across the country. At a recent Urban Design Learning1 seminar M4(3) wheelchair-user dwellings. Categories M4(2) (held in November) I heard real frustration from local and M4(3) are optional requirements which local authority planners whose hands are tied. They feel authorities can require through local policies where that any aspiration or guidance on delivering high they have identified a need and where the viability quality is pointless since viability is gauged on the of development is not compromised. The Greater minimum required standards. It is time to mandate London Authority (GLA), for example, requires 90% national space and accessibility standards. of homes to meet M4(2) and 10% to meet M4(3).

Since its inception in 2015, the Nationally Described It is difficult to establish the level of uptake of Space Standard (NDSS)2 has been steadily adopted these standards, particularly because adoption by local authorities who prove the need to use it. varies across the country, although the level of use Research shows that by 2023 37% of local authorities is significantly lower than for the NDSS. The NDSS

Living room Living / dining Kitchen Kitchen / dining WC Store M4(1)

6

M4(2)

Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

Ground floor of a four-bedroom home for six people designed to the NDSS — showing the difference between M4(1) and M4(2) requirements, including a wider entrance and hallway and a larger WC

talking houses

and M4(2) were developed together, so they can be used interdependently when discussing size or space, although M4(2) incurs higher costs in building (for example a ground floor WC). NDSS requirements are around 3–5% larger than Housing Quality Indicators (HQIs), the other widely used metric or standard.

‘It is difficult for under-funded

local authorities to prove need for optional standards ... As a result the current opt-in system exacerbates social inequality in poorly funded boroughs and low-value areas’

The main reason that we should mandate space standards nationally is to ensure that our homes are fit for their intended inhabitants, both now and in the future. We must keep in mind that most affordable homes are occupied to capacity, and that one in 11 is overcrowded.5 Another compelling reason for change is the overwhelming response to the government’s 2020 consultation on raising accessibility standards for new homes.6 Here, 98% of respondents (including developers and housebuilders) supported the government’s intention to raise accessibility standards, and two-thirds agreed that M4(2) should be the baseline standard — although exceptions apply. By mandating M4(2), local authorities are relieved of the burden of making policy to use M4(2) and can focus on drawing up better locally evidenced policy for M4(3) homes, setting their own targets for these dwellings.

It is clear that developers do not want to build smaller, less accessible homes, but when they purchase the site their viability assessment is based on the lowest acceptable standards, so no more can be achieved. With a level playing field, all developers would be factoring in the same extra costs and buying land under the same assumptions.

The government’s 2019 estimate of a price tag of £1,400 per home for increasing to M4(2) was deemed by most to be too low, but, through de-risking the process and increasing standardisation, any cost passed on to homeowners is minimal — and of course in the most part goes towards a larger and more accessible home.

The government intends to mandate M4(2) homes for new builds (with exceptions), but there is no timeline for this. It would be sensible to open this

conversation now so as to align with the Future Homes Standard and building safety regulatory changes that we know are coming. Alongside M4(2) as a baseline, the NDSS should be mandated too, as it is not a further stretch when designing to M4(2) and further instils long-term quality.

I hope that more accessibility and comfort is valued in any review of housing standards. Unfortunately, we know that it is difficult for under-funded local authorities to prove need for guidance and optional standards, and therefore impossible to develop to these higher standards in some areas. As a result, the current opt-in system exacerbates social inequality in poorly funded boroughs and low-value areas.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that suitable housing reduces the burden on the NHS, social services and local authorities who provide temporary/ specialist housing. Homes that are suitable for a wider range of people enable their residents to live more independent and fulfilled lives — contributing to a better society.

Let’s dust off the government’s oven-ready 2020 consultation and stop the postcode lottery now.

Georgie Revell is an Architect and Associate at Levitt •Bernstein, a practice of architects, landscape architects, and

urban designers. She works in the specialist housing studio on a range of housing-led, mixed-use and regeneration schemes.

She also specialises in housing standards and guidance.

The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 See Urban Design Learning’s website, at www.urbandesignlearning.com/ 2 Technical Housing Standards — Nationally Described Space Standard. Statutory Guidance. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Mar. 2015. www.gov.uk/government/publications/technical-housingstandards-nationally-described-space-standard 3 S Özer and S Jacoby: ‘Space standards in affordable housing in England’. Building Research & Information, published online 11 Sept. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2023.2253337 4 Building Regulations 2010. Approved Document M: Access to and Use of Buildings. HM Government, Mar. 2015, updated Jun. 2021. www.gov.uk/government/publications/ access-to-and-use-of-buildings-approved-document-m 5 Overcrowding and Under-occupancy by Household Characteristics, England and Wales: Census 2021.

Office for National Statistics, Aug. 2023. https://tinyurl.com/3f72nzas 6 See Raising Accessibility Standards for New Homes: Summary of Consultation Responses and Government Response. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Jul. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/ consultations/raising-accessibility-standards-for-newhomes/outcome/raising-accessibility-standards-for-newhomes-summary-of-consultation-responses-andgovernment-response Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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bird’s eye view Catriona Riddell says goodbye to 2023, the culmination of three years of uncertainty and disruption in the planning sector

surely... things can only get better damp patches, but levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England.’ 2

For many in the planning world 2023 has been the annus horribilis, the culmination of three years of uncertainty and disruption. At the national level we have waited a year for the updated National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) to be published, with the changes not substantial in number but potentially significant in their impact, given what it says on housing targets and use of the Green Belt.1 We have had three different Ministers responsible for planning in 2023 alone and three Prime Ministers in just over a year, all with their own views on the planning system and how it should be changed.

Although 2023 has been a particularly disruptive year, the current period of changes to the planning system arguably kicked off with the 2020 Planning White Paper, in which the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised: ‘Radical reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War. Not more fiddling around the edges, not simply painting over the

In July 2022 planning became a battleground for the Conservative Party leadership, with candidates and future Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, respectively, promising to end ‘Whitehall-inspired Stalinist housing targets’ 3 and protect the Green Belt from housebuilding.4 In July 2023, the House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee concluded that: ‘National planning policy has been characterised by stop-start reform over several years. This has regrettably resulted in uncertainty among local authorities and across the planning sector. Contrary to the Government’s objective of facilitating plan-making, the short-term effect of its announcement of proposed planning reforms (6 December 2022) has been to halt the progress of local plans in a number of local authority areas.’ 5 In October, the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) published research which also concluded that the constant changes to the system, together with the lack of an effective approach to strategic planning, are the main barriers to progress on Local Plan preparation.6

Ministers with responsibility for planning

Secretaries of State with responsibility for planning

Lee Rowley (Nov 2023 – ) Rachel Maclean (Feb – Nov 23) Lucy Frazer (Oct 22 – Feb 23) Lee Rowley (Sept – Oct 22) Marcus Jones (Jul – Sept 22) Stuart Andrew (Feb – Jul 22) Christopher Pincher (Feb 20 – Feb 22) Esther McVey (Jul 19 – Feb 20) Kit Malthouse (Jul 18 – Jul 19) Dominic Raab (Jan – Jul 18) Alok Sharma (Jun 17 – Jan 18) Gavin Barwell (Jul 16 – Jun 17) Brandon Lewis (Jul 14 – Jul 16) Kris Hopkins (Oct 13 – Jul 14) Mark Prisk (Sept 12 – Oct 13) Grant Shapps (May 10 – Sept 12) Months in office: 0

Michael Gove (Oct 22 – ) Simon Clarke (Sept – Oct 22) Greg Clark (Jul – Sept 22) Michael Gove (Sept 21 – Jul 22) Robert Jenrick (Jul 19 – Sept 21) James Brokenshire (Apr 18 – Jul 19) Sajid Javid (Jul 16 – Apr 18) Greg Clark (May 15 – Jul 16) Eric Pickles (May 10 – May 15) 5

10

15

20

25

Ministers and Secretaries of State with responsibility for planning, 2010–23

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Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

bird’s eye view

Change on a year earlier, %

80 60 30 20

2021

North East

North West

Yorkshire East West East of & the Midlands Midlands England Humber

2022

London

2023 Q1–3

South East

South West

Wales

Scotland

0 –20 –40

Residential planning approvals by region (number of units) Source: New Housing Pipeline Q3 2023 Report 9 (includes residential projects of all sizes, units on non-residential schemes, and conversions)

None of this provides a stable context for delivering a plan-led system and building investor confidence in place-making. As a result, since early 2022 over 60 local authorities have downed tools on their Local Plans in the absence of clarity in national policy; and that is just those that have publicly declared their position.7 We have also seen a steep downward trend in the number of planning applications received,8,9 with another record low in the third quarter of 2023.

While it is recognised that the planning system is not exclusively to blame for this, it is clear that uncertainty around planning reform has played a part.

The government’s answer to this is to blame the local planning authorities and use Ministerial interventions, targeting those that are considered to be poorly performing in development management and those that are rethinking their Local Plan strategies. In May 2023, Secretary of State Michael Gove wrote to 10 local authorities, threatening them with designation, the consequence being that applicants would be able to submit their applications directly to the Planning Inspectorate, bypassing the local authority’s decision-making process.10 In the end, all 10 escaped formal designation, but they will continue to be monitored by the government in case things do not improve. In December, the Secretary of State announced that he was designating a further two authorities, Chorley and Fareham Borough, for poor-quality decision-making.11 In September 2023, the then Planning Minister, Rachel Maclean, issued a direction to Spelthorne Borough Council, preventing the council from withdrawing its draft Local Plan from examination.12 The council, which was under a new administration following the May 2023 elections, was due to consider withdrawing the Local Plan alongside two other options. This was the first Ministerial intervention in

a Local Plan since October 2019, when the then Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, intervened in the South Oxfordshire Local Plan.13 The intervention in Spelthorne’s Local Plan was shortly followed by another two from the new and current Minister, Lee Rowley, this time preventing Erewash Borough and West Berkshire from withdrawing their draft plans from examination.14 In all three cases, the Local Plan spatial strategies had been key battlegrounds in the lead up to the local elections in May 2023. As someone who was involved in the Spelthorne case, there were also legitimate concerns about the draft plan that could potentially be addressed through modifications, but this could also risk a very long, protracted examination process. The option to withdraw the plan was considered to offer a potentially more expedient way of getting a sound and up-to-date Local Plan in place. In Erewash and West Berkshire, despite the risks and costs of withdrawing the plans, there were also good justifications set out by the officers for withdrawing them.

Housing and planning have become key political battlegrounds, and, as we head towards a general election, the government is likely to flex its muscles more, knowing that there is little time to do anything about the state of play in Local Plans. As such, when announcing the updated version of the NPPF on 19 December, Michael Gove also announced that he would be intervening in a further seven Local Plans, although, unlike the three mentioned above, these are all at relatively early stages in the plan preparation process, so it is not clear what actions can be taken, other than monitoring progress.15 This will be helped by the fact that, subject to commencement, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act now prevents local planning authorities from Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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bird’s eye view

withdrawing their Local Plans once they have been submitted for examination.16 To top it all, the bedrock of our democratic home for planning is being eroded, as we see record levels of stress in local authority planning departments, record levels of vacancies, and an increasing number of councils struggling to keep financially afloat,17 with Nottingham City Council just the latest to declare bankruptcy.18 I wrote about the very serious challenges facing local authority planners earlier in the year and the work that the TCPA and others are doing to help address this.19 The evidence around recruitment and resourcing challenges was already clear, but the Royal Town Planning Institute’s recent State of the Profession report has confirmed this and highlighted an even more worrying side to the challenges: ‘The planning system faces challenges across the UK. The cost of living and housing crises coincide with the rise of planning backlogs, the underfunding of local authority planning departments, and persistent labour shortages of planning professionals. In England, this is compounded by political uncertainty around ‘planning reform’ on both sides of the aisle. These issues manifest as foregone construction of homes and infrastructure.

Frustration with the state of the planning system also results in personal attacks on professionals in public and social media.’ 20 A survey carried out by the RTPI’s magazine The Planner earlier in 2023 had already highlighted the issue of abuse and misinformation, with 87% of respondents saying that they felt that social media contributed to misinformation about planning issues locally. In response, the RTPI has launched a national campaign to improve information about planning and planners in an attempt to improve the understanding of how important and positive planning is for improving the overall quality of life.21 Some councils, like Wealden District, are also attempting to change the narrative around planning being a negative and regulatory service, and to make it easier for local communities to proactively engage.22 But we still have a very long way to go before planning is seen as a positive force for good and not the political hot potato that it has become in recent years; and we are unlikely to get there until the next general election is out of the way, which could be as late as January 2025. More could be done in relation to local authority member training, making training mandatory for all councillors on the role of place-making, not just on planning’s regulatory functions. When people realise that planning is about 10

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creating high-quality places, using the natural and built environments to improve health and wellbeing, and has a major role to play in addressing the challenges around climate change and economic disparities, perhaps we will have a fighting chance.

My three wishes for 2024 are simple: A • much clearer idea of what the new Local Plan system will look like — and as soon as possible, so that those authorities that are not in a position to meet the government’s deadline of June 2025 for Local Plan submission can proactively start working on their new plans.23 • Recognition that an effective approach to strategic planning is not a ‘nice to have’ but a vital missing part of the current plan-making system, with a new approach advocated by the government (well, you would expect me to include this in my list!).

• Much more around the positive role of planners and planning in place-shaping, shifting the narrative away from the negative connotations and reputation that planning has had for the last few years — and the government needs to lead by example! Linked to this, the introduction of compulsory training for all councillors on the positive role of place-shaping, and the banning of the terms NIMBY and YIMBY! In the meantime, I will finish where I started, with some Latin. For all those working in difficult environments, Nil desperandum, as things can surely only get better; and, for those that continue to strive for change at the national level to improve the quality of lives and places, Illegitimi non carborundum, as the fight goes on!

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 The government consulted on a small number of proposed changes to the NPPF in December 2022 (see Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Reforms to National Planning Policy, available at www.gov.uk/government/ consultations/levelling-up-and-regeneration-billreforms-to-national-planning-policy). The final version, published on 19 December 2023 and available at www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationalplanning-policy-framework--2, confirms that the government’s standard methodology for assessing housing targets should be treated as a starting point for Local Plan targets and that the use of Green Belt to meet unmet needs is not an automatic assumption; it is for individual local planning authorities to decide whether ‘exceptional circumstances’ exist or not.

Although this is considered to be clarification of existing national policy, the intent behind national policy has been considered ambiguous since the introduction of the standard methodology in 2019

bird’s eye view

2 Planning for the Future. White Paper. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Aug. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-forthe-future 3 E Malnick: ‘Liz Truss: I’ll put an end to ‘Stalinist’ housing targets’. Telegraph, 16 Jul. 2022. www.telegraph.co.uk/ politics/2022/07/16/liz-truss-put-end-stalinist-housingtargets/ 4 A Allegretti and R Booth: ‘Sunak’s vow to stop housebuilding on green belt labelled as ‘desperate’ ’.

The Guardian, 28 Jul. 2022. www.theguardian.com/ uk-news/2022/jul/28/rishi-sunak-warned-pledge-to-stopgreen-belt-development-will-worsen-uk-housing-crisis 5 Reforms to National Planning Policy. HC1122. Seventh Report of Session 2022–23. Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. House of Commons, Jul. 2023. https://committees.parliament.uk/ publications/40872/documents/199083/default/ 6 Local Plan Preparation: Barriers and Opportunities.

Local Plan Research Project. Strategic Planning Research Unit, DLP Planning, for the RTPI, Oct. 2023. www.rtpi.org.uk/policy-and-research/research/ local-plan-research-project/ 7 See the Home Builders Federation’s ‘Delayed local plans’ webpage, highlighting that 64 local planning authorities had delayed or withdrawn their Local Plans as of 28 Nov. 2023. www.hbf.co.uk/policy/planningpolicy/delayed-local-plans/#:~:text=Currently%2C%20 64%20LPAs%20have%20delayed,as%20of%208th%20 November%202023 8 See Planning Applications in England: July to September 2023 — Statistical Release. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/planningapplications-in-england-july-to-september-2023/ planning-applications-in-england-july-to-september2023-statistical-release 9 New Housing Pipeline Q3 2023 Report. Home Builders Federation, Dec. 2023. www.hbf.co.uk/news/housingpipeline-q3-2023/ 10 Letter from the DLUHC Secretary of State to local planning authorities at risk of designation, 12 Apr. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/publications/letter-from-thedluhc-secretary-of-state-to-local-planning-authoritiesat-risk-of-designation 11 M Gove ‘Falling back in love with the future’. Speech by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 19 Dec. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/ speeches/falling-back-in-love-with-the-future 12 ‘S.27 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 Local Plan Intervention’. Letter from the Minister of State for Housing and Planning to the Leader of Spelthorne Borough Council, 14 Sept. 2023. https://spelthornelocalplan.info/wp-content/uploads/ sby-local-media/DLUHC_Documents/EDDLUHC001Letter-to-Cllr-Sexton-14.09.23.pdf 13 Letter from the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to the Leader of South Oxfordshire District Council, 9 Oct. 2019. www.gov.uk/government/publications/southoxfordshire-local-plan-holding-direction-letter-tocouncil

14 See Erewash Borough Council’s ‘Core Strategy Review Latest News’ webpage, at www.erewash.gov.uk/ local-plan-section/latest-news.html; and Letter from the Minister of State for Housing, Planning and Building Safety to the Leader of West Berkshire Council, 19 Dec. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/publications/west-berkshirecouncil-local-plan-intervention-letter 15 See ‘Local Plan intervention: Secretary of State letters to 7 local authorities’. Webpage, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-planintervention-secretary-of-state-letters-to-7-local-authorities 16 Section 15E in Schedule 7 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act prevents local planning authorities from withdrawing a Local Plan once it has been submitted for examination, unless the inspector recommends withdrawal or the Secretary of State requires it to be withdrawn — see www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/55/schedules/ enacted 17 R Davies: ‘At least 26 English councils ‘at risk of bankruptcy in next two years’ ’. The Guardian, 28 Aug. 2023. www.theguardian.com/society/2023/ aug/28/at-least-26-english-councils-at-risk-ofbankruptcy-in-next-two-years 18 ‘Government ‘minded to’ escalate intervention at Nottingham City Council’. DLUHC in the Media blog entry.

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 13 Dec. 2023. https://dluhcmedia.blog.gov.uk/2023/12/13/ government-minded-to-escalate-intervention-atnottingham-city-council/ 19 C Riddell: ‘Where have all the strategic planners gone?’.

Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, May–Jun., 151–54 20 State of the Profession 2023. RTPI Research Paper. Royal Town Planning institute, Nov. 2023. www.rtpi.org.uk/ research/2023/november/state-of-theprofession-2023/#_Toc149742839 21 See the RTPI’s ‘Planning your world — Get involved’ webpage, at www.planningyourworld.org.uk/ get-involved/ 22 See Wealden District Council’s ‘Planning Hub’, at https://letstalk.wealden.gov.uk/hub-page/planning-hub 23 All local planning authorities whose plans are being prepared under the current plan-making system have until the end of June 2025 to submit their plans for examination or they will have to prepare them under the new, post Levelling-up and Regeneration Act system. Although the government consulted on the new system in July 2023 (Plan-Making Reforms: Consultation on Implementation — www.gov.uk/ government/consultations/plan-making-reformsconsultation-on-implementation) this focused on the legal provisions set out on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill and therefore did not include some major changes that will be taken forward through a review of the NPPF (for example the proposed new alignment test, which will replace the duty to co-operate that was revoked through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act). It also did not include detail of the proposed new National Development Management Policies, which will have a significant impact on Local Plan content Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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a planning revolution under the radar The most recent round of apparently piecemeal changes to the planning system — undertaken with little openness and little democratic legitimacy — is driven by consistency in continuing the neoliberalising drive to remove the 1947 planning system and democratic and local control of development decision-making, potentially laying the ground for a dramatically changed planning system, says Tim Marshall The planning system in England has been under sustained pressure for many years, with waves of reform proposals battering it and changing its priorities. It is at times tough to judge just where we are in this historical process as we live through it at any one moment. This has led to uncertain reactions to these waves from the public and from the planning profession, as well as from planning academia. There was, for example, a long debate as to whether the Thatcher (and then Major) governments had fundamentally changed the system.1 At times there has been a judgement that the system has come through a storm and survived intact on the other side.

Perhaps the 2010–2012 fight over the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and other issues was an example, although most who have studied it at length in retrospect have concluded that concessions made by government at the time did not fundamentally change the direction of the reforms.2 Planning change post-2010 and post-2019

I argue here that the Conservative drive to change planning has had an underlying consistency, both from 2010 overall and during the post-December 2019 governments.

Before considering the changes themselves, it is worth noting that a major issue with those post2019 governments is the degree to which they have had the legitimacy to carry through this planning 12

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reform drive. If we go back to the 2019 Conservative manifesto, there was hardly any hint of such reforms.

There was a promise to ensure that GPs and school places are in place before development occurs.

This, in the form of ‘provide the infrastructure’, has been a long-standing call from Tory heartlands, and must have been a popular promise. That commitment may justify the work on the Infrastructure Levy since then, however ineffectual it has proved so far, but little else. Otherwise, virtually nothing of what has been done has a manifesto basis.

For some reason, this lack of electoral legitimacy has not been stressed by critics of the reforms.

But it means that the radical proposals in the 2020 Planning White Paper and the numerous shifts introduced by secondary legislation and policy change, and now by primary legislation in the form of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, lack democratic legitimacy.

The underlying consistency involves cutting back planning in many forms, so that more development is not subject to planning control. This involves the ever-growing changes to permitted development rights (PDR), begun in 2012, greatly extended in 2020–2021, and now about to be re-extended in a massive swathe consulted on in September 2023; the related changes to use classes, again especially in 2020; and the cutting back of most kinds of forward planning, with most regional and strategic planning

‘The radical

Clifford Harper

proposals in the 2020 Planning White Paper and the shifts introduced by secondary legislation and policy change, and now by primary legislation, lack democratic legitimacy’

removed and local planning weakened greatly by under-resourcing and a continuing and confusing shifting of the rules for making acceptable Local Plans.

But the post-2019 governments have added to this cutting-back list with strong new emphases. These can be analysed in two categories: those that are definite and already in the process of implementation, and those which are emerging or not fully detailed at the time of writing.

My argument here is that if we combine the definite and emerging categories, we can see that the underlying drive since 2010 is taking on a potentially dramatic new shape, for which the term ‘planning revolution’ would not be exaggerated. This might be described as putting in the foundations and scaffolding for a new system, leaving the vital if perhaps less challenging tasks of actually completing the edifice. This shape then can be interpreted as being the 2020 Planning White Paper ‘Mark 2’, responding to the fact that the zoning proposals that the White Paper presented were both unpopular and probably unworkable.3 The effect of this Mark 2 would be to drastically cut the remaining discretion available to local democratic actors.

It should be noted that there is little sign that the Conservatives have had a worked-out plan for this change. They have been feeling their way forward, finding paths of lesser resistance, but always guided by an ideological compass, alongside considerations

of political gain. Principles have still been present, above all deepening the neoliberalising drive to remove the 1947 planning system, and taking away democratic and especially local control of development decisions.

Definite elements of the new planning drive

The 2020 White Paper had some elements that have been taken forward with considerable vigour — almost all matters which have not needed primary legislation, and which have been relatively easy to implement, in part out of the glare of any political discussion.

The design and ‘beauty’ element is well known.

It is now supported by extensive guidance, with headlines now being incorporated into the NPPF, and by institutional innovation, mainly the Office for Place.4 Design codes will be required at authority as well as more local levels, with relationships with the development plan to be established. It can be argued that this will in time skew both development plans and development management to a new balance of emphases, raising design quality and ‘beauty’ (if that ever makes any sense at all in the real world of decision-making) to central considerations and effectively reducing the emphasis given to almost everything else — environmental issues, social and economic goals, even possibly heritage consideration, although that may be more amenable Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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Closely related to this is the continuing weakening of local authorities generated by financial cuts. It is widely understood that, without good resourcing, planning cannot be an effective public service.

Governments know this, but keep cutting back in any case, suggesting that this is quite acceptable to them, and that it can be understood as part of the consistent drive I am presenting here.

Another element has been the use of the standard method to determine desired housing levels in each locality. This has been hard to manage, but the current incarnation brought in at the end of 2021 allows spatial differentiation according to political requirements, putting the weight of housing allocation pressure on the larger cities, mostly in the hands of Labour councils, and taking pressure off Conservative-managed areas. In the context of this discussion, one can imagine this instrument being regularly fine-tuned to give maximum gain for party-political purposes, but importantly this could be integrated with National Development Management Policies (see below).

If this sounds in some way connected to some sort of national spatial strategy, we can be sure that this is not what the Conservatives have in mind, at least in any coherent and explicit form. A Labour government might possibly take the instrument In the case of planning the more in that direction, if it chose to continue with a standard method for housing targets. digital drive will carry A fresh element of the recipe, now incorporated particular governing and in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, is the scheme for ‘street votes’.6 This has been pressed technical baggage with it, by the same right-wing think-tanks that had a major which arguably could allow influence on the 2020 White Paper, and can be seen as offering encouragement to the far-right libertarian the complete reshaping of the agenda, whereby as much as possible of what planning system was previously in the public realm is converted into commodified forms, to be resolved by monetary and commercial means and eventually, if possible, taken The unit set up in the Department for Levelling into the field of private law (beyond public control, Up, Housing and Communities to progress digital as proposed long ago by Pennington7 and others). planning change has been busy running pilots with This element is one of several ‘Trojan horses’ local authorities since 2020, and we may expect full contained in recent governmental proposals which implementation to follow within the next two to three years.5 On its own this will evidently facilitate offer scope for significant extension if seen as the work of the larger consultancies and development successful in some manner. Observers do not companies, particularly in taking over more tasks seem to have noted the major issues of principle previously run by local authority staff — the outsourcing involved in the street votes idea, which is embedded driven forward since 2010 (and to a lesser degree in deeply marketising principles. One reason why before) has seen many councils contracting out this blindness has affected some commentators is their planning functions. It is explicitly designed to that the localism drive of 2011 has to some extent promote the ‘PropTech’ sector. But it is potentially legitimated the taking of very local elements out surely even more significant than that, if combined of democratic electoral control, above all by with other elements of the emerging package.

Neighbourhood Plans. Supporters of such plans A third element is the cutting back of planning may not like being placed in the same zone as contained in the PDR and related changes. This street votes, but I would argue that the legitimation clearly weakens planning overall and makes plans of of very local planning by these means potentially all kinds of less significance. Less planning may paves the way for further gutting of more genuinely mean less political relevance, as people learn that democratic planning carried out at higher levels, another part of societal decision-making has been where the really serious issues facing society can removed from public control. be addressed much more effectively. to being squared with the design agenda. This is probably all music to the ears of design specialists, perhaps especially the architectural profession, but will necessarily divert desperately scarce resources in local authority planning units from other priorities.

The second key area clearly identified in 2020 is the digital drive. This may seem innocuous to many and clearly builds on a long-term shift to digital management across society and government at all levels. But in the case of planning it will carry particular governing and technical baggage with it, which arguably could allow the complete reshaping of the planning system in England (and maybe in the rest of the UK, given the tendency for the devolved administrations to adopt English reforms).

Planning has not been like many licensing or regulating services — run like the benefits service or the Passport Office as a large national system, almost completely digitised now, with, of course, in these cases no political or consultative input.

But the dream of some political and administrative actors must surely be of moving to something nearer that model, and the digital standardisation of both development management and development plans is a step which would greatly help with such a shift.

‘

’

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A final definite element is the change of environmental regulation generated by Brexit. While the exact nature of the Environmental Outcomes Reports system is still unknown, there is a considerable risk that it will provide less impetus to environmental improvement and dealing with carbon and biodiversity challenges — even though the previous EU-set regime was far from perfect.

This risk is signalled by the impressively consistent failure to incorporate strong green goals into the NPPF and other top guidance ever since 2010.

Emerging elements of the new planning drive

Two elements stand out in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. (We should note that this was not called a Planning Act, oddly given its important planning content — another sign of the under-the-radar nature of much of what has happened since 2019.)

One remains emergent, the heralded probably radical revision of the NPPF proposed now that the Act has passed. But the limited revision of 2023 gave hints of the changes to parts of the plan-making and beauty agendas, alongside the proposed changes to plan-making procedures, with the tortuous and resource-intensive centralisation involved in the proposed three-gateways system. On a definitively new NPPF, the most we can say is that this may be the moment chosen by the Conservatives, if they can get it through while still in power, to pull together most of the elements being surveyed here, in more radical ways than imagined.

The second emerging element is the radical innovation of National Development Management Policies (NDMPs). How these came to hit us is unknown (at least to me), but one wonders whether the long-stated desire of senior civil servants to speed up Local Plan making led to this development, hoping that plans would then be less time-consuming to make — and then Ministers may have seen the potential to combine this with other parts of the emerging package.

Although the content of such policies will, of course, matter, the fact that they will override Local Plan policies is enough to show that a quite different sort of planning system could emerge after the content has been set. It can be argued that this in some degree replaces the aspirations of the zoning schema proposed in 2020, even though it comes at the matter from a completely different angle.

The point of the zoning scheme was to reduce the ‘barriers’ imposed by the 1947 planning system, which leaves significant power in the hands of local authorities.

The 1947 system, we may remind ourselves, nationalised — i.e. made public and collectively owned — development rights, but this was managed by a tandem of a central ministry and local authorities.

The 2020 zoning schema would have effectively extended permitted development to swathes of the country seen as not needing planning protection.

The Investment Zones of the Truss government would have been another path to such radical deregulation, for the moment set aside.

The NDMPs could, if designed by a government wishing to move in that direction, do some of the same task as the zoning schema, by making nationwide policies. So this would be a different sort of ‘nationalisation’ of (remaining) development rights, putting them more firmly under central government control, doing to the planning system what the 1980s recipe of ‘privatisation plus centralisation’ did more generally.

‘Although the content of NDMPs

will, of course, matter, the fact that they will override Local Plan policies is enough to show that a quite different sort of planning system could emerge after the content has been set ... the movement space left for local actors would surely be much less than under the socalled rigid zoning systems of most of continental Europe’ It is not easy to imagine quite how this system could develop, and it is quite likely that some of the earliest NDMPs will be for apparently innocuous matters, as well as perhaps targeting any more socially and economically interventionist policies which, for example, the London Plan may have promoted in the past. But the fact of having set up a new centralised instrument offers the Conservatives a chance to ratchet up the controls on local authorities, so that large parts of the digitally generated Local Plans and any other supplementary documents are ‘filled in’ before any plan-making locally is even begun. Discretion in development management by councils and the Planning Inspectorate would be even more hedged in. In fact, the movement space left for local actors would surely be much less than under the so-called rigid zoning systems of most of continental Europe, which all studies show as normally having significant flexibility.

Of course, the same central controls could be applied by a Labour government, and one wonders whether the often only modest criticism from Labour — and in fact from many in the planning field — is because they consider that there is something for them in this new instrument, given the fact that most authorities across England are normally controlled by the Conservatives.

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If one combines this with digitalisation and national design codes, and perhaps the deregulation of environmental elements, one can see the possible form of a new national system. This would be stronger than the PPG/PPS/NPPF-plus guidance regimes which have managed English planning for the last 35 years, and could leave local authorities reduced to the role of local adjustors of a system set largely within national government, and run by technical-commercial organisations and processes.

It can be noted that this analysis is a reminder of the potentially very wide range of instruments that national government possesses — primary legislation, secondary legislation, policy and guidance, and resourcing (or not), as well as institutional reforms, such as abolishing tiers of government or agencies relevant to planning, and creating new bodies.

The post-2019 governments have been quite well attuned to the astute manipulation of the package of instruments. It would be important for Labour to be aware of the full range of potential instruments, so that when and if in government it takes an integrated approach to revising the full set, rather than flailing around with a disparate and sound-bitefriendly shopping list.

Implications for Labour policy options

A major implication for the Labour Party is that, should it win the 2024 general election, it may face a planning system in full transitional mode towards a quite new state. This does not mean that Labour has to accept such a new direction as a fait accompli, but it does mean that a very strong hand on the tiller of government would be needed to reverse or change the direction of movement.

‘Something which would lead to

a total change to the way that planning has hitherto been undertaken has been generated over the last four years’ Very sharp decisions would be faced on which parts of the package should be pushed on towards their concluding implementation and which parts might be stopped in their tracks or redirected.

Of the parts reviewed here, we can imagine that much of the digital drive will be unstoppable, and will be seen by many as desirable, with the same probably applying to the design agenda, if with some significant tweaks. The same might apply to the neighbourhood planning arrangements, although how street votes and other possible hyper-localist innovations might be seen is less certain.

The key decisions will probably be on which parts of the centralisation drive to largely retain, and then on what content to give to these central steering 16

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and control mechanisms (if retained). The traditional approach of Labour governments has been to change the content to meet their priorities — probably at present addressing carbon challenges, delivering other strong green policies, and meeting affordable housing needs and local and regional regeneration agendas. But the rebuilding of local government could also be part of the main goal, which would clash with the emerging standardised, disciplined and centralised planning system being imagined here. The Brown Commission of late 2022 nailed its colours to a strongly localist conception of constitutional change, and if this were seriously adopted it would move the direction of change away from a strongly centrally controlled, standardised and digitised NPPF and NDMP system.

Core message

I am trying not to over-claim — that the suggested trajectory is definite and upon us. But I also do not want to risk under-claiming, as it is important to be aware of the already large (and potentially very large) changes under way. The core message is simple: that something which would lead to a total change to the way that planning has hitherto been undertaken has been generated over the last four years, with little openness and little democratic legitimacy; and that we would do well to take a bigger-picture view of this than we have been doing up to now.

Tim Marshall is Emeritus Professor in the School of the •BuiltDrEnvironment at Oxford Brookes University. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 A Thornley: Urban Planning under Thatcherism.

Routledge, 1993, Second Edition 2 E Shepherd: Liberty, Property and the State: The Ideology of the Institution of National English Town and Country Planning. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017; and E Shepherd, A Inch, J Sturzaker and T Marshall: ‘Ideology, statecraft and the ‘double shuffle’ of conservative planning reform in England’.

Town Planning Review, 2024 (forthcoming) 3 T Marshall: ‘The White Paper’s ideological core’. Town & Country Planning, 2020, Vol. 89, Sept./Oct., 304–306.

Also see T Marshall: ‘Assessing the Levelling Up White Paper’. Town & Country Planning, 2022, Vol. 91, Mar./Apr., 96–100 4 See ‘Office for Place — Our vision and principles’.

Webpage, at www.gov.uk/guidance/office-for-place-ourvision-and-principles 5 See the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Digital Planning Programme website, at www.localdigital.gov.uk/digital-planning/ 6 See the Street Vote Development Orders consultation paper issued on 22 Dec. 2023, available at www.gov.uk/ government/consultations/street-vote-developmentorders-consultation/street-vote-development-orders 7 M Pennington: Liberating the Land: The Case for Private Land Use Planning. Institute of Economic Affairs, 2002. https://iea.org.uk/publications/research/ liberating-the-land-the-case-for-private-land-useplanning

the uses of strategy — how the dismantled english planning system might be repaired Serious damage has been caused by the steady erosion and dismantling of strategic planning institutions and processes, and it is time to grasp the nettle and reinvent the mechanisms of strategic planning and the search for agreement, says Ian Wray Business publications such as the Financial Times and the Economist make frequent reference to the need for planning reform as the basis for securing economic growth and higher productivity. They rarely clarify what reform means, although their demands often appear to be synonymous with further deregulation and scrapping or rolling back the Green Belt,1 which is commonly (although mistakenly) seen as the main cause of low housebuilding volumes and thus high prices. In large part, the explanation for low housebuilding levels is straightforward: the almost complete abandonment of public sector housebuilding. Private sector housing completions have been fairly stable since the 1960s. It is the public sector which has stopped building.2 Meanwhile, asset prices, including housing, have been inflated by low interest rates and subsequent rounds of quantitative easing.3 Immediately after the Second World War positive planning was practised, using the New Towns Act and Comprehensive Development Areas. Positive planning had powers and resources behind it. These powers were used effectively, if not always wisely.

Today the district level Local Plans have become regulatory rather than strategic. It suits propertyowners and local communities opposed to development — and sometimes developers, too.

Successive Conservative-led governments, especially since the coalition government led by David Cameron, have effectively dismantled the strategic tier in English planning. They have replaced a system based on a courteous search for agreement with a localised system which has led to high levels of conflict and low levels of progress. In March 2022 research showed that only 42% of local planning authorities had an up-to-date Local Plan.4 This article suggests that the basis for future reform could lie in creating (or re-creating) mechanisms for strategic planning, the co-production of policy, and the search for agreement.

Dismantling the system

Few of those calling for reform understand that we have now reached the final stage in a long programme of liberalising changes to the planning system. The changes were initiated in the 1980s by the Thatcher governments, which relaxed controls on out-of-town shopping and business parks (paving the way for town centre decline); were taken further by Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in the Cameron government; and concluded, in a failed and unsatisfactory way, by the Johnson government.

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From 1968 to the early 2000s strategic planning in England had been supplied by county level Structure Plans, which determined how much development land individual districts should put in their Local Plans. These plans were abolished when the Blair Labour government introduced statutory Regional Spatial Strategies (with a similar function) in 2004. In 2010 Eric Pickles determined that Regional Spatial Strategies would in turn be abolished, leaving England without any strategic plans. Planning responsibilities now rest almost entirely with the local district councils in shire counties, and with the unitary councils, largely in metropolitan areas.5 Pickles also championed ‘localism’ and the introduction of micro-scale Neighbourhood Plans,6 although the relationship between these documents and council Local Plans has always seemed confused.

With the regional plans abolished, local councils lost no time in deleting huge areas of land for housing from their Local Plans. Research has suggested that sites for more than 180,000 houses were deleted from Local Plans within four months of abolition.7 The Pickles reforms opened the door for a more dramatic shift, set out in the Johnson government’s 2020 Planning White Paper, trailed as the most radical reform of the planning system since 1947.

Its main protagonist was Policy Exchange lobbyist Jack Airey. Airey’s paper for the Policy Exchange8 advocated doing away with the discretionary elements in the British system, sidelining local politicians in approving individual planning applications, and identifying zones where development would be automatically approved through an administrative process, provided that it conformed with simple rules (as in the rest of Europe and the USA). Airey dismissed any attempt to calculate local need for housing or employment land, and his ideas were taken forward, almost without reservation, in the 2020 Planning White Paper.9

‘Strategic planning helps to

secure agreement and reduces the exhausting effects of constant bickering, political footballs, and legal challenge’ Oddly, Johnson’s proposed new planning system was not simply deregulated. It was dirigiste, with housing targets determined by algorithms, fixed by central government and passed down via administrative fiat to local authorities. Algorithmic housing targets were as absurd as they were unacceptable. The formula insisted that areas with high house prices should have more land supply, even in urban areas where no land supply existed.

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In handing over to central government algorithms, the policy-makers had forgotten about the need to secure agreement and to base housing need on sound strategic planning. The whole package of reform was kicked into the long grass, from which it has never emerged. Without any counterbalance in strategic planning, the localism espoused by Eric Pickles had become a charter for NIMBYs. The uses of strategy

Strategic planning, if it is done properly, supplies a sense of direction. It promotes long-term thinking, rather than short-termism, frequent changes of direction, and the tendency to make things up as one goes along. Preparing strategic plans involves local stakeholders and provides a common script.

In a market economy a clear sense of direction promotes confidence about the future and, as economist John Maynard Keynes understood, confidence is the bedrock of expectations about the future and thus of private investment. This is true of the economy as a whole, but it is especially true of property markets, where a lack of confidence from one business or sector breeds a lack of confidence in others. You could call this the ‘Detroit effect’: hardly anyone wants to commit to investing in Detroit, and abandonment is widespread, because everybody believes that the city is on the way out.

A sense of direction also underpins investment plans across different sectors. Transport investors, water suppliers, bankers and housebuilders (and many others) want to know what everyone else is doing and proposing. They do not want to find themselves out on a limb, investing in the wrong place, or at the wrong time.

The above arguments in themselves might appear to be sufficient justification for strategic direction. But there is one more justification, and it is profoundly important: strategic planning helps to secure agreement and reduces the exhausting effects of constant bickering, political footballs, and legal challenge.

This was the flaw in the Conservative Party’s decision to remove the strategic tier. It culminated not in freedom, but in autocratic direction from the centre. The process ended in failure, with local authorities, environmentalists and local lobbies pitted against government. Meanwhile, there is mounting concern that the system is not delivering enough land for housebuilding, with the government failing to achieve its own target of 300,000 new homes a year.

Strategic planning as co-production

The strategic planning system which was dismantled had the ‘search for agreement’ at its core. Rather than being a vehicle for autocrats, English strategic planning was a device for local accountability and the co-production of policy.

Thinkstock

The now dismantled strategic planning system had the ‘search for agreement’ at its core

It worked like this. Draft Regional Spatial Strategy was prepared by the ‘regional planning body’ in each region. The body consisted of 70% local government membership and 30% other stakeholders, including business. There was wide consultation on the technical work, options, and policies; with government itself via the Government Offices for the Regions (abolished in 2010); and with the Regional Development Agencies (also abolished).10 The draft strategy was examined and tested at an examination in public (EiP), a roundtable inquisitorial debate led by a panel of government-appointed planning inspectors. Based on the model used for the former county Structure Plans, the EiP lasted for several days and was exhaustive. There were many voices around the table, not least environmental organisations and lobbyists. Very few business interests were represented and equal weight was given to all participants. Government considered the panel’s report and finally issued the strategy, taking the recommendations of the panel into account.

It was an open, collaborative and courteous process.

In practice, the making of Regional Spatial Strategy was a successful exercise in policy co-production.

The Regional Development Agencies were required to prepare economic strategies, and government guidance made clear that the spatial strategy should assist the implementation of these economic strategies10 (even so, my experience was that the view of the Regional Development Agency was not given great weight). When the final document emerged in the North West, for example, all the planning authorities accepted the housing figures.

Four possibilities for repair

What are the options for restoring effective strategic planning and thus securing the benefits identified above? It could probably be achieved in four different ways: at the county or city region level, at the regional level, at the national level, and

through land reform. These options are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Counties

Let us look first at the county level. English shire counties are long-established political units with strong local allegiance, as perhaps, to a lesser extent, are the ‘new’ metropolitan county areas now largely reconfigured as combined authorities. Unlike district councils (which are rarely travel-to-work or housing market areas), counties cover extensive areas, are highway and transport authorities, and have economic development responsibilities. There is considerable logic in using the county unit as the basis for strategic planning. Indeed, the process has already started in the larger ‘shire’ unitary authorities and to an extent in the combined authorities. The Structure Plans, pre-2004, had worked, but they were less than ideal, as the planning function was split between the counties and their districts. When the structure and regional plans went, all planning power went to the districts.

Restoring strategic planning to the county level could be achieved by returning all planning powers to county councils, except where unitary authorities exist — or by reintroducing some form of county strategy, at least for housing figures. Returning all planning to the counties would reflect the pattern before the 1970s. It would sharply reduce the number of separate planning authorities (reducing costs as well as the scope for inter-authority conflict), re-creating professional county teams, and moving decisions to officers and councillors with wider perspectives. It could provide a supportive tier for regional planning, as it did in the past.

Regions

The second option is to reinvent the regional system. Without repeating the discussion above, we can acknowledge that Britain has a long and often Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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distinguished history of regional planning, informed by the need to advise and secure agreement, rather than impose control.11 There have been notable successes, despite the lack of a directly elected and responsible regional tier of government. We know that the system is not without its problems, but it has worked, we know it can work, and it is surely a vastly better arrangement than the outcome of the Conservative reforms, post Eric Pickles.

together the sectoral activists in some holistic thinking. It could be loose, discursive and informal, like the pre-1980s regional plans, with a light touch.

The question is who might be an effective custodian of a long-term infrastructure plan or plans which necessarily would sit outside the five-year electoral cycle. It could perhaps be a position based in a new Prime Minister’s Department, in a specific Department of State, or in the Treasury, as a new ‘English Growth Commission’.

The nation The problem with all these ‘in-government’ The third option is the development of a national options is that the recent HS2 debacle has sharply spatial plan.12 England has never had a national revealed Britain’s long-standing inability to develop, spatial plan. In part this reflects the nature of the secure and implement long-term plans within the British government machine, more nightwatchman government machine. An alternative might be to than purposeful driver. George Brown’s National consider a body outside, or at least insulated from, Plan in the 1960s, together with its department (the government short-termism (with some parallels to Department of Economic Affairs), ended in failure, bodies such as the former British Railways Board), deliberately marooned by the Treasury.13 Admittedly perhaps in the Bank of England, in a new institution it was an economic, rather than spatial, plan. Yet like the Office of Budget Responsibility, or even a spatial resource planning decisions are nevertheless private sector/philanthropic led model, along the taken, often on the basis of an unspoken policy of lines of New York’s Regional Plan Association, which investing in success (in London and the South). dates back to the 1920s.17 That would seem to fit a British national ‘planning culture’ in which so many But circumstances have changed. The country, big successful plans in the past have been developed like the planning system, is in some disarray. With fewer public funds available, we need to think more and implemented outside the government machine.18 carefully about their deployment. Institutions that Land reform used to do the planning for us, like the Regional One final issue relates to positive planning and Development Agencies and EU programmes for UK implementation. In other European countries land ‘Objective 1’ areas, have been lost. Our regional can be acquired at existing-use value by the public disparities are acute, bringing in their wake huge sector, with the value uplift from the change of use costs for infrastructure and housing in the South. and the provision of infrastructure being shared with Voices are being raised in favour of national owners. The British system requires the payment spatial planning. Nick Winser, the government’s of all the capital value uplift with no recognition of Electricity Networks Commissioner, wants a the costs involved. Partly as a result, most public national spatial plan for new electricity power authorities rarely use compulsory purchase powers. lines.14 Climate change suggests that we will have to engage in national water planning as well as in In other European countries, the public sector is identifying priorities for infrastructure resilience and able to work in a civic manner to the joint benefit flood prevention. National planning for rail and road of business as well as the community. The lack of investment is inescapable and will inevitably have a such an enlightened land assembly system in spatial component. The political furore caused by Britain has worked to the disadvantage of smaller the Prime Minister’s decision in October 2023 to builders, who have largely disappeared because abandon Britain’s HS2 high-speed rail project in they do not have the financial resources to compete mid-stream revealed what might fairly be described with the big builders. Land reform, enabling public as dysfunctional state machinery for long-term acquisition at existing-use prices, with a provision infrastructure planning and strategic implementation.15 for sharing the capital land value uplift, would We must also think about spatial priorities for secure positive planning. It would allow the investment in research. Levelling Up Secretary of planning system to provide land, infrastructure, State Michael Gove’s current proposal to make housing and regeneration on the scale needed, Cambridge ‘Europe’s Science City’ is ambitious but replicating the system which was used in the past one-sided.16 What is the plan for the rest of England? to successfully deliver the New Towns.

What are our long-term priorities for regeneration Conclusions — back to old truths and the use of Development Corporations, New Serious damage has been caused to English Towns, and compulsory purchase for land assembly? infrastructure planning by the steady erosion and The risk is that we will end up doing lots of dismantling of strategic planning institutions sectoral national spatial plans without any ‘read and processes by successive Conservative-led across’. That might solve some problems. But we could surely go further, learning from our tradition of governments. The result has been the displacement of a system based on a search for agreement with advisory planning at a regional level and bringing 20

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a highly localised system with high levels of conflict and inefficiency. The way forward may be to invent — or reinvent — the mechanisms of strategic planning at county level or regional level (possibly both).

Thought needs to be given to a mechanism or mechanisms for effective national infrastructure planning and some form of national spatial plan. The case is already being made for electricity distribution.

A key issue is who might be an effective custodian of long-term national infrastructure plans, which would necessarily sit outside the five-year electoral cycle.

In parallel we must reconsider the tools for positive planning and implementation, introducing land reforms which will secure the sharing of land value uplift between private landowners and the public sector.

These are issues of huge topical importance and will impact on economic growth, productivity, and regional inequality. The Conservative Party’s current planning policies, focused on ‘localism’, have reached the end of a road. The Labour Party has begun to outline new approaches, including building new towns, a move away from over-localised planning, and streamlined planning procedures for national infrastructure investment.

Making progress will mean returning to some old truths. We have to plan positively and holistically, as others do, and as we once did. We have to disinter and revisit the logic of systems thinking, planning our basic infrastructure as one, not in unrelated silos. The late Professor Sir Peter Hall, one of Britain’s greatest post-war planners, set out the ‘mindset’ challenge eloquently in his last book: ‘The models are there before our eyes. We merely need to remove the blinkers that are obscuring them and to clear our minds for forging fresh solutions.’ 19 One way or another, it is surely time to grasp again the nettle of strategic choice.

•

Ian Wray is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Manchester University’s Planning School, Honorary Professor at Liverpool University’s Heseltine Institute, and the author of Great British Plans: Who Made Them and How They Worked (Routledge, 2015). He was Chief Planner, Northwest Development Agency, 2000–2010; project manager for the North West’s Regional Planning Guidance in 1991–1992; and drafting lead for the North West’s Regional Economic Strategy in 2000. In part the arguments in this article therefore reflect personal experience.

The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments on the article from Vincent Goodstadt, Jim Steer, Nicholas Falk, Tom Arnold, and John Walls. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 As advocated in ‘Britain’s green belt is choking the economy’. The Economist, 9 Aug. 2023. www.economist.com/interactive/britain/2023/08/17/ britains-green-belt-is-choking-the-economy 2 See P Hall: Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism. Routledge, 2014 — in particular Fig 2.1 (available at www.statista.com/ statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/)

3 A Tooze: Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Viking, 2018 4 R Clements: ‘Ten years of the NPPF: What do we have to show for a decade of plan making?’. Blog entry.

Lichfields, 4 May 2022. https://lichfields.uk/blog/2022/ may/4/ten-years-of-the-nppf-what-do-we-have-toshow-for-a-decade-of-plan-making/#:~:text=As%20 of%20the%2027th,data%20on%20Strategic%20 Plan%20Progress 5 M Boddy and H Hickman: ‘The demise of strategic planning?’. Town Planning Review, 2013, Vol. 84 (6), 743–68 6 ‘Neighbourhood planning’. Planning Practice Guidance.

Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Mar. 2014, updated Sept. 2020. www.gov.uk/guidance/ neighbourhood-planning--2 7 Research carried out by Tetlow King Planning for the National Housing Federation — see ‘Written evidence from Tetlow King Planning’. Submission to the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee Inquiry, ‘Abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies: a planning vacuum?’, Jan. 2011. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/ cmselect/cmcomloc/517/517we18.htm 8 J Airey and C Doughty: Rethinking the Planning System for the 21st Century. Policy Exchange, Jan. 2020. https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/rethinkingthe-planning-system-for-the-21st-century 9 Planning for the Future. White Paper. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Aug. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-forthe-future 10 C Swain, T Marshall and T Baden: English Regional Planning 2000–2010: Lessons for the Future.

Routledge, 2012 11 For a through historic overview, see U Wannop: The Regional Imperative: Regional Planning and Governance in Britain, Europe and the United States.

Routledge, 1995 12 I Wray: ‘Do we need a plan for England?’. Heseltine Institute blog entry, 21 Jun. 2023. www.liverpool.ac.uk/ heseltine-institute/blog/doweneedaplanforengland/ 13 See ‘Who’s in charge? The British government machine’, Chapter 12, in I Wray: Great British Plans: Who Made Them and How They Worked. Routledge, 2015 14 Report from Nick Winser, Electricity Networks Commissioner, to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Jun. 2023. https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/1175649/electricitynetworks-commissioner-letter-to-desnz-secretary.pdf 15 ‘HS2 curtailed: the regional fall-out’. Comment article.

Greengauge 21, Oct. 2023. www.greengauge21.net/ hs2-curtailed-the-regional-fall-out/ 16 R Martin and M Gray: ‘Levelling up? Why plans to make Cambridge into Europe’s ‘Silicon Valley’ would be bad for the city and bad for levelling up’. Blog entry.

Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge, 24 Aug. 2023. www.bennettinstitute.cam. ac.uk/blog/levellingup-cambridge-silicon-valley/ 17 See I Wray: No Little Plans: How Government Built America’s Wealth and Infrastructure. Routledge, 2019 18 I Wray: Great British Plans: Who Made Them and How They Worked. Routledge, 2015 19 P Hall: Good Cities, Better Lives (see note 2), p.310

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biodiversity net gain — understanding the opportunities and challenges ahead Laurence Cummins considers the opportunities presented by Biodiversity Net Gain and the potential challenges which may hold it back in practice — and offers some recommendations on how it can be made as much of a success as possible Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a major new change to the planning system in England. It is designed to ensure that development leaves the natural environment in a better condition than it was in previously,1 and it promises many things — including funding for nature recovery, and green and beautiful new developments — but will it deliver in practice?

From January 2024, planning applications (with some exemptions) will have to show that a development will deliver at least a 10% increase in ‘habitat units’, where gains and losses in those units are measured using a specially designed statutory ‘biodiversity metric’.2 The 10% gain can be achieved through enhancing or creating habitats both on-site (within the site boundary) and off-site (beyond the site boundary).

It is hoped that the off-site component of BNG will stimulate the growth of a private biodiversity offset market in England. Habitats secured under BNG must be maintained for a minimum of 30 years.

BNG does not consider more indirect impacts of development on biodiversity, such as those arising due to greenhouse gas emissions or land use changes within construction supply chains. Although these are acknowledged to be significant,3 they are not discussed in this article, and any references to 22

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‘net’ biodiversity or ecological outcomes should be taken to refer only to direct impacts.

The scope and purpose of BNG

As can be expected when a policy seeks to balance the need for development against the need to reduce or reverse harm to the natural environment, BNG is the subject of lively debate. It has been accused of being an example of a ‘licence to trash’4 — legislation designed to enable, rather than improve, environmentally damaging business practices. It has also been described as unsuitable for the planning system as it views nature in purely ecological terms and sets a rigid minimum standard on this basis. This is regarded by some as contrary to the purpose of the planning system in England, which is discretionary in decision-making and focused on seeking acceptable compromises amid complex trade-offs.5 Even among those backing BNG in principle, there are varying perspectives on what kinds of outcome the legislation should be designed to prioritise, sometimes in tension with one another.

Some observers are focused on the potential for BNG to enable the trading of residual biodiversity losses from development for strategic, at-scale,

Clifford Harper

nature recovery projects off-site.6 Others see BNG as serving a wider purpose, including incentivising the provision of urban green infrastructure (UGI) and the use of nature-based solutions (NBS) within, or local to, new developments.7 BNG has been widely promoted as a ‘win-win’ opportunity which will drive forward both the nature recovery and the urban greening agendas,8 yet there are clear trade-offs between different kinds of outcome, particularly when considering whether biodiversity units should be delivered on-site or off-site.6, 9, 10 For example, on-site units might be more accessible and might therefore deliver greater benefits to the health and wellbeing of local people, but the ecological outcomes might be more constrained by human pressures,

governance issues, and poor connectivity with other habitats.

A fixation on BNG delivering specific kinds of outcomes can distract from the wider purpose and limitations of the planning system. Issues such as strategic nature recovery and UGI/NBS can only truly be addressed by a broader mix of policy measures, both within and beyond the planning system, and at scales beyond that of individual developments.

On urban sites, where baselines are often low, BNG may do little to incentivise the delivery of UGI or NBS. In a similar vein, there will be cases where trading on-site losses for strategic off-site gains will be unjustifiable in planning terms owing to the wider impacts that losses may have on local green space.

Clearly, neither agenda can rely on BNG alone.

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that the status of these professions within the built environment sector will be elevated by the need to BNG is best viewed as a new minimum standard account for biodiversity throughout the development for the biodiversity outcomes of development, such lifecycle, and that their collaboration can help to that net positive ecological outcomes are ensured deliver more optimised landscape outcomes. At the in every scenario. Key to supporting this ambition is organisational level, BNG should generate greater the biodiversity metric, which defines a standardised demand for in-house ecological expertise within approach to measuring gains and losses in habitats. the built environment sector, as well as for more Although it has not historically been the purpose of the strategic forms of ecological consultancy. This should, planning system to enforce non-negotiable minimum in turn, help to embed ecological considerations standards, the way in which BNG is delivered can have within wider business practices. significant consequences for land use, impacting on Far from being simply a way of facilitating local environments and communities. Decisions biodiversity offsetting, BNG has the potential to regarding how best to achieve 10% BNG in different support more effective management of ecological risks contexts should therefore sit with the planning and opportunities throughout the built environment system, in conversation with applicants from the lifecycle. If this potential were realised, BNG may built environment sector. facilitate a long-overdue shift in working practices In its capacity as a minimum standard for biodiversity away from the status quo in which loss or degradation outcomes, BNG has the potential to drive important of biodiversity are too often the norm on development changes within the planning system and the built projects. environment sector. The biodiversity metric assigns Despite the potential benefits of BNG, there are a statutory value to a far wider range of habitats than number of issues which may hamper its effectiveness has previously been protected by existing legislation. in practice. Of these, four in particular (which have Having a standardised auditing and accounting been highlighted in my research at the University of system with quantitative outputs provides a degree Surrey and my work with Wates Group) must be of certainty throughout the planning process acknowledged and addressed urgently if BNG is to and built environment lifecycle for biodiversity aims deliver genuinely positive ecological outcomes of and objectives. It should enable biodiversity to development. These issues are set out below. be incorporated more effectively within project Issue 1 — local government capacity informational flows, or in the ‘golden thread’11 of Local government across England will play a information which runs across and through a critical role in governing nearly every aspect of BNG. development’s lifecycle.

At the strategic level, local planning authorities This will enable biodiversity (and its impact on developability) to be accounted for at the land appraisal must account for BNG when drawing up Local Plans, and must co-ordinate with landowners or stage, and to influence land values accordingly. brokers involved in establishing local habitat banking It will also provide ecologists and landscape schemes. At the development control stage, they architects with a transparent means of scrutinising must scrutinise planning applications to ensure that and challenging design or construction decisions BNG proposals are ecologically feasible and legally which have material consequences for biodiversity sound, as well as continuing to monitor and enforce outcomes. This may reduce the susceptibility of landscape and ecological outcomes to ‘creep’ from any conditions or obligations that are drawn up to guarantee that BNG outcomes are achieved in other disciplines, ‘value engineering’ (i.e. costpractice. cutting), or poor change control processes.

The significant additional burden associated At the organisational level, BNG’s standardised with BNG is, however, being imposed on a local approach to measuring biodiversity outcomes will enable ‘performance’ to be meaningfully compared government system in crisis,12 struggling to perform many existing responsibilities to a across projects and between different businesses. satisfactory level. Capacity issues within many local This makes it possible for organisations to set BNG-related targets and use BNG outcomes as key planning authorities have forced them to prioritise performance indicators at the corporate level, bringing reactive development control at the expense of proactive plan-making.13 Meanwhile, planning biodiversity into the boardroom. This in turn may enforcement is weak,14 with evidence suggesting make it easier for organisations to learn from the that this disproportionately affects landscape- and outcomes of individual projects, and to foster a ecological mitigation-related conditions/ culture of knowledge-sharing and competitiveness obligations.15 within and between businesses when it comes to Undermining governance of BNG at both the BNG performance.

BNG ought to incentivise earlier and more consistent strategic level and the level of individual planning applications is the fact that in-house ecological engagement with ecologists on development expertise within local government has been largely projects, as well as greater collaboration between lost in recent years.16 Such expertise is essential to ecologists and landscape architects. It is hoped BNG as a minimum standard for the biodiversity outcomes of development

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ensure that governance is ecologically informed throughout the BNG lifecycle.

In order for BNG to deliver genuine gains for biodiversity, the true cost of governing it must be recognised and reflected in the way that local authorities are funded and staffed. Initial steps might include a nationwide study into the costs and benefits (including those which are long term and non-financial in nature) of proper governance, a subsequent review of current funding models, and the introduction of mandatory in-house ecological positions. While the government has announced new funding for local planning authorities (about £9 million)17 to relieve some of the additional burden that BNG brings, this is based on a relatively narrow (and now out-of-date) cost-benefit analysis18 which did not consider the potentially wider and longer-term benefits of reforming local government funding.13 Issue 2 — skills and experience shortages

Ecologists will play a critical role in supporting the design, delivery and governance of BNG, through survey work, desk studies, metric calculations, and site supervision. Given the current shortage of experienced ecologists,19, 20 however, there are concerns that supply will struggle to meet growing demand.

BNG not only demands a greater volume of ecological work to be carried out, but also relies extensively on skills in botanical identification and habitat classification. These skills have not been as critical in supporting compliance with existing legislation and are therefore less well represented across the current ecological workforce.20 Successful design and delivery of BNG requires that ecological input is incorporated within wider scheme design. As design professionals, landscape architects should play a key role in mediating between ecologists and other technical disciplines to generate optimised landscape outcomes. As with ecologists, however, landscape architects are in short supply.21 Establishment and maintenance of habitats secured under BNG will be the responsibility of landscape contractors and management companies.

Such organisations typically specialise in delivering more manicured, less ecologically sensitive environments, and are rarely beholden to longerterm management plans, the likes of which successful BNG outcomes will rely on.

Although BNG will naturally create demand for relevant skills and experience, these are unlikely to develop at pace without co-ordinated effort by the public and private sectors. Promoting the development of relevant skills (in particular ecology and landscape design/management) within the education system and across the existing workforce — for example through apprenticeship schemes — will be essential for building capacity and supporting the delivery of high-quality ecological outcomes from BNG.

Issue 3 — the limits of the metric

The biodiversity metric is a critical feature of BNG, allowing ecological outcomes of development to be defined in relatively simple and quantifiable terms; yet ecology is notoriously neither simple nor easily quantifiable.

The biodiversity metric seeks to capture as many of the factors which may influence the quality of ecological outcomes as possible. These factors include the ‘condition’ or ‘strategic significance’ of habitats pre- and post-development, and the timing, duration, ‘difficulty’ and proximity to the development site (for offsetting) of any proposed enhancement and creation activities. These factors are based largely on either known properties of different habitat types, or broader assumptions about how the risk of habitat failure correlates with the displacement of enhancement/creation activities in both time and space. This embeds the conservation mitigation hierarchy 22 within BNG in so far as it assigns greater risk of failure to compensatory gains than to avoidance or reduction of losses.

However, the metric does a poor job of accounting for more context-dependent factors such as local human pressures and governance, or for dynamic factors such as climate change. But such factors could be significant in determining the ecological outcomes of BNG.9 Opportunities to account for contextdependent and dynamic factors affecting the ecological outcomes of BNG are limited. Ecologists either have to consider them in their projections of future habitats’ ‘condition’ or submit additional evidence as part of the wider BNG plan to explain why the metric’s outputs are not a fair representation of the likely ecological outcomes (or, why 10% ≠ 10%).

There is currently no standardised framework for accounting for these factors within the BNG planning process. Such a framework might outline which factors affecting ecological outcomes should be considered, how they might be accounted for within and beyond metric calculations, and what weight different forms of evidence should carry in influencing planning decisions. The metric should also continue to be updated so as to better account for context-dependent and dynamic factors.

Issue 4 — information management and procurement in the built environment sector

The built environment sector is hugely complex.

Although specialisation and subcontracting enable supply chains to assemble flexibly to deliver bespoke one-off developments, they also lead to fragmentation,9 risk-averseness, and low levels of innovation across the industry. At the project level, the management of information through time and across multiple organisations is a major challenge, with negative consequences across a range of different issues,23 including ecology.

Poor information management, coupled with a desire to minimise costs, means that technical Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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Table 1

Summary of the issues facing BNG implementation, and recommendations for addressing them Issue

Key concerns

Recommendations

Local government capacity

• Reactive, as opposed to strategic,

• Evaluate the true costs and benefits of

• •

• Review current local government funding

planning Weak planning enforcement Lack of in-house ecological expertise

proper governance

•

models Introduce mandatory in-house ecological positions within local government

Skills and experience shortages

• Shortage of ecologists, and skills not

Limitations of the metric

• The metric is poor at capturing context- • Develop a wider framework within

• •

focused on botanical identification Shortage of landscape architects Landscape contracting and management sectors not used to long-term, ecologically sensitive management dependent and dynamic factors

•

planning for assessing the ecological outcomes of BNG, accommodating evidence beyond the metric Ensure that future updates to the metric seek to better account for contextdependent and dynamic factors

• Ecological outcomes susceptible to poor • Improve the capabilities and uptake of •

information management and procurement practices within the built environment sector Risk that BNG becomes another ‘tick-box’ exercise

input from ecological consultants is often sought on a reactive, ‘need to know’ basis. It also renders ecological outcomes vulnerable to flawed change control processes (where decisions may not be adequately audited with respect to their impacts on ecology), particularly when a project undergoes ‘value engineering’ (cost-cutting) exercises. Under poor information management, complex issues tend to be reduced to ‘tick-box’ exercises, rather than treated as key considerations throughout the development lifecycle. This is particularly problematic for ecology, where outcomes are determined over many years and are sensitive to subtle changes in design or management.

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the Hackitt Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety11 highlighted the importance of creating and managing a ‘golden thread’ of information for safety throughout a development’s lifecycle and supporting this through more robust accountability systems and improved procurement practices.

To prevent BNG becoming another tick-box issue, attempts to innovate by improving information management and procurement practices across the built environment sector24 must be broadened, and should afford issues such as ecology their own golden threads within the development lifecycle.

26

landscape design/management through the education system and within the existing workforce (for example through apprenticeship schemes)

• Lack of clear planning guidance for

accounting for these factors outside the metric

Information management and procurement in the built environment sector

• Promote relevant skills in ecology and

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•

digital information management technologies Promote new procurement practices that ensure more consistent ecological input throughout the development lifecycle

The priority must be to make ecological data more readily accessible and intelligible across project stakeholders and throughout a development’s lifecycle (something that BNG is well poised to facilitate), and to ensure that decisions regarding the design or management of development schemes are ecologically informed by default. This means improving the capabilities and uptake of digital information management technologies and promoting procurement practices that make technical consultants, such as ecologists, a more central and consistent presence throughout the development process.

Conclusion

BNG is a major step forward for environmental policy in England and could serve as a blueprint for similar policies elsewhere in the UK and further afield.

Its strength lies in providing a minimum standard for the biodiversity outcomes of development, and a standardised biodiversity auditing and accounting methodology for the planning system and the built environment sector. This will certainly go some way towards neutralising the damaging effects of development on the natural environment. In order to generate consistently positive outcomes, however, the four key issues described above — local government capacity, skills and experience shortages, limitations

11 J Hackitt: Building a Safer Future. Independent Review of the metric, and information management and of Building Regulations and Fire Safety: Final Report. procurement in the built environment sector — must Cm 9607. HMSO, May 2018. www.gov.uk/government/ be addressed (see Table 1). publications/independent-review-of-buildingThese issues are not only individually significant, regulations-and-fire-safety-final-report but also heavily overlapping and interdependent.

12 P Butler: ‘English councils warn of ‘existential crisis’ Addressing them requires collective acknowledgement caused by funding shortfall’. The Guardian, 16 Nov. 2022. that governing complex, market-based policies such www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/16/englishas BNG does not come cheap, and that the success councils-warn-existential-crisis-funding-shortfall of such policies is dependent on the willingness of 13 J Patterson-Waterston, C Vexler and R Freund: Invest and Prosper: A Business Case for Investing in Planning. central government to provide support and direction Royal Town Planning Institute, Oct. 2020. to the institutions and sectors responsible for www.rtpi.org.uk/investandprosper#_Toc52359875 implementing them in practice.

• Laurence Cummins is Sustainability Manager at Wates Group Ltd, and is undertaking a doctoral research project

under the University of Surrey’s Centre for Environment and Sustainability (CES) Practitioner Doctorate in Sustainability programme. The author would like to thank his supervisors and colleagues at both CES and Wates Group for their continued support and engagement with his work. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 See Part 6 of the Environment Act 2021. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/30/pdfs/ ukpga_20210030_en.pdf 2 See the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ ‘Statutory biodiversity metric tools and guides’ webpage, at https://tinyurl.com/murwe487 3 See, for example, A Torres, S O S E zu Ermgassen, F Ferri-Yanez, et al.: ‘Unearthing the global impact of mining construction minerals on biodiversity’. bioRxiv, posted online 26 Mar. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.23.485272 4 P de Zylva: ‘Biodiversity offsetting and net gain: license to trash nature’. Friends of the Earth, Nov. 2018. https://tinyurl.com/3e7r2cay 5 RTPI Response to the Defra Consultation on Biodiversity Net Gain in England. Royal Town Planning Institute, Feb. 2019. www.rtpi.org.uk/media/2674/ biodiversitynetgain_feb2019.pdf 6 P Shepherd: ‘Biodiversity Net Gain and the Lawton Principles: Are we at risk of failing to deliver the best outcomes?’ Webpage. BSG Ecology, Mar. 2022.

Available at https://bsg-ecology.com/biodiversity-netgain-and-the-lawton-principles-are-we-at-risk-of-failingto-deliver-the-best-outcomes/#:~:text=Mandatory%20 biodiversity%20net%20gain%20is,strategic%20 nature%20recovery%20at%20scale 7 R McArthur: ‘Growing green: Changing the face of UK communities with Biodiversity Net Gain’. Open Access Government, 24 Jul. 2023. http://tinyurl.com/mpc525dn 8 Biodiversity Net Gain: An Introduction to the Benefits.

Natural England, Apr. 2022. https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/ sites/183/2022/04/BNG-Brochure_Final_ Compressed-002.pdf 9 S O S E zu Ermgassen, S Marsh, K Ryland, et al.: ‘Exploring the ecological outcomes of mandatory biodiversity net gain using evidence from early-adopter jurisdictions in England’. Conservation Letters, 2021, Vol. 14 (6), e12820. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12820 10 See ‘On-site vs off-site habitat creation: which is best for nature?’. Webpage. Environment Bank, Apr. 2022. https://environmentbank.com/blog/posts/on-site-vs-offsite-habitat-creation-which-is-best-for-nature

14 M Bauer: Planning Enforcement Resourcing: The Scale and Nature of Resourcing Challenges Faced by Enforcement Teams. Royal Town Planning Institute, Nov. 2022. www.rtpi.org.uk/research/2022/november/ planning-enforcement-resourcing/ 15 S Mckay: ‘Contravention and conformity in EIA: An investigation into regulatory compliance in Northern Ireland’. European Planning Studies, 2007, Vol. 15 (1), 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654310601016663 16 L Snell and M Oxford: Survey of Local Planning Authorities and their Ability to Deliver Biodiversity Net Gain in England. Do Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) Currently Have the Necessary Expertise and Capacity?

Association of Local Government Ecologists, 2022. www.alge.org.uk/local-planning-authoritiesbiodiversity-net-gain/ 17 See ‘Biodiversity Net Gain moves a step closer with more funding’. Press Release. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 27 Jul. 2023. http://tinyurl.com/y9kmydre 18 Biodiversity Net Gain and Local Nature Recovery Strategies. Impact Assessment (IA). Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Oct. 2019. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839610/ net-gain-ia.pdf 19 See M Wade and M Handley: ‘A crisis in our sector’.

Webpage. Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), Nov. 2021. https://cieem.net/a-crisis-in-our-sector/ 20 Submission to House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee Inquiry on Biodiversity and Ecosystems. Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), Sept. 2020. https://committees.parliament.uk/ writtenevidence/11639/html/ 21 H Garrow: ‘Government confirms addition of Landscape Architects to Shortage Occupation List’.

News story. Landscape Institute, 25 Jul. 2019. http://tinyurl.com/2s3haf7s 22 Standard on Biodiversity Offsets. Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme (BBOP). Forest Trends and the Wildlife Conservation Society, Washington, DC, 2012. www.forest-trends.org/publications/standard-onbiodiversity-offsets/ 23 The Value of Information Management in the Construction and Infrastructure Sector: A Report Commissioned by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB). KPMG, Jun. 2021. www.cdbb.cam.ac.uk/ files/cdbb_econ_value_of_im_report.pdf 24 See the Construction Innovation Hub’s ‘Information management’ webpage, at https://constructioninnovationhub.org.uk/our-projectsand-impact/information-management/ Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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the sycamore gap tree — one tragedy among thousands

Andrew Masters on Unsplash

Heather Rumble, Dean Bell, Adam Cormack, Kenton Rogers and Dannielle Sinnett consider the need for greater protection for our urban trees and our old trees of special meaning and value

The Sycamore Gap tree near Hexham in Northumberland, before it was felled

Soon after daybreak on 28 September 2023 a collective gasp rang out across the British Isles.

Under the cover of darkness, a devastating crime had been committed: a single tree, living in a small gap in Hadrian’s Wall, had been felled in the night.

The outpouring of emotion that followed was palpable. Media crews rushed to the remote spot in Northumberland National Park. The telephones of tree experts and notable enthusiasts rang all day as journalist sought quotes. People trawled through photo albums and Facebook looking for a last picture taken of the spot — ‘We were there just months ago’; ‘We could have been some of the last people to see it’; ‘We decided to get married there’; ‘We were there in 1967 with our grandparents; the World was so different then’.

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The felling of the Sycamore Gap tree1 was a terrible event. It was also a moment for reflection.

We know that trees are good for us: they cool our cities in summer,2 they purify our air,3 they absorb carbon, and they support a myriad of species that we rely on for survival (native oaks alone support more than 2,300 other species4). We also know that they benefit our mental and physical health — for example, time spent in natural surroundings reduces inflammation,5 reduces cortisol levels6 and makes the symptoms of depression, anxiety, ADHD7 and dementia 8 more manageable. Trees are a vital components of the natural world, their leaves and branches making up the all-important ‘natural fractals’ (irregular shapes that we find in nature) that benefit our brains.9

Treeconomics

The benefits of trees

But the furore around the Sycamore Gap felling has demonstrated that our need for trees might run deeper than we think. They form part of our cultural landscape. They are a backdrop to our important life events. They form the character of places that have meaning to us. They connect us to our past and help us to celebrate the future. They help us to identify the changing of the seasons. They are a landmark, helping us to punctuate time and space to create meaningful events and places.

For those of us surveying trees in cities, hovering around a tree with a clipboard inevitably sparks attention from someone in the neighbourhood.

Before a tape measure has even been drawn, there is often a shout from a nearby window: ‘You’re not going to chop that tree down, are you?’ — depressing that an official with a clipboard appears to signify the destruction of a tree, but enlivening to witness people’s passion for, and defence of, trees.

It is no wonder that a clipboard is a worrying sight for nemophilists (tree lovers!). Recent events in Plymouth,10 Sheffield11 and Tooting (the ‘chainsaw massacre’)12 have highlighted that, as important as trees are in our landscape, the funding and protection that they need to be able to persist, especially in urban areas, often are not there. While heritage buildings, battlefields and ancient monuments can be, and often are, protected by law, we have no specific mechanism for protecting our oldest and most special heritage trees — and we should not forget that it is these older, larger-canopy trees that

often provide the greatest benefits. Nor can we protect trees that have special, cultural meaning to us or define the neighbourhoods in which we live.

In Poland, around 30,000 trees are legally protected as natural monuments,13 in recognition of their cultural value and driving their active conservation.

In Italy, a similar law protects 22,000 monumental trees.14 No such protection exists in the UK, even though the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Inventory15 now lists 180,000 trees, including 20,000 verified ancient trees, that would benefit from legal protection.

Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) can be granted by local authorities, resulting in fines or even prison sentences for people damaging or cutting down trees. But TPOs cover a tiny proportion of trees in most places; many of us have witnessed community groups planting trees on their land (as is their right), only for a neighbour to cut them down in the night or poison them with weed killer. Although such vandalism is illegal, in reality little recourse is available to these groups. TPOs are also difficult to action, with objectors able to overturn them within the first six months of the granting of the initial temporary order and the grant of planning permission for development trumping a tree’s protected status.16 Major infrastructure projects could do better too: thousands of trees have been felled to make way for HS2, many of which have not been accounted for within the project’s ‘no net loss’ methodology.17 This means a reduction in the amount of compensatory habitat creation that is required of the project.

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Howard Gray

While there are ambitious tree-planting targets in many UK cities and ambitious rewilding projects outside of cities, there is clearly a widespread attitude that one tree is replaceable by another, regardless of its age or what it means to people.

The veteran Cubbington Pear18 is a case in point: felled, with the stump moved 100 metres under the HS2 project to re-sprout as a new sapling, its character now completely different and its services to biodiversity diminished. The question — aside from ‘who are we to end the life of a 200-year-old tree?’ — is: will the new pear reach the grand old age of 250 years without proper protection? And there was no guarantee that the moving process itself would be a success: many trees fail to establish once planted or moved,19 in some cases owing to natural processes but in many others the result of neglect or improper planting. A focus on planting numbers as opposed to a commitment to tree establishment frequently results in planting efforts going to waste, with trees dying by the roadside as a result of a lack of appropriate aftercare.

Furthermore, it is usually the case that responsibility for planting and preserving trees is assumed to rest with local authorities — but they have little control over trees in the private realm, which is where the majority of urban trees are found. Many of these trees are being lost to development or the changing preferences of households. Development has hitherto overwhelmingly failed to consider trees, and will have to be more mindful in light of the new Biodiversity Net Gain requirement.20 However, the view that ‘one tree is as good as another’ still largely prevails: sometimes a mature tree is felled only for a new tree to be replanted mere metres away from the site of the lost tree.

Within domestic settings, the conversation seems almost taboo. A person’s home is their castle, regardless of the fact that private gardens collectively form a large proportion of a city’s footprint and have impacts on the wider landscape. Even in London, private gardens make up a quarter of the city’s land mass.21 According to the Trees in Towns II report,22 ‘Two thirds of all trees and shrubs were on private property (mainly in gardens) or on less accessible public land (e.g. schools, churchyards, allotments, etc.)’. Although these trees are often smaller, they are usually more diverse and in better condition than those on public land.23 They have a significant impact on city-wide ecosystem service provision, urban biodiversity and the wellbeing of our neighbours.

But never make the mistake of falling in love with a neighbour’s tree …

So what is being done to reverse the plight of the urban tree? The Woodland Trust is campaigning hard to ensure proper protection for trees, seeking support from the public as well as from politicians.

More than 70,000 people have signed its Living Legends petition,24 which calls for legally protected status for our oldest heritage trees.

Cherry Tree Walk — but not a tree in sight

In terms of the broader urban forest, 41% of local authorities now have publicly accessible tree strategies25 that form the basis for long-term, sustainable urban forest management, helping curb unnecessary tree removal and prioritising planting in areas of need. Torfaen County Borough Council’s ‘Branching Out’ project,26 part of its tree strategy, is a great example, adding public engagement by asking residents to identify areas in which they would like to see more trees planted, creating social buy-in on public (and private) land.

New tools are also strengthening such strategies and ensuring that trees are established in areas of most need. We know that lower socio-economic status areas are also the areas in which trees are most lacking27 and their habitats the least protected.28 In December 2023 a partnership of the Woodland Trust, the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and American Forests launched the Tree Equity Score UK,29 which combines tree canopy, socio-economic, air and heat pollution data to help identify priority urban areas for increasing urban tree canopy cover for those who most need it. The Tree Equity Score should also help when it comes to starting conversations about community level tree canopy conservation, also engaging those with trees on private property in the conversation.

There are so many dimensions to an urban tree’s life that we, as planners, can have an impact upon.

With luck and the right conditions, the Sycamore Gap tree will live on in a new form on Hadrian’s Wall. But a walk down your local Elm Street,

Almond Close or Oakland Drive will soon tell you that our urban trees rarely have that opportunity.

Rumble, Dean Bell and Dannielle Sinnett are with •theHeather Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments at the

University of the West of England, Bristol. Adam Cormack is the Head of Campaigning at the Woodland Trust. Kenton Rogers is a chartered forester and Co-founder of Treeconomics. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 See S Jagger: ‘Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall cut down by ‘vandals’ ’. BBC News, 28 Sept. 2023. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-66947040 2 M A Rahman, L M F Stratopoulos, A Moser-Reischl, et al.: ‘Traits of trees for cooling urban heat islands: A metaanalysis’. Building & Environment, 2020, Vol. 170, Mar., 106606 3 P Mei, V Malik, R W Harper and J M Jiménez: ‘Air pollution, human health and the benefits of trees: a biomolecular and physiologic perspective’.

Arboricultural Journal, 2021, Vol. 43 (1), 19–40 4 R J Mitchell, P E Bellamy, C J Ellis and R Langwell Hewison: ‘OakEcol: A database of Oak-associated biodiversity within the UK’. Data in Brief, 2019, Vol. 25, 104120. www.researchgate.net/publication/333688021_ OakEcol_A_database_of_Oak-associated_biodiversity_ within_the_UK 5 J C Bikomeye, A M Beyer, J L Kwarteng and K M M Beyer: ‘Greenspace, inflammation, cardiovascular health, and cancer: A review and conceptual framework for greenspace in cardio-oncology research’. International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health, 2022, Vol. 19 (4), 2426 6 C Twohig-Bennett and A Jones: ‘The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and metaanalysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes’.

Environmental Research, 2018, Vol. 166, 628–37 7 G N Bratman, C B Anderson, M G Berman, et al.: ‘Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective’.

Science Advances, 2019, Vol. 5 (7). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax0903 8 P C L White, J Wyatt, G Chalfont, et al.: ‘Exposure to nature gardens has time-dependent associations with mood improvements for people with mid- and late-stage dementia: Innovative practice’. Dementia, 2017, Vol. 17 (5), 627–34 9 R P Taylor: ‘The potential of biophilic fractal designs to promote health and performance: A review of experiments and applications’. Sustainability, 2021, Vol. 13 (2), 823 10 See ‘Early-hours injunction halts ‘despicable’ tree felling in Plymouth’. BBC News, 15 Mar. 2023. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-64961358 11 S Shackle: ‘Chainsaws, disguises and toxic tea: the battle for Sheffield’s trees’. The Guardian, 24 Oct. 2023. www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/24/ chainsaws-disguises-and-toxic-tea-the-battle-forsheffield-trees 12 T Steward: ‘The Tooting chainsaw massacre: Council spent £80,000 to fell 140-year-old trees’. The Standard, 25 Oct. 2017. www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ the-tooting-chainsaw-massacre-felling-of-140yearoldtrees-cost-taxpayer-more-than-ps800-000-a3667356.html 13 A Benson: ‘Exploring Poland’s Natural Monuments Scheme: Protecting old and special trees in law’.

Blog entry. Woodland Trust, 18 Nov. 2023. https://ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2023/exploringpolands-natural-monuments-scheme-protecting-oldand-special-trees-in-law/

14 J Moens: ‘See the beautiful, ecologically priceless trees Italy is protecting forever’. National Geographic, 9 Sept. 2021. www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/ environment-and-conservation/2021/09/see-the-beautifulecologically-priceless-trees-italy-is-protecting-forever 15 See the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Inventory webpages, at https://ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk/ 16 ‘Tree Preservation Orders and trees in conservation areas’. Planning Practice Guidance. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Mar. 2014. www.gov.uk/guidance/tree-preservation-orders-andtrees-in-conservation-areas 17 HS2 Double Jeopardy: How the UK’s Largest Infrastructure Project Undervalued Nature and Overvalued its Compensation Measures. The Wildlife Trusts, Feb. 2023. www.wildlifetrusts.org/sites/default/files/202302/23JAN_HS2_Double_Jeopardy_FINAL01.02.23.pdf 18 ‘Cubbington pear tree sprouts into life after replanting’.

BBC News, 27 Oct. 2023. www.bbc.co.uk/news/ uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-67237632 19 ‘A14 Cambridgeshire: ‘Large proportion’ of million trees dead’. BBC News, 2 Mar. 2021. www.bbc.co.uk/ news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-56254842 20 See the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ ‘Biodiversity net gain’ website, at www.gov.uk/government/collections/biodiversity-net-gain 21 C Smith: A Garden City? Investigating the Changing Anatomy of London’s Private Gardens, and the Scale of their Loss. London Wildlife Trust, Greenspace Information for Greater London, and the Greater London Authority, 2010. Available at www.lbp.org.uk/downloads/ Publications/HabitatInfo/LondonGardenCity.pdf 22 C Britt and M Johnson: Trees in Towns II — A New Survey of Urban Trees in England. ADAS UK and Myerscough College, for the Department for Communities and Local Government, Feb. 2008. Executive Summary available at www.townforum.org.uk/press/treesintowns190208.pdf 23 A Chambers-Ostler, H Walker and K J Doick: ‘The role of the private tree in bringing diversity and resilience to the urban forest’. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 2023, 127973 24 See the Woodland Trust’s ‘Protecting our living legends’ webpage, at www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/ protecting-trees-and-woods/campaign-with-us/ tree-protection-campaign/ 25 K L Hand, H Rix, J Stokes and K J Doick: ‘The creation, content and use of urban tree strategies by English local governments’. International Journal of Urban Forestry, 2022, Vol. 44 (4), 183–207 26 See ‘Hundreds of trees to be planted’. News story.

Torfaen County Borough Council, 22 Aug. 2023. www.torfaen.gov.uk/en/News/2023/August/22Hundreds-of-trees-to-be-planted.aspx 27 ‘Tree cover, green space inequalities and deprivation in England’. Webpage. Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI), Dec. 2023. https://ocsi.uk/2023/04/12/ tree-cover-green-space-inequalities-and-deprivation-inengland/ 28 Local Green Spaces Report 2023: Increasingly Important for Community Well-being and Nature Recovery. CPRE — The Countryside Charity, Oct. 2023. www.cpre.org.uk/news/more-local-green-spaces-butdeprived-areas-still-lacking-our-report-shows/ 29 See the Tree Equity Score UK website, at https://uk.treeequityscore.org/

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‘the scale of the challenge dwarfs the available resources’ — (un)affordable housing in the south west of england Katie McClymont, Hannah Hickman, Stephen Hall, Cat Loveday and Danielle Sinnett outline the results of qualitative research, conducted among practitioners and policy-makers, on housing affordability issues and innovations in the South West of England — with findings that, although sometimes specific to circumstances in the South West, will resonate widely beyond the region In a recent issue of Town & Country Planning,1 we outlined the quantitative picture of housing affordability in the South West of England. This article reports on qualitative research with the practitioners and policy-makers who work in this area to offer more specific and nuanced understandings of their own local situations and the challenges and innovations in this complex sector.

The research drew on a survey and interviews with stakeholders from local authorities, housing associations, and regionally active housebuilders.

The survey was sent out via online software Qualtrics XM to all 32 local authorities in the South West region, including the two National Park authorities, targeting both housing and planning officers. It received 16 responses from a wide geographical spread of authorities. The interviews were with nine local authorities; specifically, with 32

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three planning officers and eight housing officers (two interviews had two interviewees from the same local authority), six chief executives, development directors from equivalent of registered social landlords (RSLs), and five interviews with planning directors (or equivalent) from a range of housebuilders active in the region. They were all conducted via Microsoft Teams in June and July 2022.

The points raised here triangulate with much of the quantitative assessment of housing affordability in the region. The South West is substantively less affordable than England as whole, with median house prices 10 times higher than median earnings.

The problem has got dramatically worse over the last 15 years and shows no signs of abating. The combination of low wages/seasonal work, protected land/limited land availability for development, second homes and tourism all come together to

Morien Robertson

Affordable housing developed by Brighter Places and Bristol Community Land Trust at Merry Hill, in Lockleaze, Bristol

make the development of genuinely affordable housing arguably more difficult in this region than in other English areas. Moreover, the project specifically asked about the impact of the Right to Buy policy on affordability in the area, and this article discusses the responses to questions on this topic too.

The discussion that follows brings out how these themes were considered by interviewees and survey respondents, and it explores some of the wider issues and solutions that local stakeholders saw as necessary if affordability was to be improved in the region.

counts as a second or holiday home.2 Moreover, this phenomenon is concentrated in certain authority areas, and, in larger authorities, within specific sub-areas. ‘… we’re looking at the percentage of the total stock that is lost to local people. [Authority x] have over 60% of housing that is either holiday or second homes … So, that’s three in every five, isn’t it, not available to them.’

Local authority interviewee

Most local authorities stated that affordability varies in their areas. Those that did not largely qualified their position by saying that they are a small (often Affordable housing in the South West of urban) area and therefore do not have the scope for England — a qualitative overview large variations. Unsurprisingly, and backed up by The main issue perceived as affecting affordability the quantitative data, coastal areas, rural villages was the mismatch between low wages (and low and areas with high tourism levels are perceived wage growth) and high and increasing house prices. to be where affordability issues are the most One local authority respondent commented that marked. Several authorities saw their area as house price increases ran at double the level of containing at least two distinct markets — for example wage increases over the last 10 years, indicating inside and outside a protected landscape such as that affordability has worsened in recent years. an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, or housing The local authority survey noted the increase in for a growing local population versus housing for second homes/holiday lets/Airbnb lets as having an incoming retirees and relocators working from impact, but this factor is hard to quantify or gather home. robust data for, reflecting wider debates about the In their policies and regulations, local authorities difficulty of defining and hence regulating what try to account for this — for example by asking for Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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different levels of reduction on market rates to be considered affordable. But as housing markets do not necessarily overlap with local authority boundaries there can be challenges here.

Several comments in response to the survey were also made about transport connectivity and how it relates to affordability, with certain areas within local authority districts described as less accessible and therefore less desirable (and more affordable).

However, this is complicated by issues of the supply chain and logistics for the provision of new affordable houses in such areas, as discussed below. RSL interviewees noted that the accessibility or peripherality of a site impacted on how easy it was to gain access for construction and therefore how affordable it could be. This relates to the issue of land: a major theme to come out of the interviews, which is discussed next.

Altogether, these issues emphasise the complexity of managing housing affordability on a local authority scale, with the question demanding higher levels of attention and resource than are readily available.

Land — supply and constraints

Partially because of the constraints imposed by protected landscapes, the cost of land was raised by interviewees from all sectors as an issue impacting heavily on affordability. This has several dimensions, as illustrated well by the quote below: ‘From a development point of view, that’s where the most development pressure is at the moment, but also where the highest environmental constraints are [ … ], especially Areas of Outstanding

Affordable housing in Southmead, Bristol

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Natural Beauty, and also the poorest transport links. So that’s the dilemma that we’re having to face. As planners, … you know, how far should we breach [ … ] quite significant environmental limits in order to boost housing numbers?’

Local authority interviewee

The limited amount of brownfield land which may be suitable for development in policy terms was often described as unviable, either because of high remediation costs or because of a combination of this and location-dictated low sale values. This stands in contrast to the very high cost of land elsewhere, a cost which is only increasing because of increased competition.

‘RSLs are competing with one another, and with housebuilders, the effect of which is to inflate the cost of land.’

RSL interviewee

‘There’s always been a shortage of land; it’s just really acute these days.’

Housebuilder interviewee

Both RSL and housebuilder interviewees commented that the buoyancy of the South West’s housing market in national terms is encouraging more national developers to seek to buy land in the region. This in turn increases the sale price of land and therefore squeezes the margins for the provision of affordable housing, either because players who would want to provide this directly can no longer afford the land or because commercial developers will reduce their provision of affordable

housing because of viability issues triggered by paying over the odds for the land in the first place.

Local authorities also commented that government requirements for them to demonstrate that they have a five-year housing land supply were inhibiting the delivery of affordable housing. The aim of these requirements may be to increase housing delivery.

However, the specific impact of this in the South West largely played out negatively in terms of affordability, with permission being granted for market-only housing instead of affordable housing. ‘… stuff coming in and should be treated as exception sites where it’s 100% affordable housing, with only small numbers of open market to help with the costs … and people are getting away with it because of the five-year land supply.’

Local authority interviewee

This supports wider arguments that the ‘place neutral’ approach of this policy has unintended (negative) consequences.3 Furthermore, development costs were seen as higher across the region than the national average because of the poor accessibility and transport links to some parts of the region, particularly Cornwall and some of the smaller rural sites. It is simply more expensive and difficult to get materials to the far ends of England, particularly to small sites which might be vital to villages but not viable on the scale of most development economics.

‘It’s hugely expensive to deliver in some areas, and therefore there’s a reason why certain geographies don’t benefit from growth or investment because the economics just don’t work.’

RSL interviewee This complex context of land markets, policy weaknesses and second-home demands means that delivery of genuinely affordable housing products for local residents is constrained more than headline figures may indicate. Across the interviewees, it was evident that shared ownership was a preferred type of affordable housing offered by developers — to meet the challenges described above in terms of land and markets, but not in terms of need.

Right to Buy

The Right to Buy was considered by all local authority interviewees to have contributed to a substantial depletion — quantitatively and qualitatively — of the affordable housing stock, over time. ‘… it’s the best homes that are sold, in the better locations, and they’re just not being replaced at the rate that they’re being sold at.’

Local authority interviewee

The principle of the Right to Buy itself was not widely questioned, but the subsequent impact it had on stock was, as discussed above, and the

impact on rent levels in the private rented sector was also identified as a major problem.

‘What typically happens [ … ] is that for these homes, the council tenant buys them; great.

That’s in theory. That’s a good thing. You know, that’s not a bad thing. But the problem is the unintended consequences of that when they eventually decide to sell their home for whatever reason, and then eventually it will come into the hands of someone in the private renting market [who] will then look to put the price up as high as they can get it, which then in turn further heats up the market and pushes up rental prices [ … ] which means that people can’t access rental homes easily.’

Local authority interviewee

From the survey, most local authorities reported that the Right to Buy had an impact on housing affordability in their area — specifically in terms of its legacy, owing to the lack of one-to-one replacements for stock sold privately under the scheme.

But the issue was more complex and varied than just a quantitative loss of council homes. Some authorities stated that the Right to Buy has provided some of the more affordable private-sale stock in their area, hence widening choice in affordable provision, but more broadly across the region the loss of social rented accommodation and the lack of any mechanism to ensure adequate replacements for every lost social housing unit remains highly problematic, with one authority stating that 20,000 units were sold via the Right to Buy and that they have 16,000 applicants on their waiting list.

Some authorities stated in the survey that this has been particularly damaging in rural areas, where it is very expensive to build replacement social housing, with some councils saying that they are buying back former council houses to become part of their affordable stock. This is costly, and is compounded by the loss of revenue from the loss of rents from council properties that have been sold. These dwellings also prove particularly difficult to replace given the high unit costs of construction on small rural sites. ‘ … we signed up for this one-for-one replacement, but you can’t replace one for one ever; it’s almost one to three, one to four …’

Local authority interviewee

In one case, an officer noted that, had properties in a particular village not been sold, the council would not be exploring new development on a rural exception site because the former council stock would have met the housing need in that location.

National solutions (definitions and policy bars)

Although the picture across the South West region may seem bleak, and is definitely challenging, local actors are engaging in innovative actions to try Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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to increase the quality and quantity of affordable housing in their area, and they have clear insight on the sorts of changes which are needed but are beyond their current jurisdiction.

Among all interviewees, but particularly the local authority and RSL respondents, there was a wish for clearer definitions, reinforced by specific policies grounded in genuine affordability for those on the lower incomes seen across the region. Responses included: ‘[Affordable housing] is just the wrong word. It’s just not affordable any more and hasn’t been for some time.’

RSL interviewee

‘Social rents are the key. Everyone wants to pay a social rent and our policy over the years hasn’t been specific enough, so it allows affordable rent.

So, all the schemes coming forward are based on affordable rent, and we know that when we come to let the properties on affordable rent, they are not affordable … a lot of the RPs [registered providers] want to do social rent, but their business models haven’t allowed it.’

Local authority interviewee

‘At the local level, innovation,

creativity and leadership were evident ... such initiatives were seen not as solving affordability issues, but, if operated with further resourcing, as other ways that locally sensitive and financially viable homes to meet communities’ needs can be provided’

both slowed down decision-making in terms of granting planning permissions and restricted the time available to negotiate on details which could be the difference between approval and rejection.

There were strong calls from all respondents for central government to increase funding for local authorities so that they can speed up their service, but also so that there would be more scope for local innovation, as discussed below.

Proposed local solutions

At the local level, innovation, creativity and leadership were evident, with housing and planning professionals across the region having an in-depth understanding of the workings of the housing marking in their areas and of ways in which it could be improved for social and environmental benefit.

As the title of this piece indicates, such initiatives were seen not as solving affordability issues, but, if operated with further resourcing, as other ways that locally sensitive and financially viable homes to meet communities’ needs can be provided.

Many local authorities concurred that a more proactive approach is required. The practice of ‘housing enabling’ is reported in local authorities across the South West, with the job title of many of our interviewees being ‘housing enabling officers’.

‘If we left it to the market to deliver the allocated brownfields sites, a lot of them just won’t move forward because they’re not profitable enough.

Whereas, if we take our land to market, we can take a view about the land receipt that we get and enable the full policy to be met.’

Local authority interviewee

Where resources and political priority allowed, local authorities can and do co-ordinate to bring sites forward for development. This can involve securing additional government funding for remediation, promoting small sites with SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), etc., and providing infrastructure and community consultation.

Local authorities have, themselves, become more The lack of clarity and consistency between local active housebuilders, and such efforts are typically authorities, housebuilders, members of the public pursued through a new local housing company or and government has led to inconsistencies and at an existing arm’s-length management organisation. times a weakening of genuinely useful provision. It These projects are often promoted as exemplars was not that respondents were against a range of of affordable housing that meet broader policy affordable housing ‘products’, with some respondents objectives such as good urban design, sustainable discussing the importance of affordable home development, and tackling fuel poverty. ownership as an overlooked category. It is more ‘We are trying to deliver a better product … that the use of multiple terms and definitions could homes that are well designed, well built, future lead to a watering down of aspiration and the lack proofed. We can do it. It’s viable. So, other people of provision to meet genuine need. could do it too. That’s what we’re trying to get to.’

Local authority interviewee Furthermore, respondents from all fields, but especially housebuilders, saw planning as a barrier.

Furthermore, all local authority participants were However, this was not about the planning system supportive of community-led housing projects. per se, but more about its operation in practice — and, in particular, the understaffing and underfunding There was a broad consensus that such provision, while small in aggregate terms, costly, and time of local authority planning departments, which has 36

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consuming, was crucial in meeting very specific housing needs, important politically, in terms of local empowerment, and perhaps more acceptable locally due to its community-led credentials.

‘A small number of houses does make a massive difference to a community. Young people are struggling to find homes in the villages they’ve been brought up in and probably work in. There is a danger of communities becoming unsustainable and retirement villages where the cleaners, the gardeners and all the rest come in from a long way out of the village.’

Local authority interviewee

Such local responses, and their positive value, were commented on by housebuilders and RSLs, too. Smaller, regional housebuilders were perceived as more committed to their local area, and more willing to develop higher-quality products which are more sensitive to local needs. Smaller-scale companies were seen as less likely to renegotiate on viability either pre- or post-consent. As they generally did not have a large pipeline of projects, negotiating on viability would create delay, and they needed to get on site quicker than some of the major players to maintain their cash flow.

‘We don’t like going to do viability appraisals.

There are [a] complete nuisance.’

SME housing builder interview

A typical RSL interviewee comment was that sometimes: ‘ ... opportunities come up and we take them [ … ] we get quite a number of people just contacting us through our website saying ‘I’ve got this bit of land. The village needs some housing. Are you able to help?’ ’ RSL interviewee

Local landowners were not seen as merely wanting to maximise profit on land for development; rather, there were at times feelings of duty and commitment to the local area and its ongoing future, reflecting justified fears that, without affordable housing, the viability of key community assets such as a school, shops and pubs is also under threat, especially in areas of high second-home ownership/holiday lets.

Understanding this diversity, distinctiveness and nuance in local or sub-local housing markets is key to the delivery of affordable housing. There is not a single ‘silver bullet’ to solve affordability problems, but more resourced local authorities with the time to engage actively with their place would be a good start.

across the whole of England (and beyond!), but this study has in several cases demonstrated the detailed implications of policy and definitional shortcomings.

Questions of the cost of land and developer viability are also national issues,4 but the intersection of such questions with specific issues of logistical costs and protected landscapes demonstrates how they do not impact sites or housing markets evenly.

Within the South West there is innovation in the provision of affordable housing, from communities, RSLs, and local authorities. Their stories of success are inspiring and need greater amplification in housing policy discussions, but they are small in scale, unlike the problems that the region faces. The problems in the South West are in some ways specific to the region, but the claim, eloquently put by one participant, that ‘the scale of the challenge dwarfs the available resources’ is likely to resonate much more widely.

Dr Katie McClymont is Associate Professor in Urban •Planning, Hannah Hickman is Associate Professor —

Planning Practice, Dr Stephen Hall is Associate Professor, Cat Loveday is Senior Lecturer (Planning and Development), and Danielle Sinnett is Professor in Sustainable Built Environments and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments, all at the University of the West of England, Bristol. The report on which this article draws is available at https://homesforthesouthwest.co.uk/home/ affordability-report/. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 D Sinnett, K McClymont, H Hickman, Z Fouad and S Hall: ‘The challenge of delivering affordable housing in the South West’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Mar–Apr., 102–107 2 C Paris: ‘Second homes, housing consumption and planning responses’. In M Scott, N Gallent and N Gkartzios (Eds): The Routledge Companion to Rural Planning. Taylor & Francis, 2019, Chap. 23 3 D McGuinness, P Greenhalgh and P Grainger: ‘Does one size fit all? Place-neutral national planning policy in England and its impact on housing land supplies and local development plans in North East England’.

Local Economy, 2018, Vol. 33 (3), 329–46 4 A Layard: ‘Planning by numbers: affordable housing and viability in England’. In M Raco and F Savini (Eds): Planning and Knowledge: How New Forms of Technocracy are Shaping Contemporary Cities.

Policy Press, 2019, pp. 213–24

Conclusions

The issues that this research highlights go well beyond the geographical scope of the South West region. Questions of policy requirements and definitions of affordable housing have implications Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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food-growing’s crucial role in tackling our greatest challenges Daniel Scharf considers how agro-ecological enterprises, including urban food-growing, could and should contribute to both wellbeing and our attempts to address the nature and climate crises Although planning legislation is based on a Town and Country Planning Act, the planning profession and its institute is defined by the term ‘town planning’ — no mention of country. But clearly the land use planning system has a role to play in the countryside, and it has long been argued that its influence should be extended.

The relative sparsity of control over changes in the countryside, and in agriculture in particular, is reflected in the lack of knowledge about food-growing among planning practitioners. It is unfortunate that most of those with an interest in alternatives to conventional agriculture — such agro-ecology, regenerative agriculture, organic farming and indigenous food and farming systems — tend to see ‘the planners’ as more foe than friend. Planners entering this territory have had to fight through a mixture of suspicion, befuddlement, distrust, and disappointment. Small farmers and growers are generally people who can appreciate the importance and potential of the planning system, but they can be impatient and intolerant of the bureaucracy and inconsistency that often comes through engagement with planners, both in local government officers and in the Planning Inspectorate.

In recent times there have been a number of articles in Town & Country Planning reflecting the growing interest in accessible open space and exploring the benefits and challenges of tree38

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planting, nature recovery, green infrastructure, nature-based solutions, ecosystem services, and Biodiversity Net Gain. But because most of those working very hard on community farms, social orchards, forest gardens and community-supported agriculture (often based on agro-ecological principles) have little if any time or energy to deal with the planning system, it behoves professional planners to be especially sensitive to their needs and demands. Only when these voices are heard and respected will these sectors be able to grow and thrive in urban, peri-urban and more rural areas.

This article aims to draw some of the promising recent initiatives in food-growing and agro-ecology to the attention of over-worked planners in order to energise the conversation and improve relationships with those working in what promises to be an area critical to some of our greatest challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, food security, water quality, and mental and physical health.

Local food-growing and the bioregion

Local food production and distribution was expected to play an important role in the original Garden City model. In fact, the TCPA is largely responsible for an extremely useful pamphlet on this subject, claiming that: ‘The idea of a sustainable local food system incorporates everything from encouraging healthy

iStock/IR Stone

eating and community food-growing, to thinking about commercial opportunities for growing, processing and distributing food within and beyond communities. This relates to a continuum of scales, from the wider considerations of food supply and the relationship between agriculture on the peri-urban and rural edges of communities, to urban farms, new forests, farmers’ markets, and food co-operatives, and right down to green roofs or walls on individual buildings. At all scales, food-growing considerations and providing opportunities for food-growing have implications for the way that a place is planned, designed, delivered and managed in the long term.’ 1 It is unclear that this message is being heard by planning authorities in either urban or rural areas.

But before looking at local food, it might be helpful to think of the bioregion as setting the guiding framework for new planting and growing.2 An increasing number of areas are attracting groups of enthusiasts who believe that local people can develop an understanding of local climatic conditions, water systems, and indigenous flora and fauna.

Understanding how the physical developments of urban areas and transport links can damage or serve to enhance local ecological systems within a bioregion should form the basis of town and country planning.

The urgent requirement is to stop biodiversity loss and to intervene in ways that will enable natural systems to regenerate with the minimum of human involvement. There is a lot of work to be done in defining and mapping the features that comprise the bioregions in which we live and develop land, and to use the resulting data to enable nature recovery —protection is no longer enough.

The national context

At the higher, national level: ‘Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] is responsible for coordinating the government’s overall approach to rural policy and [it is] working with MHCLG [now DLUHC], BEIS, DCMS and other departments to ensure that the needs of and opportunities presented by rural communities and businesses are reflected in the government’s levelling up agenda.’ 3

Defra is responsible for the implementation of Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes and in its June 2022 Food Strategy document 4 committed to creating a Land Use Framework for England. It is this latter task that should involve planners at all levels at a time that they are in danger of being bypassed or sidelined. For example, planners do not appear to have been given a role in the Office of Environmental Protection set up under Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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the Environment Act 2022. The recent government commitment to protecting 30% of rural areas/ landscape will need to be managed on an active basis, ensuring that means of protection really do fit with nature recovery and local food supply systems.

With regard to ELM,5 there are three schemes to reward environmental land management: • the Sustainable Farming Incentive; • Local Nature Recovery; and • Landscape Recovery.

and its significant environmental impact grow in importance, legislative changes might be required for planners to become less passive and more proactive.8 One of the neglected aspects of new climatechange-mitigating planting is the potential to grow food/drink, medicines, and timber products. The planning system is short of both the necessary skills and a belief that urban and peri-urban foodgrowing could or should lawfully feature in planmaking or decision-taking. But there is public All are set up in accordance with the goals of the interest in how food is produced and in food security 25 Year Environment Plan and a commitment to and sovereignty at both local and national levels net-zero emissions by 2050. Farmers and other land that relates closely to the use and development of managers may enter into agreements to be paid for land.9 Some of the potential material considerations and potential benefits if operators of the planning delivering: system cared to look for the available evidence • clean and plentiful water; include the following: • clean air; • thriving plants and wildlife; • Carbon emissions: Sequestration of carbon in protection from environmental hazards; ecologically farmed/gardened soils is a good way • of reducing carbon concentrations from over • reduction of and adaptation to climate change; and 420 parts per million to under 350 parts per million.

• beauty, heritage and engagement with the • Climate change adaptation: Agro-ecology and environment. urban food-growing depend on relatively high levels of manual labour, implying greater It is unclear whether these schemes will operate resilience and less dependency on fossil fuels. as well as or instead of measures to increase food • Biodiversity: Organic farming and gardening would be conducive to a diversity of flora and security. fauna in urban and peri-urban areas.

Defra’s Path to Sustainable Farming 6 states that by 2028 there should be: • Soil health: Greater weight needs to be given to the protection of best and most versatile (BMV) ‘• a renewed agricultural sector, producing healthy food for consumption at home and abroad, agricultural land and to soils in general and their where farms can be profitable and economically regeneration. sustainable without subsidy • Transport: Local or regional food systems should reduce the ‘food miles’ arising from production, • farming and the countryside contributing significantly to environmental goals including processing, and distribution. addressing climate change’.

• Employment: There are examples of livelihoods being made from very small acreages, indicating However, it is reasonable to be sceptical about the potential for local jobs from small-scale these statements given the lack of both evidence farming/growing. and agreement on how the goals could be • Physical and mental health: This is where town and country planning started (as in the Garden achieved.

City movement), and the Covid pandemic has Agro-ecology benefits given rise to a greater understanding of the health It is worth noting that the National Farmers’ benefits to be derived from food-growing.

Union is being proactive in this space, committing • Housing: Landworker housing would, by definition, meet the need for local and affordable UK agriculture to becoming net-zero carbon by housing, without which small-scale and organic 2040. Estimates of the carbon-dioxide-equivalent food production is unlikely to thrive. emissions from the food supply system vary. The World Health Organization cites a figure of 40% of • Viability: The test of the economic sustainability of new rural enterprises in the countryside, and total emissions when land use changes are factored the test of essential needs, are not applied in, and UK imports must assume responsibility for consistently (the demise of Planning Policy some of that. UK emissions could be around 13% Statement 7 has not helped here), deterring of its total, but only 10% of this is in the form of potential growers from engaging with the carbon dioxide, around 40% in the form of nitrous planning system. dioxide (N2O), and 50% as methane (CH4) from livestock/ruminants.7 • Food distribution: As well as the transport impacts, The transition to net-zero farming could involve the issue of the ready availability of healthy and changes to regimes that engage the planning relatively unhealthy foods (i.e. through fast-food legislation as it stands. If food supply and security outlets near schools) has found its way into 40

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Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

planning policy and decisions, albeit with uncertain effects.

Flooding: By concentrating on the absorbency of • soils through pasture, swales, tree/bush-planting and mulching, agro-ecology and forest farming could have an important role to play in reducing flooding.

• Landscape impacts: By increasing the planting of trees and hedges, the landscape of small-scale farming would be materially different from that of industrial agriculture and the current setting of rural settlements.

• Building in rural areas: Ideally, the centre (housing and buildings) of most agro-ecological enterprises would take place close to existing settlements, which would minimise the visual impact on the open countryside.

• Recreation: Opportunities for play and recreation are already given significant weight in plan-making and decision-taking. However, the role being played by community farms/woodland and social orchards is not being adequately recognised.

• Localism: Small-scale farming mostly relies on local labour, and local housing and local markets and should be covered by all Neighbourhood Development Plans.

• Community development: In a similar vein and complementary to localism, community farms (including community-supported agriculture) could demonstrate the elements of community involvement.

• Waste reduction: Waste recycling is intrinsic to agro-ecology, using waste from the growing, processing, distribution (and even the consumption) of animal and vegetable produce.

• Heritage landscapes: Small-scale growing can be sensitive to the protection of ancient hedges and trees and archaeological remains.

• Access to land: The opportunity to start or

develop an agricultural enterprise will often depend on the affordability of both land and housing. If the public benefits of agro-ecology have been established, then planners should assist with the availability of affordable housing and land through development plans and in deciding applications. There is economic value in growing consumable products and timber, even if not at commercial scales.

• Sustainable development: The presumption in favour of sustainable development (implying a presumption against unsustainable development?) is supposed to be the golden thread running through plan-making and decision-taking.

Forms of food-growing activity and links to planning

There are specific forms of food-growing that could and should be of interest to planners. Forest gardening10 (see also permaculture11 and social farms, gardens and orchards12) can have a number of important advantages over conventional landscaping and planting schemes, as set out in the National Forest Gardening Scheme’s Forest Gardening Supplementary Planning Document (SPD).13 When properly understood and implemented, forest gardening can contribute to conserving and boosting local flora and fauna, and also to community development and the learning about plants, animals and fungi and their use in private and community kitchens.

There is a lack of experience of establishing new forest gardens, but it seems likely that their success would depend on the appointment of a suitably qualified horticultural adviser, equipped to enable new residents to enhance the biodiversity and food-growing potential of the area.14 Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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The adviser could help with recommending how the landscaping of public areas might be maintained and could suggest planting schemes and practices in private gardens, taking into account matters of soil type and aspect. Fruit trees could be chosen to increase fertilisation. Screening could be carefully located and taken into account in planting plans.

The number of pollinator-friendly plants could be maximised. A tool-sharing scheme could be established (for mowers, strimmers, trimmers, and even spades and forks — and greenhouses and cold frames). Seed-buying could be another saving.

Some householders could specialise in vegetables, others in flowers and children’s play, and gardening clubs could be established. Gardening assistants could and should be employed and paid to secure the benefits that are achievable from forest gardening.

It is hard to overstate the potential benefits of food-growing in urban areas — but nor should the difficulties in realising them be underestimated.

Where a dedicated adviser is not available, reliance might have to be placed on training and materials accessible to both residents and those in local authorities, housing associations, and health authorities (for example social prescribers).15 Some of the physical appendages to urban food-growing could engage planners who, again, will have to have knowledge of this sector in order to assess their merits. Community gardens are also being targeted by social prescribing in the expectation that the benefits to mental health arising from growing-food and relaxing in a socially rich and green environment can be realised.16 The planning system should be taking some responsibility for the lack of opportunities for community gardens that could be provided through planning obligations or CIL contributions as part of green infrastructure. Unless planners understand and assist in enhancing biodiversity and foodgrowing in urban areas, there will be increasing pressure to apply the principle of Biodiversity Net Gain at a landscape scale and far from the residents of the developments to which the measures were intended to relate.

The planning system should also be shouldering responsibility for the failure to provide for opportunities for small-scale farming in the urban fringe. Local and Neighbourhood Plans could include policies describing a mechanism for the provision of affordable land and associated housing when housing is being proposed on the edge of settlements. A consequence of this failure is the continuing testing of the planning system to allow for residential accommodation in more remote countryside locations, applying the test of essential need set out in paragraph. 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework. There is an unacceptable level of uncertainty as to how the exception — ‘there is an essential need for a rural worker, including those taking majority control of a farm business, to live 42

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permanently at or near their place of work in the countryside’ 17 — will be applied by the local planning authority or the Planning Inspectorate, giving rise to unnecessary financial and personal costs.

The Ecological Land Cooperative model18 has gained acceptance, but, with the failure of planners to assist in the provision of new farming opportunities in the urban fringe, its schemes are still being limited to relatively remote locations.

The TCPA has identified ways in which foodgrowing can be incorporated into planting schemes, by embedding aims in local policy: ‘• If undertaking a review, consider how existing green land can be managed for food production and how this might relate to food supply for local communities.

• Include requirements for community foodgrowing and considerations of wider sustainable food systems in strategic and detailed local policy, including for site-specific briefs.’ 1 The introduction of Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs) is welcome and overdue, but the RTPI has suggested that weaknesses need to be recognised and addressed: ‘ … there is insufficient co-ordination between LNRSs and Local Plans. [ … ] Local Plans will have to follow LNRSs, but there is no corresponding requirement for the LNRSs to follow Local Plans.

This seems a very impractical state of affairs.

Furthermore, the government has set up no mechanisms by which an LNRS would relate to a number of different Local Plans in the same territory. To remedy this, the RTPI has proposed that ‘Green Growth Boards’ [ … ] be set up to align the various Local Plans with each other, and also with LNRSs and local transport plans. [ … ] The RTPI’s proposal for Local Environment Improvement Plans would [reduce the current high level of complexity of environmental plans] by going beyond the limited scope of LNRSs to embrace other key issues of water and climate (issues that are of the greatest concern to planners).’ 19 The RTPI has also expressed concerns about the capacity of the planning system to operate the Biodiversity Net Gain provisions.

There is also the movement towards ‘wilding’, the most prominent exponent being the Knepp Estate.20 Where this implies the substitution of income from visitors for that from conventional crops, planners are likely to become involved. This has already raised the question of whether such schemes are better suited to poorer-quality land where a dip in agricultural productivity might be less pronounced.

Would and should planners be impressed by the potential income from carbon credits and biodiversity offsets if these are achieved at the expense of

arable crops? Simon Fairlie, co-editor of The Land magazine, has argued that: ‘The strategy of rewilding large tracts of productive land in the UK, if it means outsourcing our food production and its environmental impact to other countries, is one we should reject.’ 21 And then there is the vision of ‘precision farming’, which seeks to reconcile sustainability and productivity, seeing agriculture as: ‘one of the only global industries with the potential to reshape our relationship with the natural world. From climate-smart seeds to biosolutions which conserve water and promote carbon sequestration, we’re seeing farmers increasingly embrace technologies and solutions that are delivering shared benefits for their yields, livelihoods, and planet health.’ 22 In summary, those operating, observing and engaging with the planning system should all be making more effort to follow official sources of advice and other relevant information sources on how rural and urban food-growing could and should contribute to human wellbeing and assist in negotiating the crises in both nature and climate breakdown.

On that score, there seems to be a tendency for Defra to be the lead ministry, even though many if not most of the interests of acknowledged public importance could and should be seen as material planning considerations. But there is a growth of information and pleading from less official sources, only some of which have been discussed here — and although potentially valuable initiatives are under way, they are unlikely to gain traction and deliver significant public benefits unless and until the planning system takes notice and recognises the importance of regenerative farming and gardening practices.

•

Daniel Scharf is a planning consultant and blogs at ‘DanthePlan’ (www.dantheplan.blogspot.com). The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 Green Infrastructure and Food. PERFECT project. TCPA, Dec. 2019. https://tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2022/03/Factsheet-4.pdf 2 See the Bioregional Learning Centre website, at https://bioregion.org.uk/ 3 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Outcome Delivery Plan: 2021 to 2022. Policy Paper.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Jul. 2021. www.gov.uk/government/publications/ department-for-environment-food-and-rural-affairsoutcome-delivery-plan/department-for-environmentfood-and-rural-affairs-outcome-delivery-plan-2021to-2022 4 Government Food Strategy. CP 698. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Jun. 2002. www.gov.uk/government/publications/governmentfood-strategy

5 See the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs ‘Future of farming in England’ webpages, at www.gov.uk/government/publications/environmentalland-management-schemes-overview 6 The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Nov. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/publications/agriculturaltransition-plan-2021-to-2024 7 See the National Farmers’ Union ‘Achieving net zero — meeting the climate change challenge’ webpage, at www.nfuonline.com/updates-andinformation/achieving-net-zero-meeting-the-climatechange-challenge/ 8 See D Scharf: ‘If agro-ecology is different how can planning promote it?’. DanthePlan blog entry, 27 Jan. 2016. https://dantheplan.blogspot.com/2016/01/if-agroecology-is-different-how-can.html 9 See D Scharf: ‘Oxford Real Farming Conference 2017’.

DanthePlan blog entry, 6 Jan. 2017. https://dantheplan.blogspot.com/2017/01/oxford-realfarming-conference-2017.html 10 See the National Forest Gardening Scheme website, at https://nationalforestgardening.org/ 11 See the Permaculture Association website, at www.permaculture.org.uk/ 12 See the Social & Farm Gardens website, at www.farmgarden.org.uk/about-us 13 Forest Gardening Supplementary Planning Document (SPD). National Forest Gardening Scheme, Apr. 2020. https://drive.google.com/ file/d/1axaIWMl1n4vKWAjFYRaHMfFI6DEbYURD/ view?pli=1 14 See D Scharf: ‘The role of a horticultural adviser’.

DanthePlan blog entry, 13 Apr. 2018. https://dantheplan.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-role-ofhorticultural-adviser.html 15 See, for example, Edge Landscaping’s ‘Urban Food Production Toolkit’, available at https://edgelandscaping.uk/toolkit.aspx 16 See, for example, the Stonehill Community Garden website, at www.stonehillgardens.co.uk/ 17 National Planning Policy Framework. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Dec. 2023, para. 84 a). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/65829e99fc07f3000d8d4529/NPPF_ December_2023.pdf 18 See the Ecological Land Cooperative website, at https://ecologicalland.coop/ 19 See NPPF Consultation Response, on the RTPI’s response to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ consultation Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: Reforms to National Planning Policy.

Royal Town Planning Institute, Mar. 2023. www.rtpi.org.uk/consultations-rtpi/2023/march/ march-2023-nppf-consultation-response/ 20 See the Knepp website, at https://knepp.co.uk/ 21 S Fairlie: ‘Rewilding or local food production?’. Blog entry, Lowimpact.org, 26 Feb. 2023. www.lowimpact.org/ posts/rewilding-or-local-food-production 22 ‘Can Britain’s farmers save the planet? How science and technology is transforming UK agriculture’.

Website article. Politics Home, Feb. 2023. www.politicshome.com/members/article/can-britainsfarmers-save-the-planet-how-science-and-technologyis-transforming-uk-agriculture?

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bracknell — lessons in new town centre regeneration

All photos: Victor Nicholls

Victor Nicholls and Emma Street look at the key elements of the regeneration of the town centre of Bracknell — so far the only ‘Mark One’ British New Town centre to have been substantially redeveloped — and outline the lessons offered by Bracknell’s regeneration story for practitioners and others interested in planning and delivering the renewal of urban centres, including those working in New Towns

‘Lexicon Proms’ at the newly created event space in Bracknell

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Part of the original town centre, pre-regeneration

Bracknell, a town in South East England’s economically buoyant Thames Valley sub-region, is one of the United Kingdom’s first wave of New Towns. It is the only British New Town to have had its town centre comprehensively regenerated.

This article draws on the authors’ ongoing research collaboration with the local authority and commercial landowner-developer partners. It summarises the key elements of the regeneration with a view to identifying lessons for practitioners and others

interested in planning and delivering the renewal of urban centres, particularly those in New Towns.

Our research also highlights broader lessons for those involved in other complex urban development projects.

In 2016, the authors began research on the regeneration of Bracknell town centre. The project benefited from the unique insights (and opportunities) resulting from one of the authors’ role as Assistant Chief Executive at Bracknell Forest Council, the local authority responsible for Bracknell town centre.

He led the council’s regeneration team over a 17-year period. This provided unrivalled access to project information and the key actors involved, and a series of interviews were undertaken with politicians, investors, developers and other professionals engaged in planning and delivering the project.

The research has generated two free-to-download research reports,1 published in 2019 and 2022, on which this article draws.

Bracknell town centre

Bracknell is located 30 miles (48 kilometres) west of London and is one of the original ‘Mark One’ New Towns created in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Bracknell Forest local authority area, for which Bracknell town is the main urban centre, had a population of approximately 125,000 people in 2021.2 The New Towns were designed to offer

Town centre demolition in progress, 2014 Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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Signage in the newly-created Eagle Lane, home of food and beverage

residents a good quality of life, with an emphasis on extensive areas of green space and modern, spacious family housing, and access to local employment and community facilities. The UK’s New Towns programme was ambitious in both scale and scope. While various aspects of its legacy are debated, the New Towns programme continues to be seen as an example of how to plan and deliver communities to meet a range of societal and environmental challenges.3 Bracknell’s New Town heritage presented particular regeneration challenges. For example, the town centre was built over a relatively short period rather than evolving organically over decades (or even centuries). The architecture was heavily influenced by post-war trends based on Modernist architectural principles, a style that fell out of fashion in subsequent decades, including among Bracknell businesses and residents.

The physical structure of the town centre’s buildings deteriorated at a uniform rate, presenting a substantial challenge for landowners and tenants.

Retail units appropriate to needs in the 1950s and 1960s did not match the requirements of modern operators, and were expensive to reconfigure, limiting the refurbishment and renovation options available.

Bracknell’s road network reflected a post-war ‘engineering-led’ approach to urban design. The town centre was contained within a ring road which constrained further growth and limited flexibility.

The private car dominated, making pedestrian and cycle movements difficult and unattractive.

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The regeneration challenge associated with the town centre’s public realm was also significant.

In the light of the issues set out above, and compounded by stiff retail competition from surrounding towns, the local authority resolved to promote the idea of redeveloping Bracknell town centre. During the 1990s, these attempts were planned in collaboration with a single major town centre landowner. However, in 1999, these attempts came to an end, with major redevelopment proposals being rejected by central government.

However, one positive outcome of the process was clear government advice that the council should prepare a comprehensive masterplan, involving extensive engagement with surrounding towns, local interest groups, the regional assembly, potential occupiers, and residents. The new masterplan was adopted in 2002 and formed the basis for the subsequent regeneration story.

Key elements of the regeneration scheme

In September 2017, Bracknell town centre saw the opening of the first substantial phase of its regeneration. The scheme (branded ‘The Lexicon’) redeveloped and renewed the majority of the town centre. It comprises 60,000 square metres of new retail space, an 11-screen cinema, and 12 new restaurants, arranged in a series of new streets and squares while retaining the essential form of the original New Town street layout.

The Lexicon was a joint project between Bracknell Forest Council and existing town centre landowners

The Avenue, one of the principal new streets

Legal & General and Schroders, who pooled their assets to form the Bracknell Regeneration Partnership (BRP). The principal funding for the project came from the BRP, which also provided the scheme’s development manager.

fundamental in planning, shaping and delivering the scheme, and helped to resolve many of the complexities involved in the scheme’s construction.

Risk and decisions

Projects of the scale, cost and complexity of The Lexicon feature a significant number of risks; In 2021, we interviewed many of the same actors managing them was essential to scheme delivery who were still involved in the planning, management and was one of the most important aspects in the and operation of The Lexicon. We wanted to test regeneration story over many years. whether (and how) the regeneration had been The scale of investment required to transform assessed in terms of whether it had proven to be ‘a Bracknell town centre was substantial. The 2002 success’. This felt especially relevant in the context masterplan contained an estimated £750 million of of low market confidence in the retail sector and the development (at 2002 prices). The Lexicon scheme effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The rest of this was valued at some £240 million alone. article outlines some of the factors that underpinned Partners developed a shared understanding of the the delivery of Bracknell’s regenerated town centre. key project milestones and drivers, providing the We hope that they provide some food for thought basis for decisions about risk. Risk management for practitioners involved in the planning, delivery and techniques were used — for example informationoperation of complex urban regeneration projects. sharing, structured and informal communication practices, and the close monitoring of project risk Work with complexity factors. However, some risks, such as those As a result of its New Town history, the majority presented by the global financial crisis, or changing of land in the town centre was owned by only two views from development partners in response to major landowners. In theory, this should have made market instability, simply could not be anticipated. land assembly less complex than in places with From the perspective of the investors, securing multiple owners. However, historically, the landowners’ formal commitment to the scheme from the two ambitions had not always been aligned. The local anchor tenants (Marks & Spencer and Fenwick) was authority acted as broker, helping the landowners another significant element in managing commercial to recognise their shared interests, resulting in the risk. The anchors helped to boost momentum and formation of the BRP. The collaborative approach confidence in the scheme among other potential established between the project partners was occupiers.

Learning from success

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Risk management underpinned all stages of the regeneration, and the ability of key actors to take bold decisions, involving balancing risk against delivery, was key.

tenants, operators, and, of course, residents and future users of the town centre.

Debates centred on the economic weakness of the town centre, its role in eroding civic selfconfidence, and its inability to meet the needs of Politics and power 21st-century retailing. There were only five listed Town centre regeneration became a shared buildings within the footprint of the regeneration objective for all political parties on the council. This scheme, and while some concerns were voiced, for endured over many years, meaning that the town example about a post-war mural and the relocation centre never became a ‘political football’. Crossof a bandstand of the same era, few heritageparty support was a major factor in ensuring that related issues were raised. Combined with the the scheme eventually came to fruition. deteriorating physical fabric of the centre, the view The council made the creation of ‘a town fit for was taken that only demolition and redevelopment the 21st century’ its top corporate priority. This was could deliver a solution that could create a new sustained over nearly two decades and through a social, cultural and economic heart for Bracknell. series of local elections, giving the project a prominent It is worth noting that the masterplanning process, place in all aspects of the council’s business. It sent a and the design and construction decisions that clear message to external audiences, including local followed on from it, represented thinking from the residents, that regeneration was fundamentally early 2000s (or earlier). While the masterplan did important. It meant that the officer and developer promote the use of renewable energy (securing EU teams could focus on the complex challenges of funding to develop the concepts), agendas such as delivering regeneration without needing to divert decarbonisation that are now front and centre of time and resources to addressing local political regeneration practice may well have led to different conflict or other competing local government issues. design decisions being taken.

The project also benefited from the council being Once a broad vision for comprehensive town centre a unitary authority, rather than part of two-tier local regeneration had been established, more detailed government. This hugely simplified problem-solving planning and design-related questions needed to be and delivery. addressed. What should be the scale, urban form, mix of uses, and look and feel of the scheme? As Developing a vision — a powerful tool Bracknell is a former New Town, the process could The masterplanning process was at the heart of not readily draw on a diverse series of historic or the regeneration story, and community engagement other reference points. One method of coming to and realistic and open collaboration with landowners, decisions was to organise focus groups (residents/ investors and partners was key. The masterplanning businesses/potential occupiers, etc.), which helped process was used to build consensus and lay the to inform the choice of materials and the look and foundations to guide the overall approach to the feel of the buildings. project. The vision set out in the 2002 masterplan Partnerships and collaboration was an important vehicle in establishing the core Building and sustaining trust between project principles that would eventually shape more stakeholders was valuable, especially during times detailed designs and plans for the town centre. of project uncertainty and stress. The culture of The masterplanning process involved extensive engagement. Later in the programme, the masterplan partnership working between development partners was one of the most important success factors in was used in dialogue with investors, businesses, delivery; this has also been sustained during the potential tenants, and key decision-makers in current operational phase of the town centre. Many government. At many stages in the process, the project partners were of the view that the strength masterplan was an important vehicle to re-engage of partnership working in Bracknell was exceptional; with local residents, some of whom were deeply a different, perhaps less effective scheme may have sceptical about regeneration, having seen previous resulted without this strong collaborative working attempts fail. culture.

While the goal of delivering comprehensive Team members clearly took pride in the scheme, regeneration remained consistent, the vision proved flexible enough to respond to fundamental challenges, were committed to its success, and invested significantly in the design and delivery of The many of which could not have been anticipated.

Lexicon. This was demonstrated at corporate level Place-making and design through a high-level culture of partnership working A fundamental question for the regeneration and a sense that it was worth waiting to get things partners was: ‘What should a Mark One post-war right. Centred on an agreed vision and outcomes, New Town centre be replaced with?’ In the case of there was a clear role for the council to provide The Lexicon, the masterplanning process explored reassurance to investors, indicating that there was many perspectives, including those of potential no risk from the local electoral cycle.

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Team commitment and communication

The importance of the regeneration project was recognised by the council’s Chief Executive, who created and championed the project team. The team worked together on the scheme for many years. This had parallels with the original New Town Development Corporations, which provided the structure and opportunity for professionals to develop their career (and build their family circumstances) over a sustained period of time.

From the developer/landowner side, the project attracted and retained high-calibre professionals at operational and board levels. The shared project understanding, and institutional ‘memory’, was valuable for the project, but the personal and professional commitment built over a long period should also not be underestimated as a driver for the project.

Other learning points

As well as the more strategic points set out above, a range of other learning points emerged from our research, relating to a variety of issues as below: • Diversity of uses: ■ Plan for a diverse range of uses, providing a range of unit sizes and types. Together with effective asset management, this will help to attract and retain a diverse mix of tenants.

■ Provide new spaces with the potential to host cultural activities which can stimulate visits to town centres. This is about creating a sense of ‘theatre’. Practically, it means accommodating elements such as street entertainment when planning for animated public spaces.

■ Think about tipping the balance even further away from retail and towards other activities such as more community-focused uses — for example a library and health and social care spaces — in order to underscore a diverse mix of town centre functions.

■ Put more focus on independent or smaller retailers — for example competitive (including short-term) leases and designing for ‘pop-up’ or temporary uses.

• Communications: ■ Make use of time-lapse cameras to communicate the progress of the scheme to stakeholders, including local residents.

■ Engage fully with social media as part of a comprehensive, shared communications strategy.

■ Be proactive through scheme communications in order to manage expectations.

• Expertise: ■ Make use of all the skills and depth of local knowledge in the local authority — for example bring on board highways and transport teams to feed into project planning/construction.

■ Make sure that all involved, especially at senior level, understand the challenges of transport solutions and costs. The time and costs involved

in planning and delivering such schemes were sometimes underestimated by more senior decision-makers, leading to unrealistic expectations.

• Long-term maintenance: ■ Think — and then think harder — about the longterm maintenance of the new public realm. Focus on the quality and durability of the materials and public art installations.

• Town centre management: ■ Install monitoring equipment (to measure footfall, for example) during the construction phase.

■ Power, data, water and lighting should be provided in key areas where the public will gather — this will provide more flexibility for the use of these spaces for animation and events.

• Project review: ■ Provide opportunities to review progress, including upon the completion. This is not typical in regeneration practice but the opportunity to do so was welcomed. For instance, respondents enjoyed reflecting on their role in the regeneration, drawing out learning points, and helping to inform future operations and designs.

Conclusions

Renewing the centre of any town is a complex and challenging task. As a former New Town, Bracknell presented a particular set of issues and opportunities to stakeholders. Through our research we have been able to establish a clear set of insights into the only British New Town centre to have been substantially regenerated to date. Interviews conducted with project professionals since 2016 have yielded a consistent series of lessons, highlighted in this article. Many newer towns worldwide are either now (or will be) in need of regeneration; Bracknell’s regeneration story may provide lessons for those tasked with transforming their town’s fortunes.

Nicholls and Emma Street are with the Department •of Victor Real Estate and Planning, Henley Business School, University of Reading. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 V Nicholls and E Street: The Lexicon: Making It Happen. Henley Business School, University of Reading, 2019; and V Nicholls and E Street: The Lexicon: Understanding Success. Henley Business School, University of Reading, 2022. www.henley.ac.uk/ research/centres/real-estate-planning-research/projects/ the-lexicon-making-it-happen 2 ‘How the population changed in Bracknell Forest: Census 2021’. Webpage. Office for National Statistics, Jun. 2022. www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/ censuspopulationchange/E06000036/ 3 A Forsyth and R Peiser: ‘The British New Towns: lessons for the world from the new-town experiment’. Town Planning Review, 2019, Vol. 90 (3), 239–46. Available at https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/37371205/ Forsyth%20Peiser%202019%20TPR%20Accepted. pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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seeking out edge city UK David Boyle and Lesley Yarranton consider whether — and how — the US ‘edge city’ phenomenon is taking shape in the UK We discovered Whiteley when we were driving along the M27 motorway with Fiona, David’s sister, who used to work there (she wasn’t a fan). You could see it poking out above the trees as we drove by.

We noticed that it wasn’t on our elderly map.

The M27 is one of those motorways that the Department of Transport, on the run from environmental activist Swampy and his friends in the mid-1990s, was trying to build furtively all the way along the south coast of England. That is why only one particularly busy section has been labelled as motorway, snaking along between Portsmouth, Southampton and the New Forest.

The whole way along the M27, and especially to the north, there are possible future ‘edge cities’ — sites for concentrations of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional central business district, in what had previously been a suburban residential or rural area. Then suddenly at junction 9 — between Portsmouth and Eastleigh — there is a four-lane highway driving off the motorway, apparently into the woods. Follow it and you find yourself in the heart of Whiteley’s business district. It peters out in what looks like a beautiful and enticing woodland walk and stream. All around us are tinted office windows and acres of empty tarmac where the employees used to park before Covid. And for some reason, so many ambulance staff — it transpires that they have been taking part in some kind of exercise.

This is one indication that we are in an edge city — the amount of office space relative to residential space is part of the original American definition.

But there is another reason too. Whiteley straddles two district council areas — Fareham to the east and Winchester to the north. We heard later that there is also a kind of class divide in leafy Whiteley between the two districts.

There was a fascinating confusion about when it all began. ‘Whiteley started 23 years ago — before I was born,’ said the young woman in one local estate agency definitively and with unexpected precision.

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When we went to see the chair of Whiteley Town Council, Mike Evans, he pushed the start date back about four years, to 1994. ‘When we were granted a new parish council,’ he said.

Zurich made its UK headquarters there a little later. HSBC moved there from Southampton. Then came NATS, the national air traffic controllers; not to mention Specsavers.

There are two contradictory stories about ‘year zero’ if you look up Whiteley in Wikipedia: either when the first buildings appeared on site (the Solent Hotel in the early 1990s), or when the first houses were built there — even before the publication of Edge City in 1991. Perhaps we need to go back even further, to 1977, when the houses first appeared in the Hampshire Structure Plan.

Still, the fact is that here is Whiteley. Nobody really planned it like this (unless it was British Land), and yet it has its own sports centre and town council, and even its own coat of arms (a deer, a family, and an oak tree).

The real beating heart of the town is the new £100 million shopping development by British Land, which began in 2007 with the demolition of the old shopping centre, Whiteley Shopping Village (except for the Tesco store, which is still there); and then its opening again in 2011 with the help of Denise van Outen. Not to mention a new nine-screen cinema.

We sit outside Costa Coffee in the sunshine (there are no local shops or brands here at all — which emphasises just how dependent the Whiteley economy is on British Land) and think out loud about what brought us here. Both of us remember the publication of Edge City,1 Joel Garreau’s ground-breaking book about American planning, more than three decades ago (Lesley was a foreign correspondent in Washington at that time).

Since then, UK land use has been subject to the same kind of pressures as are found in the USA, especially as UK planning has been seriously diminished — both in reputation and in budgets and

remit. The result has been a similar phenomenon to the one Garreau recorded in the USA, but the UK’s edge cities — which we are tempted to call ‘nowhere cities’ here — maybe truly fake. They were not planned by anybody. Often, they are just dormitory towns for commuters, perhaps around distribution centres, near one of the key motorway corridors. They often have no name, except perhaps among the estate agent fraternity, but they are there, nonetheless.

We are also rather less enthusiastic about Nowhere City than Garreau was about Edge City.

Today, many US edge cities have plans for densification, sometimes around a walkable downtown-style core, often with a push for more accessibility by transit and bicycle, and the addition of housing in denser, urban-style neighbourhoods within the edge city. For example, at Tysons, in the Washington DC metropolitan area, the plan remains to see the city become the downtown core of Fairfax County.

Other cities around the world are sporting office buildings in their outskirts too. But there is a question mark after Covid over the future of offices. There has been a considerable debate among economists as to whether ‘jobs follow people or people follow jobs’, but, in the context of the edge city phenomenon, workers have been drawn from metropolitan business hubs in favour of the edge city economies.

Garreau says one reason for the rise of edge cities is that: ‘Today, we have moved our means of creating wealth, the essence of urbanism — our jobs — out to where most of us have lived and shopped for two generations. That has led to the rise of Edge City.’ 2 So this is our updated but tentative definition of Edge City UK, based on what Garreau wrote — but written before we went out to explore some UK examples (as well as at Whitely, we found these at Birchwood, a much more established edge city, across the M62 from the New Town of Warrington, and near the junction with the M6; and Graven Hill, on council-designated land to the east of Bicester, near the M40 in Oxfordshire): • It was built around 10–30 miles away from a big city and has offices, shops and residential buildings close by, but the actual city has more offices than beds. People who work in it often live close by. (But it may also include established shopping venues, for example, that need housing to turn themselves into cities, as at Brent Cross).

• It may not have a mayor or any local council type of government.

• It ‘acculturates’ immigrants (this might just be an American thing but it is worth looking at). US edge cities were very good for the black middle-class.

• It has moved away from areas where raw materials could be made into useful products (the traditional city model).

• It might have warehouses (Amazon?).

• It might have gyms, yoga halls and cinemas (as at Whiteley and Birchwood).

• It probably has lots of corporate glass and steel (as at all those headquarters at Whiteley).

• It could be somewhere that older people live and

come out to exercise in the morning, because it challenges the idea that cities are best for the young.

• It has high-class security and no crime (no dark alleyways), but this means very little ‘truly’ public space (see Whiteley).

• It will have lawns and some connection to wildlife (wooded walkways, a lake, or jogging tracks) but all these connections will be utterly ‘tamed’ — so no spontaneity.

• It will probably be situated close to motorway junctions or where two motorways intersect and have good schools nearby (as at Whiteley).

• It may have erased a historic location where people used to have a sense of ‘clear identity’ (as at Birchwood, which is on the site of the former headquarters of the UK Atomic Energy Authority).

• People or companies who moved to it did so to conserve what Garreau calls ‘our most precious commodity — time’.

• It boosted shops in the area as people were no longer having to commute to the big city 30 or so miles away (as at Whiteley).

• Its creation was developer-driven — with little or no input from architects (see Graven Hill, where so many houses are self-built).

• It was built to create a ‘sense of community’ but probably failed owing to lack of ‘us-ness’ (there lies a danger for Graven Hill).

• It was built around the use of cars (Whiteley already has a traffic issue).

• It may have a lifespan of no more than 25 years — a new generation will have grown up in it but will have a ‘different life’.

• Its design was founded in America on the premise that the furthest an American would willingly walk before getting into a car (at time of publication — it’s probably less now) was just 600 feet.

So, there is the issue and the debate. If, as we believe, we now have edge cities, can we develop the powers we need to make sure that they retain their appeal?

Lesley Yarranton is a multi-lingual former foreign •correspondent, working in Berlin and Washington.

David Boyle is a former Editor of Town & Country Planning.

They are co-authors of Edge City UK: Abomination or New Urban Form?, available from Amazon or the publishers at www.therealpress.co.uk . The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 J Garreau: Edge City: Life on the New Frontier.

Doubleday, 1991 2 See the Wikipedia ‘Edge city’ page, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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planning practice in the social media age With professionals working in the public interest increasingly subject to anger and distrust from a disgruntled and confrontational society, there needs to be greater care given to planners’ working conditions and greater consideration in public and political discourse around planning and planning reform, says Peter Geraghty Social media has become all-pervasive. A recent report highlights that close to 80% of the global population is using social media platforms, with an annual growth of 3.2%. More than nine in 10 working professionals aged 16 to 24 say that they use social media for work-related communication, compared with fewer than two in three professionals between the ages of 55 and 64.1 Given its pervasiveness, the wider impacts of social media are inevitably being felt in the field of planning.

Social media is rapidly changing the manner in which individuals and communities interact with public institutions. Social media has incredible power to communicate with a wide range of people; however, it also has a destructive capacity which, if not checked, or appropriately managed, can have devastating effects. These effects are already being felt in planning practice in the UK, and this article offers some reflections on the nature of planning practice in the social media age. There is a growing need for social media training and support, and there is also a widespread need for agreed protocols covering the interaction between public institutions and the citizens that they represent. These protocols in turn should become a fundamental part of professional planning practice, particularly in the public sector.

Trust in planning

Accompanying and often fuelled by the growth of social media is the continuing trend of diminishing public trust in established institutions. Misinformation 52

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and fake news are creating an atmosphere of mistrust and misunderstanding. This is prevalent in many aspects of public life, and planning is as prone to this phenomenon as any other activity.

The planning profession operates at the nexus of public and private interests; at the core of planning in the UK is the balancing of competing demands for land while facilitating public participation in local democratic decision-making.2 This leads to tensions.

However, this balancing role is at the very heart of public sector planning. In January 1947, Lewis Silkin, Minister of Town and Country Planning, said during the debate on the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act: ‘The objects of town and country planning are becoming increasingly understood and accepted.

Primarily, they are to secure a proper balance between the competing demands for land, so that all the land of the country is used in the best interests of the whole people. This is especially necessary in these small, densely populated islands. More than ever, there is today heavy pressure on our limited supply of land. And many of the demands on the use of our land are conflicting. Some must result in more land being brought into development; …’ 3 These conflicting demands are as great as ever.

In order to ensure that there is confidence that the planning system is working in the ‘best interests of the whole people’, there needs to be trust. Because planning is practised in a political context, the public

needs to have confidence that decisions made by elected officials are made in a fair and transparent way. Over the past 25 years in particular, the continual proposals for reform of the planning system have significantly undermined an already fragile public confidence in planning.

To create the appropriate mood music to justify this reform, high-profile political figures have variously described their perceptions of the deficiencies of the planning system; in one case labelling it as a drag anchor to growth,4 and in another referring to it as a major barrier not only to social mobility but to business expansion.5 In July 2015, the UK Government’s Productivity Plan6 described the planning system as being ‘regarded by many as one of the most significant constraints facing the economy, bringing delay and inflexibility’. It went on to say that the country’s planning system creates a ‘slow, expensive and uncertain process’ that reduces the appetite to build.

In August 2020, the then Prime Minister, in launching the reform White Paper, Planning for the Future, said in the foreword: ‘But as we approach the second decade of the 21st century that potential [of the country] is being artificially constrained by a relic from the middle of the 20th — our outdated and ineffective planning system.’ 7 This rhetoric has played into an increasingly populist narrative that questions professional expertise and knowledge — seen most recently in the conspiracy theories that have grown up around the idea of 15-minute neighbourhoods.8 This has been borne out by recent research identifying that the political realities of the planning system serve to reproduce existing structures of power, which does little to overcome public distrust, either among those groups who have traditionally

taken an active role in local affairs, or among new participants.9 Public engagement has always been a fundamental part of planning in the UK since its introduction. Arnstein’s ladder of participation sets out a range of citizen participation in democratic processes,10 and many planners would subscribe to achieving the highest of Arnstein’s rungs. However, trust is an important element of accomplishing this.

The confidence that a community has in the planning system and the democratic processes that underlie it is fundamental to its effective operation.11 This is undermined when high-profile political figures make generic criticisms of planning as an activity. In 2019, a survey by property company Grosvenor Group looked at the level of public trust in the planning system.12 When asked whether they trusted their local council to make decisions on large-scale development that are in the best interests of their local area, just 7% of respondents in the survey said that they did. Over a third of the public (36%) said that they distrusted their council (see Fig. 1a on page 54). This compared with 49% for private developers (see Fig. 1b ).

The reasons for this level of distrust ranged from a failure to understand or care about community needs to ineffective communication (see Fig. 2 on page 55).

This reflects an increasing trend in many Western democracies of distrust of government and its activities. Opinion polls and surveys reveal a continuing and declining public trust in the State13 — part of a continuing international trend. Recent data from opinion surveys across a broad range of countries show that there has been a decline in trust in most public bodies since 2000.14 Poor communication or the wrong choice of engagement channel can lead to an unrestrained spread of misinformation or fake news.

The declining trust in public institutions is exacerbated by social media. In 2017, the Committee Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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7%

7%

2%

9%

49%

36%

40%

50%

a)

b)

Distrust

Neither trust or distrust

Trust

Don’t know

Fig. 1 a ) Trust in local councils to make decisions in the best interests of the area; b ) Trust in private developers to act in an honest way Source: Rebuilding Trust. Discussion Paper. Grosvenor Group, Jul. 2019

on Standards in Public Life (an independent, advisory body sponsored by the UK Government Cabinet Office) found that some abuse takes place in response to an unhealthy public political culture.

This can be a result of an unhealthy public discourse conducted by those in public life (including the media) needlessly undermining trust in public institutions, or the result of poor standards of conduct in public life.15 The Committee went on to say: ‘However, the evidence we have received has demonstrated that social media has sparked a step-change in the abuse and intimidation MPs, candidates, and others in public life receive.’

Such consideration should include coping mechanisms and protocols for practitioners.

The growth in, and prevalence of, artificial intelligence (AI) is also an area of concern. If deployed responsibly, AI has the potential to assist planners in their work, improve existing planning processes, increase efficiency, and allow planners to refocus their work on the human factors of planning espoused by Arnstein (i.e. human interactions, connecting with community members, and related human skills).17 However, the use of AI also poses the risk of exacerbating existing inequalities in society if its user is unprepared and does not understand and question the systems It is becoming increasingly clear that this stepand algorithms that are in place.18 It can, if used change in behaviour is being experienced by planning inappropriately, be a conduit for misinformation or professionals, in both the public and private sectors. fake news.

These new platforms can support the attainment The government has been strongly advocating of the higher levels of public participation and the use of digital planning to improve accessibility empowerment identified by Arnstein. By prioritising and engagement in the planning process. Planners transparency in planning processes, planners can have embraced the use of digital platforms in everyday planning practice, but their use also brings build trust with the community. This is increasingly important, especially as planners deal with the downsides. For example, in seeking to widen the consequences of distrust and misinformation.18 scope of consultations, it has opened the avenue However, this also brings with it other consequences. for residents to express their views in a derisive, As discussed in the next section, greater digital offensive and belligerent way. engagement has been accompanied by a stepThe Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Digital Planning programme seeks to change in antisocial behaviour. support accelerated adoption of digital tools and The need for civility in public life services in the planning process.16 This includes a A recent survey of planners in Wales on behalf of the PropTech Innovation Fund for the use of innovative Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI)19 identified how digital tools to make the planning process more a range of factors, including technological advances open and accessible. While this is welcome, there and a desire to reduce commuting, accelerated by is a need to consider the impacts of technology on the Covid pandemic, led to a shift to working from planning practice and the effects of social media.

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60 50 40 30

49 20

43

39

38

33 23

10 0

They only care They are They don’t They don’t They do not They are about making not held to care about understand effectively dishonest or saving account on what the local what the local communicate and deceitful money their promises community community their plans about their needs needs plans

9

9

Don’t know

Other

Fig. 2 Reasons for distrusting local councils Source: Rebuilding Trust. Discussion Paper. Grosvenor Group, Jul. 2019

home. The Welsh Government is encouraging a policy of remote working whereby workers can choose their place of work. This has led to both benefits and disbenefits for planners.

The Wales survey found evidence that local planning authorities and government bodies experience a considerable amount of abuse or negative incidents: 49% of respondents reported occasional instances and 16% reported regular incidents. The report goes on to say that serious concern has been raised about incidents where officers have been physically intimidated. A number of situations have been highlighted in which officers have been followed and intimidated. One respondent even reported they had been approached by the police, who had recommended security cameras and panic buttons.

The more widespread use of social media and the immediacy of communication channels such as email have together exacerbated the pressure and intimidation experienced by professional planners.

The survey reported on the negative impact of social media, with 58% of respondents saying that social media has, at least somewhat, had an effect on their wellbeing (the figure for a similar survey of planners in Northern Ireland was 53%20). Many regarded social media as having given the public the ability to express their opinions (including insults and abuse) without any consequences, with a consequential impact on their wellbeing. It was reported that the inappropriate use of social media creates an environment for misinformation and for negative campaigners to skew discussions. These survey results have also been reflected in a recent set of blog entries called ‘Life on the front line’.21 The Wales survey identified disturbing levels of

harassment, partly encouraged through social media, as well as intimidation and safety concerns. The increase in formal and informal complaints is also having an impact on workload and time resource.19 This trend has been identified elsewhere. In the latest planning careers survey conducted by The Planner magazine, 87% of respondents said that they felt that social media regularly or occasionally contributed to misinformation about planning issues locally.22 The same survey found that 35% said that this had a negative effect on their wellbeing, and around 23% of planners have been negatively targeted through social media.

This has been exacerbated by a year-on-year reduction in spending on planning — which has fallen by 14.6% since 2010, causing delays, issues with recruitment, and staff shortages in many authorities.23 Total public expenditure on planning services in England contracted from £1.4 billion in the 2009–10 financial year to £1.17 billion in 2022–23 (when adjusted for inflation), a fall of 16%. At the same time, income from planning services increased by 14% from £507 million to £577 million.24 In Scotland there has been a 28.6% drop in expenditure on planning since 2010–11, leaving it as the most reduced and lowest-funded local authority department on a national scale.25 The issue of under-resourcing has been a recurring subject for many years and shows no sign of abating. A recent report from Public Practice found that the majority of local authority teams are facing capacity challenges, resulting in them being unable to meet strategic goals beyond their minimum statutory responsibilities.

Authorities are also experiencing difficulties attracting qualified and skilled candidates, and this Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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has led to a skills gap and a situation in which organisational needs are not being met.26 The 2022 Workforce Survey conducted by the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents local authorities across England, lays bare the staff recruitment and retention difficulties in the sector.27 The survey found that almost 58% of all councils are struggling to recruit planning officers, 45%of councils that run environmental health services were having difficulties recruiting environmental health officers, and 43% were having difficulties recruiting building control officers — and 36% of authorities were having problems retaining planners. Analysis carried out by the RTPI has demonstrated that a quarter of planners left the public sector between 2013 and 2020.28 In 2019, only 53% of public sector planners felt that their team or department were valued. By late 2021, this had fallen to 42%.29 This issue has become endemic in the profession. In her review of land use planning in 2006 Kate Barker stated: ‘For at least the past two decades, the perception of planning as a profession has been relatively low and has slipped down the list of desirable places to work within local authorities.’ 30 She went on to recommend that the government raise the status of the Chief Planner within local authorities, potentially on a statutory basis, to reinforce the status of the profession for all parties.30 All these recent surveys give an important insight into what it is like to work in planning in the modern era. There is no doubt that social media and more far-reaching digital services bring benefits (not just in planning), but it is clear from the survey results that we must modify traditional practices and include safeguards for professional staff. This is particularly pertinent in circumstances in which the perception of the profession and recruitment and retention are major issues. As far back as 2017 the Intimidation in Public Life review published by the Committee on Standards in Public Life15 expressed the view that: ‘The widespread use of social media has been the most significant factor accelerating and enabling intimidatory behaviour in recent years. Although social media helps to promote widespread access to ideas and engagement in debate, it also creates an intensely hostile online environment.’

The review concluded that: ‘In the fast-paced and rapidly developing world of social media, the [social media] companies themselves and government must both proactively address the issue of intimidation online. Not enough has been done. The Committee is deeply concerned about the limited engagement of the social media companies in tackling these issues.’

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proposals. A campaign against a development can very easily take on a personal dimension, targeting planning officers and local authority staff. Engagement and consultation are fundamental parts of planning activity but, as the survey results quoted here highlight, it is becoming more and more important to consider how social media affects the planning process and the wellbeing of officers.

Working in the social media age

Populism shows no signs of waning — and coupled with this is the fact that social media trends and trust issues will continue and intensify, and they need to be addressed. It cannot be that professionals who are working in the public interest continue to endure anger and distrust from an increasingly disgruntled and confrontational society. There needs to be more consideration in public discourse around planning and planning reform, particularly in the political sphere. In an age when a person’s words can be read around the world in seconds, it is incumbent on public figures to be cognisant of the impact of those words. Planners working on the front line have to face the consequences of ill-informed, misunderstood and ill-considered commentary.

This decline in civility in professional life is becoming more widely experienced. For example, online abuse within the legal profession has been identified as a growing issue by the Bar Council.31 The loss of planners from the profession is not unrelated to the challenges arising from the social media age, and it is vital that planners have the training and support needed to deal with the challenges of working at a time of pervasive social media.

It should be a national priority to recruit and retain experienced planning professionals. The profession faces a recruitment and retention crisis, but, while efforts have been made to recruit more people into the profession, we also need to retain those experienced and expert professionals currently in post, and many planners now feel that their position is undervalued and underpaid.32 In this regard, the recent RTPI State of the Profession survey24 paints a painful picture. It finds that the number of planners working in the public sector shrunk by a quarter between 2009 and 2020, and that the remuneration of planners in real terms has been in sharp decline.

If salaries had followed inflation since 2005, the median planner should be earning close to £50,000 annually, as opposed to the actual value of £33,000.24 It is clear that the concerns raised by Kate Barker have not been addressed.

The wellbeing of all planning professionals should be a priority. Organisations need robust corporate social media strategies that include support for staff working in front-line roles. Such policies should be front and centre in dealing with citizens. Public officials need the backing and support to perform their duties. If high-quality services that deliver the higher levels of participation envisaged by Arnstein

are to be provided, we need high-quality professional staff and appropriate conditions for them to work in.

The lesson to be learned is that, if we do not look after the profession and the practitioners working within it, particularly those in the public sector, we will all be the worse off for it.33

•

Dr Peter Geraghty is a Past-President of the RTPI and a Trustee of the TCPA. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 S Kemp: ‘Digital 2023 April Global Statshot Report’.

DataReportal, Apr. 2023. https://datareportal.com/ reports/digital-2023-april-global-statshot 2 L Laurian, ‘Trust in planning: Theoretical and practical considerations for participatory and deliberative planning’.

Planning Theory & Practice, 2009, Vol. 10 (3), 369–91 3 Lewis Silkin, speaking during a House of Commons debate on 29 Jan. 1947 — ‘Town and Country Planning Bill’. Hansard, 1947, Vol. 432, cc947—948. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/ commons/1947/jan/29/town-and-country-planning-bill 4 Secretary of State Eric Pickles MP, in a speech to the Confederation of British Industry on 21 Mar. 2011 — see M Donnelly: ‘Pickles: We’ll cut drag anchor planning system down to size’. Planning, 22 Mar. 2011. www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1061266/pickleswell-cut-drag-anchor-planning-system-down-size 5 V Cable: ‘Mansion House Trade and Industry Speech 2011’. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 3 Mar. 2011. www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ trade-and-industry-dinner-speech-mansion-house 6 Fixing the Foundations: Creating a More Prosperous Nation. Cm 9098. HM Treasury, Jul. 2015, pp41 & 45. www.gov.uk/government/publications/fixing-thefoundations-creating-a-more-prosperous-nation 7 Foreword by Boris Johnson, in Planning for the Future.

White Paper. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Aug. 2020. www.gov.uk/ government/consultations/planning-for-the-future 8 See M Silva: ‘15 minute cities: How they got caught in conspiracy theories’. BBC News, 3 Oct. 2023. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66990302 — the May–June 2023 issue of Town & Country Planning (www.tcpa.org.uk/ special-issue-on-20-minute-neighbourhoods/) was devoted to the issue, in part to dispel misconceptions 9 T Bedford, J Clark and C Harrison: ‘Limits to new public participation practices in local land use planning’. Town Planning Review, 2002, Vol.73 (3), 311–31 10 S R Arnstein: ‘A ladder of citizen participation’. Journal of the American Planning Association, 1969, Vol. 35 (4), 216–24 11 C Swain and M Tait: ‘The crisis of trust and planning’.

Planning Theory & Practice, 2007, Vol. 8 (2), 229–47; and A Talvitie: ‘The problem of trust in planning’. Planning Theory, 2012, Vol. 11 (3), 257–78 12 Rebuilding Trust. Discussion Paper. Grosvenor Group, Jul. 2019. www.grosvenor.com/getattachment/8e97e7a8e557-4224-bde1-f8833d34acec/Rebuilding-Trustdiscussion-paper-(2).pdf 13 E M Uslaner: ‘Trust but verify: social capital and moral behavior’. Social Science Information, 1999, Vol. 38 (1), 29–55 14 Trust in Public Institutions: Trends and Implications for Economic Security. Policy Brief 108. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Jun. 2021, p.2. www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/ uploads/sites/22/2021/08/PB_108.pdf

15 Intimidation in Public Life: A Review by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Cm 9543. Committee on Standards in Public Life, Dec. 2017. www.gov.uk/ government/publications/intimidation-in-public-life-areview-by-the-committee-on-standards-in-public-life 16 See the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ ‘DLHUC Digital’ blog, at https://dluhcdigital.blog.gov.uk/category/digital-planning/ 17 P Jones and M Wynn: ‘Artificial intelligence and planning’.

Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Sept.–Oct., 317–21 18 C Andrews, K Cooke, A Gomez, et al.: AI in Planning: Opportunities and Challenges and How to Prepare.

American Planning Association, Sept. 2022, pp3 & 26. www.planning.org/publications/document/9255930/ 19 The Big Conversation: The Well-being of Planners and the Impact on the Planning System in Wales.

RTPI Research Paper. RTPI Cymru, Jan. 2023. www.rtpi.org.uk/media/13659/big-conversation.pdf 20 The Big Conversation: The Well-being of Planners and the Impact on the Planning System in Northern Ireland.

RTPI Research Paper. RTPI Northern Ireland, Nov. 2023. www.rtpi.org.uk/find-your-rtpi/rtpi-nations/rtpinorthern-ireland/latest-updates/bigconversationni/ 21 See Sam Stafford’s ‘50 Shades of Planning’ blog entries at https://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2022/12/ call-for-evidence-life-on-front-line-ii.html 22 ‘Careers Survey 2023’. The Planner, 2023, Mar./Apr. www.theplanner.co.uk/issues/2020/01/march-april-2023 23 Meeting Housing Demand. HL Paper 132. Built Environment Committee, House of Lords, Jan. 2022. https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/meeting-housingdemand-built-environment-committee-report/ 24 The State of the Profession 2023: The UK Planning Profession in Numbers. RTPI, Nov. 2023. www.rtpi.org.uk/research/2023/november/state-of-theprofession-2023/#_Toc149742839 25 Resourcing the Planning Service: Key Trends and Findings 2023. RTPI Research Briefing, RTPI Scotland, Dec. 2023. www.rtpi.org.uk/research/2023/december/ resourcing-the-planning-service-rtpi-scotland-researchbriefing/ 26 Recruitment and Skills Report: Public Sector Placemakers.

Public Practice, Sept. 2023. www.publicpractice.org.uk/ uploads/Recruitment-and-Skills-Report_Public-SectorPlacemakers_by-Public-Practice_v1.0_September-2023.pdf 27 Local Government Workforce Survey 2022. Research Report. Local Government Association, May 2022. https://tinyurl.com/yj9mnmtv 28 ‘Local authorities struggle as over a quarter of planners depart’. News story. RTPI, 16 May 2023. https://tinyurl.com/yu6v6nxh; and The State of the Profession 2023 (see note 24) 29 See The Planner, 2022, Feb., p5 30 K Barker: Barker Review of Land Use Planning Final Report — Recommendations. Barker Review of Land Use Planning, Dec. 2006. www.gov.uk/government/ publications/barker-review-of-land-use-planning-finalreport-recommendations 31 Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination at the Bar. The Bar Council, Dec. 2023, p.20. https://tinyurl.com/3rej3jd9 32 P Geraghty: ‘Where have all the planners gone?’. Opinion piece. The Planner, Mar. 2019, updated Nov. 2022. www.theplanner.co.uk/2019/03/18/where-have-allplanners-gone 33 P Geraghty: ‘Finding meaning — public sector planning in the UK’. American Planning Association blog entry, Jun. 2023. https://planning.org/blog/9271792/findingmeaning-public-sector-planning-in-the-uk/ Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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french leave — a trip to bordeaux

Guillaume Flandre on Unsplash

A trip to Bordeaux serves to highlight that strategic planning supported by tax and investment — in an approach that currently seems alien to the UK — can produce economic dividends and high-quality environments, says Graeme Bell

The Miroir d’eau in Bordeaux, a reflecting pool located in front of the Place de la Bourse and put in place in 2006

One of the advantages of living for part of the year in the Languedoc is that it’s well positioned for visits to interesting places for a weekend break. Barcelona, Albi, Toulouse and Montpelier are all within a couple of hours by high-speed train. So, to Bordeaux, and we arrive in wonderful autumn sunshine.

The city is festooned in tricolors and Union flags — did they know we were coming? Mais non, Bordeaux has put the flags out for King Charles and Queen Camilla, who visited the day before. There’s even a British warship at the city quay, a guard ship for the monarch. Whether this is gunboat diplomacy I’ll let you decide, but is HMS Iron Duke the only ship we have available out of our depleted fleet that has a 58

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serviceable engine? Perhaps it’s a joke, but will the French get it?

We walk around what is one of the great European cities. Emerging from years of regeneration after the city slipped into economic decline when the wine trade slumped 50 years ago, the 18th-century buildings along the River Garonne gleam in the sun. The locally quarried white limestone looks as if it’s been carved out of butter by a pâtissière. The city centre is virtually car free, the result of a combination of high parking charges and a superb tram, metro and bus network.

It’s not rocket science, just a combination of vision, long-term decision-making and public investment by the EU, the state, the region, and the city council.

Oli Lynch — www.flickr.com/photos/olilynch/37500642606/ Creative Commons CC0 1.0

Bordeaux’s Cite du vin

Fountains create excitement and fun while trees cool people in the shade, catch dust, absorb carbon dioxide, and simply look good. The restaurant and café tables spill into the pedestrianised streets and lanes in the old quarter, patronised by a vibrant crowd of locals and tourists. The shops are full too, both independents and multiples; it all feels prosperous, and people are certainly spending their money. We post-Brexit Brits feel poor as we scan the menu for plats du jour at a reasonable price, while locals order expensive aperitifs before going à la carte.

But the city has its challenges, too. Around the inner ring road there are large areas of social housing, with blocks of flats possibly built in the 1960s and 1970s and showing their age. Many French-African families sit out socialising on the pavements in the sun, the kids expertly playing keepy-uppy with their footballs. These are the communities that demonstrably feel ‘left behind’ and are regularly out protesting their situation. What would happen here if Marine le Pen won the Presidency?

The city is expanding, notably to the north, where there is a new community called Petit Bruges. The name is well chosen, for there are canals, waterways and a large lake providing the physical framework for the development, with dedicated cycleways all set within generous landscaping. One could be in any one of the towns and cities in the low countries that the TCPA uses for study tours to show what can be done to create high-quality environments and 15-minute neighbourhoods. Why do we always seem to be fighting nature in Britain when a better approach could be to work with the flow?

Around the lake in a leisure quarter are a number of new large structures. The stadium that staged the World Cup rugby, a Palais des Congrès, and a Parc des Expositions. An extensive ecological reserve provides dedicated space for nature and chilling out with the birds. We can imagine that planners and

architects have envisaged all this and, with local politicians and community leaders, have made it happen.

And then there is the Cite du Vin, Bordeaux’s latest grand projet. A new museum and cultural centre dedicated to the product that brought wealth to the city when, despite our frequent wars over the centuries with the French, claret was a Great British import. The museum tells the global story of wine from antiquity to the present day.

The architecture is stunning. This is Bordeaux doing a Bilbao. Where Frank Gehry and Guggenheim brought culture and tourism to a run-down port, so the city fathers reason that this will showcase their heritage through a breathtaking building. From the outside it clashes with the functional tradition of the old docks around the riverside, but presumably the idea is that this area will regenerate, and certainly it needs it.

Inside, it’s like a tube, and the concept is that the visitor ‘flows along’ while the story unfolds. For a sommelier this will be drink if not meat, but for us it was heavy going; too much intellectual wading through grapes, until, that is, we reach the top-floor belvedere and our free glass of wine. Some say the best views are from the building rather than of it, but it’s a matter of taste.

The museum has recently welcomed its 2 millionth visitor in the past five years, and the venue has a busy schedule of wine tastings and conferences lined up.

So, once again, the French have shown that strategic planning supported by tax and investment produces economic dividends that you can see and touch. Putting the flags out seems only natural in Bordeaux, one of the great European cities, and it’s well worth a visit.

Bell OBE is a TCPA Vice-President and lives part of •theGraeme year in the Languedoc. The views expressed are personal.

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countering the spatial lottery Without spatial planning in the interest of the greater good, the way ahead is a cause for anxiety, says Ian Campbell It was both interesting and sad to read, in the September–October 2023 issue of Town & Country Planning, David Lock’s ‘Off the Fence’ column on his receipt of the Howard Memorial Medal, listing the woes of planners.1 But is he right? Should we respect the planning profession? Should we acclaim its achievements since the 1960s? Are planners blocked by selfish, deceitful opponents? Or, in raising such questions, am I one of those ‘unthinking persons’ who see planning simply as a mechanism?

By which I believe David means those that see planners as merely mechanics, trained to ensure that the machine works, but not in the driving seat and unable to release the vision.

Being an estate management graduate of the 1960s, author of a 1968 research study into South East growth areas, and for a period a residential landbuyer, vividly I remember that time well. Just two decades after the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act came into effect, the evidence of housing land constraints was emerging. My career was about value maximisation. It required a different philosophy.

Spotting the spatial hot-spots of the future was clear cut. Follow the market and you arrived.

The indictment of spatial failure is heavy. David Lock is right. Unaffordable homes; plain-looking homes; unlovely urban realms; clogged roads; community services struggling; continuing rural erosion which happens without notice; national economic growth now on life support; widespread resistance to new homes and new power infrastructure — and this may not be a full list.

What went wrong? Planners have failed. And adherents to the open market have failed their communities, too.

Unbridled value maximisation in an unplanned market-led economy has driven these unhappy outcomes. The haphazard call-for-sites system that dominates Local Plans is an inadequate alternative.

It is a system built on sand. And the hapless spatial lottery that it provides has made planning unpopular.

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As usual, landowners and opportunists with the sharpest elbows or deepest purses win. They always do.

This is sad, because the planning profession has a compelling spatial case for re-ordering national priorities. As Catriona Riddell, writing in the same issue of Town & Country Planning, points out: ‘Strategic planning is the essential pivot between the national and local levels and, if managed at the right geographical scale, can help to articulate what national policy priorities actually mean on the ground.’ 2 Planners may seek to represent the community, but first they need to understand and capture the market forces that drive local change. So they must become linguistic artists, fluent in the instant-recoil language that local residents use: fearful knee-jerk reactions, sincere but passionate blinkers, taut scepticism, myopic short-termism, etc. Because the evidence exists: the majority can be persuaded if the long-term vision is plain, has appeal, and is promoted by articulate leaders.

Above all, planners must win the confidence of local councillors by showing local residents that change is an opportunity to do far better, and not a wrecking threat to their dreams. If they do not, planners will continue to be frustrated for many more decades, as David Lock makes clear. Spatial planning is in the interest of the greater good.

Without it, the wretched spatial options ahead in this busy island are a cause for anxiety.

Ian Campbell was formerly Senior Partner at chartered •surveyors Campbell Gordon, and is founder of 2084SE, and writes a blog at https://makehousesaffordablein2084.com The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 D Lock: ‘On receipt of the Howard Medal’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Sept.–Oct., 303–04 2 C Riddell: ‘Further turmoil ahead’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Sept.–Oct., 296–301

going local David Boyle on Passport to Pimlico, The Titfield Thunderbolt, the British character, and the origins of localism

two films — were they the origin of localism in the UK?

‘Our mild revolution’ — that was how the boss of the post-war Ealing Studios, Sir Michael Balcon, once described his famous Ealing comedies. Perhaps we can see a little of what he meant by that in the gloriously anarchic vision of Britain purveyed by the film Passport to Pimlico, which came out in 1949.

And because we are in a whole new period of change (bye, Nick!), I am going back to first principles to seek out the meaning and origins of the word ‘localism’.

Am I really suggesting that the British screenwriter Thomas Ernest Bennett Clarke — usually known by his initials TEB, or ‘Tibby’ — was responsible for making the English aware of themselves as a nation embedded in community? Well, yes, I am.

The consensus among film critics is that the politics in the film doesn’t run that deep. One critic describes Passport as allowing ‘its contemporary audience to play out a fantasy of escape — from the unending burden of rationing and post-war ‘austerity’, from government, from Britain — before delivering them safely back to the status quo’. He continues: ‘The events of the story are more like a holiday — as suggested by the very un-British heatwave, which comes to an immediate end once the Burgundians rejoin Britain.’

I should explain that the plot revolves around the discovery that Edward IV had designated a few streets in Pimlico as Burgundy. Screenwriter Clarke was said to have been inspired by a Second World War incident, when an Ottawa maternity ward was temporarily declared extra-territorial by the Canadian government so that when Princess Juliana of the Netherlands gave birth the baby could be born in Dutch territory, and would not therefore lose her right to the throne. Unfortunately for the film-makers, the script was written and inspired by the heatwave during the summer of 1947, but the weather the following year failed to follow suit. It was horribly wet, and that led to long delays in the filming.

Scenes from Passport to Pimlico (top) and The Titfield Thunderbolt — demonstrating and embedding something of the British character

Now, I don’t believe that Tibby Clarke ever used the phrase ‘localism’, which is a 21st-century word and idea. I also doubt very much that the words ‘devolution’ or ‘decentralisation’ ever crossed his lips either. Yet he managed to pinpoint a cussedness at the heart of the national character which implied that the English had an interest in standing up to authority in defence of their own communities. The film certainly had it in for the bureaucratic mind in action from Whitehall.

As well as winning an Oscar in 1951 (for his script for The Lavender Hill Mob ), Clarke also found himself in Wales at the Talyllyn Railway, one of the first volunteer-run railways in the UK. He was fascinated and inspired by that experience. So his next script, Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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going local

which was shot the following summer, emerged as The Titfield Thunderbolt, which looks at a community that tries to take over their local railway to save it from closure. By this time, Clarke was seriously down on the men from Whitehall. When the light railway succeeds in its bid for permanent status, it is only because the man sent by the Ministry of Transport is so incredibly one-eyed that he doesn’t notice anything that delays their journey, but is only interested in the train not exceeding the specific slowness of a light railway.

Because the Talyllyn Railway wasn’t in England, it is clear that this cussedness wasn’t seen just an English phenomenon. But the central line from Passport implies something else — one of the local women opens her window and shouts at the besieging police: ‘We always were English and we always will be English, and it’s just because we are English that we’re sticking up for our right to be Burgundian!’ Or, as the local constable says when the professor reveals that the residents of these few streets are legally Burgundians: ‘Blimey!

I’m a foreigner!’

These days, when there is hardly a home in the land which doesn’t have some access to a volunteer steam railway taken over by the locals, it is difficult to see the Thunderbolt film as it would have been seen in 1953 when it came out. Maybe this was why it got cooler reviews from the critics. There was also a slightly snobbish sense that the group around the vicar (played by the Shakespearean actor George Relph) at the public inquiry just want the world back the way it used to be — with themselves in charge. That would explain John Gregson’s outburst to the townspeople at the inquiry, about what would happen to them if they let the railway close: ‘Your houses will have numbers instead of names,’ he shouts. As if that was the worst that was about to happen to them.

‘With its images of steam trains, country squires, warm beer and village-green cricket,’ wrote the critic Mark Duguid, the film ‘seems now like a party political broadcast for the Conservative Party under John Major.’ But I think that it provides a kind of balance. If Thunderbolt feels occasionally like a revolution launched at a vicarage tea party, and was made during the Conservative years, Passport was definitely a reaction against the previous Labour government.

Taken together, the two films demonstrate something of the British character. And I believe they embedded it a little bit deeper.

David Boyle is the author of Tickbox (Little, Brown), •Oppenheimer (Sharpe) and, with Lesley Yarranton, Edge City UK (the Real Press). The views expressed are personal.

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reviews

the human story in a hidden history

Bessie Quinn. Survivor Spirit. From Galashiels Mills to Garden Cities. The Story of an Irish Family in Scotland 1845–1922

By Ursula Howard The Endless Bookcase, 2022, £18.99 theendlessbookcase.com ISBN: 978-1-914151-33-0

Bessie Quinn: Survivor Spirit is an account of three generations of the author’s family through her paternal side, focusing on her grandmother, the Bessie Quinn of the title. In 1907 Bessie Quinn married Ebenezer Howard’s son Cecil, living with him in Hampstead Garden Suburb until her death from Spanish Flu in the great epidemic of 1919.

I first met the book’s author, Ursula Howard, while I was Curator of the Garden City Collection in Letchworth Garden City, and it was clear from the outset that she is passionate and proud of her family achievements. She has a background in education, adult literacy and community publishing, and is a practising Quaker.

These factors have doubtless helped her to resist any temptation to present her subject in a rosetinted light. Because this is not the usual tale of progression and achievement — rather, it is a story of bitter struggle through poverty, told through the fortunes of a changing half-century. The book

reviews

unravels, like many threads in a spider’s web, the human stories behind many of the great markers of British history: the Great Famine in Ireland, Victorian industrialism, poverty, epidemics, class, and social change. Each thread interconnects and brings us back to our heroine, Bessie Quinn.

It is an exploration of hidden history. Letchworth, for example, is rich in alternative history (sandalwearing, vegetarian, socialists, etc.), in board meetings and in nuanced details of domestic dwellings; but the stories of the people that made their way to support a utopian dream — either diggers and dreamers, or just those following a wage packet — were rarely recorded. Bessie Quinn is a fascinating account of the struggles of the working class and particularly the lives of workingclass women.

Because of my background, the parts with Letchworth Garden City connections that I knew well held particular interest, but the book offers a wider account not simply of a life but of a life within the history of the time. Along the way it touches upon areas of history that got me searching for more detail about something new — from the Irish famine, to court housing, Samuel Smiles, and Cornish flower agriculture. It also opens new perspectives on the lives of the poor. For example, people often died alone because family members had to work; and people would often change their names in the interest of deflecting the attention of the authorities — several members of the Quinn family changed their name in order to re-invent themselves in new places; for the poor, this was one simple way of gaining more control over their lives.

The book is in three parts. The first starts the story at the end and acts as an introduction to the account. The second sees the Quinn family, Irish Catholic refugees, finding a home and work in Galashiels, Scotland. It makes for a dark read — life lived in a tiny space, with barely enough money to survive, and filled with work, work and more work, leading to physical weakness and susceptibility to disease. Ursula asks: How did people survive? What was everyday life like? Were there moments of warmth and laughter that we cannot see between the Poor Law accounts and birth and death dates?

Her answer lies in the title: they needed a strong spirit. Perhaps Bessie simply never lost hope for a better future.

Like many working-class people at the time (and it is a truth still relevant today in Britain and throughout the world), Bessie recognised that education was everything. Somehow, Bessie read newspapers, attended lectures, and visited libraries. People still live under the misapprehension that people of the

labouring classes were incapable of intelligent, rhetorical discussion, but the evidence is clear that this was not the case.

For many, the survivor spirit involved somehow finding space between the grime and the labour to acquire knowledge — and to dream of something better. And for Bessie this also involved losing everything from her past and starting anew. The twist, the beating heart of truth in the story, is the realisation that Bessie was exactly the sort of person that Garden Cities were created for — and she married into the founding family. But her story was not sung from the red-tiled roof tops of Hampstead or Letchworth.

The third part of the book sees Bessie starting a new life in the Lake District, meeting her husband to be, and living their brief time together in Hampstead Garden Suburb, with Bessie’s rise from poverty interlinked with the stories of the movers and shakers who would seek to bring about social change. Working as a cook and cleaning for guests at Newlands, the Co-operative Holiday Association resort started

by T A Leonard (in one of those Garden City crossconnections, Leonard was a friend of Barry Parker, who had attended Co-operative holidays when he was younger and would later design Leonard’s home, ‘Walden’, in Cheshire), she also met and socialised with artists and progressive thinkers such as Canon Hardwicke and Edith Rawnsley, and possibly Ebenezer Howard. Somewhere along the line she found ‘social sponsors’ who helped her on her way.

Bessie moves from dirty air, industrialisation and squalor to fresh air and decent living — almost a living embodiment of the Garden City movement.

All is not perfection, though, Ursula Howard cautions, since, for all the movement’s progressiveness, classes did not mix easily and freely, particularly not through marriage. Other than when with a few most close to her, Bessie did her best to forget everything she was — a subtle message in a book about a hidden history. For we should be unafraid not only to say where we came from but to celebrate the people that made wider society, too — the labourers behind the great feats of architecture.

I hope that this book will inspire more writers to delve deeper and write about the stories that we have lost.

Victoria Axell Victoria Axell was formerly Curator, The Garden City •Collection, Letchworth Garden City, and is the author of Barry Parker 1867-1947: Architecture of Harmony, Sunlight and Equality (Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, 2018).

The views expressed are personal.

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legal eye Bob Pritchard on implementing, through secondary legislation, provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act and the need to simplify and rationalise existing planning law

unfinished business inspector to refuse an application for a quarry in the Green Belt because of an error concerning the weight to be attached to the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) that would result from the development.

The agreed level of BNG was 39%; however, the inspector discounted this figure and attributed it only moderate weight because an element would be required to meet prospective BNG requirements In terms of the planning system, the King’s Speech prescribed by the Environment Act 2021. However, was notable for what it didn’t contain. While there as these were not mandatory at the time that the were tangential references to planning, including decision was made, the inspector had exercised commitments to a ‘long-term plan to regenerate his planning judgment on a basis that was wrong towns and put local people in control of their future’ in law. and to ‘continue to lead action on tackling climate While implementing key elements of the Levellingchange and biodiversity loss…’,1 no new substantive up and Regeneration Act will tie up some legislative legislation was announced. Many will welcome loose ends and should undoubtably be prioritised, this pause in attempts to restructure the planning some fresh planning legislation is required to deal system, particularly given the need to concentrate with important issues that the Act has not addressed. on finalising the secondary legislation and policy There is still a call for a stand-alone New Towns Act necessary to implement the planning provisions in that reflects 21st-century priorities and which is the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. specifically tailored to guide the delivery of the next Some Levelling-up and Regeneration Act provisions generation of new settlements. This legislation have been prioritised, notably those aimed at remains a priority despite provisions in Part 8 of the accelerating housing delivery. These include reforms Levelling-up and Regeneration Act to encourage the to the completion notice process requiring stalled formation of new Locally Led Urban Development development to be progressed within a specified Corporations and the increased use of Locally Led timescale — failing which, the permission lapses; New Town Development Corporations. commencement notices heralding the start of Measures such as bringing the planning powers development; and the introduction of mandatory available to these bodies in line with those of development progress reports. The Environmental Mayoral Development Corporations are undoubtably Outcomes Report regime (which will replace both a step in the right direction. However, there are Strategic Environmental Assessment and some major drawbacks. Once again, these powers Environmental Impact Assessment) should also are to be implemented through amendments to be quicker out of the legislative blocks. primary legislation that is now over 40 years old and Other more inchoate elements will require more was formulated at a time when the need to address time and elaboration to bring them into effect. the challenges associated with climate change and For example, reforms to the Local Plan system are biodiversity loss had not been contemplated. predicated on the formulation of secondary legislation Furthermore, the provisions are predicated on and also on significant changes to national policy, local authorities taking a lead role. Whether many notably the introduction of a suite of National authorities will be in a position to take advantage Development Management Policies. of these new powers is debatable. The financial So there is a good deal of work in progress. The difficulties currently faced by local government are risks inherent in planning decision-taking during this particularly acute, and there is every prospect that legislative and policy interregnum was highlighted more councils will find themselves unable to balance by the High Court in NRS Sarendon Aggregates their books and will be obliged to follow the example Limited v Secretary of State and Worcestershire of Birmingham City Council and Nottingham City County Council and Stop the Quarry Campaign.2 Council by issuing Section 114 notices.3 This will In this case Eyre J quashed the decision of a planning restrict their ability to commit expenditure to non64

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Clarity on this issue is important, as it would reduce the prospect of local planning authorities adopting different approaches to identical development proposals. A new use class which specifically covers later living would help to promote predictability in decision-making and encourage investment in laterliving schemes.

The enactment of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act marks the continuation of the incremental injection of content into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. This has further compounded the complexity of the parent legislation, which is already difficult to navigate and is now suffering from a loss of focus in a number of important areas. An example of this is the absence of a comprehensive code for dealing with changes to planning consents, a topic which requires regular interventions from the courts to clear up anomalies and resolve conflicting interpretations.6 The case for concentrating on the simplification and rationalisation of existing planning law rather than looking for ways to further supplement it remains a compelling one.

Uncertainty over the application of the Use Classes Order in cases of later-living development schemes is just one area that would benefit from the simplification and consolidation of existing legislation

statutory functions and severely impact their capacity to take a lead when it comes to participating in New Town and Urban Development Corporations.

Moving from primary to secondary legislation, the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 would also benefit from an overhaul, not least the C classes, which do not reflect current trends in residential occupation. Consultation has already been undertaken on proposals for a new short-term let use class (class C5),4 but there is also a case for codifying other forms of residential occupation, in particular that tailored to the needs of older people.

There is an increasing demand for housing suitable for later living.5 In response, different models of accommodation have emerged which reflect the level of care required, from purpose-built retirement housing with minimal care, and integrated retirement communities (IRCs) with intermediate care, through to more ‘traditional’ care homes which provide the highest level of care. Within this spectrum it can be difficult to identify whether a particular development proposal for a later-living scheme will fall within class C3 (use as a dwellinghouse) or class C2 (which includes residential care homes), or will not fit neatly within either of these use classes.

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

Notes 1 The King’s Speech 2023. Prime Minister’s Office and HM The King, 7 Nov. 2023.www.gov.uk/government/ speeches/the-kings-speech-2023 2 NRS Sarendon Aggregates Ltd v (1) Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and (2) Worcestershire County Council and Stop The Quarry Campaign [2023] EWHC 2795 (Admin) 3 Section 114 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 4 Introduction of a Use Class for Short Term Lets and Associated Permitted Development Rights. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Apr. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/introductionof-a-use-class-for-short-term-lets-and-associatedpermitted-development-rights/introduction-of-a-useclass-for-short-term-lets-and-associated-permitteddevelopment-rights 5 There are an estimated 12.9 million over-65s today, and this figure is expected to increase to 16.9 million by 2040 6 See, for example, Armstrong v Secretary Of State For Levelling-Up, Housing And Communities & Anor [2023] EWHC 176 (Admin) and Fiske, R (on the application of) v Test Valley Borough Council and Woodington Solar Ltd [2023] EWHC 2221 (Admin), where the High Court considered the scope of the power set out in Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to make changes to planning conditions

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power lines Mark Bramah on why community energy could be a disrupter of the existing energy system, creating a new paradigm for the future

can community energy become the catalyst for the local energy transition?

In August 2023, the government announced a new £10 million Community Energy Fund ‘to empower local people to develop energy projects to benefit their local areas’.1 The funding pot will be distributed to the regional Net Zero Hubs and ‘will support eligible community groups to consider options, design schemes and overcome barriers to investment’.2 Registrations of interest in the fund by eligible community groups is sought in January, and each of the regional hubs have around £2 million available for grant funding. The only restriction is that the funding cannot be used for capital investment in projects.

The new Community Energy Fund follows on from the earlier Urban Community Energy Fund (UCEF) set up in November 2014 and the Rural Community Energy Fund (RCEF) in June 2013.

Of course, this is welcome news for the community energy sector in England, which has been growing and delivering an impressive range of community-owned energy projects, ranging from energy generation and energy efficiency to low-carbon transport and renewable heat.

The most recent state-of-the-sector survey carried out by Community Energy England, Community Energy Scotland and Community Energy Wales,3 and published in 2022, showed that since 2017 the sector had installed 7.5 megawatts of new renewable energy generation capacity, taking the total community-owned renewable capacity to 331 megawatts of power. It had also raised £21.5 million in investment for new projects across the UK and engaged 57,600 individuals/communities through energy efficiency initiatives, helping to save an estimated £3.35 million from people’s energy bills.

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But as the survey report points out: ‘Community Energy was mentioned in the Energy White Paper and Net Zero Strategy but no plan was offered, no recognition given of its key importance to achieving net zero and no ‘practical support measures’ were provided as recommended by the Environmental Audit Committee. The Energy Security Strategy promised to ‘prioritise putting local communities in control’ but this involved ‘a limited number of supportive communities’ being bribed to ‘host new onshore wind infrastructure in return for benefits, including lower energy bills’.’ 3 It is instructive to contrast the meagre levels of government support with the £1 billion commitment to four carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) clusters by 2030 set out in the Energy Security Strategy, together with over £1.6 billion invested in offshore wind and £1.7 billion in new and advanced nuclear power;4 together with the £2 billion of funding announced by the government over the next 15 years to develop the hydrogen industry.5 This may not be an entirely fair comparison given the extent of capacity being installed and amount of private sector investment required. However, there is more than a passing suspicion that investment in the type and scale of technologies has a great deal to do with enabling existing fossil fuel giants to continue their polluting ways while generating huge profits and sinking those profits into investment in new green technologies, including offshore wind.6 The community energy sector is very much the ‘Cinderella’ of the energy transition. Government Ministers such as Andrew Bowie, the Minister for Nuclear and Networks, may pay lip-service to the idea of ‘local communities [ … ] at the heart of our plans to boost our energy security and grow the economy’,1 but there is a yawning chasm between warm words and real decisive action on delivery.

Local Electricity Bill

At present, UK community energy schemes can generate an income by selling their power either directly into the national grid or to an ‘offtaker’ such

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power lines

The community energy sector has been delivering an impressive range of community-owned energy projects

as a school where solar PV is installed on the roof.

Export rates are set by the regulator, and people then buy the electricity at wholesale rates from power utilities. This stands in direct contrast to other European models such as those used in Germany and Denmark which support the right of community energy organisations to sell renewable energy direct to third parties.7 Consider the current state of play with the crossparty-supported Private Members’ Local Electricity Bill introduced into the House of Commons by David Johnston, the Conservative MP for Wantage.

The latest version, called the Local Electricity (No.2) Bill, is intended: ‘to establish an export guarantee scheme for small generators of low carbon electricity; to set a tariff, based on market rates, for the sale of electricity under the export guarantee scheme; to make provision to enable small generators of low carbon electricity to sell electricity directly to local people; to place certain duties on the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority; and for connected purposes.’ 8 But this legislation is only at its First Reading stage and is unlikely to progress without government support in the House of Commons. The previous iteration of the Bill, which was first introduced in

2020, failed to reach its Second Reading and in March 2023, when Parliament prorogued, the Bill made no further progress.

The government resisted amendments to the Energy Act 2023 (which received Royal Assent in October) that would have enabled community energy groups to sell their clean power locally. Instead, the government announced its new £10 million Community Energy Fund to support the sector (referred to above).

This really is just playing around at the edges, and, without a significant shift in policy, funding and resources, the community energy sector is destined to play only a minor role in the energy transition.

Energy democracy and the energy transition

’Energy democracy’ is a concept that grew out of the climate justice movement and the idea of a just energy transition. It seeks to: ‘democratize the production and management of energy resources — including the social ownership of energy infrastructure, decentralization of energy systems, and expansion of public participation in energy-related policymaking’. 9 This is at the very heart of the idea of ‘energy communities’ being promoted by the European Union (EU).

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Given the massive spike in energy prices and the cost of living crisis — caused in part by the war in Ukraine but also by the dependence on imported fossil fuels — the European Commission and the EU have been actively promoting actions that help citizens to reduce their energy consumption, increase their energy savings, and lower their energy bills.

Energy communities are legal entities that empower citizens, small businesses and local authorities to produce, manage and consume their own energy as a means of collective and citizen-driven energy action that helps to pave the way for a clean energy transition.10 There are, for instance, around 2,250 energy co-operatives operating across Europe, which jointly represent over 1.5 million citizens.11

be a much greater focus on the ideas of energy democracy and energy communities.

What can local authorities do to support community energy?

While local authorities are hampered by the same lack of powers, clarity of policy direction, limited resources and access to finance as the community energy sector, there are things that councils can do to support the development of the community energy sector and promote energy democracy.

Around 83% of councils have declared a climate emergency.13 Most councils will have put in place climate change strategies and action plans, setting out how they propose to tackle the threat posed by climate change. Councils could make support for local community and co-operative energy one of the key outcomes for their strategy and action plans.

The community energy sector Specific measures could include the following: could be both a powerful • Review council assets to identify whether there is the potential to work in partnership with ally and a collaborator in local community energy organisations to deploy contributing to meeting local community-owned renewable energy such as solar PV, wind and hydro power on their land climate change targets and buildings (schools, leisure centres, depots, community centres, etc.).

An example of how community and co-operative • Consider innovative funding packages to support energy contributes towards the vision of energy community energy deployment through, for communities can be seen in the Heidelberger instance, green bonds or underwriting the risk of Energie Genossenschaft (HEG) in Germany. HEG, community share offers through loan guarantees, the Heidelberg Energy Co-Operative, was established to enable community energy groups to raise the in 2010 and has since invested in and built renewable necessary capital and repay loans on an affordable energy generation across the city and region. It has basis. invested over £6 million of capital raised through • Support community organisations to apply for grant funding (Community Energy England offers citizens in renewable energy projects (including a list of funding opportunities on its website) by wind and solar initiatives) and has over 1,330 providing technical and bid-writing support and members.12 It supplies 100% renewable electricity as well as green gas to residents and businesses as endorsing their applications. a citizen utility.

• Provide access to local authority officers in sustainability, estates and property management, This is a useful policy lens through which we can finance, legal, planning and development control view the community energy movement. Community to provide technical support and advice. energy could be a disrupter of the existing energy system, creating a new paradigm for the future.

• Remove or ease the regulatory barriers to community energy, whether in relation to Local energy markets (LEMs), peer-to-peer trading, planning policy, building regulations, or leases and energy clubs, the development of distributed energy licences, etc. systems and new digital technologies could all contribute to a change in the current energy system • Actively promote co-operative and community energy through communications, social media architecture, leading to fundamental reform of the and events, and involve community energy existing energy market. organisations in decision-making at a local level.

It is now widely recognised that the current privatised energy market is broken. It does not work Councils need to understand that the community well in promoting competition, protecting consumers, or supporting the energy transition. The time is long energy sector could be both a powerful ally and a collaborator in contributing to meeting local climate overdue for an overhaul of the energy market and change targets. It is a way of engaging with and the role of market regulation, and there should

‘

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meeting space catalysing communities to take climate action and of taking control of the energy system and the future of clean energy.

•

Mark Bramah is Climate Change & Sustainability Project Manager with Rochdale Borough Council. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 ‘Communities at the heart of new fund to boost local growth and energy security’. Press release. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 11 Aug. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/news/communities-at-theheart-of-new-fund-to-boost-local-growth-and-energysecurity 2 See the North West Net Zero Hub’s ‘Community Energy Fund’ website, at www.localenergynw.org/page/ community-energy-fund 3 See Community Energy: State of the Sector Report 2022. Community Energy England/Community Energy Scotland/Community Energy Wales, 2022. https://communityenergyengland.org/pages/state-ofthe-sector 4 British Energy Security Strategy. HM Government, Apr. 2022. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/626112c0e90e07168e3fdba3/british-energysecurity-strategy-web-accessible.pdf 5 ‘Major boost for hydrogen as UK unlocks new investment, jobs and progress towards net zero’.

Press release. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 14 Dec. 2023. https://beisnewsroom.prgloo.com/news/major-boost-forhydrogen-as-uk-unlocks-new-investment-jobs-andprogress-towards-net-zero#:~:text=Over%20700%20 jobs%20will%20be%20created%20across%20the,in%20 government%20funding%20over%20the%20next%20 15%20years 6 J Ambrose: ‘SSE to invest £40bn in green energy as profits almost double’. The Guardian, 24 May 2023. www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/24/ energy-firm-sse-reports-near-doubling-of-annualprofits 7 O Balch: ‘Energy co-ops: why the UK has nothing on Germany and Denmark’. The Guardian, 2 Oct. 2015. www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/ oct/02/energy-cooperatives-uk-germany-denmarkcommunity 8 Local Electricity (No. 2) Bill. Bill 288 2022–23. Private Members’ Bill. May 2023. https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3447 9 See the ‘Energy democracy’ Wikipedia page, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_democracy 10 ‘In focus: Energy communities to transform the EU’s energy system’. News article. European Commission, 13 Dec. 2022. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/news/ focus-energy-communities-transform-eus-energysystem-2022-12-13_en 11 See the REScoop.eu webpage, at www.rescoop.eu/ 12 See the Heidelberg Energy Cooperative webpage, at https://heg.solar/ 13 See the Climate Emergency UK website, at https://climateemergency.uk/

central london meeting rooms for hire The TCPA has two meeting rooms for hire in the centre of London for conferences, meetings, and training events.

The refurbished Boardroom overlooks The Mall. It can accommodate up to 40 people in a theatre-style layout and up to 28 in boardroom/roundtable style. A small meeting room, which can accommodate up to 10 people, is also available for hire.

A laptop and projector can be hired, subject to availability.

Refreshments and lunch (not included in the room hire) can also be ordered at the time of booking.

The TCPA’s premises are situated in the Grade I listed 17 Carlton House Terrace, close to Trafalgar Square, and a few minutes’ walk from Charing Cross and Piccadilly Circus Underground stations.

The TCPA has no parking facilities, but a National Car Park at the end of the Terrace in Spring Gardens can be accessed via Trafalgar Square.

The rooms are available for hire all year round during office hours. Evening hire may be available by arrangement. Booking priority and preferential rates are given to TCPA members.

For further information and hire rates and to check availability, ring 020 7930 8903 or e-mail tcpa@tcpa.org.uk

Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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europe inside out In a troubled world, courageous professionals can play a valuable role in keeping dialogue open between different political perspectives, people, and cultures, says Olivier Sykes

being professional in a turbulent world

Sitting at the keyboard four years to the day after the 2019 UK general election gave pause for thought in writing this, the latest entry in a column dedicated to reflection on the European and international dimensions of planning. Back in 2019, the schisms between those who still supported the UK’s exit from the EU and those who either wanted the whole idea abandoned or at least a chance to vote on the terms on which Brexit would take place, and tensions within the UK union exacerbated by it, were once again on full display. Despite a slight progressive majority in terms of vote share, in the 2019 general election the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system delivered a significant majority to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.1 It is hard to look back over the intervening years and the UK’s choice without having the ironicising quip popularised by social media, ‘How’s that working out for you?’, playing somewhere in the back of one’s mind. The morning news bulletins on 12 December 2023 were full of the attempts of the third Conservative Prime Minister since 2019, Rishi Sunak — fresh from his awkward appearance at the Covid Inquiry the previous day — to secure the passage of his Rwanda Bill through Parliament.

In 2022 the premiership of the second post-2019 Conservative Prime Minister, Liz Truss, had been marked by the hard application, via her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘mini budget’ of 23 September, of the economic prescriptions of many of the thinktanks that have spent half a century decrying the apparently negative effects of planning on national economic vibrancy and potential.

Commenting on the mini-budget, Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) had excitedly gushed that ‘This isn’t a trickle-down budget, it’s a boost-up budget. The government has announced a radical set of policies to increase Britain’s prosperity.’2 Even better for the deregulators, in his speech announcing the mini-budget, Kwasi 70

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Kwarteng stated that ‘in the coming months, we will bring forward a new Bill to unpick the complex patchwork of planning restrictions and EU-derived laws that constrain our growth.’ 3 A libertarian, low tax and regulation, post-Brexit ‘Britannia Unchained’4 beckoned. Back in the real world, by 14 October the Bank of England had had to commit around £65 billion to try to restore some stability to Britain’s bond market.5 Yet within weeks, in response to a speech to the Confederation of British Industry by the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Matthew Lesh, Head of Public Policy at the IEA, was opining that ‘Sunak entirely failed to discuss the single biggest handbrake on our prosperity: Britain’s broken planning system [which] hampers the construction of infrastructure, factories, lab space and housing, which are all essential to innovation and growth.’ 6 Perhaps if Kwasi Kwarteng had been granted the time to ‘unpick’ the complex patchwork of planning restrictions that hold us back, things might have been very different and Liz Truss would not have had to stand down as Prime Minister? Perhaps planners were also part of the ‘left-wing economic establishment’7 that conspired to stymie her vision?

As Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak was soon vaunting the benefits of a new agreement with the EU on Northern Ireland 8 which would place the region in an ‘unbelievably special position’ 9 with access to both the UK and European Union markets, making it the ‘world’s most exciting economic zone’ 10 — a privilege that the whole of the UK had enjoyed before the Brexit he had campaigned for. A prominent Brexiter extolling the benefits of access to both the UK and EU rather underscored the fact that, after all this time, those who had promoted the UK’s exit from the EU could not point with honesty to anything positive that the UK’s retreat from the EU had yet generated, or anything negative that had been forestalled because of Brexit.

To be clear, Brexit was never going to mean nothing positive was ever going to happen again in the UK. But nor was the bar for measuring ‘Brexit’ success supposed to be a situation in which certain positive things that would have happened anyway might still take place, but typically with more complexity and costs involved as a result of leaving

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europe inside out

Change in public discourse and dispute have seen facts, evidence and expert counsel increasingly dismissed

the EU. Think of the example of the car and other industries enticed with taxpayer subsidy — often at undisclosed levels — to remain and invest in the UK. This is a far cry from the Brexiters’ promises of a ‘turbocharged’ economy.

It was reported by the British Chambers of Commerce in December 2023 that ‘Almost twothirds of British exporters have said selling to the EU has become harder in the past year’.11 Even the flagship post-Brexit trade deal, the ‘Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership’, is now predicted to be worth even less to the UK than was previously thought, with official estimates indicating that it could add just 0.04% to GDP in the ‘long run’ after 15 years, rather than the originally expected 0.08%.12 And while inflation started to fall by the end of 2023, the London School of Economics estimates that Brexit-induced food inflation has cost UK households up to £6.95 billion overall since December 201913 — not really a great help for ‘left-behind Britain’ and the delivery of the increasingly spectral14 levelling-up agenda.

Matters of substance, matters of process

Some readers may recall the notion of the substantive and procedural distinction in planning theory. In this, substantive theories relate to the ‘object’ and the ‘ends’ of planning, or as the name suggests the ‘substance’ or ‘stuff’ that planning deals with (for example urban land use, green infrastructure, mobility, etc.), while procedural theories relate to the processes and ‘means’ of planning.

The distinction has been questioned over recent decades — for example, on the grounds that the ‘means’ and ‘ends/goals’ of planning can be hard to disentangle in practice: achieving public engagement could be a goal of planning as well as part of its processes, for instance. However, the substantive and procedural distinction can be useful in making sense of the impacts of something like Brexit.

The evidence indicates that in substantive terms this archetypal ‘solution in search of a problem’ has not delivered on its promises while aggravating a host of other issues. This assessment is not only that of those who oppose the idea, but is increasingly voiced by those who supported the UK’s exit from the EU — although this is often accompanied by the argument that the mediocre results are due to Brexit ‘not being done properly’, and that it has been undermined by an amorphous ‘blob’ of deep-state agents and ‘remainer’ bureaucrats; or are due to the fact that ‘we haven’t properly left the EU’, etc.

Yet the substantive impacts of ‘what was done’ with Brexit are just one issue. The impact of ‘how it was done’ is another; and is significant as this sets the context within which future policy choices — and by extension the impacts of these choices — will be generated. The 2016 EU referendum campaign and its aftermath shifted the dial on the manner in which public discourse and the natural public discord on different matters are transacted, and it supercharged the routine dismissal of facts and evidence and the counsel of experts.15 This has durably eroded the quality of public debate, civility, truthfulness and probity16 in public life — which is a big issue for Town & Country Planning January–February 2024

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planning, which seeks to serve the public interest through balanced reasoning and just and effective institutions. Brexit thus became the UK’s version of a wider descent into populism, culture wars and conspiracy theory movements around matters of public interest.17 Concrete examples of the impacts of such a context on planning were provided in a clutch of articles in the November-December 2023 issue of Town & Country Planning. Robin Hickman discussed the exploitation of divisive ‘wedge issues’ by populist politicians in the context of transport planning and motorists.18 Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson pointed to how ‘the values that appear to underpin planning and development choices are being increasingly contested using populist tropes’, and noted that ‘planning itself is being dragged into the ‘culture wars’ ’.19 The progressive ‘utopian’ visions explored by Hugh Ellis in the same issue — whether promoted by an enlightened state committed to universal solutions, or versions of more bottom-up ‘community-led mutual aid’ — seem to lie some way off below the horizon against such a backdrop.20

‘A concern with common

problems and a shared ’repertoire’ of ways of apprehending reality and acting to address such problems can help to maintain or rebuild bridges’ Professionalism in a troubled world

Political moments and movements such as Brexit also have wider environmental, social and strategic geopolitical dimensions. The ease with which populist political messaging and opaque political financing were able to prise a supposedly advanced democracy away from a vital alliance with like-minded countries with shared strategic interests was an encouragement to authoritarian regimes in Europe and elsewhere to continue seeking to undermine free and democratic states and societies. Populist politicians in those same societies — often with financial and social media support from such regimes — continue to play the game of destabilisation and division in pursuit of votes.

Although their success has been mixed (and in some places held back or reversed), many societies 72

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seem stuck in an enduring loop of ever-diminishing political returns, in which the populists’ crude offer of ‘solutions in search of (purported) problems’ (predictably) generates more problems, leading to calls for ever more extreme ‘solutions’. As the shadows of conflict lengthen internationally in certain regions around the globe and various states face their own populist ‘moments’, professionals face the question of how to practise when real and culture wars flare and falsehood reigns.

Professionalism rests on a number of claims: ‘the claim to control a particular area of knowledge or expertise; the claim that problems the occupational group’s members seek to solve are ultimately resolvable within the existing social and economic structures of society; the claim to altruism, that the occupation serves the public interest or common good.’ 21 Commitments to equality and autonomy in transactions with clients are other often-cited features.

Graduating medical students, for example, recite the Declaration of Geneva22 (the contemporary version of the Hippocratic Oath) — one clause of which states: ‘I WILL NOT PERMIT considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient;’ Yet sifting issues and discriminating among humanity according to such characteristics is the bread and butter of populist politics and culture wars, and can in extreme situations lead to open and armed conflicts (including the ‘urbicide’ and forced displacement of peoples witnessed in current wars).

Life as a professional against such a background can be challenging. However, more positively, in a politically divided and troubled world courageous professionals and professions can play a valuable role in keeping dialogue open between different and sometimes opposed political perspectives, people, and cultures. A concern with common problems and a shared ‘repertoire’ of ways of apprehending reality and acting to address such problems can help to maintain or rebuild bridges (sometimes literally).

As a planner and educator, it is a privilege to be able to often witness meetings in which students and professionals who come from nations, cultures, and identity groups that may be in disagreement or conflict ‘in the world’ can come together as planners to reflect and work constructively on ways

europe inside out

to improve places and the prospects for ‘flourishing lives on a sustainable planet’.20 Andreas Faludi and Bas Waterhout once described planners as ‘notorious internationalists’23 — in the present troubled world this notoriety should be worn as a badge of honour!

Dr Olivier Sykes is Senior Lecturer in European Spatial •Planning in the School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool. The views expressed are personal.

Notes 1 The Conservative Party got 43.6% of all votes cast, but 56% of all the seats in the House of Commons — see P Worral: ‘What might have happened under proportional representation’. Channel 4 News, 13 Dec. 2019. www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-whatmight-have-happened-under-proportionalrepresentation 2 ‘IEA responds to mini budget statement’. Press release.

Institute of Economic Affairs, 22 Sept. 2022. https://iea.org.uk/media/iea-responds-to-mini-budgetstatement/ 3 L Edgar: ‘Kwarteng announces new bill to unpick ‘complex’ planning restrictions’. The Planner, 23 Sept. 2022. www.theplanner.co.uk/2022/09/23/kwartengannounces-new-bill-unpick-complex-planningrestrictions 4 Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss were among contributors to the libertarian tract Britannia Unchained (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) — see J Cruddas: ‘Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity — review’, The Guardian, 27 Sept. 2012. www.theguardian.com/ books/2012/sep/27/britannia-unchained-global-lessonsreview 5 In comparison, the UK’s net contributions to the EEC/ EU budget over the 47 years of membership from 1973 to 2020 totalled about £178 billion at cash, or £252 billion at real, prices — source HM Treasury 6 M Lesh: ‘The Prime Minister’s words are no substitute for bold action to turbocharge innovation’. Press release. Institute of Economic Affairs, 21 Nov. 2022. https://iea.org.uk/media/the-prime-ministers-words-areno-substitute-for-bold-action-to-turbochargeinnovation/ 7 L O’Dell: ‘Liz Truss blames ‘left-wing economic establishment’ for her being the shortest serving prime minister — 9 top reactions’. indy100.com, 5 Feb. 2023. www.indy100.com/politics/liz-truss-daily-telegraphlettuce 8 The Windsor Framework: A New Way Forward. CP 806.

HM Government, Feb. 2023. www.gov.uk/government/ publications/the-windsor-framework 9 S Francis: ‘Windsor Framework: New Brexit deal about people of Northern Ireland, says Sunak’. BBC News, 28 Feb. 2023. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64796945 10 P Walker: ‘Sunak draws ire after hailing Northern Ireland’s access to UK and EU markets’. The Guardian, 28 Feb. 2023. www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/ feb/28/sunak-northern-ireland-access-uk-eu-marketstrade-deal

11 H Stewart: ‘British exporters call on government to ease post-Brexit trade frictions with EU’. The Guardian, 19 Dec. 2023. www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/ dec/19/british-exporters-call-on-government-to-easepost-brexit-trade-frictions-with-eu 12 T Helm: ‘UK’s flagship post-Brexit trade deal worth even less than previously thought, OBR says’. The Guardian, 25 Nov. 2023. www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/ nov/25/uks-flagship-post-brexit-trade-deal-worth-evenless-than-previously-thought-obr-says 13 J D Bakker, N Datta, R Davies and J De Lyon: Brexit and Consumer Food Prices: 2023 Update. Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science, May 2023. https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit18.pdf 14 A Nurse and O Sykes: ‘Levelling up and the privileging of sub-national governance in England in the interBrexit space’. ZFW — Advances in Economic Geography, 2023, Vol. 67(2–3), 161-171. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2023-0048 15 H Mance: ‘Britain has had enough of experts, says Gove’. Financial Times, 3 Jun. 2016. www.ft.com/ content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c 16 As regards this issue and planning, as noted in 2020 by Lord Evans, Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, ‘There can be little doubt that the handling of Richard Desmond’s proposed scheme to redevelop the Westferry Printworks knocked public confidence in the fairness of the planning system’. See J Evans: ‘Are we in a post-Nolan age?’. Hugh Kay Lecture, 12 Nov. 2020. www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ the-hugh-kay-lecture-are-we-in-a-post-nolan-age 17 R Behr: ‘Why does the spirit of Remain survive?

Because it is about so much more than Brexit’.

The Guardian, 6 Dec. 2023. www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2023/dec/06/remain-spirit-brexitreferendum-party-politics 18 R Hickman: ‘Wedge issues, winning votes, and car drivers’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Nov.–Dec., 367–69 19 G Parker and M Dobson: ‘ ’Do the right thing’ — planning at the intersection of the ‘culture wars’ ’.

Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Nov.–Dec., 381–86 20 H Ellis: ‘Utopia — the wind in our sails or the ghost in the machine?’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Nov.–Dec., 375–80 21 B Evans: ‘Why we no longer need a town planning profession’. Planning Practice & Research, 1993, Vol. 8(1), 9–15 — cited in P Allmendinger: Planning Theory. Red Globe Press, 2017, Third Edition, p.155 22 WMA Declaration of Geneva. World Medical Association, Sept 1948, with subsequent amendments up to Oct. 2017. www.wma.net/policies-post/wmadeclaration-of-geneva/ 23 A Faludi and B Waterhout: The Making of the European Spatial Fevelopment Perspective: No Masterplan.

RTPI Library Series. Routledge, 2002

Town & Town Country & Country Planning Planning January–February January–February 2024 2024 73

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