Planning reform could be good news shock!

With the latest headlines damming the government’s new localism bill due to its impact on our green and pleasant land, Ian Blacker, Head of Planning Advisory Services, at John Rowan & Partners, urges us to read behind the sensational headlines. Most people, he says, will find more things to agree about than disagree…

The government’s localism agenda has raised significant concerns in the development industry about the potential impact of ‘nimbyism’. Help may now be forthcoming from the unlikely source of the Treasury with a presumption in favour of development.

Many involved in the planning process have endured years of frustration watching proposals for much needed housing (and other development) founder on the rocks of nimbyism. With the arrival of localism we’ve seen strategic housing allocations slashed across the country and the prospect of enhanced powers of veto for neighbours of new development, causing many to wonder how anything will be built in constrained urban locations.

Then came the Budget, whether a response to concerns about slipping back into recession or to specific criticisms of the Bill itself, the Plan for Growth (published by the Treasury and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, not the DCLG) committed the Government to reintroduce a presumption in favour of sustainable development. Whatever the reason, it’s good news.

By June the DCLG was onboard: Local planning authorities “should plan positively for new development, and approve individual proposals wherever possible”. It provided a three step approach for planning authorities: Prepare local plans on the basis that objectively assessed development needs should be met; approve development proposals that accord with statutory plans without delay; and grant planning permission where local plans and policies are “absent, silent, indeterminate or out of date”.

This caused immediate speculation that the nations greenbelt would be under threat and swathes of countryside would be under concrete. But the new draft National Planning Policy Framework, published in July, will not lead to every last blade of grass in the countryside being built upon, nor every new planning proposal being consigned to the scrapheap.

However as much as some would like it to be, this is not about good versus bad or protectionism versus progress. This is about balancing interests – social, environmental and economic – in decisions about new development.

The story of the government’s planning reform readily divides into two phases: Pre-budget 2011 and post-budget 2011. Before the budget we had the launch of ‘Open Source Planning’ in February 2010 and the first reading of the Localism Bill in Parliament in January 2011, which raised legitimate concerns about local determination translating into ‘nimbyism’. Post-budget, The Plan for Growth and now the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), demonstrates a top-down pro-growth approach. As someone once said, “it’s the economy, stupid”.

But let’s look at what is actually now being proposed. The seemingly long-abandoned 1980s planning principle of a presumption in favour of development returns as a presumption in favour of sustainable development. So who’s against sustainable development?

The plan-led system will be strengthened, provided there’s an up-to-date plan with policies relevant to the site or scheme being considered. If there’s no plan or relevant policies, then the presumption in favour of sustainable development will prevail. Once again, critics on all sides have long complained about planning not being relevant, so here’s a challenge from government to neighbourhoods and councils to plan for their area and affect the nature, form and location of development.

There are, undoubtedly, legitimate concerns about the ability of councils to deliver a new set of plans within increasingly restrictive financial regimes, as well as about the willingness of neighbourhoods to actively and effectively engage in the plan and policy making process (a process where they will discover a lot of allocations and targets – including housing targets – have already been set). But the principle of ‘localism’ has not gone away, and developers will have to embrace much higher standards of public engagement. Whilst landowners, occupiers and developers, communities, councillors and planning officers will all have to learn new ways of working together. Decisions on investment and growth are better made through properly thought through plans than by appeals.

And what of ‘sustainable development’? Well, almost inevitably, what passes for a government definition provides sufficient opportunity for detailed, case-by-case debate. The plan-led or presumption approach should, the government states, apply ‘unless the adverse impacts of allowing development would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits when assessed against the policy objectives in the National Planning Policy Framework taken as a whole’.

We’ve clearly come a long way from the classic Brundtland Commission definition of sustainable development but at least – and at last – we’ve got something setting out the ground rules for debate for all those involved in the planning process. And that should be seen as a significant step forward.

These are all, of course, just words, and much can change before the Bill becomes law and the news reaches your local planning officer or Planning Committee member. But every decision developers make should now be influenced by this new planning landscape.

We’re not out of the dark yet, but it’s just got a lot brighter.

Do you have a view on this subject? Please let us know. Comment below or email editorial@sustainmagazine.com