As the government endeavours to mop up their predecessors’ apparent mistakes, reduce the red tape and seeks that ‘sweet spot’ in planning management and development delivery, the already complex planning system is rapidly being made the more so by a constant round of vague political dictates that appear to be sound in principle, but in fact do not appear to have been thought through at all. Well, if they have, someone is “avin a larff”.
As I understand the story so far:
The Big Society will aim to empower local people through the Localism Act (in combination with what’s left of their local authorities and one or two LEP’s) to generate sustainable economic development and significant infrastructure benefits, with local-vernacular designed (non Lego based) housing of which a great deal will have to be affordable in format, within socially mixed and sustainable communities, based on a Core Strategy (where only 20% are currently adopted) and Neighbourhood Plans of varying context and nature that are in conformity with those Core Strategies, created by Neighbourhood Forums (maybe a quorum of 3, or 20, or something) that have yet to be provided with the means to convene. Oh, and with a scythe being taken to the long evolved planning structures and policies that have helped to manage development in this crowded country for the last 60 odd years.
So, where does this leave the development industry which has to interpret all this and convince financial backers and shareholders that they can still make a commercial return undertaking the right development in line with the right policy framework, and in the right place, at the right time, delivering eco-friendly, energy-efficient and well-designed edifices for a continuously growing population, that minimise their carbon footprint to that of a microbe and reduce car use to an afterthought, do not tread on flood plains, the countryside, anywhere where a bat may have been, or brownfield sites that have stupidly gone and got themselves some ecology, whilst being just profitable enough for the benevolent, if not positively philanthropic, smiley-faced old developer, to fund the full cost of the whole planning service, from community engagement to the inevitable appeals, plus pay the pre-determined ‘planning gain’/CIL uplift, deliver full infrastructure and public transport provision, together with a 150 per cent affordable housing quota, in a fully integrated, socially and culturally diverse eco-heritage-futurist–village/town/metropolis with jobs for all, that has taken less than 12 months to receive all its relevant consents from inception, following a public consultation exercise involving every means possible, including the ‘X-factor’ and ‘Strictly Come Planning’, and is fully operational within one Parliamentary cycle!!
Nurse, the screens!
Maybe the big boys can take all this on the chin, but what of the small guy? The simple everyday builder or local businessman, who has enough trouble trying to keep his head above water to pay his staff and the Inland Revenue, let alone spending time and money going through a new and poorly outlined planning minefield in order to secure a small extension to his factory/ office/ restaurant etc.
The planning service is pressing for full cost recovery, which will put existing planning fees through the roof. Early CIL drafts suggest that this too will become rapidly quite expensive and then there is all the ‘gain’ stuff. And all he wants is to keep his business alive.
As a practitioner working daily for many small clients across the country I already have cause to agonize over their future chances of survival. They don’t have time to understand all that is happening and really cannot afford to invest so much in their ‘community’ beyond the economic benefits they create from their business and the jobs they are sustaining.
This country is running on the back of a myriad of small businesses (both in urban and rural areas) and THEY are the ones who really need to have a clear and accessible planning framework so they can get on with keeping the economic machine going. It’s not all about building houses for goodness sakes.
If there is anyone out there in ‘Whitehall Mandarin Land’ who is applying any sort of testing to all these wonderful and innovative new ideas, you would do well to run them against a simple proposal for a small business and then demonstrate how this is going to work within the new planning regimen, costs and all.
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