Planning By Numbers - Large Ones!

A little while ago [1] I wrote about the likely impact of CIL and all the associated costs, fees and levies that can be applied when making even the most innocuous of planning applications. Since then the Government have confirmed that planning fees will rise by 15%. The jury is still out over allowing authorities individual rights to set their own fees.

Well, my gast has never been so flabbered when applying recently for three residential caravans. Nothing too exciting about that. But during the course of the application I was contacted by the Planning Officer to ask when I was going to submit my unilateral S.106 obligation. I expressed some surprise  -given the development was adjacent an existing mobile home park with its own facilities - but was directed to a rather well hidden backwater of the councils’ website where there lurked the adopted Supplementary Planning Document on Planning Obligations – and an infrastructure levy calculator!

I applied the calculator to the proposal. It came to over £16,000. I blanched. I must have got it wrong, but no. With two bedrooms per unit (albeit very small ones) the calculator assumed there should be a heavy contribution for local schools provision as well as applying all kinds of additional charges; including for a welcome pack to the area, supplied by the council at over £30 per pack. Wonderful. Since when is a welcome pack ‘infrastructure’? Why not lie and propose one-bed units? There was a monitoring element applied.

But - I pointed out – residential caravans are almost exclusively the province of the retired and elderly. In fact my client did not accept families onto the site. Quick as a flash the response came back that in that case the costs would be just as much for enhanced health care services, so the same figure still applied. There was no room for ‘negotiation’; despite that very word appearing in the first paragraph of the SPD document. So my client agreed to pay up and consent was duly granted.

A number of issues come to mind. Firstly the explanatory documents indicated that this was not meant to be a betterment tax. Quite frankly I couldn’t see even the merest glimpse of clear water between the so called levy and a betterment based tax. The term planning ‘obligation’ seems far more relevant.

Secondly, the calculator couldn’t be adjusted to reflect the reality of the proposed development and therefore even though the Planning Officer’s instantly revised stance might have had some legitimacy, the reality is that the extracted fee will still not be applied to healthcare, but to education (and all the other bits and bobs that formed the extensive schedule of so called infrastructure – there are over 30 discrete elements against which the levy is applied). So it is unlikely that the extracted cash will actually go to fulfilling the generated needs in any event - even if they existed in the first place.

Perhaps the money just goes into the pot and is divvied up as and when. Not much point to the calculator then if that’s the case. So I looked into things a bit further.

The SPD noted correctly that, “CIL should only be levied where there is a genuine infrastructure need to support development of the area”. The Annual Monitoring Report for December 2011 (the latest available) reveals that of nearly £20 million contributed in this way, less than £1m had actually been spent in the last 12 months. So where is all that ‘genuine infrastructure’?

Let’s be honest. However you jazz it up, it’s a tax on development; a betterment tax pure and simple. Never mind what it is, pay up or shut up. Even if it had been one dwelling a substantial levy would have applied. The calculator indicates that a single 2 bedroom bricks and mortar dwelling would require just over £10,000 to be coughed up.

And don’t think you’re safe if you’re not doing residential development. There is a similar commercial space calculator too.

CIL is meant to provide certainty and it certainly does that. Certainty that I will be warning my clients to avoid some areas where excessive levies are being applied in apparently arbitrary ways that do not appear to deliver on the promise.

The real kicker is that this SPD went though the formal adoption procedure and someone, somewhere, thought it was all OK! And the Government wonders why the development sector is parlous.

Of course, the costs can be passed on to the purchaser/tenant. But this simply adds to price inflation. It wouldn’t be so bad perhaps if the money was actually being spent. And maybe it is all ring fenced and committed, but the AMR doesn’t hint at any of that. So for the time being it sits in the Council’s coffers doing nothing. Perhaps.

I have been deliberately vague over the circumstances as my paranoia knows no bounds. But is this going to be the future of planning? Really? Even for the much vaunted self-builder who was encouraged into action by the Housing Minister only a month or two ago? I fear it is and the real outcome will be a stalling of development, except for those who have very deep pockets indeed.

Welcome to the brave new world of Planning by numbers. Large ones.

[1] http://theplannerman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/cil-bill-levy-too-far-for-self-builders.html

http://theplannerman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/kerching-planning-stealth-tax-too-far.html

Office to Residential? - It's all about the Drains!

Well, they've been and gone and done it again and no mistake.

In their response to consultation(1) published today concerning the possible conversion of redundant offices space to residential use the Government has stated that:

"We have given very careful consideration to all the points which were raised and have decided to take the following actions:

• to include a new policy in the National Planning Policy Framework1, to be read in the wider context of the Framework document, that local planning authorities ‘…should normally approve planning applications for change to residential use and any associated development from commercial buildings (currently in the B use classes) where there is an identified need for additional housing in that area, provided that there are not strong economic reasons why such development would be inappropriate…’; and

• to amend the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 (as amended) to extend existing permitted development rights which allow the space above shops and other town centre uses (A1 and A2 uses) to be converted into a single flat without the need to submit a planning application, to allow for 2 flats"

The aim is to introduce legislation in October 2012 to give effect to these measures.

Fine. Given that housing need is pretty universal, the only limiting criteria is economic need. i.e. the need for office space overriding the need for housing in a specific location. Hard to see this one sticking though but you never know. 

No matter then any question of actual suitability of the space for residential use, visual impact, sustainable locations and all that - or will all this sneak in the back door via the planning process and the wider application of the NPPF (with LPA's then being royally blamed for inhibiting Government initiatives if permissions are not granted). Lets ignore such trifling matters that play space is likely to be around the Business Park entrance sign and most of the windows wont open on modern office space. Hang your washing out in the delivery bay?

And what about the drains? Eh!? 

It is a fundamental law of any development that the drain capacity will inevitably determining scale. Office blocks of whatever kind will not have been developed to residential specifications - not needing all those washing machines, dishwashers, baths etc. The mains drains therefore will not be sized for residential capacity.

Simply encouraging the conversion of any old vacant office space in any old location, just because it is there to be used, may not be a terribly practical way of creating new dwellings; even assuming you can convert the space sufficiently well to provide appealing dwellings for the market. And there I was thinking that the flats market was already flooded.

Now. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for the flexible use of buildings. I have spent a deal of my life securing planning permissions for just that around rural Britain; and the 'Concept of Reversibility' that we apply to schemes is a fundamental precept of economic future-proofing. The thing is we design the buildings for a dual use from the outset.
(1)http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/2172423.pdf