Trains, Planes and Internet Technology - Revisited

This time last year I considered the role of technology in adjusting the way we work and the impact on the planning process. On the day that the Government have published their proposals for HS2 I have another look at the need for this proposal.

Town planning is going to have to get to grips with a fundamental shift in the way we undertake and travel to work in the foreseeable future. This will knock-on into how we will live and play in the future and will significantly alter some of the long held planning precepts that still colour today's economic development and infrastructure initiatives.

The Government have given their support to HS2 (High Speed 2) and a new London Airport remains on the table for consideration. Both have naturally attracted considerable public comment - both positive and negative - and in either case, the benefits are likely to be long in gestation and delivery.

The first phase of HS2 linking London with that distant provincial settlement of Birmingham is not likely to receive its first fare paying passenger until 2026 and the track won’t reach the northern wastes of Manchester for 21 years or so.

The business cases for each are largely formulated on the basic premise of, "more of the same". The economic justification reports highlight the extrapolation of past growth as a justification of need. And what is more it's all about enabling speedier business and economic growth. The fact that HS2 acknowledges the likelihood of modal shift from plane and car does cause an eyebrow to be raised momentarily, but perhaps this is inevitable.

We have a growing population, with increasingly footloose aspirations for work and play, so it would seem that such schemes are all to the good. Right?

I wonder.

21 years ago the height of modern business practice would see your average office operating with electronic typewriter/wordprocessors and fax machines. Top executives might have a wired-in carphone and at the very upper limits possibly a ticket on Concorde. The 'New York for Breakfast' meeting was the height of business sophistication and apparent success. The colour of the travel tag on your hand luggage was your mark of progress. Whilst telephone conferencing was emerging, in order to run your business face to face meetings were still the norm, as they had been for millennia.

But just look today at what has happened with technology in that short period of time. The rapid and revolutionary emergence of the Internet has led to a fundamental shift in the way we do business.

Mobile and smartphones, tablets and reliable video conferencing, skype-ing, texting, Google, working in the Cloud and 24 hour around-the-world team operations are the norm. A year or so back I was impressed knowing that I could dictate a report in the afternoon, send it by email for formatting to a dedicated service in Australia overnight and have it back in my inbox ready to go the following morning. Tame. I now dictate straight into my PC using voice recognition software, print out as a pdf and email in one seemless operation. I can work anywhere using my iPhone and can access my client files in the Cloud without needing to lug them around. The days of stupefyingly repetitive copying of documents for planning applications has been replaced by the Planning Portal. The paperless office finally begins to emerge.

Manufacturers can convene meaningful real time meetings between teams with interactive video and online graphical interfaces to discuss product development without needing to pour over drawing boards (now replaced by CAD) or oily lathes and never leaving their offices. 3D models of almost anything can be emailed around the world and precisely reproduced in laser 'copiers'. Feature films are now regularly produced between UK and Hollywood studios online. I'm sure there are lots of exciting things about which I have no knowledge.

So if all this can occur in such a short time period, just think how technology is going to evolve further over the next 21 years. The question is, will we really need to travel for business in the way that we used to, and secondly, is speed crucial?

From the standpoint of aviation the equivalent to high speed trains would be a replacement Concorde. But forgetting any environmental consideration for a moment, the market began to feel that such speed was not essential. Cost effective, comfortable and reliable business travel was the way ahead. For the rest, cheap, mass travel is now the watchword. Why otherwise build the double-decked Airbus A380 or the truly massive Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental. And with in-flight access to the internet  via WiFi an increasingly common feature, why rush?

There is already clear evidence of firms beginning to encourage employees to 'work from home' or from satellite hubs using modern telecommunications to interact between employees. And this is beginning to affect the demand for and structure of workspace. Hot-desking is becoming the norm. Why spend a fortune commuting to an office an hour or more away if you can work locally at a Co-working hub or from the kitchen table – if only for part of the week. We don't even need to go down to the shops for our purchases.

The students of today - the next generation of employees and entrepreneurs - have a wholly different approach to the way they interact with others. Much of their learning will have been 'online' with podcasted lectures and 'webinars'.

We are in a transitory phase so the real impact of these technological advances have yet to hit home widely, but rest assured a work revolution is evolving faster than we can imagine.

So I return to the point. Why do we need to shave an hour off the travel time between Manchester and London? How is this going to better enable business? Does a 30 minute time saving from Birmingham REALLY help?

I can see that a European network may have more credibility, given the distances. But in the UK?

Regularly travelling on the West Coast line from Preston to London I can now do the journey in just over two hours. Not bad really for 250 miles. If it were non-stop - as HS2 will be - this would be even quicker. But I doubt it would pay me to travel into Manchester first just to save an hour, which would be largely used up in transfer times anyway. I might perhaps want to use it to get to Heathrow for an overseas flight (if it were linked there), but Manchester already has a well connected International airport.

Equally, HS2 wont be cheap; as HS1 isn't. If I can put the ticket on business expenses then all well and good, but as a tourist I would be happy to put up with an extra hour or so at an off-peak time to save some money. Why otherwise do so many people use the budget airlines in preference to the rapidly declining mainstream operators?

I could go on. But it seems to me that technology developments and working practices in the future could well negate the business case for ultra fast intercity travel. This is yesterday's thinking. Yes, of course we all want to go places quickly and efficiently. But should such travel 'luxury' be at the expense of the limited countryside through which we will travel - not seeing much of it in any event. In aviation the 'need for speed' era of Concorde (wonderful though it was) didn't last long. And this at a time when 'being there' was still vital in business.

Lets not kid ourselves that HS2 is really vital for business. Certainly not based on the economic case that has been presented to date. The money might be better spent properly enabling high speed broadband in rural UK to achieve a meaningful, deliverable (and probably faster) economic benefit.

Town planning is going to have to get to grips with a fundamental shift in the way we undertake and travel to work in the foreseeable future. This will knock-on into how we will live and play and will significantly alter some of the long held planning precepts that still colour today's economic development and infrastructure initiatives.

The future's bright. The future's online.

Planning Changes - Office to Residential and Other Permitted Development Rights

New planning measures will ensure empty and underused offices can be swiftly converted into much-needed housing to make the most use out of previously developed land, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles announced today (24 January 2013).

The changes will make the best use of developed sites by allowing existing buildings to be quickly brought back into productive use. New permitted development rights will allow office space to be converted into new homes without the need for planning permission from the local authority.

This new change of use right will provide badly needed homes for local people and will make a valuable contribution to easing the national housing shortage. It will help create jobs in the construction industry and help regenerate our town centres by increasing footfall in high streets.

The permitted development right will be in place for 3 years, and because local circumstances vary, local authorities will have an opportunity to seek an exemption if they can demonstrate there would be substantial adverse economic consequences.

Further reforms will also help boost rural communities and create jobs by allowing agricultural buildings to be converted for other business uses without the need for planning permission.

Full Press Release

What will these permitted development rights allow?

They will permit change of use from B1(a) offices to C3 residential

This is subject to a prior approval process covering:

• significant transport and highway impacts 

• development in safety hazard zones, areas of high flood risk and land contamination

The permitted development rights will only cover change of use: any associated physical development which currently requires a planning application will continue to need one. 

A proposed change from commercial to residential use that does not benefit from the new permitted development rights (e.g. where it cannot satisfy the prior approval requirements) will continue to require a planning application, which should be determined in the light of paragraph 51 of the National Planning Policy Framework. 

When will these new rights come into force?

They will come into force in Spring 2013 and run for a period of three years from the date of coming into force. The operation of the rights will be considered towards the end of that period, and the rights may potentially be extended for a further period or indefinitely.

The guidance for Chief Planning Officers is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/68937/Letter_about_permitted_development_rights_for_change_of_use_from_commercial_to_residential__24_January_2013_.pdf 

April Fool or Eton Mess? - Moving on Up in Planning

Adding that extra floor!!

I hoped for one ghastly minute that I'd unknowingly developed narcolepsy, had fallen asleep and was having another in a continuing series of bad dreams about changes to the planning system. But no. She who must be obeyed was very definitely issuing directives and I was being pressured to rapidly relinquish my supermarket parking space to a 4 x 4 that was never going to fit.

The cause of my angst was a sub-heading in 'Planning' this week that read "Every homeowner should be allowed to build an additional storey to their home without needing to apply for planning permission, according to a book published today by a group of Tory modernisers".

The headline was laughable enough, 'Tory modernisers press for further planning reform', but to actually spend time, money and doubtless no little effort in publishing a book containing such unmitigated drivel beggars belief. Was it April already?

What is it that this Government actually believes is going to be achieved - for the benefit of the electorate - in open season planning relaxation of this type? 

Clearly (to a man) they have never sat in a planning committee and witnessed the unholy rantings of neighbours and others (often from some distance away and out of sight of the applicant property) who will commit gross calumny's over the most innocuous of extensions, let alone a whole extra storey; especially where there might be the risk of even an oblique glimpse of any part of neighbouring property. There's been enough grief already over ground level extension proposals.

Can you imagine the gap toothed street scene that could be encouraged? This would drive a coach and horses through adopted design guidance and Local Plan policy. And as for neighbourhood planning. Forget it. There wouldn't be one. Just a ramshackle array of houses all at differing levels with feuding occupants erecting ever higher fences to maintain what they believe is their god given right to uninterrupted privacy.

And as for what's left of the housing market - it would pretty much fall off its perch. Lets destroy the much vaunted house building industry by avoiding the need for newer, well designed, energy efficient buildings by retrofitting the existing stock by adding a floor to a building that was never designed to take the loads. Just think what the banks and building societies will make of that for mortgage purposes.

For goodness sake Government, get a grip. Let's sort out why people arn't able to buy a house in the first place. 

East of England Regional Strategies Revoked

From the 3rd January 2013 the East of England Regional Spatial Strategy published by the Secretary of State in 2008 and any policies contained in revisions 2 to it together with the East of England Regional Economic Strategy published by the East of England Development Agency in 2008 have now been revoked.

LINK TO STATUTORY INSTRUMENT

And so begins the inexorable round of planning changes that - in about 30 years time - will doubtless come full circle. Hey ho.

Community Infrastructure Levy - Guidance Document

For those of you desperately excited about the Community Infrastructure Levy (and those of you who, like me, have to be whether you like it or not) here is the latest guidance which takes into account some of the anomalies that were developing under the original CIL provisions.

COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE LEVY GUIDANCE