26 January 2007
Are decades of planning laws about to be reversed in a free-for-all that will carpet England's green belts with out-of-town megastores? Peter Hetherington weighs up the evidence on the Barker review
Imagine a country with no rules to determine what can be built – or where. In this land of endless sprawl, there are no green belts restricting development around big cities. Houses, estates, warehouses and businesses are plonked randomly in the countryside. Factories, unencumbered by regulations, belch out fumes on the surrounding population.
Anything goes in this market-led free-for-all. It is close to anarchy. The individual, still less a company, sees no reason to get permission for – say – a new home, a house extension or a big industry. In short: you want it, you build it.
Where in the world? China, much of the US, the old Soviet Union, modern Russia? No. This was much of England, Scotland and Wales before the ground-breaking 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and associated legislation brought a sense of order to a country recovering from the ravages of war.
A new Ministry of Town and Country Planning was set up with all-party consensus. Welcomed by many but reviled by a few free-market zealots, it issued graphic posters with the headline: 'Before we build – a plan.' The ministry highlighted a vision of 'order and beauty coming to our towns and cities of the future', contrasting images of old industrial towns, dominated by chimneys and endless smog – 'an evil which must be done away with as soon as possible' – with a modern smoke-free factory conforming to conditions 'affecting design, screening and access to roads'.
The effect was green belts, new towns, national parks and even (relatively short-lived) industrial relocation. This year, the sixtieth anniversary of the Act, England could be facing the most profound shake-up of the planning system in over half a century (Scotland and Wales now operate under a different regime). Fears are growing that supermarket giants are preparing to build hundreds of new stores, with apparent encouragement from Chancellor Gordon Brown, as a key restriction limiting their growth looks likely to be lifted.
This has prompted an alliance of former ministers – from former Tory environment secretary John Gummer to Labour's former local government and planning minister Nick Raynsford – to claim that the Treasury has taken leave of its senses by undermining town and city centre shopping in favour of more green-field building.
The government is preparing a white paper aimed at 'streamlining' the planning system and making it more business-friendly. This follows last month's final report from economist Kate Barker's Review of Land Use Planning, which was commissioned by the Treasury, with support from the Department for Communities and Local Government (the latest successor to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning). She recommended relaxing planning rules governing big supermarkets and much else besides.
Should we be worried? Perhaps a little, says Gideon Amos, chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association. 'The 1947 Act was part of the post-war vision for Britain, laying the foundations of the twin planning achievements of green belts to contain development and new towns to provide decent homes and an escape from urban overcrowding.' But he cautions: 'By contrast today, we rely heavily on the private sector and, as a society, do less to shape market-led development.'
The Treasury believes that a cumbersome planning system is holding back big infrastructure projects and, hence, the country's competitiveness. The near ten-year long saga in getting Heathrow's soon-to-open Terminal Five is cited as a classic example. Ministers want a more market-friendly system to take issues deemed to be in the national interest out of politicians' hands. This follows complaints from business groups, and individual companies, that delays in the system, and interference by councils, are placing England Plc at a disadvantage compared with overseas competitors.
Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees. 'Big business already dominates our planning system,' storms Hugh Ellis, planning adviser of environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth. 'Barker is determined to hand over what's left of it to them on a plate.'
More fuel was added to the fire this week with the publication of a robust pro-market attack on the planning system by the Right-of-centre think-tank, Policy Exchange. Its findings were promptly described as 'a tissue of misinformation' by the Royal Town Planning Institute.
But business has already been calling many of the shots because councils are heavily dependent on 'planning gain' agreements, in which a range of community facilities, such as leisure centres, new roads, social housing and sometimes schools, are delivered by the private sector in return for planning permission.
Such inducements would doubtless be anathema to the pioneers of the 1947 Act, who believed in an active state tempering the perceived excesses of the market. The 1945 Labour manifesto committed Labour to building more houses 'in relation to good town planning' and reminded the electorate that the party believed in land nationalisation.
While public ownership would be anathema to New Labour – along with much of the statist rationale behind the 1947 Act – the Treasury was keen on Barker's proposal, in an earlier report on house-building, for a planning gain supplement. This would be a form of 'betterment levy', to 'capture' the increased value of land once planning permission has been granted, with the aim of curbing speculative excess. But it has been stalling in the face of business pressure.
Barker seemed to address some of the concerns of business in the 32 recommendations in her planning report. She called for an independent national planning commission to rule on big national projects – such as new and expanded ports, airports, power stations and major road schemes – after consultation with interested parties. She also advocated a streamlined appeal and public inquiry process in which contentious issues would be resolved within six months, rather than several years. And, in relation to more minor commercial developments, developers should be able to avoid the need for full planning permission if they could reach agreement with all parties involved.
But, contentiously, Barker also advocated some building on the green belt, thus challenging, or perhaps updating, a cornerstone of the 1947 Act. Her rationale was simple. Construction on countryside beyond the green belt means people would have to jump over the green belt to live in the new developments, creating longer journeys to work and more pollution. Better to selectively build within the belt, thought Barker, while maintaining 'green wedges' in cities. 'The land that can be developed with the least likely environmental or wider social impact is low-value agricultural land with little landscape quality and limited public access,' she argued. 'Regional and local planning bodies should review their green belt boundaries to ensure they remain relevant and appropriate.'
The proposals are more likely to affect growth areas in the greater Southeast, such as Cambridge, than London or Manchester, where there are more opportunities for development on recycled, or 'brownfield' land, within cities. While this cut little ice with some environmentalists, the normally vocal Campaign to Protect Rural England was more sanguine.
'Given the Treasury's steer to Kate Barker, her conclusions could have been much, much worse,' concedes Shaun Spiers, its chief executive. But he warns: 'Whatever the Treasury may think, the purpose of planning is not just to give business quick, favourable decisions [but] to advance the public interest.'
Most forceful in pursuing their self-interest are the supermarket giants, which have been lobbying the Treasury and Downing Street for a more 'relaxed' planning regime. Like much of the US, they want the 'free market' to decide how many stores can be built and believe that the planning system is restricting their seemingly unrelenting growth.
Barker appeared to be sympathetic to their cause. Her report urged the government to abandon the 'needs' test, which decrees that superstores can be built only if an area is deemed to have insufficient retail space.
Smaller outlets, represented by the Association of Convenience Stores, argue that scrapping the test will lead to many traditional shops disappearing. But small shopkeepers have a fight on their hands. According to Raynsford – who has openly clashed with Gordon Brown's officials – the Treasury has taken the side of the supermarket giants. 'They're completely out of touch with the real world,' he complains. 'Their stand is complete lunacy. This [needs test] policy has been hugely successful in turning round city centres. To talk about scrapping this is the height of folly as well as being politically stupid.'
Amos, of the Town and Country Planning Association, agrees. 'There's a danger this could be a charter for carpeting the country with supermarkets,' he warns.
But both the association, the country's oldest planning organisation, and the Royal Town Planning Institute, which represents planning professionals, believe Barker has made some positive recommendations.
'It might seem like damning with faint praise, but her report is much better than people expected and reinforces the need for a planning system to serve the nation,' says Kelvin MacDonald, director of policy and research at the RTPI. 'But there are some parts of the report which do cause great concern, and one of them is the dropping of the needs analysis for out-of-town shopping and the reliance on the market.
'Barker says these are the people investing the money and they will know whether there is a need or not. But, of course, that's just taking a very narrow sectoral view of how you prove the need in its widest sense.'
Both planning bodies will shortly be joining in the celebrations for the anniversary of the 1947 Act. The TCPA has organised a series of initiatives and events to portray how things might have been without planning legislation. One wheeze involves producing a map that will attempt to represent the extent of sprawl around London if there had been no green belt. Another will compare development around Stevenage in Hertfordshire – the first post-war new town – with New Jersey in the US, to illustrate the differences between a regulated England and a free-market US, characterised by sprawl.
Today, more progressive states and cities in the US look at the British planning system with a degree of envy. It was not always so. MacDonald has unearthed the views of Time magazine on the Act in 1947. 'Britain's Labor government this week proposed a revolutionary act – in its implications the most sweeping act since the Soviet government's decree of forced collectivisation of the peasants (in 1929),' it reported.
Back in Britain, the Daily Express went further. Quoting Shakespeare, it noted: 'Thy lands and all things that thou dost call thine worth seizure, do we seize into our hands.'
MacDonald smiles wryly, noting Ruth Kelly's comment to the Commons last month in the aftermath of the Barker report that 'planning is a valued and necessary activity that can deliver positive economic outcomes, alongside important social and environmental objectives'.
As a country, then, have we built on the legacy of that ground-breaking 1947 legislation? In truth, successive governments could have done more. 'Post-war conditions demanded radical responses and we need a similar ground-breaking, or revolutionary approach, to planning the nation now, in the light of climate change in particular,' adds MacDonald cautiously. 'Where we've gone wrong is separating the control of land from the financial return in developing it. The '47 Act tried to do it and we've been trying ever since to capture some of that uplift in value (after planning consent is granted). We're not saying there's anything wrong with the market, but it works best within a system of guidance and control.'
As a student of Labour history, Gordon Brown will need little reminding of the party's post-war planning pioneers who safeguarded much of our landscape 60 years ago. Sadly for some Labour traditionalists, his old instincts, deep in the movement, have been tempered by what he sees as the reality of the market and the perceived needs of big business. But whatever his views on entering Number 10, he will know that business is rarely happy – particularly when all the indications from Whitehall are that any reform of the planning system is unlikely before 2009 anyway. In short, the battle over Barker is only beginning.
Peter Hetherington writes on community affairs and regeneration
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