Left high and dry?

25 Feb 10
The Conservatives’ planning green paper, launched this week, proposes to scrap most of Labour’s reforms and devolve many decisions to local communities. But critics fear this will be a charter for ‘Nimbyism’ and leave building projects all at sea. Peter Hetherington reports
By Peter Hetherington

25 February 2010

The Conservatives’ planning green paper, launched this week, proposes to scrap most of Labour’s reforms and devolve many decisions to local communities. But critics fear this will be a charter for ‘Nimbyism’ and leave building projects all at sea. Peter Hetherington reports


In proposals largely obscured by all the pre-election heat, the Conservatives are preparing for a quiet revolution in the way ­England builds houses, supermarkets, schools and infrastructure projects.

Driven partly by a hostility to big government, Tory ideologues are battling for a planning system that some see as pandering to narrow self-interest and the ‘not in my back yard’ tendency. This week leader David Cameron underlined the Tory commitment to transforming planning in England in a potentially far-reaching green paper, Open source planning. He said that it represented ‘one of the biggest shifts in power in decades’ so ‘a system that was controlled by the few can be run by the many’.

It is clear that sections of the party see a reformed system as one way of making a big impact in the first year of a new Tory government. There is one overriding attraction: it carries little, or no cost.  Some think it might even offer savings.

The new planning and local government legislation is likely to be framed within months of taking office. The ­Tories are determined to quickly scrap the centrepiece of Labour’s housing and planning policy: namely ‘fanciful’ building targets, geared to 2 million new homes by 2016 and a further million by 2020.

A Tory government would also bin the ‘regional spatial strategies’ that enshrine the targets and are vested with nine non-elected regional development agencies. RDAs themselves, which consumed £2.2bn of public money this financial year, might also go. The idea is to give local councils  strategic planning powers and, maybe, the economic powers ­currently exercised by the RDAs. The green paper also proposes that the ­Section 106 ­planning gain system should go.

Nationally, the Conservatives are ­determined to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission – arguably the most powerful quango of all – which only opened for business last October. The IPC’s task is to determine the sites of major projects, from power stations and wind farms to expanded airports, major road schemes and high-speed rail lines. Its aim is to fast-track individual schemes, avoiding the need for time-consuming and expensive public inquiries.

But the Tories argue that the Bristol-based body sidelines Parliament and that ministers should be given back their powers as the final arbiter for big national projects. 

Cameron’s vision, however, is overwhelmingly localist, if not revolutionary, at least in rhetoric.

‘We’re going to replace the entire planning system with a new system of local plans,’ he enthused this week. That would be done, he said, by inviting every household in a particular area affected by a proposal – contentious, or otherwise – to a neighbourhood meeting. A neighbourhood plan would then emerge. It would be submitted to a local council that would incorporate it into an overall local plan, with ‘cash incentives’ for neighbourhoods to approve ­developments. If only life were that simple.

The Conservatives’ housing plans, perhaps inevitably, are generating the most hostility – on two fronts. The Home Builders’ Federation, representing the big housing developers, has bluntly warned Cameron that abolition of the housing targets will, potentially, lead to an even more depressed building market, creating additional unemployment.

‘Housebuilding capacity could disappear,’ laments one main player, who does not want to be identified at what he calls a ‘sensitive political time’. Another says cautiously: ‘We have serious concerns... government cannot abdicate responsibility for housing any more than it can for schools and hospitals.’

Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps says centralised targets have failed to provide enough homes. In speech after speech, he rails: ‘The top-down, Soviet-style Labour approach to housing just isn’t working... we’ll dump the pointless housing targets, dump the diktats.’

He might have a point in labelling those 2016 and 2020 housing targets ‘fanciful’. In 2009/10, the number of new homes in England and Wales slumped to the lowest level since 1923, according to the National Housing Federation. Fewer than 123,000 were built, 18,000 down on the previous year’s figure.

On a second front, however, the Conservatives face stronger opposition – sometimes from their own natural supporters. As Cameron outlined, the party is committed to devolving some planning control to villages, neighbourhoods and even to streets – ostensibly in pursuit of a new ‘localist’ agenda aimed at handing powers to local communities. The idea is that these micro-areas should determine the level of house building appropriate to local needs,  rather than larger councils. As Cameron said this week: ‘Imagine if we put local people in real control over the look, shape, feel and character of the community… if we let them decide how many houses they want built or whether they want a new park or a playground… giving local people a real incentive to get involved.’

At first, the Tory proposal appears alluring. Their policy talks of transforming a planning regime hampered by a centralised, bureaucratic system that gives local communities little option but to rebel against Whitehall and central diktats ‘and, all too often, against the notion of development itself’. They say they want to reverse historically low levels of building and replace targets with ‘a planning system that enables local people to shape their surroundings’.

Rather than a ‘one-size-fits-all ­solution’, they call for community empowerment – ‘a radical reboot’ – to avoid current tensions between ­development and ­conservation. So far, so good.

With that empowerment comes a ­carrot – Cameron’s ‘incentive’. The Tories say that, for six years, they will match the extra council tax receipts for every new house built in a particular community. They will do this by top-­slicing the revenue support grant, a ­crucial source of funding to councils, and creating a ­special central matching fund that will be geared to creating new community facilities – leisure centres, playing fields, new village halls, for instance – alongside the new housing. Shapps believes this will provide an incentive for communities to accept new housing and expand by 10% over a ­ten-year period by ‘granting ­themselves planning permission’.

But with the carrot comes a big stick. The green paper skirts the issue of community support for new housing, but Conservative spokespeople have recently insisted that local referendums would be held, in which plans would need a ­massive 90% backing. Almost everyone in the housing field, from developers to local parish councils, believe this would be a charter for ‘Nimbyism’ and self-interest.

‘It’s a phenomenally high target,’ complains David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, which ­represents not-for-profit housing associations. This year, housing associations will build more houses in England than private developers.

‘In some places, just half a dozen Nimbys could bring developments to a halt,’ says Orr. ‘And it doesn’t deal with the problem of significant numbers of people opposing new housing in areas where more homes are clearly needed.’

 Former housing and local government minister Nick Raynsford has already clashed with Shapps over plans to top-slice the revenue support grant. He says this would potentially remove billions of pounds from the direct control of local councils, threatening essential services.

Housing professionals are perplexed. Sue Chalkley, chief executive of the ­Hastoe Housing Association, one of the largest providers of affordable homes in rural areas, has asked shadow local government and planning minister Bob Neill for a meeting.

‘In a period prior to a general election there is always a danger that parties seek to appease all sides of an argument,’ says Chalkley diplomatically. ‘I think that is happening with Conservatives in relation to social housing. On the one hand, they are all for it yet they are supportive of the very attitudes and mechanisms that ­Nimbys use to stifle its delivery.’

Take the case of Burnham Overy Staithe, a coastal village in north Norfolk. Most locals have been priced out of a booming property market, in which a modest two-bedroom terraced house can change hands for £300,000. When ­Hastoe submitted a proposal for five ­affordable homes, opponents – mainly second-home owners – leafleted local houses and hired a planning consultant to oppose the plan.

‘Most objectors said they thought social housing was a good idea, but not here,’ recalled local campaigner Jonnie Usher, a retired university accountancy lecturer. To answer the objections, the parish council carried out a survey and three-quarters of residents backed the development. The plan was approved and Usher and other supporters were overjoyed.
But could they have gained 90% ­support? That is ‘unbelievably high’, says Usher. ‘You would never get it.’

It’s a similar story in Pilton, Somerset. Local farmer Michael Eavis – founder of the famous Glastonbury Festival –  donated land for 22 affordable homes, the last four of which have just been completed. ‘We wouldn’t have got 90% support initially, but locals are fully backing the project now,’ says Eavis.

Away from housing, localism is also proving a double-edged sword – none more so than in education policy. Neill recently admitted that shadow education secretary Michael Gove was considering taking control of all planning applications for new and expanded schools, bypassing local councils. The Tories fear that some town halls might torpedo plans for new freestanding schools outside the control of local education authorities.

This raises the prospect of a new ­bureaucracy emerging  within the ­Department for Children, Schools and Families – or whatever name it is given after an election – purely to administer the new breed of schools and a possible surge in planning applications. To put it mildly, some of the most ­prominent ­Tory-run councils are far from enthusiastic.

None of this is to suggest that, under the current government, planning is a well-oiled machine, handling applications speedily and in tune with local opinion. In truth, ministers have often appeared more keen to accommodate business interests – such as house builders, airport and port  operators – than the views of local people and environmental and amenity groups.

Indeed, a 2008 Planning Act – which heralded the Infrastructure Planning Commission – was specifically framed to make the planning system more business friendly, at the behest of the Treasury when Gordon Brown was chancellor. The legislation was based on a report from the economist Kate Barker, who called for a fast-track process for major infrastructure projects to eliminate the need for lengthy public inquiries.

The resulting commission has its ­merits, particularly in addressing the looming energy crunch and the carbon challenge. England can certainly ill­-afford delays as supporters and opponents of nuclear energy,  coal-fired generation and wind farms endlessly argue at inquiries, seemingly oblivious to an ageing ­generating capacity reaching the end of its natural life.

This message is probably getting through to the Conservatives. Rather than scrapping the IPC outright, the party is now considering  incorporating a specialised major infrastructure project section within the Planning Inspectorate, which is also based in Bristol. The green paper talks of time-limited public inquiries for major projects, such as power stations, with private or hybrid Bills being used to push through other projects, such as high-speed rail lines.

To be fair, the Conservatives, historically the party of big business, are – so far – not afraid to challenge and confront vested corporate interests when necessary. That is particularly true of big ­supermarket groups, whose welfare has been well served by this government. The 2008 Act gave Labour the opportunity to scrap the so-called ‘needs’ test for supermarkets, which decreed that large stores could be built in a specific area only if it had insufficient retail space.

Companies such as Tesco were ­delighted by ­Labour’s softer approach and are alarmed by Tory plans to reinstate the ‘needs’ test in the interests of promoting local retail enterprise.

Overall, however, the  Conservative planning proposals bear the hallmarks of a messy compromise between centrist ­Tories, who see little benefit in unravelling the entire planning system, and Right-wing elements favouring a near-revolution. In some respects, this latter group reflects the opposition to the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, which created the foundations for much of the current planning system. One columnist, 63 years ago, accused the postwar ­Labour government of ‘the most sweeping act since the Soviet decree of forced ­collectivisation of the peasants (in 1929)’.

With Conservatives still apparently hooked on the odd Soviet analogy – now it is applied to Labour’s housing targets – Nick Raynsford insists his party needs no lessons from the Opposition.

Of their planning proposals, he fumes: ‘It’s positively Maoist, in a state of permanent revolution, quite bizarre and all over the place. They want to destroy regional spatial strategies, housing targets, the IPC – and all this at a time when everyone [in building and development] says “be ­careful, and do not destroy confidence”.’

But did Cameron make a valid point this week when he railed against the overall system, or was he being unduly naive and populist?

Maybe it was a bit of both when he labelled the current  ­process divisive and frustrating ‘with developers, residents, councils… fighting it out and things either never getting built or c­ausing ­massive resentment when they do’.

The problem, however, is that no development – no matter how well designed and sensitively located – will appeal to everyone in a community. That’s why a higher authority is needed – the local council? – to balance competing interests for the greater good of city, town or ­village. And without that balance, ­‘Nimbyism’ could simply run riot.

Peter Hetherington
writes on community affairs and regeneration

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top