Forget ‘community plans’, it is big business that is set to gain from the weakening of local government’s planning role
Imagine a country where big business is preparing to pounce on prime development sites, unimpeded by town hall officials branded ‘enemies of enterprise’ by the prime minister.
In this ultimate free-market world, long-cherished checks and balances that are meant to protect the English countryside from the ravages of US-style sprawl – namely, the planning system – would be effectively scrapped.
Far-fetched? A distortion of the government’s approach to enterprise and job creation? Not if you’ve followed the painful, hastily amended progress of the Localism Bill through Parliament, allied to moves promoting growth in the March Budget. While this legislation was ostensibly meant to put communities in charge of planning, with neighbourhood plans supported by local referendums, it is now clear that the earlier localist ideals run the risk of colliding with big government.
Few in the Department for Communities and Local Government will openly admit to a noticeable change of direction and rhetoric, still less a U-turn, in this once vaunted commitment to ‘localism’. But ministerial language has changed since Cameron talked a year ago of a planning revolution involving ‘one of the biggest shifts in power in decades’.
Now we know what many long suspected – namely, that the big hitters in government, principally Chancellor George Osborne, have been at best lukewarm about the ‘localist’ agenda, believing it will impede growth and, potentially, stifle any economic recovery.
In his Budget, Osborne claimed that ‘local communities would have a greater say in planning’ but, significantly, not the ultimate ‘say’ any longer. Meanwhile, the Treasury’s ‘Plan for Growth’ considerably weakens local democracy on two fronts.
First, planning controls will be suspended in a new wave of ‘enterprise zones’ in 20 areas, with developers given a free hand to build what they like. Secondly, in any part of England, planning permission will be similarly waived if businesses want to convert vacant commercial buildings into houses or flats.
Hugh Ellis, chief planner of the Town and Country Planning Association, says the social and environmental implications of this move are ‘breathtaking’, with no measures either to promote good, carbon-efficient design, or to ensure that new settlements are built near transport links.
But the most contentious change has emerged in a late amendment to the Localism Bill. This lays down that direct financial benefits from developers should be a ‘material consideration’ when councils decide on planning applications.
Labour’s former planning and local government minister, Nick Raynsford, says this would seriously threaten the integrity of the planning system. At a stroke, it undermines the 1997 Nolan Committee, which stressed the need to safeguard against a public perception that planning permission can be bought or sold.
Raynsford says this gives the green light for cash-strapped councils to approve unpopular developments. Others put it more crudely: legalised bribery.
Amid all this hype – councils, after all, have long benefited from ‘planning gain’, where permission is granted for developments in return for community facilities – one fundamental issue emerges. What happens when the rock of a recently approved community plan meets the hard place of a government-supported development for – say – new housing, or a business park?
I put this point to a senior official heading a quango grappling with this very problem. He acknowledged that, in several areas, plans for developing government-owned land – former Ministry of Defence sites, for instance – were in danger of colliding with the aspirations of active citizens preparing village plans. ‘It’s a real problem,’ he said.
Ministers appear unmoved. Even the amiable planning and localism minister, Greg Clarke, now says that the government’s ‘clear expectation is that the answer to development and growth should wherever possible be yes’.
Hardly surprising, then, that the Royal Town Planning Institute, representing the planning profession, argues that these changes will have a dramatic effect on the character of England, and could mean ‘developers building what they like, where they like… a policy that finally buries genuine localism’.
But, come on. Let’s get real. Did anyone really believe that this administration’s localist rhetoric in England would be anything more than – well – big talk? Governments, after all, don’t volunteer to give power away. This one, like the last, loves micro-managing.
