The House that George Built Edition
Rebekah Paczek
Director of Public Affairs, Social Impact & Community Relations at Earls Court Development Company
Quote of the Day:
“Democracy simply means the bludgeoning of the people, for the people and by the people.”
Oscar Wilde
As promised, George Osborne today presented us with yet more planning changes – sure to be called a ‘developers charter’ by the NIMBY/BANANA lobby – it contains a series of measures aimed at boosting housing supply, improving infrastructure and generally putting the economy on a secure footing.
The changes came as part of a wider plan called ‘Fixing the Foundations’, presumably they have decided this is better than fixing the roof, or maybe they were just bored of using that cliche. However, does this also imply that they think the Coalition government was so bad that the economy is rotten to the very foundations on which it is built? The plan reiterates much of what was in the Budget and puts the flesh on the bones of aspects of it.
Osborne demonstrated his commitment to the initiative by donning another hard hat and high vis jacket, which he has been doing a lot of – so much so that it appears he may have his own slightly tailored high vis jacket in some photos to show off his new streamlined physique (possibly with one eye to the PMship and making him look more like a leader), wandering around a building site and then being filmed studying some architectural plans which he pretends to understand.
On planning, the current system is referred to as ‘excessively strict’, a term bound to strike fear into the hearts of communities across the country and delight those who have been saying this for a long time. It also clearly brings about conflict with local authorities who are quite happy with their planning management strategies. It is obvious why this has been published now, it is unlikely that a Conservative government would want such controversial legislation coming forward close to another General Election.
The document declares that, in the post-NPPF world housing starts have increased not by enough. Imposing more stringent measures, the new plan announces that Government will:
- intervene where local authorities do not have up to date plans;
- strengthen the duty to co-operate;
consider how policy can support higher density housing around key commuter hubs. The government will also consider how national policy and guidance can ensure that unneeded commercial land can be released for housing;
use a statutory register of brownfield land to grant legislating to grant automatic permission in principle on brownfield sites identified on those registers,
- speed up planning permissions
Local communities will apparently be forced to accept homes, even if they don’t want them, so there… Planning permission will also be effectively granted on ‘suitable’ brownfield sites (no definition of ‘suitable’ so that is about as useful as a chocolate teapot or as the ‘principle of sustainable development’). When will someone also admit that this means greenbelt development as much degraded brownfield land is indeed in the greenbelt?
I am still not sure how the politics of all of this is addressed – after all, it isn’t actually communities who refuse development it is their councillors and if the government simply ignores all democratic decisions they don’t like on planning issues it raises questions across the board…
At the same time, Government is planning to devolve housing powers regionally ‘where there is local support’ and make it easier for householders to extend up as well as out ‘where neighbours don’t object’ as well as allow local communities to allocate land for housing.
On roads, there is a new Roads Fund which will apparently be used to transform our shoddy network – no indication of how this money will be spent and whether Osborne will continue to ignore the north east by continuing not to dual the A1 to Edinburgh; possibly any investment going north of the border may be slow to come forward.
Railways are also to receive investment and the Government will make a decision on airport capacity at some point in the future. Honestly they will.
As always, the devil is in the detail. The principle of most of the proposals is not new – successive governments have promised to speed up planning, enforce a duty to cooperate, build more homes etc. The challenge has always been how this is actually implemented and how, something as emotive as housing developments can ever be viewed and assessed objectively at the local level. It would be a dangerous precedent if the government were to begin stepping up interventions at the local level at a time when there is nominal wide scale devolution to the regions. With the intention to also devolve more powers to local areas and communities it gives us rather a large square to attempt to circle.
Link to the full document: