More on neighbourhood planning

Neighbourhood planning has been with us for well over a year now, ever since the Localism Act was passed in later 2011. But it has taken time for the first neighbourhood plans to be prepared, voted in on local referenda and accepted as local development plan documents. In theory, this was a radical move towards greater involvement of local communities in the planning of their localities - a genuine form of bottom-up planning. Town and parish councils and newly-formed neighbourhood forums could emerge from a variety of local groupings and be given the authority to draft such a plan. Local residents would be given a final say through a referendum, although only a bare majority was needed to pass the neighbourhood plan; note, though, that local businesses are potentially eligible to vote on any business-led plan. But in practice, this seems less radical than at first hoped or feared. Any such neighbourhood plan has to be in conformity with the Local Plan which potentially heads off conflict between neighbourhood forums and local planning authorities but may also demotivate community action. These plans are primarily about where and how to permit new development in the locality, which is a rather restricted perspective on what local communities may actually want to do with their areas. Local visioning, of the sort I mentioned in my last post, may well go beyond this particular concern of the statutory planning system. Recent research by DEFRA (yes, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs not that for Communities and Local Government) found - at least in rural areas - the process of preparing plans was quite protracted and expensive. The demands on local authority planning staff can be considerable - particularly as they have to fit into the statutory planning system and be shown to be 'evidence-based'. So perhaps this is more business-as-usual that might be wished (as is often the case when one tinkers with the statutory planning system). But one interesting item in the DEFRA research is that at least one plan - in the tourist area of Lynmouth and Lynton - has been used to focus housing on meeting local needs through a 'primary residence' policy; if this is not the case, then the housing has to be offered for rent or sale as affordable housing. Quite how this will implemented will be interesting to watch.

Community-based visioning

One of the arguments of the book is that an important option in areas that are experiencing a lack of economic growth is to foster community-based planning using the valuable resources (non-financial) of local communities. There are an increasing number of community-based initiatives and one interesting example is Clear Village: www.clear-village.org
They operate on a 80:20 principle whereby local residents and external advisers are combined in the ratio of 80% to 20%. But the over-riding principle is that everyone is an expert; this is not a combination of lay people with external experts. Rather everyone is pooling their expertise. Clear Village see 'locals' as offering knowledge of the place and how it works in detail, while 'globals' bring their own specific expertise, often disciplinary  together with a 'fresh pair of eyes'. The aim is to jointly re-envision an area and then put in place initiatives for change. This is an appealing approach. Could it work for neighbourhood planning? Could local residents and businesses work with planners on a neighbourhood plan for their area in this way? The problem here seems two-fold. First, the initial wave of neighbourhood plans seem to be disproportionately located in areas of greater rather than less wealth and not being used to address problems of disadvantage. Second, it is clear that neighbourhood planning has to operate within the rules and guidelines for preparing a statutory development plan and that these can constrain the whole process. However, as I shall explore at another time, this does not mean neighbourhood planning could not be reformed to incorporate more of the spirit of the Clear Village approach.

Just Planning

It is interesting to see growing interest in the interface between the planning, sustainability and environmental justice agendas. In my book I pick up on the arguments that Julian Agyeman of Tufts University has put forward for 'just sustainability'. This seeks to overcome the tendency within some environmental debates to assume that any environmental protection is in the interests of us all equally. While the environment is a set of commons - global commons like the atmosphere and local commons like local nature reserves - we use them unequally. Some have more access to environmental resources and services than others and some bear more of the adverse environmental impacts than others. Just sustainability seeks to capture this by promoting more sustainable pathways that also address inequality. And Simin Davoudi, of Newcastle University, is ploughing a similar pathway in developing a framework for 'just planning'. You can find the full report where she develops these ideas at:
www.ncl.ac.uk/guru/news/item/environmental-justice-and-the-city-summary-report-published.
She follows the line adopted in environmental justice debates (as advocated by David Schlosberg and Gordon Walker) that sees justice not only in terms of outcomes but also participation, recognition, capability and responsibility. These are really interesting but also demanding criteria for a new planning approach. While this would seem ideal, I do wonder if we should not return to a focus on distribution first, particularly given the depth of social and environmental inequalities that we are faced with. After all, the big justice thinkers such as Iris Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Brian Barry were clear that they were arguing for more procedural concerns to be incorporated into the justice agenda in addition to, or even after distribution being addressed. If fair distribution becomes one of five criteria for just planning, will it get the emphasis it deserves?

Responding to two-speed Britain

There was an interesting article in the Observer on Sunday which highlighted the gap in development activity and property market movement in London and the South East compared to the rest of the country. They pointed out that there were more cranes on the London skyline than the rest of Britain put together. This really raises the question of whether our current planning system is fit for purpose across the country. To date it is really only suited to either encouraging market-led development (where it can) or resisting development pressures (where they exist). This clearly does not describe great swathes of the country. In my forthcoming book I argue that there are alternatives using community-based development and management and thinking about the value that low-priced areas have for local communities. I present a number of reforms to the planning system that would support such an alternative approach. It is interesting to see that some of these overlap with some current government initiatives (although not the prevailing planning ideology which is firmly pro-market). I would point to the announcement of measures to re-use empty buildings, provide land for self-builders and put funding into high streets, sometimes through community ventures. These are clearly times of change and such change is not alway simple. Yes, the government are in favour of deregulation and promoting market-led development. Yes, they are weakening the negotiating power of local authorities through their reforms of planning gain. But there are also these smaller changes which perhaps are there because of the Localism agenda that could form the kernel of a different way of doing planning. What is needed is a broader programme of reform to build on this.

Debating the West End - do we always have to go for growth?

Yesterday there was an interesting discussion at the UCL Bartlett School of Planning about the report from the West End Commission (see last blogpost). One thing that came up was the way that always pursuring growth in a locality was seen as almost inevitable. The West End is undoubtedly commercially successful. Employment growth and new development has continued throughout this recessionary period. Indeed many of the difficulties that it faces could be argued to come from too much growth. And yet there is such resistance to planning for less growth of this area and diverting some of this activity to other areas across London. Why is growth of the Westfields seens as a threat rather than a spreading of economic activity? But seen as a threat it is. The argument is made that the West End is part of the growth machine that is London and that is at the heart of the UK economy. Thus any shifts that might reduce this growth are resisted. Indeed changes are currently being implemented to local government finance that will create greater incentives for local authorities to pursue economic growth. In London it seems likely that the report from the Travers Commision on London's finance (commissioned by the Mayor of London) will recommend greater tax raising power for the Mayor and the principle that a larger proportion of the tax-take from Londoners and London businesses being retained by the Greater London Authority. This will ramp up the growth machine of London yet further. Perhaps this machine works well in London but as a model for local government more generally it can create problems. How will the income of local authorities in low growth areas fare? Will there be less redistribution given that the totality of local government finance is unlikely to grow? This suggests again the need to think again how to plan in areas where growth - and now it seems enhanced central government funding - is not the norm.

London's West End

Last week, the report by the West End Commission, set up by Westminster City Council was launched. I was lucky enough to be involved in the fascinating process of discussions that led to this report. These revolved around the issue of how to ensure the future success of the West End and whether this future success was tied up with encouraging growth and development, dealing with the externalities of such growth and/or preserving what was already there and arguably made the area so distinctive. There was widespread agreement that the unique street morphology and historic buildings and places, the mix of land uses and social groups, the prevalence of SMES and the fine grain of the area were the things that made the West End what is was. So should preservation be the order of the day? Should existing clusters of land uses - as found in Cork Street and Savile Row - be specially protected?  Or would this inhibit future organic change that would provide the West End of the future? How to balance growth and conservation and yet work towards a low carbon future? The West End is though unusual across the UK. The report makes clear that is continues to experience economic success even during the recent downturns. Here growth-dependent planning can work if regulation is appropriately applied, if development is managed so that it does not kill off the distinctiveness of the West End and if some of the profits of development are used to support low carbon initiatives, place making and, above all, affordable housing provision. But we should not be deluded by this example; most places across the UK are not in this situation. And, if Larry Elliott in today's Guardian is correct, then the future may mean that the West End will be more and more atypical; see his article on 'What if, this time, the party is really over?' at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/larryelliott.

You can find details of the Commission and its report at http://www.westendcommission.com/ and I will be giving a talk on this at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL at 5.30pm on Wed 8th May; see http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/planning/events/lps-rydin-may2013 for details.

Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013

The Growth and Infrastructure Act has now received Royal Assent and become law. Among its various provisions is the potential for reconsideration of Section 106 agreements that have been negotiated between developers and local planning authorities to secure community benefits from new developments. The argument that has been put forward is that existing S. 106 agreements are rendering developments unviable and therefore holding up new build projects. Let these agreements be renegotiated to reduce the financial burden on the developer, and then these projects would go ahead. It has been suggested that the construction of 75,000 homes could be prompted by this measure. This could be seen just as a further move towards deregulation; I think this is wrong as it is more a restructuring of regulation to tip the balance of power towards the developer. But more interesting is the assumption explicitly built into the new legislation that planning has to operate within the constraints of the viability of private sector development. This builds on previous policy guidance from the Coalition Government to local authorities, as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework for example, that ensuring the viability of development must be a core principle guiding local plan making. The explicitness of this acknowledgement that current planning practice is reliant on the decisions and investment activities of private sector developers is at the heart of growth-dependent planning. But the move to allow S.106 agreements to be renegotiated also shows the limitations of this paradigm. Planners can no longer weigh up the costs and benefits of a development proposal with any certainty, as the negotiated benefits of planning gain may be open to reconsideration; broadly the community will get less for permitting the development to go ahead. The message seems to be that the local planning authority and local communities should be happy to get the development itself and little more.