Planning: new approach is good for growth, good for profits – and also good for the countryside.
The Government are proposing to make the planning process less bureaucratic. Requirements from Whitehall are being cut from over a thousand pages to 52 in a draft National Planning Policy Framework. Certainly that is good news for property developers for whom the red tape costs a fortune and causes excruciating delay. But that doesn’t mean that the streamlining of planning rules is bad for the rest of us. There is a desperate shortage of housing and restoring the economy to robust economic growth is a national imperative. So development is needed but it doesn’t need to ugly.
The key safeguards can still be included in 52 pages. Contrary to scaremongering from some environmental lobby groups they have been. The Green Belt is protected also areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Listed buildings, archaeological sites, ancient woodland and civic conservation areas are all still protected. It is true that the Government’s draft says there should be a “presumption” in favour of development but this has been the policy since the Second World War and there is the rather relevant proviso that any development must be sustainable.
Indeed in important respects protection against bad development is strengthened. Local councils will have more power to turn down schemes they dislike rather than impotent planning committees of local councillors being obliged to rubber stamp the in deference to some housing target or “Regional Spatial Strategy.” Councils will have a incentive to allow more houses to be built will be built rather than it being a requirement to hit some Stalinist target from Whitehall. So their will be a local interest in allowing development but flexibility in ensuring it is the right type in the right place. Councillors who fail to deliver what their communities want will no longer have an alibi. There is more accountability.
Another improvement is the stress placed on good design. This is something the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment welcomes and they will have more opportunity to champion neo-classical design as an alternative to modernist prejudices that prevail among most architects and planning officers with their strange enthusiasm for hideous concrete blocks.
The Chief Executive of The Prince’s Foundation, Hank Dittmar tells me: “We support the NPPF’s drive to simplify planning, to increase community engagement and support sustainable development. Our comments, which are those of an independent charity, will suggest ways that the NPPF can balance the need for housing and growth with the protection of countryside, local character and beauty. The Prince’s Foundation endorses the principle of Neighbourhood Planning at the heart of this new guidance, and its prominent role in emergent national policy. It is heartening to see so many communities coming forward to participate. We are pleased to be able to help community groups around the country to develop their own visions for growth, preservation and improvement.”
Groups such as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England risk their own reputations by getting embroiled in hypocritical, dishonest and politically motivated attacks on the Government. “Planning is for people not profit,” declares the National Trust like some demented Marxist agitprop outfit. Yet they don’t seem to be quite so anti development when it comes to lucrative schemes on their own land – such as the (ugly) Stamford Brook housing scheme in Altrincham in Cheshire or in Buckinghamshire and North Wales where “rode roughshod” over local opinion to push through development. Then we have the CPRE, whose Chief Executive is Shaun Spiers, a former Labour Euro MP, and which has bizarrely condemned Government measures to stop “garden grabbing.”
Good development is not a threat to rural life. It could help keep it viable. It could help a village pub, Post Office or shop to survive. But the buildings must be attractive. They need to be in harmony with their surroundings, to respect nature and use local materials. Attractive buildings are usually more profitable than ugly ones. Of course if we are going to
have development then developers will need to make a profit – unless we became Communist. It is not profit itself which is the problem. It is that the rules have been loaded in a way that only the big firms can cope with the red tape and they are steered towards brutalism rather than beauty. This new approach is good for growth, good for profits – and also good for the countryside.
September 12, 2011 | Permalink