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Town and Country Planning Association, 17 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AS +44 (0)20 7930 8903 q tcpa@tcpa.org.uk q www.tcpa.org.uk

Shaping our future

Emma Vandore reports on the TCPAs Annual Conference Re-building Britain Shaping Our Future held at One Whitehall Place in London on , 1 December 2011
Britains housing crisis and particularly how reforms to the planning system will address the chronic shortfall dominated debate at the TCPAs Annual Conference, held at the beginning of December. In an era of spending cuts, debate at One Whitehall Place centred on concerns over affordable and social housing and the lack of strategic spatial guidance on how many homes are needed and where. TCPA Chief Executive Kate Henderson opened proceedings by questioning the degree to which taken as a whole these reforms will provide a socially progressive framework which will ensure access to high-quality housing and sustainable communities for all of us. We are now the only country in North West Europe without a national or regional tier of planning, and we need to ensure that doesnt impinge on our economic development, on our social development, and on environmental sustainability, she said. Given the removal of many restrictions on development in the Coalition Governments planning reforms and cuts to local authority spending, TCPA Chair Lee Shostak asked whether the organisation should be examining the effect of land values in determining development. The fear is that people living in poorer parts of the country, or near expensive-to-rehabilitate brownfield land, will not see much investment, widening the gap with richer areas and lengthening housing waiting lists. Communities and Local Government Minister Andrew Stunell MP defended the Governments approach to housing in particular the Affordable Rents scheme (which he said will help those currently in the private rented sector). He also rebutted TCPA Chief Planner Hugh Ellis prediction that regional strategies in some form would return within five years. The idea that we have just emerged from a golden age of Regional Spatial Strategies where the answer to everything and everybody was getting exactly the housing policy they want is completely false, he said. However, he admitted that the vagaries of the housing market may demand some rethinking: Im sure these things will evolve, and 4
Town & Country Planning January 2012

who knows to say where we will be in ten years?, he said. Kate Henderson reported on the TCPAs activities over the past year, noting that much of its time has been spent engaging with the Governments localism agenda and the development of the forthcoming National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). She said that in 2012 the TCPA will look beyond Westminster, starting with an independent inquiry into the reconstruction of England (with a series of roundtables planned for the new year on demography and housing, social equality, and investment and climate change). She also said that the TCPA would work with councils, investors, developers and communities to encourage planned large-scale developments in the style of the Garden City movement initiated by TCPA founder Ebenezer Howard. Considering the draft NPPF conference , participants expressed concern that a lack of precision in the language leaves the guidance vulnerable to legal challenges and uncertainty. Or as Shadow Housing Minister Jack Dromey MP who , addressed the conference after lunch, put it: we potentially face over the next two to three years chaos and conflict, which could lead to the wrong sort of homes being built second homes in Marbella for planning lawyers. Another pressing concern is that the NPPF should express a workable definition of sustainable development. The Government has said that a presumption in favour of sustainable development should be at the heart of the planning system, but environmentalists fear that the NPPF will prioritise economic concerns. Lee Shostak told Minister Andrew Stunell, who gave the closing address, that the conference consensus was a preference for the 2005 UK Sustainable Development Strategy definition, which gives weight to environmental and social as well as economic goals. The Minister gave nothing away: the Government was working on a final version after the public consultation which closed in October. His biggest revelation was that in his early career he worked for 30 years as an architect on the Runcorn New Town development.

inside stories news from the tcpa

Town and Country Planning Association, 17 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AS +44 (0)20 7930 8903 q tcpa@tcpa.org.uk q www.tcpa.org.uk The conference included two debates. The morning session addressed how localism and planning reform can deliver high-quality homes and communities, with a panel that included a developer, a planning consultant, a local councillor, and the head of housing and homelessness charity Shelter. Emma Cariaga, Development Director at Land Securities, insisted that developers have money and that it is not planning regulations or even the economy that is holding them back. The danger with the new policy framework in general is that certainty for developers on likely outcomes on planning decisions across the country is going to be very patchy, and you wont find developers making huge investments where they have no guarantee or degree of certainty on the outcome, she said. In the absence of regional plans, development will migrate to areas where local authorities can deliver more certainty. Patrick Clark, Technical Director at URS/Scott Wilson, agreed, predicting locally designed, locally driven growth. prices being built in the right places at the right quality in this country now, he said. Cuts in the Governments housing budget have had a dramatic effect, according to figures from the Homes and Communities Agency which revealed housing starts for homes in the social rented sector in the period April-September 2011 fell by 99% compared with the previous six months. The day before the figures were released, the Government announced a new Housing Strategy, with measures such as a mortgage indemnity scheme for first-time buyers, and 400 million to kick-start stalled development. The afternoon session, which examined the principles that should shape our future, was particularly animated. Planning consultant and TCPA Trustee David Lock criticised National Trust Director-General Dame Fiona Reynolds for politicising her organisation by campaigning against the Governments planning reforms as if the Trust were a pressure group. He thought the Trusts claim that the Government put economic gain ahead of environmental and social concerns was deliberately exaggerated in order to stir up opposition. Dame Fiona said the Trust has a long history of campaigning and its concern was about policy not politics. Government should see planning as part of the solution and not part of the problem, she said, to widespread agreement. Trudi Elliott, Chief Executive of the RTPI, bemoaned the move towards economists telling us how to do planning, when economics itself is not an exact science. David Lock instigated a debate over the brownfield first policy, saying it was not automatically the most sustainable approach. Some brownfield land might be better used for parks or nature, or might be in a location without jobs or transport. Just because its knackered, does make it the best place to live? he asked. On the Governments reforms, he said that local councils do not have the resources and capacity to deal with the new demands facing them. A lot of our problems are to do with the constant emasculation of the town hall, he said. Hugh Ellis, also speaking in the debate, said that national and regional plans will be needed to address future challenges, and in particular climate change mitigation. Providing high-quality housing for working people was possible in the past, and should be possible now, he insisted. We are a wealthy nation; we are just badly organised, he said. We have never been less fit for purpose.
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The danger with the new policy framework in general is that certainty for developers on likely outcomes on planning decisions across the country is going to be very patchy, and you wont find developers making huge investments where they have no guarantee or degree of certainty on the outcome
Now is a golden opportunity for those of us in a leadership role in local authorities to step up to the plate, said Councillor Barry Wood, Leader of Cherwell District Council. He called for realism among local authorities over how much money can be extracted from developers under Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy agreements. The head of homelessness charity Shelter was more pessimistic. Even if all the Governments reforms worked to their maximum potential, there would still be an annual shortage of 45,000-50,000 homes, Chief Executive Campbell Robb said. There are fundamentally not enough homes at the right

Emma Vandore is an urban PR consultant, analyst and writer. She can be contacted at emmavandore@gmail.com or through her website: http://emmamvandore.blogspot.com. Views expressed are personal.
Town & Country Planning January 2012