Arguably several decades too late, the UK polity has finally begun to accept the way planning applications up and down the country are determined is fundamentally flawed. Why so long for the penny to drop? Well local democracy is a tough thing to argue against and our national politicians are loathe to upset their Councillor colleagues. Yet what we have isn’t local democracy in the planning process. What we have is a frail and clunky system open to capture by a tiny proportion of our communities which deters investment and has stymied this nation’s infrastructure and housing for far too long.
I recall as Chair of Planning at Wandsworth, some moons ago, the night the Council determined the planning application for the Battersea Powerstation. After a rigorous three plus hour Committee debate to determine one of London’s largest and most significant applications of the decade the Planning Committee said yes and took a break for ten minutes. Then, a few moments past midnight as the Powerstation crowd trooped out, a host of bleary-eyed residents were ushered in.
A score or so of household extensions, basements and conservatories had been waiting outside the committee room for more than three hours whilst the fate of a piece of national infrastructure was determined. With blood sugar levels on the floor, the applications were determined in the space of ten minutes or so and they were done. I couldn’t help thinking as I left after a long night of local bureaucracy, sorry typo, democracy how misaligned the system was.
So what’s on offer. Potentially a national scheme of delegation. Currently, every council has its own scheme of delegation to identify the circumstances where planning consent decisions are taken by Planning Committee rather than delegated to officers. That looks likely to change. Hooray I hear you say. Well not quite, the devil is in the detail.
There’s a menu of options. The first is and probably the most minimal change. Where an application does not comply with the development plan it must go to Committee. This doesn’t work.
Few if any applications can comply with all the policies. In my two decade plus experience of property development and planning I am racking my brains of examples and as policy gets more complex the threshold gets higher.
As we all know, where there is ambiguity there is challenge and so the safe option will be for everything to go up to Committee. The Government paper appears to acknowledge the flaws in this one so let’s rule that one out if we want any real change and this Government does.
The second option is where a departure from the Development Plan occurs it goes to Committee. Departures are bit different and it’s very much in my experience a discretionary decision. Whilst better than option 1 I can see scope for confusion and challenge. I don’t see this working for largely the same reasons as the first.
The third and final option is the way forward, an explicit list. Committees still get a say if the site is not allocated but otherwise it’s for the Officers. This offers certainty and clarity to the developers and promoters.
One of the benefits for local democracy will be a greater emphasis on plan making and the plan. Too many plans don’t get adopted and there is too little focus. I would say that the majority of the planning committee I chaired did not fully understand the adopted Wandsworth Plan. Why should they – it’s too complicated and besides they have planning committees to have their say so they focus on that, not the plan.
The other benefit is a more accountable and effective system. The current planning system is open to capture by vocal minorities because the Members do not have effective mandates. Let’s look at London. The average planning committee member sits on just 19%* of the overall registered electoral vote within their specific ward.
The worst-performing planning committee was Bexley, with members averaging just 8%. A shocking figure. Richmond performed best, though still with just 27%. Kingston planning committee members – who according to HBF research spent £474,324.05 over the past three years on planning appeals (the fourth-highest of any council in England) – held just one-fifth of the registered electoral vote within the wards they represent. In my view our planning committees stretch the definition of local democratic mandates.
What the Government is proposing is not radical. It should have been done years ago. It will make some difference but not enough. Development viability is on its knees and a simpler more zonal led system which sits alongside a streamlined set of delegated powers is vital. However, perhaps the Government has learnt from the last one that moving across too broader front might mean everything valuable is lost. If that is the case, then lets welcome what’s on offer and have simpler decision thresholds and professionals making judgements on plans which have been produced by the whole community who live there.
