On 15 June, Housing and Planning Minister Matthew Pennycook designated nine councils under section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 — Cherwell, Dacorum, Epping Forest, Hertsmere, Malvern Hills, Rossendale, South Tyneside, Staffordshire Moorlands and Wychavon — taking the total number of designated authorities to ten, alongside Lewes. Each was found “not adequately performing” its function of determining major applications. From 9am that day, developers in those districts gained the right to skip the council altogether and apply directly to the Planning Inspectorate.
Epping Forest’s leader, Chris Whitbread, called the designation “an attack on local democracy and accountability,” noting that over 90% of the district is Green Belt and that councillors are entitled to balance government pressure to build against the interests of existing residents. There in of course lies the rub. Councillors are elected by existing residents and to serve them and Councils have limited incentives financially and politically to think of what future residents might want. This is particularly acute in a green belt dominated locality and one which has also been a flash point for protests associated with migrant housing and short stay accommodation.
Meanwhile at the end of May in London, the GLA stepped in to recover two applications in Barnet which had been refused by the labour administration, one which was covered in an earlier propviews. Pipe approved JTP’s Great North Leisure Park scheme in Finchley: 1,485 homes, 20 buildings rising to 25 storeys, on a site where Barnet’s planning committee had voted eight to zero against, citing overdevelopment and infrastructure concerns — against their own officers’ recommendation. The same day, High Barnet Place was approved: towers at a tube station, refused by Barnet, overturned by the Mayor.
The councillors who voted against were not acting irrationally. They were doing what they were elected to do — representing residents who will have to live with 25-storey buildings at the end of their street. The Mayor overruled them because a different decision-maker, applying a different weighting, judged the housing benefit decisive. It is the same argument, in substance, that Whitbread is now making about Epping Forest. The objection is the same. Only the mechanism overruling the Committee has changed.
The connecting thread is structural, not coincidental. Both the Mayor’s call-in power and MHCLG’s s.62A designation route are effectively bypasses designed to remove local planning committees from having the final say over the planning process. The new LPG in London gives the Mayor power to bring in schemes now of 50 homes or more.
A city, or a country, that resolves its housing crisis by routing around local decision-making rather than fixing it has not built a sustainable planning system. It has built in effect a board of snakes and ladders and depending on where your site falls you might benefit from a leg up the ladder. It goes without saying, for investors seeking to place capital into large scale housing and infrastructure within the UK, this is not an operating environment which offers long term certainty.
