Sam Stafford's Blog

Since coming into office this Government has adopted both carrot and stick approaches to improving the performance of LPAs.   The initial nudge was the inducement of a New Homes Bonus and the promise of a six year guarantee to provide investment in local services following the building of new homes.   More latterly LPAs have been operating under the threat of special measures and recently Blaby fell foul of this designation because of it's poor record of determining major planning applications within 13 weeks.   Local Plan coverage too remains poor and the recent National Infrastructure Plan revealed plans to consult on what could be described as the ultimate stick with which a Government could beat a LPA - a statutory requirement to put a local plan in place.   It is telling though that 87% of respondents to the recent DCS Planning Consultancy Survey agreed that a shortage of staff is a major constr...

Of many misunderstood and misinterpreted concepts in planning, safeguarded land is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted. If I had a pound for every time I have seen or read a letter from a local resident expressing dismay about 'the loss of land that is supposed to be safeguarded against development' I would have... well... a few pounds.   Nick Boles' comments on the subject in a recent Westminster Hall debate have served to pour mud into already muddy waters. To recap, Mr Boles said that:   There is nothing in the Localism Act 2011, in the NPPF or in any aspect of Government planning policy that requires someone to plan beyond 15 years. So, anybody who is suggesting that there is any requirement to safeguard land or wrap it up in wrapping paper and ribbons for the future development between 2030 and 2050 is getting it wrong. There is no reason for it and my hon. Friend can knock that suggestion straight back to wherever it came from . ...

The failure of a High Court challenge to the rejection of planning permission for a 1,400-home development at Coalville received some coverage last month, but most it (like this piece: http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1216286/developers-lose-legal-challenge-1400-home-leicestershire-scheme ) missed  the real significance of the decision. Paragraph 49 of the NPPF states that: Housing applications should be considered in the context of the presumption in favour of sustainable development. Relevant policies for the supply of housing should not be considered up-to-date if the local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites. It had been widely interpreted that relevant policies for the supply of housing included both those that supported housing, e.g. requirements and land allocations, and those that restricted housing, e.g. settlement boundaries and policies of restraint. Mrs Justice Lang concludes though...

  “I get by with a little help from my friends” sang The Beatles, which came to mind when contemplating the task of a LPA attempting to steer a Local Plan through an ocean of competing interests towards the island of soundness.   Two of the tests of soundness that a development plan is subjected to during examination are whether it is justified (the most appropriate strategy, when considered against the reasonable alternatives, based on proportionate evidence) and effective (the plan should be deliverable over its period).   Reasonable alternatives will include, firstly, the quantum of development directed to a particular settlement over the plan period (e.g. How much to this town? How much to that town) and, secondly, the best locations within those settlements to accommodate that development (e.g. How much to the north of the town? How much to the south?).   For every site that a LPA seeks to allocate and every landowner that stands to benefit from t...

As one storm abates another continues to brew. The perfect storm that is the Cheshire East Local Plan will develop further this week as a Portfolio Meeting is set to review a final Draft Pre-Submission Local Plan document and approve a 6 week consultation that would start on 5 November.   In most circumstances progress by a LPA towards the adoption of a development plan would be heralded as a positive step, but circumstances at Cheshire East are, whilst not far from typical, certainly unique and the review of the final Draft Pre-Submission Local Plan will come only two weeks after the Secretary of State revealed in that he is “not persuaded that the updated SHLAA provides a robust assessment of 5 year land supply."   The Cheshire East storm has been brewing for some time, but the clouds really began to darken when a SHLAA update was produced in February in advance of the expiration of the NPPF transitional arrangements. It is fair to say that eyebrows w...

Cheshire East Council has confirmed that a Portfolio Meeting on the 1 November will review the final Draft Pre-Submission Local Plan document and approve a 6 week consultation that would start on 5 November.   The agenda and papers will be available via this link in due course. http://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/ecminutes/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=714&MId=5118&Ver=4   The meeting will come only two weeks after the Secretary of State revealed that he is not persuaded that the updated SHLAA, upon which housing supply policies in the Plan will be based, provides a robust assessment of 5 year land supply...

Cheshire East Council released the following statement yesterday in response to the recent appeal decisions.     STATEMENT: Abbey Road, Congleton Road and Sandbach Road North Planning Appeals   Council Leader Councillor Michael Jones said: “We are content to win the planning appeal in respect of Sandbach Road North and are determined to protect the Cheshire’s countryside and this decision goes to prove the value of the ‘countryside argument‘.   “However, we are disappointed that the Secretary of State and the Planning Inspector have seen fit to turn down two other appeals (Abbey Road and Congleton Road). We put up a strong defence of our decision to refuse these planning applications.   “The Planning Inspector agreed that we had met the housing requirement of 5,750 homes. But because of the recession and the stall on house building this figure has now inflated to 9,000 homes over five years. This is a relatively new target. ...

Three appeal decisions have been published, which are the first to interrogate land supply in Cheshire East since the publication in February of the updated SHLAA. The three are:   Middlewich Road & Abbey Road, Sandbach;   goo.gl/o6FxA0   Sandbach Road North, Alsager; and   goo.gl/7kBNJs   Congleton Road, Sandbach   goo.gl/XGbd9u   The fact that two Inspectors have confirmed that the Council does not have a five year land supply will come as little surprise to those who expressed a degree of sceptism about the 7.1 year figure included in the SHLAA. The decisions come though at a critical point in the local plan process and so the implications are of major significance to planning and development in the Borough. The housing requirement is currently 5750 for five years, based upon the old Regional Spatial Strategy figures (although it should be noted that the Council’s emerging housing requirement is h...

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, featured in an Inside Housing article recently in which he suggested that councillors are "deeply conflicted when balancing planning responsibilities and re-election strategy."   This is the piece:   http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/regulation/councillors-deeply-conflicted-when-balancing-planning-responsibilities-and-re-election-strategy-says-nhf-chief/6528755.article   In a blog post today Mr Orr continues the theme, stating that "where we need creative local leadership, we get cautious self-interest."   This is the blog:   http://www.hothouse.org.uk/towards-a-vision/where-new-housing-built/blog/planning-for-the-future/   I wholeheartedly agree that problems with planning are not, at root, systemic and welcome the light that he is trying to shine on the operation of the current system.   The suggestion, noting the conflict between planning responsibilities a...

Nick Boles told a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference last week that being planning minister was a 'wonderful job' ( http://www.planningresource.co.uk/news/login/1214541/ ), but reports in the Telegraph suggest that he is tiring of battles with campaigners ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10356601/Tory-women-set-for-promotion-in-David-Camerons-second-reshuffle-next-week.html?utm_content=buffer880e4&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer ). With a reshuffle expected today I for one hope that Mr Boles does not move to another brief because he is in my humble opinion the best planning minister in recent memory.        

Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past is a terrible, terrible film, but one that, following the 'my turn, your turn' principle, I have had to sit through with Mrs Stafford (a little tip: it gets less terrible with every additional glass of wine...).   What relevance though does this have to a blog on town planning?   Well my recent frustrations bring to mind the only memorable line in the film, which is from the principal protagonist played by Matthew McConaughey.   The power in all relationships lies with whoever cares less .   The character wasn't speaking about the UK planning system, but unfortunately he could have been.

“This government is committed to localism and greater local decision-making in planning. The flawed top-down targets of regional planning, centrally imposing development upon communities, built nothing but resentment. They will hang over communities no more."   Planners would not need three guesses to attribute that quote to Eric Pickles, speaking earlier this year as the last of the Regional Spatial Strategies was abolished.   What though is the practical difference to a local community of a Borough-wide housing target 'imposed' by a former regional assembly, and the Planning Inspectorate raising concerns about the soundness of a local plan because of a failure to address full and objectively assessed housing need?      The difference to the layperson is negligible because in both scenarios their Council's housing requirement is ultimately set by an 'unelected and unaccountable quangocrat' telling a LPA what ...

Further to my piece on the Cheshire East Local Plan, this appears on Place North West today: http://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/news/archive/14411-cheshire-east-urged-to-reconsider-green-belt-strategy.html Jonathan Vose at Walsingham Planning would also appear to have concerns about the evidence base underpinning the Council's proposed development strategy.  "The proposals in Handforth are particularly interesting, in planning terms, given that a very large scale of development is proposed wholly within the green belt, without the council first having published a formal assessment of its green belt, or the quality and openness value of sites within it."

Here we go again. Ed Miliband will warn again today of the evils of land banking. “Across our country”, he cautioned in June, “there are landowners with planning permission, sitting on land, waiting for it to accumulate in value and not building on it”.   Developers who sit on land banks, he will apparently say today, will be hit by a “use it or lose it” law and Councils will be given the right to impose escalating fees backed up by new compulsory purchase powers.   The same call has been made by Boris Johnson, who has criticised “pernicious land banking” for being “against London’s economic interests”.   Are these cross-party warnings evidence of a legitimate issue or do they reflect a soft and misunderstood target that fills speeches and generates headlines?   For the sake of this blog let us assume that applicants for planning permission break down into three categories: the private landowner (let’s say a farmer), the volume PLC housebuilder, and ...

The HBF has published it's latest Housing Pipeline report this morning.   http://www.hbf.co.uk/media-centre/news/view/housing-planning-permissions-up-49/   The headlines are a 49% year-on-year increase in the number of planning approvals for new homes in England in the second quarter of 2013.   Whilst a fall on Q1, the figure still means there were 77,686 permissions granted in the first six months of the year, a 26% year-on-year increase.   The HBF also take the opportunity to warn though of overly onerous conditions that increase the time between a planning approval and work commencing on-site.   A high number of conditions is often an indication that details that might otherwise have been agreed during the application process have not been agreed. This might suit some applicants because often at attitude prevails that pre-application discussions can be abortive where the principle of developmen...

Cheshire East's Strategic Planning Board will be told next week that the Green Belt Study being undertaken to support the emerging Local Plan is "soon-to-be-finalised".   (See agenda item 4 here: http://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/ecminutes/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=279&MId=5069 )   One wonders then upon what basis the Leader of Council, Michael Jones, was able to tell the BBC's North West Tonight programme this week that the Green Belt land proposed for the North Cheshire Growth Village east of Handforth was of "low quality"?   To be considered 'sound' the NPPF requires a Local Plan to be 'justified', which is defined as being "the most appropriate strategy, when considered against the reasonable alternatives, based on proportionate evidence."   A LPA's evidence base will obviously evolve in parallel to the evolution of the local plan process, and it may well be that the Green Belt Study supports th...

There's a great line in this review of last night's first episode of The Planners by Tom Sutcliffe in The Independent:   "...The Planners isn't dull, since it's about the hysterical emotions aroused in the average Briton by the prospect of any encroachment on their property rights".   It's worth a read...   http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-nights-viewing-the-secret-life-of-dogs-itvthe-planners-bbc2-8476113.html

I was confronted with a sobering thought last night whilst speaking with the planning officer who will deal with one of our imminent applications. I had met with his ecology and conservation officers colleagues last summer as we embarked upon a masterplanning process and I put it to the officer that we had never actually received any feedback on our proposition. "You won't do now", came the response. "They've both got the boot".   This is sobering for two reasons. Firstly, of course, one feels for the officers who have lost their jobs. Secondly, though, it is sobering to think that a large Metropolitan Borough has no ecological or conservation resource.   The project that we are working has at it's heart a feature of ecological and heritage value and there is an opportunity to enhance this value as part of our proposition. We are working to identify all of the parties (public, private and voluntary) who might help with realising this potential...

I highlighted in a tweet recently that Cheshire East Council, £132.3m in debt, owns or part owns seven of the strategic sites identified in it's Draft Development Strategy, including the proposed new settlement at East Handforth. The Council has stated that as part of a wider approach to developing the economy it will directly promote employment and housing growth through the development of Council assets and land. This approach is logically enough given the Council's financial plight, but it is important that those Council assets and land are identified through the development plan process as being the most appropriate sites for development relative to other options. It's interesting to see, therefore, that the Council is seeking a Development Executive to become Chief Executive designate of wholly Council-owned company that will be established to deliver "a number of strategic sites as well as two brand new settlements". http://www.placenorth...