Sam Stafford's Blog

Writing for the Conservative Ho me website yesterday (15 December), Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis stated that.. "... it was clear that to really solve these problems we needed a new level of thinking, which challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of top-down bureaucratic control. That new principle was localism: ensuring that local authorities, and local people, have more control over the delivery of new homes in their area." Deliciously, only a day later, a recovered appeal decision from Secretary of State Eric Pickles in Rolleston on Dove illustrates both what can happen when communities have more control over the delivery of new homes, and what can happen when politicians like Mr Lewis and Mr Pickles, who are tasked with 'significantly boosting the supply of housing', have to intervene in marginal constituencies in the run up to a general election.   The context: The site in Rolleston on Dove is a housing allocation in the draft ...

How to solve the problem of more new households than new houses? Sir Michael Lyons' report of his independent review of housing for the Labour Party makes 39 considered and sound enough recommendations. Planning Minister Brandon Lewis has summarised the Government's "wide range of measures" as including neighbourhood planning ('putting power back in the hands of local communities'), investment in the Affordable Homes programme, and the stimulation of demand (like 'Help to Buy'). Shadow Communities Minister Roberta Blackman-Woods has spoken of "tweaks" to the NPPF to reflect a 'brownfield first' policy (and also a common methodology for objective assessments of housing need), sentiments also expressed by Brandon Lewis in response to a recent CPRE report . Whilst the Lyons' report mentions "housing as a priority for Government", regardless of who forms the next Government the smart money (I'd he...

We are in election season, which means that planning policies and pronouncements are more prone than usual to the pie charts of public opinion. It occurs to me, therefore, that planning is ripe for satirical send-up, so this blog, therefore, is meant for Armando Iannucci, who will hopefully at some point in the future consider a fifth series of The Thick Of It, the razor-sharp, foul-mouthed satire that pricks at the Westminster bubble. If, and hopefully when, Mr Iannucci does contemplate that new series, he will hopefully stumble across this piece and my suggestion that Nicola Murray, the tragi-comic Minister whose sole ambition in politics is to avoid the ire of tyrannical spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker, finds her way from DoSAC to the new Department of Places and the Environment where she has accepted the crucial role of Planning Minister. To assist Mr Iannucci yet further, I have also taken the liberty of sketching out a planning narrative for the series, around...

Morecambe and Wise. Shearer and Sheringham. Green Belt and Brownfield. Partnerships that are famous because you cannot think of one without thinking of the other. Having reinforced the Government's commitment to the Green Belt last month , it was perhaps inevitable that this month would see a similar commitment from Housing & Planning Minister Brandon Lewis to brownfield sites, the supply of which, as I heard recently, becomes more elastic the closer time gets to a general election. Sure enough, Mr Lewis lent his name to a CPRE press release about it's ' Wasted Space ' campaign. Labour too is keen to emphasise it's pre-election brownfield credentials, and I recently heard Shadow Minister Roberta Blackman-Woods reinforce a ' brownfield first ' message that was first aired by Hilary Benn some time ago.  Nobody would disagree that brownfield sites should be developed before greenfield ones, but this, unfortunately, is where the public prono...

If the general election of 2010 was about localism, the 2015 election promises to be about devolution. If it’s not on the lips of everybody then it’s certainly on the lips of the metropolitan, liberal elite that concerns itself with the future of regional governance. The Conservatives’s ‘ Northern Powerhouse’ ; the five cities’ ‘ One North ’ plan; Nick Clegg’s ‘ Northern Futures’ project; the City Growth Commission’s ‘ Unleashing Metro Growth ’ report; Labour’s plans for an English Regional Cabinet Committee ; and David Higgins’ ‘ Rebalancing Britain’ report, are all evidence of a devolution arms race. "New transport and science and powerful city governance", said George Osborne . "Better connections between people and jobs is crucial if we want to rebalance the national economy", said Keith Wakefield . "The next phase in our drive to generate the best ideas for stronger local growth", said Nick Clegg . 'Granting more powers to cities should...

In a Telegraph piece today (10 November) Redrow Chairman Steve Morgan bemoans the "political posturing ahead of next year's General Election (that) is already having a detrimental impact on the time taken to grant planning permissions in many parts of the country." To what might Mr Morgan be referring to? Well last month ministers "underlined the government’s commitment to protect the green belt from development" with 'new' guidance  and, predcitably enough, two Surrey councils have already shelved plans for a Green Belt review.   Practioners though are seeing through the smoke and mirrors. This is an extract from a piece by Stephen Ashworth at Dentons. In substance, neither additional paragraph makes any real contribution to our understanding of the policy in the NPPF. However, the ministerial statements that introduce the additions to the NPPG have given the impression that green belt policy has been tightened and that greater favou...

Of all the challenges awaiting the first directly-elected mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017, and there will no doubt be plenty, the one that drew my eye amongst the 'devo-manc' coverage (3 November 2014) was the need for the Spatial Framework to be approved 'by a unanimous vote of the Mayor’s Cabinet' ( here ). John Geoghegan at Planning Magazine has been told by Eamonn Boylan at Stockport Council ( here ) that the Cabinet would retain the GMCA model, which means that it will comprise all ten Council leaders. According to the Spatial Framework consultation material, 2017 should herald a 'publication' draft of the new statutory document, as well as it's submission for examination. Even without a unanimous cabinet vote that is an extremely ambitious timetable because it means plan publication either before or very soon after an election in May, cabinet consent to the submission of the plan in the summer, and an examination by Christmas. The need for unani...

It would be interesting to know (and perhaps I'll ask at my next public exhibition...) what winds our NIMBY friends up more. The prospect of the green fields over which they have enjoyed a view being used to house the next generation, or the prospect of ' speculative developers ' benefiting from the process. The phrase, speculative developer, is an emotive one and one that I imagine sub-editors quite like because it instantly invokes an image of someone in a pinstripe suit waving a fifty pound note around. Notwithstanding the plain and simple fact that people profit from the development process (and I do like to ask NIMBYs at exhibitions whether they would promote any land that they owned for development...) the two component words represent an amalgamation of two distinct players in the process. The first word first. The dictionaries that I have just consulted define speculative in a number of ways, but common ones include ' a high risk of loss', and '...

Ah, Garden Cities. Like Matthew Le Tissier in an England shirt, everybody agrees that they should work, but nobody seems able to get them to. The Lyons Review has added to the growing body of support for the concept. The evidence is clear that Garden Cities will not happen without local support and therefore we propose that the process will be locally-led with designation proposed by local authorities; proposals from other parties including LEPs or private developers could be valid where the support of local communities and alignment with local plans is clearly evidenced. Regular readers will know that I regard locally-led Garden Cities as the planning equivalent of turkey-led Christmas dinners so I shan't dwell on the need for local support, but the suggestion that non-locally-led proposals should be clearly aligned with local plans demands closer inspection. Advice to the review has suggested that progressing through the Local Plan process is likely to take at least three years....

Putting aside the terrible title ("Mobilising across the nation to build the homes our children need" sounds like a key words were thrown into a hat and picked out at random) and the glaring difference between an identified need for 243,000 homes a year and an identified target of 'at least' 200,000 homes a year, there is much to commend the Lyons Review. Despite though a promise of 'national leadership', the key issue for many practioners, the return of regional planning, has been sidestepped.    On the plus side, of the ten key recommendations for planning reform summarised here by Planning Magazine there is merit in nine (I imagine that the policy of 'local homes for local people' was thrown in by a SpAd because I cannot think that any of the Commissioners felt that was a sound idea that is workable in practice). A "national spatial dimension to the NPPF to identify opportunities for substantial housing growth created by national infras...

Sitting here in limbo But I know it won't be long Sitting here in limbo Like a bird without a song Well, they're putting up a resistance But I know that my faith will lead me on Ok, Sam. I hear you say. What tenuous way have you found to crow bar a  Jimmy Cliff  song into a 50 Shades blog...  Well. Barbour ABI, a supplier of data to the construction industry, has announced that, while 238,000 homes received planning permission in England and Wales last year (September 2013 to August 2014), only 129,000 units started construction in the same period. This, it was stated, "indicates a significant disparity between planning permissions and builds starting on site". 24 Dash, a social housing and local government  website , went on describe 109,000 planned dwellings as...   wait for it...   "sitting in limbo". The suggestion that planning permissions can be implemented within the same calender year ...

The first impression of confirmation that the ten AGMA authorities are to develop the nascent spatial framework (GMSF) for identifying future housing and land requirements into a statutory joint Development Plan Document (DPD) was a positive one. The replacement of regional planning by the current Government with a wishy-washy 'duty-to-co-operate' was to the detriment of strategic plan-making, and Greater Manchester, functioning as it does as a single spatial entity, will manifestly benefit from more coordinated planning. On reflection though, one starts to wonder about the ability of the ten LPAs to get local plans in place whilst the GMSF process is ongoing. Although the consultation document states that "no weight should be attached to the intention to produce the GMSF or the initial evidence that is the subject of this consultation", it is also stated that "the objectively assessed needs or requirements for individual districts will be a key outp...