Sam Stafford's Blog

If you were to believe the Telegraph this week, 'thousands of new homes are set to be built on the Green Belt in the biggest relaxation to planning protections for 30 years'. If you were to believe the Telegraph of course... However, the proposed amendments to the NPPF have certainly brought the Green Belt back to the media's attention, which is why some perspective is required. This is not the biggest relaxation of planning protections for 30 years. Given the frequency with which the Government likes to tinker with the planning system it's probably not the biggest relaxation of planning protections for 30 days. In relation to brownfield land, the NPPF, if amended to reflect the current consultation , will support t he regeneration of previously developed brownfield sites in the  Green Belt by allowing them to be developed in the same way as other brownfield  land, providing this contributes to the delivery of starter homes, and subject to  local cons...

Thanks to this piece by Ed Smith, the former cricketer turned writer and TMS commentator, I have been introduced to the concept of 'The Prisoner' Dilemma'. "Imagine how good cricket could be if we cured the easy fixes", writes Ed Smith, contemplating the factors that led to England's run chase in recent first Test against Pakistan being cut short. Those factors all arise from a seemingly rational pursuit of self-interest, but, as Albert Tucker, the Princeton mathematician and game theorist, showed in his "Prisoners' Dilemma" theory, when two agents pursue narrow self-interest it can work against the long-term benefit of both. In cricket's case this is the long term future of the Test Match as a spectacle. "That's interesting, Sam" I can hear you thinking, "but where are you going with this?" Well, might it be said that planning in the Eric Pickles-inspired, post-RSS world has suffered from its own version of t...

There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which, having been inspired by a Spinal Tap gig, Homer and Marge buy Bart an electric guitar. A little while later, spotting that his initial enthusiasm has waned, Homer asks Bart why he doesn’t play it anymore… “I'll tell you the truth”, says Bart. “I wasn't good at it so I quit. I hope you're not mad.” “Son, come here”, says Homer laughing. “Of course I'm not mad. If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing. ” There is a reason, Reader, for shoehorning a Simpsons reference into the start of this piece, and that is because this exchange often comes to mind upon hearing news of local plan delay. Why is it that according to NLP , in March this year, more than ten years since the 2004 Planning & Compulsory Purchase Act, 46% of councils had no local plan in place or had adopted one before the NPPF was introduced in 2012? The short answer is that local plans are hard. They are hard technically (the empirical ...

Did you make your childhood memories in the Green Belt? The CPRE would like to know and it's "Our Green Belt"  campaign  has been launched 'to show the Government how important it is us'. According to the CPRE: It’s where we relax. It’s where we watch wildlife. It’s where we take part in our hobbies. It’s where we eat and drink. It’s where we feel inspired. It’s where we make memories. Powerful, evocative stuff. According to a poll from  Ipsos Mori  though, which was commissioned by the CPRE itself, only 23% of people claim to know a 'fair amount' amount the Green Belt. A quarter of people in England have never even heard of the Green Belt and that figure is 62% for 15-24 year olds. Even those who claim to know a 'fair amount' about the Green Belt will probably not be aware that it's five purposes as set out in the NPPF make no provision at all for public access of any kind,  so it is not actually for relaxing and watching wildli...

Birmingham is booming and should set a target to be the UK's fastest growing major city, the council leader Albert Bore has said . And why not. Midland New Street Station, the Metro Extension, Grand Central Shopping Centre and the new Mailbox work are all set for completion in 2015; there is more than one million square feet of city centre offices in the pipeline; and the Greater Birmingham and Solihill (GBSLEP) area is attracting more foreign direct investment than another local enterprise partnership zone in the country. So all is rosy in the Birmingham garden? Well not quite. There is quite a large elephant in the corner and that is that Birmingham City Council cannot accommodate the homes that it needs. The submitted Birmingham Development Plan (BDP) identified a need for 84,000 homes to 2031, but is acknowledged and accepted that that figure will be higher by the time the plan's examination has run it's course. Birmingham City Council only has though capacit...

If you really cared about something that was under threat how would you go about protecting it? A practical option could be ownership or at least part-ownership, like the campaigners trying to save Ancoats Dispensary in Manchester, or the Pompey Supporters Trust , which took control of Portsmouth Community Football Club. A political option could be a campaign, like the Labour's twenty year fight to save the NHS ... This came to mind at a RTPI-sponsored Green Belt debate at Oxford Brookes University, where the Campaign to Protect Rural England's (CPRE) Head of Planning, Matt Thomson, began his remarks by stating that the CPRE "like to think that we own the Green Belt." The CPRE do not, obviously, own the Green Belt, and instead 'stand up for it' on it's member's behalf, but what if it did? What if, in order to provide a 'beautiful and thriving countryside for everyone' the CPRE started to acquire beautiful land for the benefit of not j...

Who remembers 'Open Source Planning' ? A Conservative Party pre-election Green Party that lamented a 'broken' planning system, rejected any 'piecemeal' reform, and attempted a 'radical reboot' of the Labour government's 'centralising, corporatist attitiude'.  "The creation of an Open Source planning system means that local people in each neighbourhood – a term we use to include villages, towns, estates, wards or other relevant local areas – will be able to specify what kind of development and use of land they want to see in their area. This will lead to a fundamental and long overdue rebalancing of power, away from the centre and back into the hands of local people. Whole layers of bureaucracy, delay and centralised micro-management will disappear as planning shifts away from being an issue principally for “insiders” to one where communities take the lead in shaping their own surroundings." Doesn't that sound nice... Can you be...

Let's play a little word association game. A bit like Mallet's Mallet (for the readers who need to realise that knowing what this is makes you almost old...). Sam's Stick. Stafford's Staff. Anyway. You get the idea. I write a word, or words, you read it, and then lodge the first word, or words, that come in to your mind. Ok. Here we go. The Premier League...   ..., ok...   What did you think? Over-paid and over-hyped? Unmissable? Too many foreigners? Great brand?   There is, of course, no right answer. Football is a game. A sport. It means lots of different things to lots of different people. Another one. The Turner Prize... ..., ok... What did you think? Cutting edge? Experimentation? Boundary-pushing? Indulgent nonsense?   There is, of course, no right answer. Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, usually involving imaginative or technical skill (at least according to Wikipedia). It too means lots of diffe...

This piece by Simon Coop at NLP very nicely anticipates the publication next week of the 2012-based sub-national household projections (SNHP), which, as Simon states, are expected to demonstrate a lower level of future household change when compared to previous projections.   Given that the SNHP will project forward the demographic and household formation trends that were experienced between 2007 and 2012, this lower level of change should not surprise anybody, and Simon's piece makes the point that they should not be taken at face value.   In planning terms, the SNHP do not provide a definitive position in relation to future housing need, and the national PPG requires DCLG household projections to provide only the starting point for the assessment of housing need.   This is election season though and, whilst Simon makes the point that a lower level of change in the SNHP might 'threaten the abilities' of pro-...

Would you like to guess how long it takes to get planning permission for a 50 home development? Have in mind that the target for major applications is 8 weeks, which increases to 13 weeks for EIA development.   Research undertaken in 2013 concluded that across the Barratt Group it took an average of 22 weeks to get an application approved by a Committee, with a further 20 weeks required for S106 Agreement negotiations and the satisfaction of pre-commencement conditions.   I could write a very extensive piece about the influences upon the submission and determination of an application, and would probably end up concluding that any procedural efficiencies would be offset by the diminishing number of experienced, talented planners to implement them, but will settle today for a couple of ideas that I might submit to the inevitable review that the next Government will undertake 'on speeding up the planning process'.   Planning Performance Agreements...

A recent blog post by Alex Marsh highlights a theme familiar to regular readers of this blog, which is that the political classes are lagging and not leading on housing.   "The problem here is typically diagnosed as being that politicians feel constrained to offer relatively modest policy solutions and tinkering round the edges because they fear voters will reject anything more radical."   Those in the, ahem, (green) field will agree that that is absolutely right. Alex highlights though the publication of data by Shelter this week that indicates that opposition to development has softened, and suggests that any politician brave enough to break away from "the conspiracy of minimal policy ambition" might be pushing at a 'partially open, rather than a locked and bolted, door'.   The issue, I would contend, is not necessarily one of policy ambition. Whilst true to say that no party is offering more than modest solutions, a consensues has emerged a...