The end, when it came, was fittingly ignominious. The Publication version of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF), which is in the public domain, but will not now be published for public consultation, was to help “transform Greater Manchester (GM) into a top global city”, but Stockport’s councillors must have missed that bit as they presumably skimmed straight to the housing allocations chapter. Stockport’s vote on continuing to progress the conurbation-wide development plan document (DPD) bore less of a resemblance to New York’s City Council and more of a resemblance to Dibley Parish Council. The GMSF states that “the strength and strategic location of Greater Manchester puts it in an ideal place to act as the primary driver for the Northern Powerhouse”, but such lofty rhetoric played second fiddle to members’ concerns about the plan being based on ‘developer wants rather than community need’; it’s reliance on ‘out-dated’ statistics and who’s ward was ‘bearing the brunt of mass development’.
It was obvious from way back when that having to corral a moveable feast of ten leaders and ten councils, meaning that the keenest had to travel at the same pace as the less keen, was going to be a challenge (my 2014 blogs can be found here and here). Some planners and property professionals in other parts of the country might have enjoyed watching the soap opera-like spectacle of the GMSF from afar, but for those in GM it has not been a distraction from reality, it has been the grinding reality. For planners and property professionals like me that have followed the GMSF from the start it has been akin to the Jim and Liz or Dev and Deidre storylines in Coronation Street. It was destined to end badly. It has just been a question of when.
It came as a surprise to no one in GM that the listing GMSF should finally run aground in Stockport. Where once all ten GM authorities were majority controlled (one wonders whether the Mayor now regrets not getting on with it during a relatively becalmed period at the start of 2018) two are currently being run by minority administrations. One, Bolton, saw it’s need in 2016 for 3,500 homes within a Green Belt ‘area of search’ (as well as other housing allocations) disappear by the time of the 2019 version so there was never likely to be too much scope for political point-scoring from councillors and MPs there. The other, Stockport, was the likely monkey in the wrench, which was why the spat about the Bredbury Industrial Estate earlier this year was particularly disappointing.
The background to that can be viewed here, but, in a nut shell, the publication of the Publication Draft was delayed because Tameside Council objected to the extension of one of Stockport’s industrial estates into Green Belt adjacent to Tameside’s boundary, which raised alarm about the GMCA’s ability to stitch both the politics of the GMSF together let alone the sites put forward by the LPAs. Presumably either nobody spotted that a dispute on the boundary had the potential to cause rancour or, if they did, waited until hackles had been raised in the week of the document’s intended publication before trying to do something about it. One of the most telling contributions at the Stockport Council meeting was from Conservative Group Leader Mike Hurlestone who said of the Mayor that “…to leave it so late in the day (to try to intervene) - one week before a decision was due to be made - shows that this flagship policy was not given the attention it deserved. That is also a failure.” If success has many fathers then the poor GMSF has always felt like an orphan.
What now then? Is it actually the end? What update can planners and property professionals in GM offer to landowners with whom they are working or the accountants that have signed off six years’ worth of promotional activity with precious little to show for it? If the Stockport decision signals the end of the GMSF as a joint plan of the ten authorities what comes next? As I started writing this piece I imagined four possible scenarios.
Scenario 1 is a period of wound-licking, dust-settling and naval-gazing on the part of the GMCA that could be spun as ‘a period of reflection’. Going into ‘listening mode’ for a while would get May’s elections out of the way and, who knows, perhaps Labour could take back full control of Stockport. Perhaps, like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, such shot of political adrenaline could bring the flatlining GMSF back from the dead. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. On the other side of the coin though, of course, is the possibility that another authority changes hands.
Scenario 2 would be to just put the ailing DPD out of it’s misery now, call it quits, and let everybody move on with the rest of their lives. Whilst this sounds like the most humane option it is also the least feasible. The Mayor is obligated under the terms of the Devo Deal to prepare a plan for GM and a lot of time and money has been invested in the GMSF to date. Whilst these might not be insurmountable obstacles, and this option would expose the authorities that are ready and willing to get a plan in place (perhaps on the basis of smaller cross-boundary geographies like Rochdale, Bury and Oldham) and the authorities that are less ready and willing to get a plan in place, the embarrassment to all concerned would be huge. On top of this calculation about starting from scratch might also be the higher housing requirements for GM that SM2 might bring before not to long.
Scenario 3 then is the ‘Plan of 9’, which is the notion tabled by the Mayor ahead of the Stockport vote that the other nine GM authorities just move forward without Stockport. Whilst technically possible it would involve the inevitable substantial rewrite of the plan and it’s evidence base would need even more work. What about the ‘optics’ of this? A GM wide plan that is not a GM wide plan? A ‘King of the North’ who is not even ‘King of GM’? That being said GMCA may not be too concerned about the perception of such a move in the same way that it clearly was too concerned about how passing up a £68m housing deal by pursuing a lower housing target would be perceived within MHCLG. This ‘press on’ option is not without it’s challenges though because serious doubts remain as to whether the current version stands up to scrutiny as a ‘Reg 18’ plan let alone as a ‘Reg 19’ plan.
Scenario 4 is, for what it’s worth dear readers as a seasoned GMSF observer, one that I personally think could have considerable merit. The GMSF has hit the rocks because of Green Belt and the ability of opposition groups within authorities to sell to the public the perception that authorities are having ‘planning done to them’. All of the GMSF’s other benefits have been torn asunder because of this one key issue. Hindsight is wonderful thing, but perhaps the GMCA has been too wedded to the ability of the GMSF to make Green Belt allocations. The pragmatist might surely now contemplate going around the problem rather than just staring at it for a bit longer. Might the GMSF become a more strategic Spatial Development Strategy (SDS) rather than the more contentious (and evidence-laden) DPD? What if it made the case for strategic rather than specific allocations? All of the other benefits of the GMSF would be back on the table and the individual authorities that want to and can do can bring forward individual plans to dealing with Green Belt boundaries and other borough-specific matters, but the work that has gone into to dealing with the cross-boundary matters that sunk individual plans previously will not have been wasted. In so doing the authorities that did want to keep kicking the Green Belt could carrying on doing so. Might this option get us from here to plan coverage across all of GM faster than Scenario 3?
As it so happens by the time I had finished writing this piece the agenda for an Executive Board meeting has revealed AGMA’s preferred way forward, which is, well blow me down, the ‘Plan of 9’. A report states that a joint DPD can progress in the event of an authority withdrawing provided that the plan has ‘substantially the same effect’ on the remaining authorities as the original joint plan. No timetable is placed on the review that officers are being invited to undertake of the evidence base, the spatial strategy and the thematic policies, but all other things being equal one imagines that a good case could be made for GMSF as drafted, but without Stockport’s allocations, having substantially the same effect on the other nine. The issue though, technically and politically, I imagine, will be Stockport’s self-generated housing need. As Manchester Leader Richard Leese has noted Stockport is already making less Green Belt release “because Manchester, Salford and Rochdale are building above the government housing allocation to effectively donate that excess.” So either Stockport’s self-generated housing need comes out of the GMSF, which has an impact on spatial distribution, or Stockport’s self-generated housing need stays in the GMSF and Stockport gets away with less Green Belt release when it does get around to preparing a local plan. What a palaver.
Tellingly the AGMA Executive Board does not appraise any options other than the ‘Plan of 9’, but there is a tantalising reference to a SDS. It is stated that MHCLG has accepted to this point that a DPD prepared by the ten authorities would satisfy the mayoral obligation to produce an SDS and that, whilst discussions with MHCLG regarding the current situation are ‘ongoing’, ‘it is not proposed to commence further work on the preparation of an SDS’. Does this rule out a SDS or rule out a SDS for now..?
So whilst GMCA’s officers are reviewing the GMSF’s evidence base, spatial strategy and thematic policies, which will keep them busy, and GM’s politicians start thinking about May’s election leaflets, which will keep them busy, what is to occupy the rest of us in the meantime.
For the GMCA, whilst there are some emollient words in the AGMA Executive Board report about the ten continuing to work together on the Local Industrial Strategy, the 5 Year Environment Plan and the 2040 Transport Strategy, Stockport’s decision surely shakes the strength of those foundations a little as well. In an act of delicious cakeism having voted down the GMSF Stockport’s councillors then voted in favour of the Greater Manchester 2040 Transport Strategy only to have it pointed out by the council’s furious Cabinet Member for Economy & Regeneration that the proposals such as a Metrolink extension to Stockport that are included in the latter would be thrown into doubt by not backing the former.
For Stockport, it was frequently said during it’s GMSF debate that the council would now have three years to prepare a standalone local plan that would need to accommodate 5,502 more homes in the borough than the GMSF makes provision for. That is true, but then there are many examples up and down the country of recalcitrant LPAs that, in the face of a Government that does not follow through on threats of intervention, can spin out a local plan process longer than the six years absorbed by the GMSF already. The Publication Draft would have reduced Stockport’s Green Belt by 1.2% and that was deemed by councillors to be too much even before 5,502 plus whatever SM2 brings are added to the pot. Presumably too for Stockport the ‘mayoral’ part of it’s ‘mayoral development corporation’ might be under review, which will not help with demonstrating the delivery of all of those brownfield sites in the town centre (and I believe that access to the Brownfield Land Fund is conditional on having an up to date plan in place).
It was also frequently said during the Stockport debate that the collapse of the GMSF would lead to developers ‘cherry-picking’ Green Belt sites across the conurbation. It would be a bold planning consultant that would recommend an application on a Publication Draft GMSF allocation let alone a Green Belt site with less pedigree (although I can think of a few consultants that might…). As far as I am aware the Seashell Trust application in Cheadle and Russell Homes’ application at South Heywood are two of only three to be made on a 2016/2019 allocation and, interestingly, the appeal inspector’s recommendation in the former case gives ‘very limited weight indeed’ to the emerging GMSF on the basis, in accordance with the NPPF, of the significant number of unresolved objections in relation to it. Since a draft GMSF allocation did not form a material part of the case for very special circumstances, and that whatever weight the 2019 GMSF did have then diminishes further with every passing day, Greater Manchester’s Green Belt sites are safe from the bulldozers for quite a while yet (unless something akin to hosting the Ryder Cup forms part of the proposition).
What else can be expected to happen in the meantime?
Well the current batch of GM local plans get more out of date with every passing day. Bury’s was adopted in 1997. Only three of the ten authorities have plans adopted since the 2012 NPPF and only one plan was reviewed less than five years ago.
Planning applications will keep being approved for apartments in Manchester and Salford. Nearly 90% of all new homes built in Salford last year were apartments in either Ordsall, around the Quays or along the border with Manchester. Of 3,034 of the new homes in Ordsall alone all but 29 were apartments.
It is also worth noting that according to the UK House Price Index the average price of an apartment in Salford fell by -0.1% in the year to September, whilst the price of a detached house in Bolton rose by 8.6%.
I should also point out that this blog is written with a planning and property professional readership in mind. Heaven knows what the good people of Greater Manchester make of all of this. What impression of the planning system is being conveyed to them? It cannot be positive and that too is only likely to deteriorate further in the meantime.
So here we are. Another GMSF blog over. Back in 2014 it was hoped by AGMA that the GMSF would be adopted in 2018. The fact that it has not been should come as a surprise to nobody, but the Stockport vote does reflect poorly on all concerned. The unseemly squabbling at that meeting reflects poorly on both Stockport’s leaders, for failing to see the bigger picture, and GMCA’s leaders, for failing to foresee the smaller picture. The travails of the GMSF, as I have written previously, are an example of everything that is both good and bad about strategic planning in a non-statutory age, but here we are in 2020 and the prospect of local plan coverage across GM is as far away now as it was in 2014. Those tasked with working out what to replace the Duty-to-Cooperate with would do well to heed it’s lessons and perhaps ask about having another look at the Devolution White Paper before it finally sees the light of day.
Coronation Street turned 60 this week. The GMSF will surely not be as long running a soap opera as that…
As non-planning professional, this is an insightful article.
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