Polly Toynbee writing opinion pieces for the Guardian on planning policy is a sure sign that something might be afoot. I would not go as far as to suggest that planning is, has been, or ever will be ‘cool’, but it is front and centre of the new Government’s agenda, which, it is fair to say, it certainly was not under the previous Government.
Toynbee’s piece considers some of the challenges faced by Steve Birkinshaw, Head of Planning & Regeneration at Erewash Borough Council, over the past decade, which are not dissimilar to those faced by planners across the whole country, and highlights both the challenges and opportunities facing the incoming administration.
Birkinshaw talks of his years planning part of HS2’s route to Leeds along an old freight line, which, not cancelled, has still blighted streets along the route because of overarching compulsory purchase powers.
HS2 is unlikely to return at all let alone in its former guise, but the new Government has stated that policy intentions for critical infrastructure will be set out in the coming months, ahead of the updating of relevant national policy statements within a year. Had HS2 been an explicit national policy statement commitment then one imagines that it would have been harder for an individual Prime Minister to scrap it, seemingly on a whim.
Birkinshaw talks of past aspirations for a 2,500-home community on the 190-hectare former Stanton Iron Works. A foreign investor was reportedly about to take on the project, but withdrew when interest rates rose after the Liz Truss ‘Mini-Budget’. The new Government has spoken of redirecting Home England to unlock complex sites like this.
Whilst homes are not coming forward on sites that Birkinshaw wants to see come forward, proposals are advanced on sites that he would sooner not. He talks of refusing planning permission and the costs to the council of taking on the “expensive barristers” instructed by the landowners to challenge the decision. He talks of a small office block that has been converted by way of permitted development rights into “poky” flats backing straight on to a railway.
Toynbee introduces her piece by suggesting that “bulldozing the system will clash with Labour’s devolution pledge” and that “change rightly means removing some decisions from England’s 370-odd planning authorities”.
It is noted that “a mighty array of pylons will come striding across Birkinshaw’s borough carrying electricity from the Lincolnshire coast, with residents consulted only on “the how not the if”. It is striking though that, while councils along the route “kick up a stink demanding compensation, secretly they and planners are quite relieved it’s not their decision”.
Birkinshaw goes on to talk about a former coal-powered power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar and how, being on a main road, beside a mainline station and close to an airport, it is “ideal” for a 10,000 home new town. Ratcliffe-on-Soar is, however, in Rushcliffe, and its borough council, Birkinshaw reports, would prefer industrial uses on the site. Will, one wonders, the new Mayor of the East Midlands have powers to plan for this strategic site in the interests of the wider sub-region? Is a strategically located new settlement proposition of sufficient national importance as to be overseen by a state-backed Development Corporation?
What the experiences of planners like Steve Birkinshaw in places like Erewash illustrate is that over the past ten years local planning authorities and local councillors have been carrying to the point of near exhaustion the weight of greater-than-local decisions that should not be theirs to take. HS2 and the ‘great grid upgrade’ are matters of national importance. The redevelopment of huge sites like iron works and power stations have a significance at the city-region scale of economic and housing market geography. These decisions should be with ministers and mayors to take because the consequence of this responsibility being passed down has been inertia, obfuscation and rancour.
“You don’t become a planner to make friends,” Birkinshaw told Toynbee, “but to make the word a better place”. With the reintroduction of some much-missed and much-needed proportionality into the system planners might just be able to do both, which would be cool.
Comments
Post a Comment