As I was chatting to the BBC’s Nick Robinson about the idiosyncrasies of the planning system whilst on a building site in Ipswich the other day (now there’s a start to a blog…) I shared with him my supposition that objecting to planning applications is fast becoming the country’s favourite pastime.
After meeting me, Nick (as I can now call him…) went to visit the site on the edge of Ipswich upon which an application for 80 homes was refused against the officer’s recommendation recently. Access was a “big point of contention” apparently, but the local paper also reported that “reasons for refusal included concerns over drainage and flooding, the number of homes proposed, the site’s proximity to a 3G football pitch at Thomas Wolsey Ormiston Academy and infrastructure issues.”
Standard stuff and all, no doubt, will be dismissed were there to be an appeal and, when the homes are finally built, everybody in years to come will probably wonder, if they do ever give it another thought, what all the fuss was about.
I do not know if Nick (my new best friend...) still lives in North London, but I am led to believe that he was once asked to chair the residents group opposing Arsenal’s then proposed new stadium. He apparently declined on the basis that it was manifestly a sensible and unobjectionable proposition, but was struck by how the group had brought together people with largely nothing else in common and who would not otherwise have met were it not for that planning application.
That set me thinking and I have been since about whether there is a broader societal trend at play here.
Some caveats.
First, there is a case to say, as Greg Clark did in the final episode of 50 Shades of Planning, that we have always been “a bolshie lot” and have never been much taken with the imposition of grand schemes from above. Having once read Jeremy Paxman’s ‘The English’, I have some sympathy with this view. As Tristram Hunt wrote when reviewing ‘The English’, “far from being a pragmatic, politically acquiescent and innately tolerant tribe, the English have a long history of political radicalism, militant religiosity and sometimes staggering brutality”.
As well as a suspicion of authority generally, the English probably also have an innate suspicion of the planning system. As Clive Betts once observed, “In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem.”
A second caveat, developing the theme of the first, is that development has likely always been contentious, but that contentiousness has increased in the era of over-sold localism and the collapse of local plan-making, and then been amplified in the digital age of Facebook Groups and a financial model for local news websites based around ‘publishing at scale the populist topics that bring in the big numbers and that our most loyal readers turn to us repeatedly for.’
That being said, attitudes to development or planning per se is not the societal trend that I want to explore here. I wonder if some people, perhaps a very small number, at least in part and perhaps a very small part, object to planning applications because of a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging that they might not find elsewhere.
Hear me out…
According to the internet, Sunday church attendance is 80% of what it was in 2019 and has more than halved since 1987.
Also according to the internet, fifty pubs a month closed for good across England and Wales in the first half of this year.
Further, according to the internet, 51% of people with neighbours admit they cannot recall their first names and 70% are unaware of their full names.
If I spent even longer on the internet I could probably find other examples of institutions and activities that help to weave social fabric, but that have come undone over time and that result in a sense of loss likely to be felt most acutely by the elderly people who are, perhaps, most likely to object to planning applications.
Were one to ask people signing petitions and attending public meetings they would probably say that they are taking an interest in and standing up for their community, which I am sure that some are. They probably would not say that they are fearful of change and like things just the way they are thank you very much, but I am sure that some do. They would almost certainly not admit to just being bored and happy to have something to talk to their neighbours about, but, given the above and given also that the internet reports that 26% of adults feel lonely often, always or some of the time, surely that might just be a factor in why some people want to be involved?
Perhaps in time somebody in academia will explore the extent to which there is something in this, but, and if there is, then at the project-specific level it perhaps emphasises the need for planners to better tell the story of why a high-speed railway line, or a first reservoir to be built since 1992, or just 80 homes on the edge Ipswich, are good ideas.
Even if there is not something in it, that data gleaned from the internet starkly emphasises the systemic role of the planning system in conserving and enhancing opportunities for social interaction so that there is less chance that there will ever be something in it.
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