The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

A blog! An actual blog! It has been a while because my writing is mostly now preparatory material for podcast episodes, but eminent planning lawyer Simon Ricketts kindly invited me to contribute to a  Clubhouse session this week and having jotted down some thoughts for that I thought that I may as well leverage the content on another digital platform… Simon’s theme this week was both deliberately provocative, ‘Why are planning issues so badly reported in the media?’, and well-timed, given coverage in The Times this week of “ new planning targets forcing councils to build on greenbelt sites ”. Planning is, for all we might hope it to be more publicly-accessible, a technocratic, quasi-judicial process and we have no more right to expect journalists to be instant experts in it than doctors have when reading articles about Covid or immigration lawyers have when reading articles about deportations and so on. It can be striking though, and sometimes disappointing, to see an incons...

In case you have not heard the government is committed to reshaping the planning system to make it accessible, efficient and more predictable. Permitted development (PD) rights, which are kryptonite to the paternalistic planner and cocaine to the free marketeer, have come in from the shadowy fringe to take centre stage in this government’s reshaping process. From September last year a new use class brought together commercial, business and service uses ‘to provide greater flexibility and enable businesses to respond rapidly to changing market demands’. It seemed to me that most commentators agreed that moving between such uses without the need for a planning application was a good thing on the basis perhaps that one of those activities is better than no activity. ‘ Class E’s are good ’ someone who came of age in the ‘90s might say. Hot on it’s heels though came another consultation in December on a proposed new PD right for the change from that new Class E to residential. My sense...

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...

How remiss of me! Since I began working in the West Midlands I have been recording an annual collection of reflections on devolution and the Birmingham shortfall. Here we are towards the end of 2020 and I very nearly managed to miss the sixth instalment. If this is the first of these blogs that you have come across feel free to catch up via these links:·  2015 ; 2016 ; 2017 ; 2018 ; and 2019 (a fifth anniversary podcast special). December 2019 was a month that neatly encapsulates the issues at play in the West Midlands. It was last December that Birmingham City Council’s (BCC) Cabinet considered the looming three year anniversary of the adoption of the Birmingham Development Plan (BDP). A review mechanism, readers of past blogs and followers of this whole, sorry farrago will know, was introduced late in the day into the BDP whereby BCC would review the Plan within three years of adoption (10 January 2017) if the expected rate of progress on distributing a 37,900 home shortfall w...

Fixture release day is the footballing highlight of the summer. Even those fans for whom relegation was the paltry reward for another season of dedicated service will at least have something new to look forward to. It might not be a cash-laden consortium of far east owners, or a precocious young coach, or a new star striker, but there will at least be a couple of different teams on the fixture list. If your team finished mid-table in one of the middle divisions then you will have a few new faces. They might include a Goliath on their way down, a David on their way up, or perhaps just a once familiar foe that has spent a few seasons in either the sun or the shadows. From the moment the preceding season has finished and matters of promotion and relegation have been settled I will have had my eye on new grounds to visit. I put every game in my work calendar and then surreptitiously slip the games that I fancy during the first half of the season onto the kitchen calendar. I repeat this e...

As each week of the ‘Great Lockdown’ of 2020 has passed excursions have either been crossed off the kitchen calendar all together or added to a list on the back page of things that need to be added to 2021’s version. Filey at Easter with my family would have been lovely. The Peak District with the families of my university pals over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend would also have been lovely. Travelling down to celebrate my Mum’s birthday, my sister’s birthday and my nieces’ birthdays with them rather than via Zoom would have been lovely too. I was really looking forward to Trent Bridge though. There will be international cricket this summer, but the first test will certainly be behind closed doors and the final test almost certainly will be too. I am reconciled now that all but the last vestiges of hope remain with not spending two days in the upper tier of the Radcliffe Road End in August. In 2015 the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) sought to find England’s ‘Greatest Place’...

Every so often a word enters the public conversation that you have never heard before, but all of sudden is everywhere. A word that captures the zeitgeist. In the summer of 2006 it was metatarsal. In the Autumn of 2019 it was prorogue. In the Spring of 2020 it was furlough.  I was granted a leave of absence from work on 6 April and am still furloughed as I write this at the end of May. Whilst all around key workers are keeping the lights on I am being paid to stay at home.  There have been moments when the enormity of why I am at home and not stuck on a motorway somewhere has escaped me. These moments have, I admit, usually involved a book, a beer and some late afternoon sunshine. For the most part though this has not been an especially relaxing time.  Like all families (apart from those involved in the running of the country) we have had to deal with not going anywhere, which was novel at first, but quickly become a nuisance. Layered on top of that has been ...