The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

What is to be done about the Green Belt? Most planners, I suspect, have recognised for a while that housing need has become an irresistible force and that hitherto immovable Green Belt boundaries on the edge of most major cities need to start moving. That though has not been and is still not likely to be a feature of many local or national election campaigns because, according to this Ipsos Mori poll from 2015, even though 70% of the public claim to know little or nothing about it, 65% of people know that it should not be built on.   There are though some faint signs that public opinion might be shifting. Another Ipsos Mori poll for campaign group Housing The Powerhouse found net support for Green Belt release across Greater Manchester where this would result in investment for infrastructure and services. Further, in the build-up to the November 2017 Budget a number of newspapers trailed the possibility of Green Belt reform and hinted that the Chancellor was prepared...

This is a piece that I contributed to the RTPI's Blog . Which position is the most precarious? Housing & Planning Minister or football manager? This image, which I came by via @NobleFrancis on Twitter, reveals that Alok Sharma is the fifteenth Housing Minister in twenty years, with the average tenure being just sixteen months. According to this piece the average tenure of a football manager is also sixteen months. An incoming football manager can typically expect to inherit a squad that is bereft of form and confidence. An incoming Planning Minister can typically expect to inherit decisions that were just too complicated and policies that were just too difficult for their predecessors to deal with. Alok Sharma’s in-tray seems particularly full, but helpfully for him a House of Commons Library Briefing Paper on Planning Reform Proposals sets out proposed changes that are still yet to be made. These include (in the Briefing Paper’s order): Section 106...

I first wrote about the Birmingham shortfall in June 2015 . Mike Best of Turley provides the background to it’s emergence through the Birmingham Development Plan (BDP) here , but by June 2015 it was becoming clear that the challenge presented by accommodating some 38,000 homes beyond the city’s administrative boundary and across a housing market area (HMA) represented by 13 other LPAs would not be met by the Duty-to-Cooperate (DtC). The mechanism introduced into the BDP (late in the day as a main modification) is little more than a commitment on behalf of Birmingham’s neighbours to either review already adopted plans or have regard to the shortfall and the DtC in the preparation of new plans. Birmingham, for it’s part, is to review the BDP if the expected rate of progress is not being achieved. What else could have been done about it though? As the BDP Inspector himself put it, “I see no other way of proceeding that would achieve a faster result”, but the optimist in me wonder...

With receipt of the Inspector's Report marking a major milestone on the Cheshire East Local Plan's long journey towards adoption, fans of planning and soap operas in the North West may be wondering how to replace what became a major part of our professional lives over the last eight years or so. The void may be filled on the Wirral. Planning Officers reported to Wirral's Cabinet at the end of February the results of last summer’s SHMA and SHLAA consultation. In the report officers accepted that whilst the objectively assessed need has not yet been identified, it will be higher than the North West RSS. This was the 500 dwellings per annum (dpa) that the Council had sought to be adopted for the next plan period as set out in the Submission Draft Core Strategy, which will soon be five years old. The OAN for the Borough will be between 875 dpa and 1,235 dpa, both of which represent a significant uplift and Wirral is already falling woefully short of a 5 year housing l...

The Government is to fix our broken housing market . It is easy to be cynical about claims of ‘radical, lasting reform’ or ‘big, difficult decisions’ and healthy cynicism is always a good starting point in politics and planning. To apply lazy cynicism to the Housing White Paper would though be unfair because it seems to be born of good intentions and does represent a coherent and comprehensive set of measures. It would also be unfair though because there are few other areas of public policy where minister's views are so routinely tested in the white heat of popular opinion. The stock answer to a difficult question on, say, Question Time is to call for a ‘national debate’. The future of the NHS; the crisis in social care funding; immigration, for example. There are no white papers on these subjects though. There is no print deadline by which cabinet ministers of different views have to agree. Politicians are able to offer platitudinous responses on these subjects because, aside p...

I cannot remember exactly why, I may have been in a flap about a councillor or consultant giving me a hard time, but I remember being told by my principle officer and team leader to relax. ‘It’s only a game’, he said. Now. Let’s be clear. Planning is clearly not a game. Late Victorian intervention into a laissez-faire market on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged was not a game. The need to rebuild the country after the great wars and to build homes for heroes was not a game. Looking back on my time in development control with ten years more experience myself I think that my former colleague was expressing a world-weary, cynical view that when you strip back the noble traditions of the profession and look narrowly at the ability of one person to get anything done, you have to play ‘the game’. I was on the panel at a ‘Movers & Shakers’ breakfast seminar recently (check me out) and was asked what I would like to see in the Autumn Statement and much-trailed Housing White Pap...

How does one go about spatial planning at the city-region or sub-regional level in an era when there is no legislative and policy basis to do so? The answer, based upon the nascent Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF) that is being prepared by AGMA / GMCA, is perhaps unsurprisingly 'with great difficulty'. Progress with  local plans  speaks to the difficulty of even this enterprise. Evidence needs to be prepared, neighbouring authorities need to be engaged, the public needs to be consulted, the political party in control (if there is one - pity the Head of Policy in authorities with no overall control) needs to be supportive, and then finally, at the business end of the process, an inspector needs to hear more supportive voices around the examination table than there are dissenting ones. The GMSF needs to harvest evidence from and on behalf of ten LPAs; it's neighbouring authorities account for a good proportion of the entire North West region; it's local...