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…and three ways in which it already does the job
Is planning the friend or foe of prosperity?
The debate has been going on ever since the system was created. But the stakes have rarely seemed so high as over the past few years, with a government in place that is willing to dispense with regulation or processes that it believes to be obstructing economic recovery.
Hence the teatime debate on the Saturday of last weekend’s Planning Summer School at Leeds University, which took that question as its starting point, felt genuinely relevant to delegates’ career prospects.
If planners can’t articulate the system’s economic, social and environmental benefits, politicians may well further dismantle it, and discard more of the people that operate it. English planners often look enviously at the respect in which Scottish government ministers seem to hold the profession, but RTPI Scotland convenor Alistair MacDonald had earlier told Summer School delegates that his colleagues never took the good relationship for granted. “We know if politicians out there who are not in favour,” he said. “You have to stay ahead of the game and show the politicians the positive outcomes of planning. Politicians can then buy into them”.
Equally, it is no longer safe to assume that radical or apparently far-fetched ideas to make the system more pro-growth will never overturn the status quo. After all, who would have thought five years ago that office-to-housing conversions would have become permitted development in England? If such ideas come from a source with any apparent track record of influence, they need to be taken seriously, and the arguments for an against properly considered.
Summer school’s organisers had invited a panel that mixed fierce critics and staunch defenders of the system. All could claim genuine clout. Former Royal Institute of British Architects president Ruth Reed made the case against planning’s economic credentials, although she made it clear that she did so in a personal capacity. Leeds City Council chief planning officer Phil Crabtree argued strongly in the sector’s defence. Lawrence Revill, managing director of consultancy David Lock Associates, and Bruno Moore, head of town planning for supermarket giant Sainsbury’s, took more nuanced positions (as Summer School president Roger Pidgeon, chairing the debate, put it, “they had a foot in both camps”).
Here are three suggestions that emerged for making the system more pro-growth, and three reasons cited as evidence that planning already plays a vital part in fostering prosperity.
Three ways to make planning more conducive to prosperity
1 Take development management out of politicians’ hands
Reed said councillors should be prepared to “let go” of development management, and focus on strategic planning. “Ask yourselves, are the detailed changes to schemes made during planning negotiations really making a big difference?” she said to the elected members in the audience. “Can the country afford you to police it, rather than set out a vision for the future?” she asked. Revill agreed that it would be beneficial if politicians switched their focus. But he cautioned: “In my experience, politicians tend to stay back from the plan-making process, but don’t want to give up dabbling in the detail when applications come in”. But Moore pointed to Northern Ireland’s experience of councillor-free planning as a warning. “It’s rubbish. Individuals make decisions behind closed doors. Applications get lost”.
2 Reduce officer scrutiny of technical aspects of development
Reed said the country could no longer afford to have planners judging the acceptability of “all aspects of development”. Instead, she said, applicants’ professional advisers should be made accountable for ensuring projects met the standards relating to their area of expertise. For instance, the engineers would have to vouch for the scheme’s meeting of flood resistance requirements set by government adviser the Environment Agency, she said. Crabtree questioned whether such a system would ensure adequate scrutiny of schemes’ technical merits.
3 Don’t allow performance targets to turn a decision into an end in itself
Targets for timeliness of decision-making mean that in some places ‘the main objective of planning is to deal with an application one way or the other”, never mind the outcome, said Moore. He said that in one area, after a year of consultation, Sainsbury’s was being “strongarmed” to withdraw a “totally policy-compliant” mixed use scheme to allow the local planning authority to meet its performance targets. “In that instance, the planning system is broken,” he said. “It will delay a multi million pound investment”.
Three ways in which planning is key to prosperity
1 It helps business to make investment decisions
Planning “provides intelligence to investors about where to invest”, said Revill, not least by showing them that their employees will have somewhere to live. Strategic planning helps to spread investment around, he said, identifying places that want it and can cope.
2 It is a mechanism for profitable co-operation
Planning enables the collaboration that helps generate prosperity across society, said Revill. He pointed to a slide, showing two mules tethered together, straining fruitlessly in opposite directions to reach separate hay bales. In the next slide, an idea occurs simultaneously to the mules, as they lie exhausted between the still untouched bales. The final image shows the mules, now working together, contentedly eating first one bale of hay, then the other. “If we can work out how to share things, there is plenty for all,” said Revill. Crabtree had earlier accused the government of ignoring the contribution made to planning delays by confrontational developer action, such as judicial reviews of rivals’ planning permissions. “You never hear the government talking about reforming the rol eof the private sector,” he said.
3 It spreads prosperity around
Planning helps spread prosperity to communities in which it would otherwise be in short supply, said Crabtree, securing affordable housing and jobs. It also helps to create a clear idea of the sort of places that citizens think we should create. “If we as planners won’t do it, then who will.” he asked. “We musn’t lose sight of the fact that we are involved in one of the most socially worthwhile things. We can achieve enormous things that will change people’s life chances”.
