Planning Reform

Will MorlidgeGOEM

Government Programme

Set out in:• Coalition Agreement• Queen’s Speech• Ministerial Statements to Parliament• Departmental Structural Reform Plans

– http://www.number10.gov.uk/other/2010/07/structural-reform-plans-53023

Localism, Localism, Localism

Contents

1. Reform of planning policy

2. Powers returned to Local Authorities

3. Communities and neighbourhoods

4. Incentivising house building

5. Protecting land from development

Reforming Planning Policy

CLG SRP: “Radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods much greater ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live.”

• LAs advised to continue to develop LDFs• Can revise existing plans (and housing targets)• Binding Inspectors’ Reports to be abolished• Duty to co-operate• Presumption in favour of sustainable development

Reforming Planning Policy

Coalition Agreement: “We will rapidly abolish Regional Spatial Strategies and return decision making powers on housing and planning to local councils, including giving councils new powers to stop ‘garden grabbing’.”

• 6 July 2010 Statement to Parliament – RS revoked under s79(6) of the LDEDC Act 2009.

• November 2011 (?) Decentralisation and Localism Bill – Need for RS will be abolished

• Local authorities to set evidence-based targets• LDFs can use RSS evidence base

Reforming Planning Policy

Open Source Planning: “Government has the right and the responsibility to define the economic and environmental priorities of the country.”

• RDAs to close and some functions replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs).

• LEPs to be business-led with LA partners • Some LEPs have asked Government for some

powers: Govt to respond of extent of devolution of any powers

Communities and Neighbourhoods

Coalition Agreement: “We will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live.”

• Neighbourhoods include villages, towns, estates, wards or other areas.

• Plans from ‘ground level’ in neighbourhoods.• Presumption that neighbourhood plans will be

incorporated in the LDF. • Full involvement of democratic representatives.

Communities and Neighbourhoods

CLG website: "Community Right to Build organisations will not need to make specific planning applications for new developments. Those plans that get 75 per cent support in local referendums will no longer need to go to the Town Hall for approval…

• I believe this threshold strikes the right balance… and I hope it gives rural towns and villages across the country the prompt they need to prepare for a new Right to Build as a solution to the housing challenges they face”.

Communities and Neighbourhoods

CLG website: “Once a project proposal has been finalised and community buy-in has been secured and assuming that there are no other legal bars to the project, the community organisation will need to hold a referendum. We anticipate that the Local Authority will be able to do this on the community organisation's behalf”

• Not possible expand communities by more than 10% in 10 a year period

• May supercede Home on the Farm• righttobuild@communities.gsi.gov.uk

Incentivising House Building

CLG SRP: Meet people’s housing aspirations by streamlining and speeding up the planning system…Provide strong and transparent incentives for local authorities to build new homes”

• Grant Schapps: “communities who go for growth now and in the future will receive direct and substantial extra funding to spend as they wish - whether council tax discounts for local residents, boosting frontline services like rubbish collection or improving local facilities like playgrounds”.

• A consultation paper will be published following the spending review (20 October)

Incentivising House Building

CLG SRP: Other housing elements• Options to bring more empty homes• Energy efficiency • Reforms to LA housing finance: potential for

more locally raised income to be retained?• Increased mobility for social housing tenants CLG website: Ecotowns• Government's priority is to see that plans are

well supported locally and will achieve genuine improvements in sustainability

Protecting Land from Development

CLG SRP: “Maintain the Green Belt, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and other environmental protections, and create a new designation to protect green areas of particular importance to local communities...by Nov 2011”

• Natural Environment White Paper June 2010• PPS3 revised - national minimum density

removed.• Garden land excluded from definition of

previously developed land.

Thank You