Natural England

LAND USE PLANNING GREEN PAPER (AP01/48)

FOR INFORMATION

To note: the input made to DTLR to influence the draft Green Paper on planning; the intention to continue to influence the Government during the consultation period, to help secure a planning system that delivers the requirement set out in the Agency's published policy - Planning Tomorrow's Countryside

Relevance to Strategy and Corporate Plan: A targeted outcome of the Corporate Plan is to secure adoption of the Agency's published planning policy by central and local government; The plan undertakes to work with the Government to develop and improve national and regional land use planning policy and guidance that will incorporate the Countryside Character approach at regional and national level.

Staff and financial implications: Because staff in the Planning and Sustainable Development Rural Assurance Team have been seconded onto urgent Foot and Mouth recovery work consultants have been used to draft a submission to the DTLR at a cost that should not exceed £10,000.

Main issues to concern the Board: We need to be focused. Have we hit our main targets, namely: clarity of statutory purpose; more strategic local plans with associated 'development invitations'; sustainable development obligations; affordable social housing/diversification; closer links with public spending priorities? Are there points left out of the submission that we should pursue once the Green Paper is published ? What particular aspects of rural life require reformed planning for delivery other than affordable housing and protection of countryside character?

Background

1. The Countryside Agency has the opportunity to influence the Green Paper on the planning system by submitting papers to the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions at both Ministerial and senior officer level. 

2. The Countryside Agency position on planning is set out in Planning Tomorrow's Countryside, published in September 2000. This forms the agenda for the changes to the planning system which the Agency wants to see. In addition, the Agency has agreed that affordable housing should be better served by the planning system.

Method

3. The Agency has written to the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions setting out our ideas (Annex 1). In addition:

• we have sent a paper to the Green Paper team in DTLR;
• we plan a response to the Green Paper ;
• more important, we plan to work with non-government organisations and other agencies in order to share ideas and coordinate effort and to make joint submissions, if appropriate.  

Scope and timetable

5. DTLR's timetable required the initial submission be put in by 5 November. Accordingly the submission has been made by the required date and a copy is attached at Annex 2. This is fully consistent with the Agency's published planning policy Planning for Tomorrow's Countryside.

6. The submission discriminates between legislative change needed and change needed in local authority practice. The Steering Group agreed to focus its contribution on five areas:

1. A new purpose for planning: 'To promote sustainable development that will bring social, economic and environmental benefits' - shifting the emphasis from a regulatory, bureaucratic process to a stimulus for beneficial change; 2. A new-style local plan and development approval process: 

• a slim statutory plan containing the authority's vision, policies and sustainability criteria;
• 'development invitations' (supplementary planning guidance) for areas; of significant change, prepared with full community involvement;
• a duty on local authorities to promote the changes identified in the plan;
• community views having been represented in the development invitation, Councillors will not be able to oppose schemes that comply.
  

3. Sustainable development commitments (previously planning obligations). Requirements set out in the criteria and development invitations. Greater flexibility for developers to offer offsite and traded rights;

4. Affordable housing. Legislation enabling local planning authorities to secure the tenure of housing in perpetuity. This would allow issues of affordable housing identified in the vision/ criteria/ development invitation process to be secured through development approvals and associated sustainable development commitments; 

5. Closer links with public spending priorities. Local plans having been prepared with the full involvement of local strategic partnerships, the constituent bodies would undertake to commit their funds to the investment indicated in the plan - eg. Government Offices (England Rural Development Plan funds), regional development agencies, the Housing Corporation, highway authorities.

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Annex 1

PLANNING GREEN PAPER 2001

REQUIREMENTS OF THE PLANNING SYSTEM

A planning process that: considers what development is needed as well as where it should go; looks first for solutions which bring social, economic and environmental benefits and then for solutions where unavoidable adverse impacts are mitigated or compensated; is based on positive objectives for future change and development expressed in development plans that assume change will take place but define the form it should take;

encourage high quality applications that meet the criteria for sustainable change and development set out in the development plans; draw on and aim to meet the expressed vision and preferences of the communities affected by change; respect the character of all landscapes and townscapes and protect and enhance the best.

Achieving this approach needs:

a new type of development plan;

sustainable development obligations;

training for local authority staff and councillors and some redeployment.

Development plans

Development plans should set out:

the vision for the future of the area derived from the expressed view of the community revealed through consultation of various types;environmental, economic and social characteristics required of new development;commercial, industrial, domestic and leisure developments that will be encouraged because they contribute to the vision.

The development plan would integrate with the community strategy and parish plans and draw on village and town design statements, Quality of Life Capital analyses and countryside character statements.

Plans need to be short. They should indicate what is meant by sustainable development and encourage developers to come forward with schemes that will help achieve it. In effect, the plan would say, "This is what the area needs; these are the criteria by which we will judge a proposal's suitability. We will positively welcome development which meets these criteria." A clearer target for developers to aim at would save time spent on development control.

Sustainable development briefs would be prepared for areas subject to major change. The plan could extend, with the necessary legislation to the definition of zones in which specified development conforming to stated requirements could proceed.

Resource management issues like soil quality, air quality, and sustainable drainage would be set out in a sustainability appraisal linked to the plan. South Gloucestershire Council, Leicester City and County Councils, some London Boroughs and other planning authorities are already preparing these.

Development plans would be produced by the local strategic partnerships. The bodies involved would undertake to commit their funds to the investment indicated in the plan. So, the government offices, (with England Rural Development Plan funds), regional development agencies, the Housing Corporation, the highways agencies and others would have much more ownership of the overall goal and the joint effort needed to attain it.

Sustainable development obligations

The plan would specify the requirements of development that would meet local need, based on sustainable development criteria. Where development rights were sought that did not meet these requirements, and adverse impacts were unavoidable, mitigating measures, namely, "sustainable development obligations" would be required to produce an overall net gain (or at least no net loss) to the locality and its community. Planning obligations through Section 106 agreements and transfer of development rights could be developed to these purposes.

To be successful, the developer needs to know well in advance that the costs of such mitigation or betterment are going to need to be met so the plan would need to signal clearly the circumstances in which they would be required.

Resources in planning authorities

Local planning authorities are heavily burdened with the need to deliver all the intricacies of a development control service and stay out of court. This prevents them ever finding sufficient resources to produce or revise development plans and briefs to sufficient quality or with sufficient speed. An improved system would have less resources devoted to reactive development control and more emphasis on positive, proactive development planning.

Planning authorities would need to have both councillors and staff equipped with the skills to excite the interest of the local community and bring their views together into an expression of a vision for the area. This would require a training and education programme and the increased number of staff deployed on development planning would need further training in the gathering and organisation of ideas to create lucid and viable development plans.

While expansion in the development planning role would require more financial investment than at present, savings to offset this should be expected in reduced development control activity. The overall result would be better value for money in a more efficient planning system producing faster results, greater clarity to developers on the standards they have to meet and broader satisfaction that communities have a greater stake in controlling the way their area develops.