The Big Society and Localism: My thoughts

The government is widely endorsing the Big Society and the localism agenda as key principles to drive their policies forward. I admire many aspects of this but cannot help thinking that it is very disjointed and the relationship to place has been woefully underestimated. I argue that the government has so far been missing some of the point, is not radical like it proclaims and has been far too unilateral with geography in the projects that support localism. Ultimately I state that localism and schemes initiated to deliver it have potential to leave people out spatially and that this has a far more detrimental impact on our society and planning, outweighing the importance of putting people at the heart of decisions that localism aims to meet.

 

What do I read localism to be?

It was true to form that I first became aware of localism upon the release of the Conservative Party’s green paper ‘open source planning’ but only began to take it more seriously when the coalition government was elected. Localism is conveyed as a radical change to sideswipe the centralised state and provide less barriers to ‘the people’, who in the government’s mind should be at the forefront of decision making. I read for localism to be one of the more powerful tools in exhibiting the government’s Big Society agenda, again a pinnacle of Conservative policy prior to the election as a coalition in May 2010. By encouraging civic pride and responsibility, it is envisaged that local people will feel empowered to make change in their areas.

My initial perceptions

I am quite an unusual character in that I am quite unforgiving and hostile to this government’s attitudes to the built environment and always have been. This is despite supporting some of their work in other sectors and initiatives. I am a strong proponent of regional planning and have been sad to see it lost without a chance to let it breathe. There has been widespread criticism of that particular framework but it was only implemented for a small number of years as part of sectors that are well known for a rhetoric of slow progress (see Barker and Killian Pretty, among others). So how can it be commented on with such distaste? It comes as little surprise that I am finding localism rather difficult to interpret, but am a personality that is open to reconstruction on this matter.

I show a somewhat mixed reaction, but must stress that not all of it is negative. It is all too easy to start pinpointing the opposing argument; exhibiting a bullish personality and a vanguard of emotion. But even with a subject such as localism I cannot bring myself to respond in this way. The majority of  government policy does actually have meaningful elements to it, reflecting the aspirations of their creator.  I have tried to underpin those values instead of taking the lazy route towards nitpicking.

Unease but hope

At the moment there is more unease to be displayed than joy to endorse localism, but this is because I am holding back, wanting to (and willing to) understand more about the subject and its objectives. I feel that localism has been a mass of buzzwords launched too early in advance before government has convened most of the substance together, and that is worrying. Indeed most of the uncertainty does not stem from the continual pattern of frontloading that is taking place that others might transpire to state as their concern, such as the rapid but thwarted abolishment of the regional tier and frontloading of local government spending reductions. I admire cutting to the chase, being specific and going ahead with what you stated you would do. But in order to represent true grit and determination, there needs to be some dialogue of what happens, how are conflicts going to be mitigated and a transparent framework to evaluate success. With the localism agenda I see little thought on this, and a constant drizzle of policy introductions. While I would like concrete, all I see is blancmange – that is at least until we have a proper breakdown of localism’s powers, which are slowly creeping in. I see the ideas born out of localism and the big society to have a poor spatial understanding, with policies that are too simplified. For example the New Homes Bonus, intended to incentivise house building in areas of demand, will work extremely well in the South East and other areas with housing pressures. But this will be woeful in places with negative take up, causing a funding shortfall for local authorities who will receive little merit from the Bonus. I would endorse that if Localism is to provide these kinds of measures, there needs to be multiple versions to specify not just who but where will benefit from them.

Radical? Not quite!

 I find localism to be less radical than previously thought – take the whole concept of ‘decentralisation’ for example. Under the new localism based principles local communities would have obligatory powers to produce their own neighbourhood development plan, but the housing numbers still have to either match or be higher than any previously proposed under regional planning or the local plan. We also have environmental directives to consider from Brussels, which we have little enforcement of. Therefore I would argue that true ‘pure’ localism cannot be achieved, instead an uneven patchwork quilt of civic responsibility will be encouraged across the country.

Civic responsibility is something I find a virtue here, albeit with caution

Civic responsibility is a fundamental feature of society that has in part been lost. I treasure attempts to bring some of this back into the wider rhetoric on the street and at the local level. However, the reality put into practice is that our lifestyles do not always arrange well to being responsible, supporting others and working for nothing. It is something I personally advocate, but know many personalities who would not work with the concept. Having said that, I can imagine that the element to embrace civic responsibility will work well in certain places, but will be severely dictated by geography. Places including rural areas that still have community spirit and diverse urban neighbourhoods such as student areas with higher levels of volunteering rates could benefit from localism principles and the big society. But in places that are comparatively deprived and facing similar budget reductions, or rural areas that have lost their soul to poor attitudes and wrong decisions, localism is bound to be a struggle. The big society motive may be better in these areas to rally people together as part of a wider social welfare remit, but it will be particularly weak when applied to planning. Big society and localism will no doubt fuel the power relations of whoever has the greatest stake, and the greatest influence on development proposals. With the advent of neighbourhood plans, this is likely to get larger as the prospect of developer funded plans may become a reality.

But there surely will be a  rise of the third sector even during times of restraint and potential austerity

Overall, I see much potential for the third sector, despite their own financial pressures brought on by questionable times, to experience a rise of take up or interest in their work from local people as a result of localism. This is inevitable, no matter what the variety of opinion is on the matter, and is accentuated if protest goes unheeded.  If the government acts on its ideologies and mobilised campaigns to protect the built environment fail, then in certain places people will have no choice but to join such organisations to try and make their areas work once again. Furthermore, the voluntary sector can be a means with which to represent a stronger unified voice to inform the government on best ways forward. I can increasingly see the third sector starting to lean on the side of pressure groups as a result of localism; their bargaining power increased but the eventual decision not necessarily as decentralised as first imagined.

 Thanks for looking,

Chris

This article is written from a personal perspective.

What will the Coalition Government mean for Town Planning?

The full coalition government document can be found here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_187876.pdf

Good evening,

Its my first post for a few days, but I delayed posting on the Coalition Government and town planning reform before more information became available as to how far such change would extend and who would be leading it. As a planning student, I attended the RTPi Yorkshire Annual Development Control Conference in York yesterday which provided an insight into some of the viewpoints in planning to the coalition government’s intentions. We now know that Eric Pickles will be Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and a very vague responsibility of Planning policy for minister Greg Clark, and ‘planning’ for Bob Neill. Very inspiring.

In this post I will disect the main policy objectives for the planning system and note how I regard these changes. Initially though I will cover briefly the labour planning system. While there are many qualms about the system under the 13 year long previous Labour Government, I am also confident of the positives that era brought to planning reform.  Aspects of the Local Development Framework (LDF) process have worked, notably in the arenas of sustainability and economic development. Planning Policy Statements have been updated accordingly, some written without conviction but generally appreciating a modern spatial planning vision in line with the Royal Town Planning Institute, academic sources, local government and recommendations from NGOs being unsuccessfulTown Planning. Lets also note the importance of the Barker Reviews (Housing 2004 and Land Use Planning 2006) and the Killian-Pretty Review (2008) in facilitating improvements to economic development and the development control process respectively. While not a labour supporter on all issues I take allegiance to them on the built environment. I think they brought in sufficient reform and there was consensus in 1997 that planning applications were taking too long to process; by 2001/02 improvements started to emerge and now authorities generally reach a 75-80% target for meeting applications within 8 weeks. Yes, the Killian-Pretty Review outlined difficulties in the process (many) and yes, there may be funding/other implications to not meeting the given deadline but there needs to be that kind of an ‘incentive’ (almost) to ensure efficient procedures here. The list of suggestions by Barker and Killian/Pretty would be far longer if they had been commissioned in 1997 to look at improving the system.

And now for the proposed coalition changes:

The government says it will create Local Housing Trusts to develop ‘homes for local people’ where there is strong community backing (no more than 10% opposition in a local referendum.

Verdict: Nonsense, because there is an extremely high doubt over the definition of “local people”. It will be ‘local people’ that will be in the majority that dislike affordable housing, unless it is for their own benefit or family arena. Local Housing Trusts will have the ability to approve housing of most given types, I can just see a further prevalence of large housing in affluent areas enforcing affordable homes to the ‘pathetic end’ of housing sites in urban areas.

• It also states that all affordale housing delivered will qualify for a council tax incentive scheme with every new built affordable home earning the local authority 125% of council tax raised by that unit, for 6 years.

Verdict: Acceptable in principle, funding process required for the incentive. How would this work with the Local Housing Trusts system?

• The Local Planning Authority will lose the right to decide applications in respect of new schools. Planning applications to build new schools will be assessed by short planning inquiries followed by the decision by the Secretary of State for Education.

Verdict: Approve. We need better planned allocation of education places and new schools. Planning applications for schools should still be dealt taking note of the Local Planning Authority being a major material consideration. 

• An end to re-writing of Development Planning Documents (DPDs) that include the Core Strategy, Adopted Proposals Map etc by inspectors on independent examination. So long as they comply with national policy, developed fairly, and are equitable to neighbouring communities, they will be approved.

Verdict: Against. There have often been valid reasons to rewrite DPDs on the basis of soundness. They are being rewritten because of an unsound process; non-compliance with a policy, unfairly developed or because they are not equitable to neighbouring communities!

• If new local plans have not been completed within a prescribed period, a presumption in favour of sustainable development will automatically apply,  in accordance with national policy, making applications acceptable in line with this.

Verdict: Mostly agreed with but can understand the contentions. The speed of development plans has long been disputed. Most Local Development Frameworks have still not been finalised 6 years after the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 necessitated on their creation.  I can see problems in the appeal and planning law process with the principle of turning to national policy if the local authority meets the deadline. Using national objectives will obviously not specify planning to local issues and it may enforce the local planning authority to get their act together. But authorities in return will want the government to free up the system to allow them to do that.

• We will abolish the unelected Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC)

Verdict: disagree. I think we needed a separate (yes centralised) body that dealt with the more major applications for the likes of power generation, airports, roads and so forth. It would be wrong to turn this case backwards now and would clog up the workload of local authorities. We do not want a situation where the major applications, representing a minute proportion of planning applications crowd out the smaller applications that equally matter, especially when public service resources may be cut further.

Regional Planning

• Rapidly abolish Regional Spatial Strategies and Regional Development Agencies.

Verdict: Fair enough. Labour has taken hold of more councils than it hoped but generally most are Conservative controlled and this works in their favour. I have long been dubious about Regional Spatial Strategies particularly for housing allocation, but do not mind Regional Development Agencies

• More right to neighbourhoods to shape the places they live in.

Verdict: Incredibly dangerous. From an equal opportunities perspective this is worrying. We need a continuation of integrated planning, not giving those who are the loudest the power the judge.

• We will publish a consolidated national planning framework covering all forms of development. Planning Policy Statements will be slimmed back to one statement and guidance notes on each individual characteristic.

Verdict: I agree. I very much agree that we need a consolidated national planning framework, but I am slightly unsteady on the cutback of PPS’s – how long will that take and will there be any ambiguities in the transition period?

• Abolish the government office for London.

Verdict: I approve. This is a whirlwind subject and London should not warrant a separate identity. It already has much going for itself in the built environment to define itself from other areas.

• We will cut local government inspections and abolish the Comprehensive Area Assessment.

Verdict: disagree in the short term, prospects possible in the long term. I understand that the past government has been very target driven, planning included but given major shortfalls in certain cases (social care, fraud cases etc) I see no reason at the moment why we should scrap CAA.

• We will promote ‘home on the farm’ schemes that promote the conversion of farm buildings to affordable housing.

Verdict: Utterly impractical. This would go against strict local policies on development in the countryside, and would be an unsustainable location for affordable housing.

The full coalition government document can be found here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_187876.pdf

RTPi Manifesto for Planning – Can somebody tell me what is new?

Hello all,

After printing it off at work yesterday and getting the chance to read through it this afternoon on the train from London, I thought I’d give a review on the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPi) Manifesto for Planning. This has been produced particularly with the forthcoming General Election in mind (May 6th) to reaffirm the RTPi’s stance and values as to how the current system is working and the direction they would prefer to see it take.

I read with bemusement come page 14 (the final page) that the manifesto was not inherently radical – instead it appeared to be a basic and hastily defined set of values that we already came to expect from the RTPi.

It went on to suggest that the planning system should not have any radical changes because this would cause ill feeling and uncertainty at local planning authorities who are barely getting to grips with the process of Local Development Frameworks (LDFs), incidentally anow 6 years old. But further down the manifesto it was suggested that LDFs were not the way forward and a slow process of implementing local planning. But in order to solve those frailties, I personally think a radical overhaul would again be needed and that would then constitute a contradiction to the RTPi’s values. The rest of the document was very much part and parcel of what we already knew the RTPi stood for, but I suppose the Institute was very strenuous to advocate that those values and objectives still very much exist strongly.

Thanks for looking

Chris