Here we go again ...
According to yesterday’s FT, “Gordon Brown will on Tuesday embark on a new drive to streamline Britain's cumbersome planning rules, seeking to speed up the time planners take to allow companies to develop land.”
The article is headed “Brown in drive to streamline planning” – and apparently he will publish another piece of work by the UK’s leading advocate of putting concrete all over the South of England, economist Kate Barker.
The cynical may assume from the fact that this is coming from Gordon Brown rather than the nominally responsible minister, Ruth Kelly, that this is just part of the Brown for PM campaign. If only I thought this were true – in fact the Treasury was the main driving force behind much of the pro-development pressure which came from the government while Prescott was in charge.
But you have to ask, have these people learned absolutely nothing from the past few years ?
Cut and paste the minister’s names and dates and this could easily be one of the press releases which Lord Falconer and Prescott produced during earlier planning shakeups. Councils are still in the process of adapting to a new planning system based on laws passed over the past few years which were supposed to streamline the system. The promises made when current planning laws were passed were almost identical to what Brown is apparently going to promise again next week.
However, the real effect of the new rules has been to make the system ten times more complicated, to require councils to carry out even more consultation but ignore what people actually tell them during that consultation, and force councils to recruit lots more planning officers to administer the new system.
The headline comments of the FT article suggests that the government still imagines that the speed at which councils determine planning applications is a major hold up to development. I won’t say this is never an issue, but compared to the shortage of land and other mostly genuine planning concerns it is trivial.
Over the past few years the government has both bribed councils with vast amount of extra money to deal with planning applications faster through the “Planning Delivery Grant”, and threatened sanctions up to and including loss of their planning powers against those who don’t. Most councils have responded to this. We’re getting to the stage when both applicants and the Audit Commission are telling councils that they are paying too much attention to the objective of dealing with applications quickly.
Indeed, even Kate Barker recognises that there has been a big change. Her report admits that almost 80 per cent of all planning applications are now decided in eight weeks. She notes that of the 18,000 applications for big developments that were made in 2004-05, 57 per cent were decided in 13 weeks, up from 49 per cent in 1999-2000.
The biggest problem with the planning system is the national planning rules – both those which impose bureaucratic requirements on local planning authoritites and those for the big national infrastructure projects. The government should look at its own contribution to planning delays before it beats up local councils.
Kate Barker is said to believe that we need “a fresh and more flexible approach to policy.” I’d like to suggest one – how about removing most of the restrictions which the government puts on local planning authorities and letting them get it right or wrong on the basis of local democratic choice.
The article is headed “Brown in drive to streamline planning” – and apparently he will publish another piece of work by the UK’s leading advocate of putting concrete all over the South of England, economist Kate Barker.
The cynical may assume from the fact that this is coming from Gordon Brown rather than the nominally responsible minister, Ruth Kelly, that this is just part of the Brown for PM campaign. If only I thought this were true – in fact the Treasury was the main driving force behind much of the pro-development pressure which came from the government while Prescott was in charge.
But you have to ask, have these people learned absolutely nothing from the past few years ?
Cut and paste the minister’s names and dates and this could easily be one of the press releases which Lord Falconer and Prescott produced during earlier planning shakeups. Councils are still in the process of adapting to a new planning system based on laws passed over the past few years which were supposed to streamline the system. The promises made when current planning laws were passed were almost identical to what Brown is apparently going to promise again next week.
However, the real effect of the new rules has been to make the system ten times more complicated, to require councils to carry out even more consultation but ignore what people actually tell them during that consultation, and force councils to recruit lots more planning officers to administer the new system.
The headline comments of the FT article suggests that the government still imagines that the speed at which councils determine planning applications is a major hold up to development. I won’t say this is never an issue, but compared to the shortage of land and other mostly genuine planning concerns it is trivial.
Over the past few years the government has both bribed councils with vast amount of extra money to deal with planning applications faster through the “Planning Delivery Grant”, and threatened sanctions up to and including loss of their planning powers against those who don’t. Most councils have responded to this. We’re getting to the stage when both applicants and the Audit Commission are telling councils that they are paying too much attention to the objective of dealing with applications quickly.
Indeed, even Kate Barker recognises that there has been a big change. Her report admits that almost 80 per cent of all planning applications are now decided in eight weeks. She notes that of the 18,000 applications for big developments that were made in 2004-05, 57 per cent were decided in 13 weeks, up from 49 per cent in 1999-2000.
The biggest problem with the planning system is the national planning rules – both those which impose bureaucratic requirements on local planning authoritites and those for the big national infrastructure projects. The government should look at its own contribution to planning delays before it beats up local councils.
Kate Barker is said to believe that we need “a fresh and more flexible approach to policy.” I’d like to suggest one – how about removing most of the restrictions which the government puts on local planning authorities and letting them get it right or wrong on the basis of local democratic choice.
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