It is a general rule of life that the longer a document is, the less it matters. I have just read all 1,374 pages of the Strategic Environmental Assessment for the revocation of the South East Plan, published last week. Does this document matter? Not one jot, except for one important lesson, which I’ll come to in a moment.
Everything regional is out of favour at the moment. Quite rightly, too. When I lived in Oxfordshire I did not feel that I belonged to “the South East”. Now I live in Shropshire, I do not for a moment consider that I am part of “the West Midlands”. Regional government has, thankfully, had a brief life. John Major launched the Government Offices of the Regions in 1994. John Prescott added the Regional Development Agencies and the Regional Assemblies in 1998. Now the assemblies, agencies and offices are no more.
All of this would be nothing more than a footnote in history if it were not for one lingering legacy of regionalisation – regional strategies. The two strands, economy and planning, were meant to bind a region together and propel it to a new glorious future. All they did, in reality, was to tie up councils and communities in red tape. It took six years to put the South East Plan together. The public inquiry alone stretched over five months. The opportunity cost was huge for the hundreds of planners, officials, developers, lawyers and campaigners involved.
Eric Pickles had hoped to abolish the regional strategies (outside London) in 2010 but he erred on one simple point. European law requires a ‘strategic environmental assessment’ (SEA) of all development plans. The logical and legal point is that if you need an SEA to put a plan in place, you also need one to withdraw it. Two years later, after a scrap in the courts, we can at last see what the impact of abolishing the South East Plan will be.
And here is the important lesson. The long awaited SEA says that abolishing the South East Plan matters barely one iota to the environment and planning in the South East. Green belts, biodiversity, infrastructure, regeneration and lots more will go on just the same with or without the Plan. True, the assessment predicts that housebuilding is likely to slow down in the short-term and less affordable housing may be built. There might also be fewer wind farms. But even if the South East Plan remained in place, there will be fewer turbines and houses. It is the economic and political environment that holds these developments back, not planning.
Regional planning tied up the planning system in bureaucratic knots for more than a decade and distracted councils from the most important issue – planning for their local patch. There is now a big catch-up job to do in getting local plans in place around the country. Once the regional plans have been axed, that task will be a whole lot easier.
* Andy Boddington is a Lib Dem councillor in Shropshire. He blogs at andybodders.co.uk.
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11 Comments
“Andy Boddington is a new Lib Dem…”
Welcome to the party, Andy. Is this your LDV debut? If so, good work. I heartily agree. “Regional planning” was just another layer of economic planning – the idea that government (at one level or another) can determine the “right” level of economic activity, housebuilding, infrastructure development etc. and can then introduce policies that ensure that this level is met. It’s flawed at a national level and it’s no more valid at a regional level.
The various Government Offices of the Regions, Regional Development Agencies etc. just created an extra dose of heavy and pointless bureaucracy, creating thousands of non-jobs while tying businesses up in knots of red tape.
The regional plans have passed away. Let’s not send any flowers.
I think all this localism stuff has already been covered a generation ago.
Keith: Love it! I had quite forgotten that.
Tom: Thanks. Been a member for 8 days – my first post was last Tuesday
https://www.libdemvoice.org/eric-pickles-are-you-a-cigarchomping-commie-30654.html
Standing for Shropshire Council next year. A lot to do, a lot to learn.
Regional is one of the ugliest words in the English language. It applies to everything in a scalar sense. Doctors speak of local and regional infections relative to the human body; weather conditions are local and regional; and then, of course, there are political boundaries which delimit cities, towns, counties, and in some nations: states, provinces, etc.
That within the boundary is local. That beyond is regional up until the next relevant boundary, from the viewpoint of the one looking. Boundaries are mostly man-made, not geographic features like the English Channel, and thus easily crossed in pursuit of trade, work, leisure or just transit.
It is nice when the roads line up, the rail lines, phone systems, laws and other historic impediments made to keep certian people within their bounds or not entering other locals.
Having worked with Local governments in the States for over 35 years, I’ve often made this observations. “Local governments were designed to be local and are very good at it. Being regional goes against that design, but is important so citizens of the locality can function in a greater community.”
Ensurance that things do connect for our benefit can be left up to the nation and or its subnational governments, but the bureaucratic tendency is to treat all areas the same. Sometimes that is accepted, other times, for the locality, it seems unfair, and there is protest.
Single voices can be ignored, so neighboring localities can get together to make a greater point, building what I call a “regional community of communities.” This in order to get notice.
Now it is still the nature of localities and their planners to think just of themselves. Just give us the resources and we’ll do what is needed. We’ve always done that; for centuries even. Usually the national or sub-national government doesn’t have all the resources that the localities say they need, so they encourage the localities to work together across those local boundaries.
In areas where there is a city that has grown to some size over time, due to natural advantages and the industry of its people, there is some local leadership that seeks to propel its hinterlands – greater community, though there may be some enmity among the neighbors to that success. At the same time, the city sees its peers in other cities, not its small town and rural neighbors. Local planners too are focused on what happens within their political boundaries, as that’s what they are paid to do.
All very parochial, but when managed with a greater community perspective, where cooperation is a tool with competition to build strength, there can be success.
The question is, how do you get the neighboring local governments to talk and coordinate their plan for the benefit of their citizens?
This is not simply a government problem, but one that faces and organization, profit or nonprofit/charity. What will be the Chapter structure. What is the scale for efficient meetings so members can network and learn from each other?
Of course, others slow one down. They have these contrary views for no reason at all. Such communication is always slow, but that is conservative. Talk is much cheaper than making wrong headed investments.
It is curious to me that all the RDAs were eliminated, save London, the most wealthy region. All of England has been saved from having to talk to each other’s neighbors and work toward small efficiencies that, over decades have a great impact.
Regiona/greater communities is what is successful everywhere in the world. Local identity need not be lost, as humans are very capable of having many scalar identities and using whichever the situation calls for.
Cheers
Tom
Dear Andy
I probably only read about 1 in 10 of the posts on here, but both of yours caught my eye and were well worth reading. Well done and thank you – keep it up!
Personally I think there was an element of baby with bathwater in abolishing the Regional Spatial Strategies. Tory councils (the shires) hated them because they forced housebuilding numbers. But there was a reason for those numbers: to avoid continuing and escalating housing shortages.
Once you took out the controversial housing numbers, lots of the stuff in the RSSs was fairly sensible planning, and got counties/cities to work out who would provide what in the region. On balance I’m sorry to see them go.
One of the problems with the regional spatial strategies is they were not very democratic. In fact Labour’s regionalisation tended to give to regional bodies with a limited democrat ic mandate powers that should have been done closer to home. But that does not mean there’s no role for regions. For instance, as a councillor in Birmingham I sat with councillors from Shropshire in May and agreed a “regional ” bid to get control of the London Midland rail franchise. It surely makes sense to have regional input into rail routes etc where it is possible. It may be uncomfortable to think about but rural and urban areas in particular regions do have issues in common. For a start we do share many sources of employment. You can see the new Jaguar Land Rover plant rising north of Wolverhampton on the M54 right on the edge of Shropshire. It will be easy to access for skilled workers right across the ‘region’.
Thanks for the comments
Jon: I agree with counties and districts working together on bids for funds, strategic thinking and so on. But the regions are often arbitrary groupings. This was very true of Oxfordshire where its thinking and planning was oriented toward London and the South East. Important, yes, but it was at the expense of links to the counties north of Oxfordshire. This is improving under the local enterprise partnerships, with Cherwell taking park in both the Oxford City LEP and the South East Midlands LEP. In Shropshire, we need to do more with Cheshire. Also with Powys which may be in a different country, but has a permeable social and economic border with Shropshire.
Mark: There are lots of good things in the regional strategies. I just don’t think we needed that tortuous process which bogged down planning. Incidentally, I rather suspect that we could not compile a regional strategy any more. Planning department staff have been cut back so far, they barely have the capacity to deal with everyday matters, let alone long term thinking.
Tom: I don’t believe that abolishing the regions will stop us talking to neighbours. Eg: Shropshire, Herefordshire and Telford & Wrekin are working together in the Marches local enterprise partnership. There are 15 councils from two regions in the Coast to Capital LEP. But informal links are as strong as the formal. A few councils will isolate themselves, but most will work together as they have long done.
@Cllr Mark Wright,
You may be correct about the motivations of the Tory shires, but the solution to Britain’s housing shortage is not going to be achieved by centrally (or regionally) imposed targets. It was tried in the late 1980s and again in the 2000s (the regional spatial strategies) and both failed. Having said that, the early 1980s and 1990s saw local councils given more freedom and that failed, too.
The only way to tackle the UK’s housing shortage is to reform our overly-restrictive planning laws.
I thought Liberals used to be very keen on regionalism. Have I missed something?
Tom: I think the underlying reality is that housebuilding and planning are only loosely correlated. Houses don’t get built because of planning – “it’s the economy – stupid” that underlies housebuilding. Planning constrains where houses can go but seems to have little impact on overall supply.