Britain’s planning system is generally defended on environmental grounds. Yet far from keepingBritain“green and pleasant”, the Town and Country Planning Acts have led to the creation of dormitory towns, required the building of extensive infrastructure, and have increased urban density at the expense of urban green space.
In a new report released by the Adam Smith Institute, I argue that we need to do away with the old, top-down planning system. In this first article, I will lay out the indictment of the system. Tomorrow, I will make some proposals for how we can liberate the land and empower individuals and communities, allow the real values and priorities of people to be expressed, and ensures that those who lose out as a result of development are compensated, thus incentivising people to allow and welcome suitable development in their neighbourhood.
The policy of “urban containment” that underlies the regime has also put enormous pressure on urban green space. While we may like to think that preventing “urban sprawl” provides city-dwellers with access to the countryside, but the evidence does not support this. The number of visits to the countryside has been declining steadily for years. City-dwellers want urban green space, but this has come under intense pressure as governments – eager to prevent towns from expanding – have deliberately sought to increase urban density.
In fact, the quality of Green Belt land is extremely mixed: there are beautiful sites, but there are also railway and motorway embankments, old gravel pits, quarries and previously developed land. There are also vast swathes of farmland that city-dwellers may think of as a natural idyll, but which are in fact a man-made monoculture, sterilised by insecticides and herbicides, with far lower biodiversity than the average back garden, which are inaccessible to the general public.
The Green Belts have not in aggregate protected our countryside; they have merely displaced development. There is no environmental benefit in saving woodland near Croydon at the expense of rolling hills nearGuildford. Preventing urban expansion has resulted in the creation of dormitory towns, the net result of which is negative, as more roads and railways are built to connect them to places of work, and more Greenhouse Gasses are emitted by commuters.
Yet I have sat on a planning committee and seen councillors reject an application submitted by a lady who wanted to slightly expand her stable so that her horse had more room, because her stable was in Green Belt land and there were no “very special circumstances.” If stabling a horse isn’t rural enough for the Green Belt, just what is?
In addition to the environmental cost, the system has created a housing crisis: the supply of new housing has lagged behind demand for decades, as a result of which housing is absurdly expensive, first-time buyers are priced out of the market, individuals struggle to buy homes in the villages and towns where they grew up, and modern housing frequently resembles “rabbit hutches built on postage stamps”.
And the planning system is seen as a barrier by 98 per cent of businesses. It is stifling our economy.
Change to this system is desperately needed. The Government has made a good start, reducing 1,000 pages of planning regulations to a manageable, understandable 50 pages. But it remains a centralised system that is doing enormous damage. It is high time we liberated the land.
Tom Papworth is Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on the London Borough of Bromley, and sits on two plans committees. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, other Liberal Democrats, the party generally or the Bromley Council Group.
* Tom Papworth is a member of Waltham Forest Liberal Democrats
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24 Comments
I hope these views are not shared by Lib Dems. They are a recipe for urban sprawl and the notion of expecting that local people will protect open countryside is naive in the extreme. Without zoning it just ends up as a dreadful eyesore everywhere. Everyone is on the make and will exploit every loophole there is to extract whatever quick buck is to be made.
What utter utilitarian nonsense!! Yet another policy that the party has got seriously wrong..
Furthermore, the ‘message’ of this post has also been completely subsumed by the events/ debate of the last 9 months. Did you write this last July? Has it been stuffed under a copy of Milton Friedman in a dusty old drawer of yours?
THE TOP FIVE ‘PLANNING MYTHS’:
1. The default response to a planning application is “No”
Government statistics show that for at least a decade more than 8 in 10 planning applications are granted. The figure for major commercial applications, critical for economic growth, is higher at around 90%.
2. Planning is slow
Councils as a whole meet or exceed the 8 or 13 week application targets set for them by the government. Only 0.7% of planning applications take longer than 12 months to reach a decision.
3. Planning is costly
Costs continue to fall. Application fees are very small in comparison to the potential profits of development.
4. Planning is a drag on economic growth
Planning significantly contributes to growth. The certainty provided by the planning system is essential in supporting business investment decisions.
5. Planning forces house prices up
The current slump in house building is the result of a lack of finance, both for homebuyers and house builders, prevalent since the “credit crunch”. The slow-down in planning permissions is the result of a lack of planning applications. There is not a lack of houses, premises to convert or sites to build on. In England, there are around 750,000 empty homes, nearly half of which have been empty for over 6 months, and developers have permission for around 300,000 homes they are not currently building.
Have a look at the following: go on…..educate yourself!
http://kirkwells.co.uk/2012/03/nppf-time-for-more-light-less-heat/
http://www.cpre.org.uk/resources/housing-and-planning/planning/item/2769-a-cpre-policy-briefing-in-advance-of-publication-of-the-final-national-planning-policy-framework
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/what-we-protect/coast-and-countryside/projects/view-page/item584341/
Town and Country Planning Acts have led to the creation of dormitory towns, required the building of extensive infrastructure, and have increased urban density at the expense of urban green space.
What utter rubbish in the very first paragraph – I lived in Harlow for many years – which while having a very high urban density also has many green areas which brilliantly counterbalances that high density – all down to careful planning, – not a free for all. Another ill thought through policy on the hoof initiative for the party to flounder about with methinks.
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with Mr. Papworth’s methods – I would like to see the Green Belt reformed, not scrapped – but we have to look very, very carefully at whether the planning system serves our needs.
I currently live in a medium-sized town in the south of England surrounded by countryside and a Green Belt, with a serious housing problem. People want to live here, and the jobs are certainly there, but there is a severe shortage of houses caused by the serious shortage of residential land. I can’t see it being possible for me to own my own house in the immediate future. Others are less fortunate than me – they can’t see the possibility of renting anywhere decent. Others can’t get anything at all. In summary, our current planning laws are causing real human misery.
Of course, it is possible to temporarily relieve the housing shortage in my area, but it comes down to the simple arithmetic of supply versus demand. There is no doubt it my mind that we should save areas of outstanding natural beauty and not build on flood plains, but I think it is possible to balance this with the new housing that the country badly needs. It is true that there are areas with plentiful spare housing stock but no demand, and that rebalancing the national economy would reduce housing pressures in some areas by encourage people to move to areas of less demand. However, this is a long-term goal – it will probably not happen for decades, if it ever happens at all. That’s why I think that our planning laws need reform.
I agree with everything ‘Foregone Conclusion’ said. I live in Oxford, where there is a severe housing shortage. The town is full of green spaces that can’t be built on (because they’re flood plain) and surrounded by green belt. As a result, the only way to ease the housing shortage is to build on every scrap of land that can be found in East Oxford, meaning that parks, sports fields and the like have been lost. Between the green belt and the floodplain, there’s nowhere left to build, but the population continues to grow – so young people have to live in huge multiple occupancy houses, and families are forced out of the city because they can’t compete with buy-to-let landlords hoping to rent out to multiple people. Everyone agrees that we need more flats, so that first time buyers have something to buy and young people can start living in smaller properties with fewer housemates, freeing up the bigger houses for families… but where do we put them? Meanwhile, rents are sky-high, and wages don’t match.
Yes, we have a green belt that residents can use – but Oxford is in the middle of Oxfordshire, which has rather a lot of green space in it! Pushing Oxford’s boundaries outwards by half a mile (while protecting the areas important for biodiversity and designating some large parks) would make very little difference in terms of accessibility of the countryside, but would make it easier to protect green space within the city and go some way towards alleviating the current housing crisis.
The alternative is to have everyone who wants to buy move to other towns in the counties – but not only do people resent being forced out of their communities by the house prices, they also can’t afford to commute – and don’t want to, which is perfectly rational as, broadly speaking, commuting is strongly correlated with not being very happy.
All this could be alleviated by shrinking the green belt a bit. I really don’t see the arguments against.
(Another good post using Oxford as an example is here: http://www.rovingbandit.com/2011/09/why-left-should-support-new-uk-planning.html. Highly recommend).
Rob’s stats are not relevant – they include the time councils take over tiny planning applications (e.g. for a loft conversion) which are not relevant for new dwellings. The CPRE (Cramming people in the remainder of England) should not be seen as neutral here.
The facts are with Laura – we have too few houses, and that is why they are so expensive. Roll on Community Land Auctions!
The famous essay by G.Hardin entitled “The tragedy of the commons” seems relevant here. I’m given to understand that it represents much of the reasoning behind our approach to planning and the environment. The following websites contain the paper, Nicholas Corker’s description of the paper, and (in April or so) my severe criticism of it:
The paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
Corker’s description: http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/article/10.1680/ensu.2011.164.2.105
Criticism (available April or so): http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/serial/ensu
@Howard: Funny you should mention “urban sprawl” – I wondered how long it would take for that phrase to appear. It’s an utterly loaded term, redolent of a teenager splayed out across a sofa at 2 in the afternoon. Why not use the more neutral term “urban spread” or even “human development”, as that is what we’re really talking about?
“Without zoning it just ends up as a dreadful eyesore everywhere” – Zoning is one of the options I explore in the paper. However, I’m not sure that it’s true that “it just ends up as a dreadful eyesore”. They didn’t have a planning regime in Umbria or Tuscany and yet I understand that people generally consider the towns and villages there to be rather charming.
“the notion of expecting that local people will protect open countryside is naive in the extreme.” – I find this tendency to dismiss people’s ability to protect their own environment to be very sad.
@Rob Sheffield: Such invective! And I don’t think I’ve ever been called a “utilitarian” before. Still, there’s a first time for everything.
The figures you cite are for submitted plans, but the biggest impact of the planning system is in proposals that are never submitted, either because developers know that they will not survive the politicised planning process or because they are advised by officers to withdraw them. And if it were really true that “The certainty provided by the planning system is essential in supporting business investment decisions” then why do 98% of businesses see it as a problem?
Meanwhile, we have been building far too few houses for decades, as a consequence of which housing is vastly expensive, young people are unable to get on the housing ladder at all, and poor people’s only hope is in social housing. You seem to suggest that that is not the case, which is a particularly bold claim considering every economic study of planning says the opposite.
@Foregone Conclusion: The story you tell is a very common one. We regularly hear people complain that they cannot buy a home in the village where they grew up, or afford to live near their parents. This is because of a lack of supply of housing land, as you rightly point out. It is also because neighbours of empty sites have no incentive to permit development. If they could be adequately compensated for the loss of amenity, they would be more willing to agree to development; if they owned a stake in the development rights (as I’ll explain in the second article this afternoon) they would actively seek to develop those areas with the most marginal environmental value, while protecting those areas that are environmentally precious.
@Laura Gordon: Again, a familiar story – though one that Howard discounts. In my own ward, 150 flats have been granted planning permission on Crystal Palace Park and Anerley Hill was modelled by the London Development Agency for “medium density housing” – i.e. cramming more poor people into ever smaller spaces.
“we have a green belt that residents can use – but Oxford is in the middle of Oxfordshire, which has rather a lot of green space in it!”… and the evidence suggests that people don’t go to the green belts for recreation. They go to urban parks (there’s two citations my report where I discuss this).
@Tim Leunig: I didn’t discuss Community Land Auctions in my report (or LVT for that matter – I’m amazed nobody’s raised it here!) but I did propose that different mechanisms for planning be tried. Auctions would be one option that could be tried.
@Richard Dean: An interesting point. The four royal commissions that preceded the Town and Country Planning Acts made a number of rather questionable assumptions, including assuming a rigid distinction between “urban” and “rural” and (apropos Howard) viewing the expansion of human development as “sprawl”. Most of them have since been disputed or dismissed (indeed, the minority report of one of the Commissions disputed them at the time). The basis for our planning regime was the belief – common in 1947 but not very widely held now – that central planning led to superior economic outcomes to decentralised planning. The Town and Country Planning Acts have proved that to be disastrously wrong.
I work in planing in local government and must disagree with Cllr Papworth.
The TCPA was a direct result of the free-for-all planning system of the 1930s, which resulted in the swallowing up of 60,000 hectares of agricultural land each year for low density suburban housing. It resulted in a lot of cheap homes for working people (a good thing), but at a huge cost in terms of the environment, both in terms of the land used for development and in terms of CO2 emissions from lots of car-dependent communities (while car ownership was generally low then, homes were built for and around car use).
The TCPA has not held back development – some 80% of planning applications are approved. The drop in housing was caused by the govt essentially stepping out of providing homes – 380,000 homes were built in a year at the peak of construction in the 1960s, but two thirds of that was byt he state. In fact the private sector has only ever built around 100-200,000 homes pa, and it was state council house building that kept house price inflation relatively low until the 1980s. It wasn’t the planing system at all, and Tom Papworth should really know that.
Tom also compains that the green belt isn’t reallty green. well, it was never meant to preserve rural idylls. it was meant to stop unconstrained urban expansion, and in that has been incredibly successful. However, i would agree with him that keeping very low quality land open when you coudl build sensitively on parts of it and upgrade other parts to beautiful, usable land, should be looked at. but only on a very exceptional, site by site basis.
As for supporting the horrific NPPF – words fail me. If tom was leader as opposed to opopsition leader, i doubt he’d be relish the vast legal costs about to be borne by Bromley as developers take advantage of an absent local plan there and get their applications decided by planning appeal courts rather than weakened planning comittees, whose power will be undermined hugely by a national policy that directs them to say yes to almost everything.
@ Foregone conclusion
You blame the planning system for a lack of homes. But the planning system can build lots of homes if your politicians want to do so. They can allocate as much area as local people want for housing . However, therein lies the rub – it is not in any poltican’s interets to sacrifice the votes of existing resident nimbys to create housing for people that may or may not vote for them once they move in. I wish we had braver politicians who would take that risk, but we don’t. So the direct cause of the very real problem you describe is democracy, not planning, i’m sorry to say.
@London Liberal:
“the swallowing up of 60,000 hectares of agricultural land each year for low density suburban housing” created the housing we wanted and needed. As somebody who was brought up on Harrow and now lives in Bromley, I never find that people stand in the middle of Metroland or the Park Langley Estate and complain that all that agricultural land was swallowed up by housing. Rather, they ask why it is that we can’t build housing to that standard any more. Instead, we get small, cramped houses squeezed onto tiny plots of land, selling for high prices because of the constraint put on supply. It’s a disgrace.
“The drop in housing was caused by the govt essentially stepping out of providing homes – 380,000 homes were built in a year at the peak of construction in the 1960s, but two thirds of that was byt he state”
However, the houses built by the state were not the type of houses people wanted. They were the foul estates that are now recognised as a blight on the landscape and a social disaster. Poured, moulded concrete with pavements in the sky may have been attractive to your predecessors in the 1960s, but to the people who were moved into them they were a nightmare. Many of the skyscrapers have since been demolished.
“It wasn’t the planing system at all, and Tom Papworth should really know that.” Except that I’ve read the academic literature and it really was that.
As for the NPPF, I very much like the fact that the national plan is going to be simple enough that my residents can read and understand it, rather than their always being out-done by the experts that developers can afford to bring it. Anyway, Bromley will get its local plan in in time.
@LondonLiberal: “the planning system can build lots of homes if your politicians want to do so…. However, therein lies the rub – it is not in any poltican’s interets to sacrifice the votes of existing resident nimbys to create housing…”
This is entirely true, and I address this directly in the report. Put simply, a winner-takes-all planning system where no compensation is paid to ‘losers’ is the cause of Nimbyism. In fact, under the current planning regime, nimbyism is rational! That is one of the things that we need to change.
BTW: With regards your point that “the private sector has only ever built around 100-200,000 homes pa”, does that not rather imply that the TPCA was constricting supply?
@ Tom papworth ” Instead, we get small, cramped houses squeezed onto tiny plots of land, selling for high prices because of the constraint put on supply. It’s a disgrace.”
well, yes and no. the constraint on supply is as much to do with an oligopolistic construction industry as anything else. they are frankly not interested in building the numebr sof homes we need. Read their business plans – they universally say that their interest is in margin not volume – building a few high value homes rather than the numbers we need. And planning isn’t the problem – the netherlands has a very well-developed planing policy that allocates their scarce land just as we do, but yet builds bigger and better homes than us. You can in any event build high density and still build desirable homes – Notting Hill has something like 200 dwellings per hectare. Why don’t developers build that quality and density today? margin., profit. and lack of competition. Not planning.
you are right that many counil homes were poor designs built to shoddy standards. that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have been built. The state must step in wher eth eprivate sector is unprepared to, and build lots of genuinely affordable homes. but they must be better designed than before. I think the lesson has been learnt, to be fair. But again, planning was not the problem.
i’d be interested to know what academic literature blames high prices on the planning system. Given that prices in London tripled in fifteen years to 2008, with only a mildly rising population and no major change in the planning system (the 2004 Act didn’t have much of an impact between 2004-8 and regional strategies, if anything, sought higher levels of housebuilding), i don’t think you’re correct.
NPPF- yes, readability and accessibility is great. so why not re-write every bill that goes through parlaiment to read liek amanifesto or newspaper articlke? becuase lawyers pour over every word, and even the placing of commas. you shoudl knwo how important clarity and detail are in planning, and, while some reform was necessary, the NPPF removes both tot ehgreat detriment of both your constiuents and to communities up and down the land. and by the way put power in the appeal courts’ hands, not yours, your ward colleagues, or your voters’.
as for your suggestion that the TCPA was constricting supply because the private sector built 100-200,000 homes pa, i don’t see why that should be the case. as i say above, meetign demand is not high on housebuilders’ priorities, increasing margin is.
You, along with many others, claim the countryside is ‘sterile’ in places due to over use of pesticides & herbicides. Can you point to whichever source of peer reviewed research that underpins this argument? No because it is untrue, there are problems and we need much more research and work to protect our soils, (which are also a huge CO2 sink) and which the UK has a incredible reputation for protecting. I agree completely that ‘brownfield’ first if taken forward in its last definition (which led to garden grabbing and dreadful densification) is wrong – but the true brownfield, ex industrial contaminated sites are being forgotten about. Techniques to both develop and green these areas are available now – and this would be sustainable development.
I just wish that the many commentators who saturate the internet would at least base their comments on scientific or academic facts or better still commission some research rather than just making things up to prove a point, that was just as good without the lie.
@London Liberal
With folks such as you still in the party then there is hope for it in the medium term.
I’m afraid that the short term impact on the party of the next few May local elections and the next general election is going to be down to neoliberals such as Tom. For Tom and co read Tony and co in the Labour party circa 1980-1985.
It all sounds so logical: but on closer inspection (and smelling) you know what they are offering you !
Tom Papworth does have more of a point than some responses suggest. Planning can be too rigid – for example, preventing building on a highly unattractive featureless field outside a village’s envelope while allowing building on a “waste” or “brownfield” space within the village that has become a valuable play space or mini-nature-reserve. The London green belt has led to much development just outside the belt, often for people working in London, so commuting journeys are longer than they might have been; and he’s right that the quality of green belt land varies hugely.
However: visit Florida (not just Disneyland), the Bulgarian coast or many other countries to see what a lack of planning control leads to when an economy is growing – ugly sprawl which becomes uglier if the economy then contracts. Although the detail and interpretation of planning law can be unduly restrictive, the main planks have widespread public support: my impression is that this is particularly so in urban areas, like that where I was a councillor for twelve years, where planners are seen as protecting people (effectively or not).
I’m not sure that fewer visits from the towns to the countryside show reduced interest in the countryside. The traditional picnic by the car has declined, but serious use of the countryside by urban people is increasing. We take our leisure differently now and if people are on the computer rather than at a picnic, that doesn’t say anything about the value of rural versus urban green space.
The experience of those concerned about valuable wildlife habitat over the years has been that it has often been irrevocably destroyed for short-term gain – under current planning law – but conservation was beginning to be taken seriously. Weakening planning law would almost certainly increase the destruction. Local democracy in planning is fine – and fewer local decisons overturned at the centre would be very welcome (but that would lead to more refusals of permission), but there needs to be a framework that protects the interests of people affected by the decision who may not live at the locality and the interests of future generations.
If we want to make local land use decisions more democratic, a priority not mentioned by Tom would be to redress the huge imbalance between the power of Tesco’s and the like, and small local authorities who don’t have limitless funds to pay lawyers.
Yawn!
Yet another politician who hasn’t understood the fundamental problem: the development pressures being seen in this country have largely been caused by excessive, prolonged and unsustainable levels of population growth combined with massive changes in the number of people per household.
Yawn!
Yet another commentator who hasn’t understood the fundamental problem: whatever got us into this mess, the issue now is how to sort it out.
@Jammie Flattery:
Peer Reviewed research, you say? Okay, let’s start with these:
Green, B.H. (1990). Agricultural intensification and the loss of habitat, species and anemity in British
grasslands: a review of historical change and assessment of future prospects. Grass Forage Sci.
45 :365-372.
Fuller R.J., Gregory R.D., Gibbons D.W., Marchant J.H., Wilson J.D., Baillie S.R. and Carter N. (1995).
Population declines and range contractions among lowland farmland birds in Britain. Conservation
Biology 9 : 1425-1441.
Barr, C.J., Bunce, R.G.H., Clarke, R.T., Fuller, R.M., Furse, M.T., Gillespie, M.K., Groom, G.B., Hallam,
C.J., Hornung, M., Howard, D.C. and Ness, M. J . (1993). Countryside survey 1990. Main report.
HMSO, London, UK.
Andreasen, C., Stryhn, H. and Streibig, J.C. (1996). Decline of the flora in Danish arable fields. Journal of
Applied Ecology 33: 619-626.
Krebs J.R., Wilson J.D., Bradbury R.B. and Siriwardena G.M. (1999). The second silent spring? Nature
400: 611-612.
Now, in the interests of looking like a person who wants to enter into the debate in a spirit of scientific enquiry, why don’t you point at some peer reviewed literature that supports your claim that my “claim the countryside is ‘sterile’ in places due to over use of pesticides & herbicides… is untrue”?
@London Liberal: “The state must step in wher eth eprivate sector is unprepared to, and build lots of genuinely affordable homes” but the private sector is prepared to build lots of homes. They just can’t. It is hardly a coincidence that the peak period of public sector housing was after the Town and Country Planning Acts had put a break on the private development of housing.
This is a classic piece of socialism (but the post-war governments): put restrictions in place to prevent the private sector from operating and then “step in” to redress a problem of their own making.
“he constraint on supply is as much to do with an oligopolistic construction industry as anything else” – At the risk of having the same discussion in two places, I agree, but the way to attack oligopoly is through competition. If Proprietary Communities could issue development rights or even develop land themselves this would occur. In fact, if you think developers are hoarding land and you want to make them release/use it and/or punish them, just watch them panic when a new Planning Bill is put to parliament proposing real reform!
“i’d be interested to know what academic literature blames high prices on the planning system.” – Oh ‘eck. I see another list coming on!
Sarah Monk and Christine M E Whitehead, Evaluating the Economic Impact of Planning Controls in the United Kingdom: Some Implications for Housing, Land Economics, Vol. 75, No. 1, February 1999, pp.74-93.
Alan W. Evans, `Rabbit Hutches on Postage Stamps’ : Planning, Development and Political Economy, Urban Studies, Vol. 28, No. 6, 1991, p853-870.
Barker, K. (2003), Securing our Future Housing Needs: Interim Report—Analysis, Review of Housing Supply, London, HM Treasury.
— (2004), Delivering Stability: Securing our Future Housing Needs: Final Report—Recommendations, Review of Housing Supply, London, HM Treasury.
— (2006a), Barker Review of Land Use Planning; Interim Report—Analysis, London, HM Treasury.
— (2006b), Barker Review of Land Use Planning; Final Report—Recommendations, London, HM Treasury.
— (2008), ‘Planning Policy, Planning Practice, and Housing Supply’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 24(1).
Glaeser, E. L., and Gyourko, J. (2003), ‘The Impact of Building Restrictions on Housing Affordability’, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, June.
Hall, P. G., Gracey, H., Drewett, R., and Thomas, R. (1973), The Containment of Urban England, London, Allen & Unwin.
Saks, R. E. (2005), ‘Why is Manhattan so Expensive? Regulation and the Rise in Housing Prices’, Journal of Law and Economics, 48(2), 331–69.
I think that should keep you going!
@ Tom
“@London Liberal: “The state must step in wher eth eprivate sector is unprepared to, and build lots of genuinely affordable homes” but the private sector is prepared to build lots of homes. They just can’t.”
Ah yes, we all remember how the private sector provided wonderfully high quality flexible accommodation in the nIcol slum. And only a penny a night to lean on a piece of rope! Ahh, the golden days of no planning restrictions, or pesky environmental health officers getting in the way of good old fashioned free enterprise!
Apologies for the sarcasm Tom, as I know you’re not advocting a return to the slums, but it was precise the failure of the private sector to adequately house the poorest that led to Peabody and others setting up trusts to fill the gap left by the private sector, a mantle taken up by the state from the end of the 19th century until Thatcher effectively ended it in the 1980s. In that time generations of people became well housed, which led directly to the reduction in health probelms for (what was) ther working class, the disappearance of ricketts and which aided the narrowing of income inequality in society. The presence of social housing in the mix since 1945 has nothing to do with an alleged acceptance of a failure of the planning system and everything to do with an actual acceptance of the fact that the private sector simply didn’t meet the human needs of the poorest in society. And i see no evidence that it would do so today.
thanks for th eacademic literature links, i will have a look. I recognise some of the names and i have an idea of where they’re coming from, but it’s interetsing that you pray in aid of your assertiont hat planning is the problem kate Barker, whose report recommended regional planning mechanisms, more allocations for housing in local plans and planning gain supplement to capture added value – all interesting suggestions, but which do not suggest that it is planning per se that is the problem,
None of that research underpins what you say, but merely highlight a growing problem re biodiversity loss. And one factor you ignore completely in your report are soils, in this link you will find evidence which supports the fact that there is a serious gap between housing needs and soil sealing: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/pdf/sealing/Soil%20sealing%20-%20Final%20Report.pdf
There has to be discussion with regards soil as what is happening underground is far from sterile. And it is a discussion which will provide a middle line. If you have any other papers to hand which actually do provide evidence of sterility in the English countryside I would love to read them and we all need to see them! But evidence that some species are migrating towards gardens is not even close to the dangerous statement you make.
As for peer reviewed paper to counter your claim, as a first instance the UK NEA is worth dipping into: http://uknea.unep-wcmc.org/Resources/tabid/82/Default.aspx
You suggest using a valuation of biodiversity to counter any governmental costs in your paper – if the countryside is sterile – how can you can underpin funding measures using such an approach? If you want more let me know, although virtually every UK academic journal concerned with landscape, natural heritage, forestry, agriculture and soils is packed cover to cover with evidence against your ludicrous claim.
@Richard Dean
An understanding of the fundamental factors that got us into ‘this mess’ will greatly help us to find a way out. The major factor is population growth, both that has occurred since WWII and is projected to occur in the next few decades assuming a continuation of the laissez-faire government policies relating to population growth. Tom in his article shows that he doesn’t understand the fundamentals:
1. “the [planning] system has created a housing crisis” – sorry this is not supported by direct observation. In my area we have greenfield land adjacent to existing urban areas and infrastructure with planning permission for businesses and thousands of homes, yet there has been no construction activity since 2008. Additionally, the Structure Plans identify further areas to support future development as required by the government. From the comments here and elsewhere others can point to similar experiences in their area’s.
2. The sacrifice of urban green space over the last 20 years I suggest has had more to do with government policy on ‘browfield development’ and encouraging councils to build on school playing fields and allotments than anything directly to do with the Town and Country Planning Acts.
3. “modern housing frequently resembles “rabbit hutches built on postage stamps”.” This has practically nothing to do with the Town and Country Planning Acts, this is down to: Building regulations which for private development do not specify minimum room, house or plot sizes etc. Government increasing the permitted density of housing which encouraging builders to further reduce the size of plots. Attempts by builders to mitigate increasing construction costs.
4. “The Green Belts have not in aggregate protected our countryside.” that is because it’s primary purpose is to prevent urban spawl. Additionally, it is ‘open’ land not ‘countryside’. But other than this yes the current planning system hasn’t and doesn’t protect the countryside. We’ve seen this with the extension of the M3 – turns Twyford Down into a void and we see this in the criteria used to select the preferred route for HS2. Interestingly, both of these and the development of new towns are a direct result of government sponsored infrastructure development that is able to step around the Town and Country Planning Acts.
5. “And the planning system is seen as a barrier by 98 per cent of businesses. It is stifling our economy.” This incorrectly quotes the 2011 CBI report which actiually states: “Almost all businesses (98%) see the planning system as a barrier to the delivery of new infrastructure currently.” It is the lack of infrastructure investment that industry see’s as “stifling our economy”.
Fundamentally, we need to ask what population and sort of country do we want to have in 2050 and plan accordingly.