Some evidence suggesting the CPRE are wrong about the National Planning Policy Framework

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A core criticism of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has been that it will be in place ahead of most local authorities having adopted a Local Development Framework (LDF). Given that the NPPF states that, in the absence of a policy locally or nationally the presumption should be that (sustainable) development is permitted. Hence the CPRE’s response:

An analysis by CPRE shows that almost half of England’s local authorities (48 per cent) will be without an adopted Core Strategy development plan document on 1 April 2012 when the NPPF is intended to come into force. Almost a fifth (17 per cent) of local plans are still likely to be missing a year later. This means that, if the NPPF is not altered and no effective transitional arrangements for local planning are provided, planning applications in those areas will be decided primarily in accordance with national rather than local planning policy.

The obvious concern here is that developers will target authorities without a Core Strategy to force through their developments over the heads of local councils and local councillors. Now I don’t lay claim to being a planning lawyer – or even a planner – but I’ve been pretty sure from the start that this argument is best described as “scaremongering”. It’s probably true that, if developers felt it worth their while, there would be an increase in planning appeals (as CPRE suggest).

The question therefore is how the system – applicants, planning authorities, planning inspectors and the courts – view the period of transition. In simple terms what weight is given to the different plans, policies by those making recommendations and decisions?

Are the CPRE right in arguing that the NPPF – once approved by parliament – will trump any other plan? Or am I right in taking the view that, so long as the local authority is progressing to an LDF, that will be recognised and given due weight? Plus of course the recognition that “saved policies” from the previous (in Bradford’s case) ‘replacement Unitary Development Plan’ (rUDP) will also be given weight in any decision – rather like this (quotes taken from APP/W4705/A/11/2154371 Buck Park Quarry, Denholme):

“With respect to national policy, besides Planning Policy Statements (PPSs), Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) and Mineral Policy Guidance (MPG), the Draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is capable of being a material consideration.”

This rather supports the CPRE position except that the same Inspector, in the same decision, also said:

“The Council is in the process of preparing its Local Development Framework (LDF) and specifically it’s Core Strategy (CS)...for the next 15 year plan period to 2027. The CS...were published for public consultation and are scheduled to be submitted for public examination sometime in 2012. Given their advanced stage towards adoption, I give these documents more than the negligible weight ascribed to them by the appellant’s planning policy witness.”

This rather undermines the CPRE position. The developer argued that the emerging LDF should be ignored in preference for the historic rUDP. I cannot see that planning authorities, inspectors or the courts will take a different approach to challenges relating to the NPPF once adopted as national policy. Where local planning authorities are well advanced in developing a local plan, I can’t see there being this frightening scenario where there is no policy.

As I’m sure the CPRE’s planners know, the system has always allowed for weight to be given to new plans before approval – which applies equally to the NPPF and to LDFs. But then that wouldn’t have made a headline now would it!

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"One Million Pound A Vote" isn't quite enough for Labour to buy Green support....

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Windmills! Not sure about what I personally feel about them (although I'm unconvinced at their value as a solution to England's energy supply challenges - fracking and nuclear power look much better bets) but I do know that plenty of people aren't so keen on having them plonked in their back yard. Including a whole bunch in Denholme.

Right now Bradford Council is consulting on its 'Local Development Framework Core Strategy' which includes proposals for loads more windmills. Which will be sited (assuming the Council avoid the massive row that would come from putting them on Ilkley Moor) in Denholme and Queensbury where there's loads of wind. And residents in these places want to challenge these proposals.

However, it seems we needn't bother complaining since the Labour Councillor responsible for planning has already decided:

Councillor Val Slater, Bradford Council's executive member for planning, said: “Renewable energy ultimately means a cleaner district and less pollution. Although there is an increase in applications for wind turbines we don't actually receive that many.”

I guess this is part of the price that Bradford people will be paying for the backroom deal that led our three-strong Green group on Council to back almost everything the Labour Party propose! It seems that the "One Million Pounds A Vote" deal on renewable energy we saw at the budget council was only part of the payback for the Greens' support. They love windmills and the bigger the better!!

Councillor Martin Love, one of Shipley’s ward representatives and a member of the Green Party, said: “Any increase in renewable energy generation is to be welcomed.

“Something Bradford has got a lot of is hills and wind. We should utilise them for energy generation wherever we can. However, for Wind turbines to be effective we need bigger ones."

I will point out that the hills and wind aren't in Cllr Love's ward, of course!

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Bradford's LDF consultation will be a disgrace...

Cottingley

The current planning legislation and the legislation wending its way through parliament in the form of the Localism Bill speak often and loudly about ‘community engagement’, about ‘consultation’ and about ‘community-led’ planning. Let me tell you the truth.

Planners – or those planners charged with drawing up local plans, spatial strategies and ‘development frameworks’ – do not think the public, you and me, are qualified to know about such lofty matters. I recall being at a briefing about localism and communities developing local neighbourhood plans when a senior planner at a large metropolitan authority (not Bradford for once) described such devolution and public involvement as “the thin end of the wedge”.

By way of illustration might I present Bradford’s “LocalDevelopment Framework Core Strategy Further Engagement Draft” – currently so draft that the page numbering is inaccurate but that amounts to over 300 pages.

But this is just the beginning – there are some other documents, some of which the council has yet to publish. These include:

Open Space Assessment

Bradford District Baseline Study

Bradford District Retail & Leisure Study

Conservation Area Assessments & Management Plans (various)

District Wide Transport Study

Draft Settlement Study

Employment Land Review

Gypsy & Traveller Accommodation Assessment

Local Infrastructure Plan

Sports & Recreation Facilities Assessment

Strategic Flood Risk Assessment

Affordable Housing Economic Viability Assessment

Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment

Strategic Housing Market Assessment

Each of these documents will be over 100 pages – some much more than that. All of them will be hard to come by and laden with impenetrable technical language. It is truly a monument to the last government’s bureaucratic mindset and to the planners’ belief that only those will their occult knowledge can possibly create a strategic spatial plan for Bradford.

I am at a loss to understand how the ordinary public – the men and women whose local amenity and environment will be affected by these decisions – are able to engage with a process involving over a thousand pages of jargon-filled planning mumbo jumbo. This is not the local planning process we were promised when the “Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act” was passed by the Blair government.

People like me – with a little time and some knowledge – will try to understand what the planners are saying, will challenge their arguments on population growth, housing need and the distribution of employment, and will endeavour to get across to our local residents what the proposals are saying. But this massive, overweening, so-called “evidence base” will mostly go unchallenged except by those with the money to employ the experts to go through the documents and comment.

The Bradford LDF is planning to remove significant tracts of land from the ‘green belt’, to increase the size of villages like Denholme by approaching 50% and to force huge crowded “urban extensions” on to the fringes of the City. And it is that list of documents above that will be used to justify this pillage and to ignore the pleas of local communities for a conversation about the place they live. A conversation that would allow the negotiation of new housing – affordable and market – places for new employment and places that need protecting. Not from the view point of some expensive, besuited consultant but from the local people who the plan will affect.

It is a disgrace.

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