The basis of all planning at District Council level is the new National Planning Policy Framework, which seeks to make the planning system less complex and more accessible, to protect the environment and to promote sustainable growth.
[A word cloud of Greg Clark's forward to the draft NPPF
National Planning Policy Framework
19: The Government is committed to ensuring that the planning system does everything it can to support sustainable economic growth. Planning should operate to encourage and not act as an impediment to sustainable growth. Therefore significant weight should be placed on the need to support economic growth through the planning system.
28: Planning policies should support economic growth in rural areas in order to create jobs and prosperity by taking a positive approach to sustainable new development. To promote a strong rural economy, local and neighbourhood plans should: support the sustainable growth and expansion of all types of business and enterprise in rural areas, both through conversion of existing buildings and well designed new buildings...
However, the term 'sustainable' is open to interpretation. This is from Transition Norwich:
Review: National
Planning Policy Framework 2012
Reading government policy is not quite as enjoyable
and easy as the
book I reviewed on Monday, but nonetheless worth looking through.
The National Planning Policy Framework is a document recently adopted by the coalition government as requirements for the UK planning system. It revokes and replaces 44 government documents that had previously made up the nation's planning policy, cutting down over a thousand pages of policy to a manageable 50 or so.
A Controversial Policy
The National Planning Policy Framework is a document recently adopted by the coalition government as requirements for the UK planning system. It revokes and replaces 44 government documents that had previously made up the nation's planning policy, cutting down over a thousand pages of policy to a manageable 50 or so.
A Controversial Policy
There was great concern when the first
revision of the document was published from organisations and individuals who
thought that the government's "presumption in favour of sustainable growth"
would be a free ticket for developers to build whatever the hell they liked,
provided they could justify that the "benefits" outweigh the
"adverse impacts" in terms of "sustainable economic
growth". You can see why they had problems with it from this
passage:
Local
planning authorities should: ... grant
permission where the plan is absent, silent, indeterminate or where
relevant policies are out of date.
All of these policies should apply
unless the adverse impacts of allowing development would significantly and
demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies in
this Framework taken as a whole.
Thankfully, they revised it, and now the
clause in question reads:
14. At the heart of the National
Planning Policy Framework is a presumption in favour of
sustainable development, which should be seen as a golden thread running
through both plan-making and decision-taking.
For plan-making this means that:
> local
planning authorities should positively seek opportunities to meet
the development needs of their area;
> Local
Plans should meet objectively assessed needs, with sufficient flexibility
to adapt to rapid change, unless:
> any adverse impacts of doing so would
significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed
against the policies in this Framework taken as a whole; or
> specific policies in this Framework indicate
development should be restricted.
For decision-taking this
means:
> approving
development proposals that accord with the development plan without
delay; and
> where the
development plan is absent, silent or relevant policies are out-of-date,
granting permission unless:
> any adverse impacts of doing so would
significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed
against the policies in this Framework taken as a whole; or
> specific policies in this Framework indicate
development should be restricted.
This managed to persuade environmental
and historic interest organisations (such as the National Trust) to accept it,
and most of them have now withdrawn their complaints.
What does the NPPF actually say?
The National Planning Policy Framework's clauses are often open for a lot of
interpretation. The benefits of this, in my opinion, are that it prevents
bureaucrats from picking up on minute details of planning policy and blowing
them out of all proportion, and it also leaves lots of flexibility for
different strategies to be taken by councils and developers in different parts
of the country, where the economic, environmental, or social requirements of the
area may be different.
I'll use one of the "Core Planning Principles" (clause 17) as an
example (and one that is particularly relevant to us transitioners!):
[Planning should] support the transition
to a low carbon future in a changing climate, taking full account of flood risk
and coastal change, and encourage the reuse of existing resources, including
conversion of existing buildings, and encourage the use of renewable resources
(for example, by the development of renewable energy)
This, I'm sure you'll agree, is a very noble piece of
policy, and one that most of us would support wholeheartedly. It is also
flexible enough to allow for areas in question to prioritise different aspects
of climate change depending on the risk of the location to flood risk, for
example, or the number of existing buildings that the area has.
But at the same time it's a bit woolly, for exactly the same reason. Whether a
particular local authority does prioritise one aspect of a "low carbon
future" over another is seemingly up to them, and could
cause undesirable consequences if they put too much emphasis on one
thing over another, as they may be persuaded to if they are threatened by
lobbying interests, or influential media coverage.
Approval for housing developments, for example, is one of those things that
will be different depending on the strength of the local authority's plans.
If the local plan comes to the conclusion that housing developments are
fine, and all other conditions are met, we could see housing developments sweep
through towns, but if the Local Plan limits new housing development, then even
developments with strong sustainability credentials may struggle to get
through.
So will this policy guarantee us sustainable development?
The strength of this new policy is based on the fact that it hands much of the
power and responsibility for planning back to local authorities (where, in my
opinion, it belongs), by stating that local plans should be made, and that
these plans should reflect the particular needs of the community, as well as be
in line with national policy (i.e. the NPPF document itself).
With this power in the hands of the local authorities, we then rely upon the
strength of those particular authorities to create plans and implement them in
a balanced manner. Whilst in theory the policy ought to give councils the power
to challenge controversial projects, it may also leave a lot of scope for
dubious projects to fall through the cracks where the council does not have the
resources to create a detailed enough Local Plan (particularly an issue when
budgets are being cut back).
What difference does this all make to me?
For those submitting planning applications, they should be granted quicker
where they are in line with the Local Plan, and should be slower and harder to
achieve if they are not in line with local plans.
But even if you do not ever wish to file an application, there are a couple of
big changes that the framework represents, even if most of the time you
won't notice them. Local authorities, holding more responsibility, should be
more vocal about what local plans are, and how they are changing, as these are
now the documents determining whether an application should be approved or not.
Hopefully politicians will woo voters by indicating what they
hope to prioritise in local plans, and voters will hold them accountable to
what they promise.
I have yet to read the more detailed clauses (I've only got to page 12 so
far!), but I'm sure this won't be the last you hear from me on the NPPF!
Images: The National Trust's "Planning for People" campaign, that
led the fight for rewriting the NPPF; Save Hethersett campaign image from http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk.
And this is from the CPRE, South-East:
NPPF:
Some of the Issues
(P#)
refers to paragraph numbers in the NPPF.
1.
Sustainable development defined
One of
the main demands of campaigners was for a robust definition of sustainability.
That has now been achieved and the government has readopted the widely respected
definition in UK Sustainable Development Strategy 2005. The NPPF directs “to
achieve sustainable development, economic, social and environmental gains should
be sought jointly and simultaneously through the planning system” (P8). There
is no requirement that economic, social and environmental gains should be balanced,
though net gains should be sought across all three and “significant adverse
impacts on any of these dimensions should be avoided” (P152).
Reading
the NPPF as a whole, the economy is still the most powerful pillar of
sustainability. The framework insists that “significant weight” must be given
to supporting economic growth (P19) – this is the only use the phrase “significant
weight” in the framework (see “The Trump Cards of the NPPF” below). While the
NPPF as a whole can be read to suggest that economic growth cannot be supported
at the expense of sustainability, the weight given to the different pillars of
sustainability is set to remain one of the main areas of contention in planning
decisions and appeals.
.
.
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