Will planning reforms revitalise or ruin London’s nature?

Will planning reforms revitalise or ruin London’s nature?

Mathew Frith, our Director of Conservation responds to new Government White Paper.

Will planning reforms revitalise or ruin London’s nature?

A fresh radical wind?

On 6th August, the Government published its much trailed proposed reforms to the planning system with a consultation White Paper Planning for the Future.[1]  These include ‘streamlining and modernising the planning process, bringing a new focus to design and sustainability, improving the system of developer contributions to infrastructure, and ensuring more land is available for development where it is needed.’

An evolving leviathan

The planning system has a profound influence on land use – and therefore nature – in London. It plays a critical role in protecting important places and features for biodiversity, and to secure enhancements of the capital’s nature either through appropriate development design or financial contributions by developers.  It is a system that has evolved ever since the first landmark Town & Country Planning Act of 1947, and aims to reflects the changing priorities of society as best possible.[2]  For example, in terms of nature it now takes account of London’s 1610 Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINCs), ‘Priority’ habitats and species, and addressing access to nature for people, as well as a number of statutory obligations such as legally protected species and the capital’s 37 Sites of Special Scientific Interest.[3]

It isn’t perfect; addressing the multiple needs of society has led to an increasingly clunky and time-consuming system, whether one is a planner, local Councillor, developer or person who wishes to comment on a plan or development.  Many are surprised that plans don’t necessarily achieve what they say on the tin, but in essence that is partly down to the utter complexities of competing demands within the system, whether for affordable housing, tree cover, energy generation, playspaces, or cycle infrastructure. It’s a system that leads to trade-offs. And with over 90,000 planning applications a year in London, these issues are more acute in the capital.[4]

Reforms, reforms (and austerity)

As such, numerous Governments have attempted to reform and ‘streamline’ the system over the past 40 years, from those of Margaret Thatcher (leading to out-of-town retail parks and arguably the ‘death of the high-street’) and Tony Blair (‘brownfield first’), to Gordon Brown (restricting local objections) and David Cameron (replacing detailed planning guidance with a 52-page National Planning Policy Framework[5]).  All have claimed the system as too bureaucratic, too complex, costly and time-consuming, that it slows the ‘business economy of UK plc’.  None of these reforms have radically changed this, many leading to unintended outcomes.  In addition, the austerity imposed on local authorities since 2011 has decimated planning departments, and with it the experience and skills required to develop robust plans, and more importantly scrutinise planning applications so that they meet plan requirements and are delivered as expected.

Planning for what future?

The new White Paper suggests a much more radical departure. In effect it will rip up much of the existing system and put in place some significant changes, through new legislation, if feedback and advocacy through the consultation fail to make any dents in its thrust.  The florid foreword by the Prime Minister describes the system as a 63-year old building that has had multiple extensions and renovations; we now ‘need to level the foundations and build from the ground up.’[6]

It is a daughter of the free-market advisors to the Cabinet, hitching its colours to the ‘solve-all’ abilities of new digital technologies, simplification and centralisation.  It sets out its rationale on some truths and many tired myths of the current system, in many cases echoes of previous reforms that basically suggest that in this Brexit future the planning system fails Britain (although the reforms only apply to England).  Significantly it plays up the democratic gaps in the system (of which there are many) and promises that it will continue to maintain strong environmental standards; there is little in the proposals that robustly improve either.

An ode to beauty

In short Planning for the Future sounds good and many of the proposals make sense, especially if you’re new to the planning system.  It recognises that there may be different means to achieve good planning outcomes. There is much placed on the need to build beautiful, to create beautiful places.  Much of this follows on from the work of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission chaired by the late Roger Scruton, a philosopher not known for his love of the modern world, or indeed much of democracy. References to Belgravia and Bath suggest that planning needs to discover the means to build and protect such places.  As such there are commitments to respect the older built heritage, with specific proposals. Local authorities are to have a design champion; experience suggests that architects are likely to occupy this role, which will be interesting.

In a similar vein, also partly advocated in the Commission report[7], is the following: “Plans will still play a vital role in identifying not just areas of defined national and international importance (such as National Parks and Sites of Special Scientific Interest), but also those which are valued and defined locally (such as Conservation Areas and Local Wildlife Sites[8]). However, the planning system can and should do much more than this. In line with the ambitions in our 25 Year Environment Plan, we want the reformed system to play a proactive role in promoting environmental recovery and long-term sustainability. In doing so, it needs to play a strong part in our efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change and reduce pollution as well as making our towns and cities more liveable through enabling more and better green spaces and tree cover.”  Sounds promising, until it suggests that environmental assessments are too complex and time-consuming. Speed and clarity are everything, despite trying to understand systems that don’t work to human time.

There is also a commitment to replace existing development levies with a nationally set Infrastructure Levy (with possibly locally appropriate rates).[9]  There are merits on this being more transparent, but whether it provides the resources to, for example, help secure biodiversity uplifts through development is not clear.

…or something more beastly?

There are three fundamental changes set out. Firstly, Local Plans are to divide their areas into three zones and to set the tenor of development though a local Design Code (this is where the ‘beauty’ supposedly comes in);

  1. Develop, where development is automatically permitted, based on Design Code principles
  2. Renewal, for some development such as ‘gentle densification’, subject to some permissions
  3. Protect, where development is ‘restricted’ (not prevented).

What this means could go two ways; it provides more certainty at one level, but also simplifies. Nature doesn’t observe such boundaries; it will be found in all zones, and there-in lies a future battle-ground especially on inner city brownfield sites that have become pollinator havens. 

Secondly, the system is to go through a technological step-change. Signs on lamp-posts, notices in local newspapers, written submissions and attendance at Planning Committee meetings are to be replaced by a process driven by digitally accessible data. This is to be commended in principle, but there is little reference to ecological data or recognition that this is forever changing through natural processes. The focus is on a system that ‘speeds up the process while protecting and enhancing England’s unique ecosystems’ (which may not include those difficult to define urban habitats).

Finally, and most worryingly, is the restriction of the public consultation to the initial Local Plan/Design Code stage; whilst this could be made broader and more inclusive through digital technologies, once that’s past, the Plan is effectively done and dusted. Your chance to say something about a particular development, especially in a Development or Renewal Zone is pretty much gone. So much for the local democratic voice being able to make itself heard.  There is of course, nothing said about Third Party Rights of Appeal (where a local community can appeal against an unpopular proposal being given permission), a long sought ‘ask’ for those of us wanting more democratic balance in the system.

One gets the sense that there is drive behind this White Paper, and some of its proposals could improve a system that few people really support. However, there are significant gaps and questions that need to be answered if the protection and enhancement of London’s natural environment are to be robustly embedded within it, and give surety that local democratic voices for nature are not ignored in the process. London Wildlife Trust will be making our voice heard, and there is the opportunity for you too, through the consultation portal: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-for-the-future - by 29th October.

Mathew Frith

@WildLondon @frithinwood

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/907245/MHCLG_PlanningConsultation.pdf

[2] The original act aimed to prevent the American suburbanisation of Britain through production of what are now Local Plans to identify where development should be built (or not), and the process that development has to be applied for and agreed by planning authorities on the basis of a plan. These two principles still apply for most developments.

[3] For more on London’s SINCs see: http://live-twt-d8-london.pantheonsite.io/sites/default/files/2019-05/spaces-wild-london-wildlife-trust-oct2015.pdf

[4] In addition to the complexity of the city’s 33 Local Planning Authorities and the Greater London Authority.

[5] Most recently updated in 2019 and now 74 pages.

[6] There is also a swipe at one of his predecessors: “Eight years ago a new landlord stripped most of the asbestos from the roof.”

[7] The Commission’s Living with Beauty was published in January (it’s nature is tree-focused): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/861832/Living_with_beauty_BBBBC_report.pdf

[8] Aka SINCs in London.

[9] Currently there is Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy to help offset the costs of developments. There is no transparency on the negotiation of the former.

Gunnersbury Triangle

Gunnersbury Triangle; The current system doesn’t prevent this cheek-by-jowl development against a Local Nature Reserve. Photo Credit, Mathew Frith, London Wildlife Trust