Labour sets out Confused and Confusing ‘Golden Rules’ for Green Belt Release

Standard – Starmer says a Labour government will put in place five golden rules for grey belt development:  

• Brownfield first – within the green belt, any brownfield land must be prioritised for development  
• Grey belt second – poor-quality and ugly areas of the green belt should be clearly prioritised over nature-rich, environmentally valuable land in the green belt  
• Affordable homes – plans must target at least 50% affordable housing delivery when land is released  
• Boost public services and infrastructure – plans must boost public services and local infrastructure, such as more schools, nursery places and new health centres  
• Improve genuine green spaces – the party rules out building on genuine nature spots and requires plans to include improvements to existing green spaces, making them accessible to the public, with new woodland, parks and playing fields  

Confused – no test as to whether land is needed. Brownfield is looked at first in GB rather than Brownfield outside GB. No test as to contribution of a brownfield site in terms of Green Belt harm or planning balance (Calverton tests)

Grey belt second – poor-quality and ugly areas of the green belt should be clearly prioritised over nature-rich, environmentally valuable land in the green belt, yes but should be just one of the test and too much emphasis on thus will create a perverse incentive to neglect sites and leave them derelict. Few areas of GB sites are genuinely ugly. Where they are released they are always a minority of sites.

Affordable homes – plans must target at least 50% affordable housing delivery when land is released . This will only be viable in a minority of sites, especially major sites requiring infrastructure, and brownfield sites requiring remediation.

Boost public services and infrastructure – plans must boost public services and local infrastructure, such as more schools, nursery places and new health centres . this is true everywhere GB or not. Not a GB test.

Improve genuine green spaces – the party rules out building on genuine nature spots and requires plans to include improvements to existing green spaces, making them accessible to the public, with new woodland, parks and playing fields – True whether GB or not. A GB site reelasse can include open space and biodiversity improvements within it.

A true test must be about release of land. this is not a true test as it doesn’t even consider the need for the release or the strategy for releasing. It ignore existing caselaw and the distinctions between good planning of Gb and non GB sites. Furthermore it is arguably a tightening not a loosening of policy adding tests for release but imposing no requirement for review and release. A terrible, and actually rather incompetent, first dibs by labour into planning policy. A very poor show.

South Staffs Drops 3,000 GB Houses in Meet Black Country Need – Claiming it delayed so Long the Evidence for Strategic Need is out of Date

Quite the worst and most egregious exclude for not meeting need in recent years and illustrating better than anywhere else why the system has to change re GB and strategic planning. They delayed for two years, after reviewing GB, and after the new NPPF came out without anu of the changes they expected there new excuse is the report re meeting the strategic need is out of date going back to 2018. Nimbyism never gets out of date. inevitably they will be brought to heel, and will cry like spoilt babies.

Full council

Wirral Local Plan Green Belt: Inspectors Find Plan 1,600 Houses Short

The inspectors have found the plan 1,600 houses short

The arguments at the EIP raged around deliverability with opponents claiming, there was no evidence on deliverability on many key sites. Before the submitted draft of the local plan it had not included many urban sites such as Wirral Waters on deliverability grounds. At the examination they claimed something would turn up, despite some sites requiring up to 19k in subsidy. a previous draft of the plan had claimed up to 4,700 GB sites would be needed

The EIp panel found

We have reviewed the extensive evidence before us and hearing discussions in respect of allowances, site allocations and other deliverable areas (‘ODAs’). In broad terms we are satisfied that some sites and ODAs will likely deliver as the Council anticipate, although others may not.

This is less than useful from the panel, what are your findings> Thouigh the numbers suggest they have discounted much. The real change is to OAN with an extended plan period to 2040. With the revised outurn the shortfall is 1,600

Remember the Leverhulme appeal sites only accounted for 800 dwellings

They recommend an ‘ear;y review policy’

We note that NPPF paragraph 68.b) requires the identification of broad locations for years 11-15 of the plan period ‘where possible’. There is also a statutory requirement for a local plan to be reviewed every five years. ‘So effectively theya re saying that a GB review will be needed within 5 years.

It is notable to compare these findings with Solihull where the inspector was very clear the plan needed extra GB sites – though the circumstances are different in that Solihull clearly miscalculated capacity on their main housing site at the NEC.

This is not a good look for the planning systme and EIP menchanism. Weeks of argument about GB lead to no decision on GB and an overoptimistic strategy without funding will almost certainly lead to teh same arguments in 5 years time. Isnt this what safeguarded land is for? If a plan cannot gaurentee GB boundaries for 18-20 years whay include land in GB now – and take it out within 5 years. That would conflict with the NPPF aim that GB should be permanent.

Guardian Housing Delayed by Years through lack of Grid Capacity

Guardian

Housing projects are being delayed for years because of an “infra­structure crisis” caused by lack of capacity in the National Grid, council leaders have warned.

Building schemes for thousands of homes are on hold, while new ­projects face delays of up to four years in some parts of the UK because of a ­lengthening queue of developers waiting to be connected.

Those hoping to build new wind turbines, solar farms or micro-hydroelectric schemes face even longer waits after a deluge of new connection requests, many of them from speculative schemes.

Ministers have asked the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) to investigate, but senior members of the District Councils’ Network (DCN), part of the Local Government Association, say the delays are slowing down the UK economy. Bridget Smith, the DCN’s vice-chair and leader of South Cambridgeshire district council, said: “Nationally, we’ve got an absolute ­crisis in all infrastructure.”

Plans by Michael Gove, the housing secretary, to build 150,000 homes in Cambridge to create a British Silicon Valley were already being hampered by lack of water, she said. “And where’s the power coming from? Something fundamental has to change.”

Susan Brown, the leader of Oxford city council, who is also a DCN vice-chair, said that 90 new homes in the Littlemore district had been meant to have heat pumps. “The National Grid basically said ‘we won’t have enough power to connect them’ so half the houses are going to have to have gas boilers instead – it’s so frustrating.”

Brown, who is also chair of the Future Oxfordshire Partnership, said plans to expand the town of Bicester with 7,000 new homes and a commercial zone had ground to a halt.

“All of that has been paused, awaiting grid reinforcement,” she said.

Under the current first-come, first-served system, developers can pay to jump up the queue, but the Bicester project has a further twist of red tape because there are two developers – one for the housing and another for the commercial buildings.

“Competition rules mean they’re not allowed to broker a solution together,” Brown said. “That’s particularly mad because it means they are dancing around, hoping the other one is going to take the full cost of providing grid reinforcement. There are so many daft things in our system.”

Brown said that leaders in other areas such as Milton Keynes, Swindon, Cambridge and Peterborough – with whom she works as part of the Fast Growth Cities group – were ­reporting similar problems. “It’s really beginning to constrain our ability to grow our local economy, which is significant for UK plc because the Oxford-Cambridge wider area is a significant net contributor to GDP, and not many bits of the country are.

“It’s possible that we’re a little bit ahead of the curve across the ­country. If they’re not already experiencing [these problems], people elsewhere will be experiencing them very soon.”

Although demand for electricity from builders is not being met, plans to expand the electricity supply are also causing problems, as the National Grid has been swamped with applications to build solar and wind farms – far more than the country would ever need.

Two weeks ago, the National Grid’s electricity systems operator (ESO), which manages power distribution, said that the connections queue had “grown at unprecedented pace”.

Great Britain’s power stations together generate 75 gigawatts of electricity, and the mainland is expected to need about twice as much by 2050 as people switch to ­electric vehicles and heat pumps.

But in January alone, developers submitted projects that would add 49GW, and the ESO said the queue could reach the equivalent of 800GW by the end of the year – more than four times as much as the country would ever need.

Being swamped with applications has made delays even longer, and Ofgem has had to approve a three-month delay until developers even find out when they can get connected. David Wildash, the ESO’s interim director of engineering, said in a blogpost that “we recognise that the outcome of this process is not what was envisaged at the outset. The outcome will be hugely disappointing to our customers.”

The delays come after Ofgem had already taken action last year to remove so-called “zombie” projects – those that had been approved but had stopped being developed – from the connections queue.

Nick Winser at the National Infrastructure Commission, who last year issued a report recommending that homeowners should be given generous compensation for agreeing to have power lines built close to their homes, is examining ways to solve the electricity capacity problem. He said: “We can’t let the distribution network become a barrier to the transition away from fossil fuels, which is why the commission is looking at what further investment or policy changes are needed to ensure the whole network is ready for 2050 and beyond.”

A government spokesperson said: “We’re driving forward the biggest reforms to our electricity grid since the 1950s – halving the time it takes to build networks, speeding up grid connections, supporting thousands of jobs and reducing bills in the long-term for families.

“Meanwhile we are on track to build one million homes this parliament and have laid out an ambitious long-term plan for housing that includes speeding up the planning system, cutting bureaucracy, and reducing delays to ensure we deliver the homes that communities want and need.”

Solihull Asks Inspectors to Ignore what new NPPF says about transitional Provisions to avoid Green Belt Allocations – err inspectors cannot ignore the NPPF

If they did they would be JRd to hell

Also the situation in Spelthorne where rather ridiculously they claim tyhey were previously buiiled into GB release

I hope inspectors are tough on such palapable nonsense

The Council does recognise that the transitional arrangements in paragraph 230 of the updated NPPF indicate that plans such as the Solihull Local Plan should be examined under the previous version of the Framework.

Thus, the direct consequence of this is clear. However, the Council believes that the situation is more nuanced as there are significant indirect consequences of this change in policy that do have a bearing on the examination of the Solihull Local Plan.

In that respect, it is our understanding that the Council has a number of options at this stage, these include: a. Continue with the examination of the plan and seek to make amendments to deal with the issues you have previously identified, i.e. follow a process to identify additional allocations to deal with the shortfall in the supply at the NEC. Inevitably, these additional allocations will be sites in the Green Belt.

Withdraw the plan and seek to prepare a fresh version of a plan that could be published after 19th March 2024 that would then be examined under the new Framework in accordance with the last sentence of paragraph 2301.

Continue with the examination of the plan without any further allocations.

Whilst option (a) would enable the examination of the plan to be completed under the terms of the previous Framework, it does not reflect the clear direction of travel that adopted national planning policy is now following. As such, it does not give the Council the opportunity of taking into account the new flexibilities to plan-making that are included in the updated NPPF.

Option (b) does need to be considered as a realistic fallback option since it would relate to a course of action to use national policy already set out in an up-to-date, approved Framework, not simply relying on a draft policy, or some potential future change to national policy, that may or may not be confirmed.

Government Introduces Water Credit Scheme to unlock growth in Cambridge – But knocks Development Corporation till after Election

Two announcements yesterday concerning issues we have blogged on frequently in teh past

Addressing water scarcity in Greater Cambridge: update on government measures

The Case for Cambridge Cambridge Delivery Group

Recognising the unique context in Cambridge, the government has made a one-off commitment to work with local partners to address the deficit in water supply, until water companies bring major infrastructure online, through a new water credits system. This is underpinned by a major investment in measures to offset new demand for water in the area through retrofitting water efficient devices in existing buildings.

Pretty much exactly as we have recommended on here

As such it is difficult to see the Darwin Green scheme recently at PLI being refused, a condition /S106 will implement a credit scheme, now the credit scheme, as we recommended. The appeal could have been avoided.

In order for growth to proceed in a sustainable way, we have developed a 2-part plan:

1. Ensure long-term water supply so that the city can grow in a sustainable way. We are doing this by:

• Assuring the delivery of long-term major water supply infrastructure including the proposed Grafham transfer and Fens Reservoir.
• Supporting the development of a plan for strategic water resources over the long-term.
• Using Cambridge as an area for innovation in water management in agriculture and through nature-based solutions.

2. Support growth in the short-term so that development currently stalled can proceed. We are doing this by supporting increased water efficiency, reuse and offsetting, which will prime a ‘water credits system’.

Currently, 99% of Cambridge Water’s supply comes from aquifers and other groundwater sources, which can put pressure on the environment, in particular at sensitive sites and when flows are low. The delivery of Fens Reservoir would precede cuts to abstraction licence caps by the EA, which will mean that less water is removed from the aquifer. It will build resilience in the water supply and further protect and enhance biodiversity and minimise risks from drought and flooding….The Grafham transfer will only be available when the Grand Union Canal resource option is in place which allows Affinity Water to reduce its water transfer from Grafham Water.

We are commissioning regional-scale models to support a long-term water resources plan that meets our development growth ambitions. This will include working with water companies across the region to identify new transfers and supply-side options beyond those already in Water Resources East’s core regional plan.

Water credits system

We will pilot a ‘water credits’ system where developers can offset their development through the purchase and sale of water credits to ensure they have a neutral impact on water scarcity within Cambridge. This will provide the mechanism for development to progress through planning while minimising the risk to the environment. We are undertaking detailed design work but can set out now our starting point in doing that work.

We will establish a market framework and a market operator who will oversee where ‘water credits’ can be allocated to developers to ensure that the impact of water demand from new development is neutralised. This will be in place as long as it is necessary. Initial government investment will be used to retrofit both household and non-household properties in Cambridge to provide the initial credits, with any property owners meeting the market requirements for retrofits able to supply the market in future. ..We are confident this overall package will be sufficient to address the EA’s concerns

In terms of growth of Cambridge – kicked until after the election as no fiscal scope.

In the longer term, we are taking the steps to establish a development corporation to oversee and coordinate the complex operation and the fundraising required to deliver a bold vision for Cambridge. The development corporation, once established, will be backed by a multi-year funding settlement that is commensurate with the government’s high level of ambition. This will be set out at the next Spending Review.

The content of the Case for Cambridge will be uncontroversial and holds no surprises to the Science and busienss lobby in the city none the less it will be controversial to the substantial anti-growth coalition in the city.

What it says is encouraging and clarifying re teh scale and horizen of growth

These illustrative scenarios estimate the potential additional value to the economy once new residents have moved into the properties. Given Cambridge’s highly skilled and specialist economy, we anticipate additional investment and skilled labour to be attracted from abroad, reducing any displacement of jobs from elsewhere in the country. Building 100,000 new homes by 2050 has the potential to add approximately £4.3 billion to the economy (between £2.1 billion and £6.4 billion with a central estimate of £4.3 billion). This in turn has the potential to translate in today’s terms into an annual increase of approximately £1.5 billion of additional receipts for the exchequer (income from taxes and other sources), which can be spent on public services. Building 150,000 new homes by 2050 has the potential to add approximately £6.4 billion to the economy (between £3.2 billion and £9.7 billion with a central estimate of £6.4 billion). This in turn has the potential to translate in today’s terms into an annual increase of approximately £2 billion of additional receipts for the exchequer (income from taxes and other sources), which can be spent on public services.

Building on historical precedent, such as the development of the garden cities and Milton Keynes, there is huge potential to capture, for the public benefit, any increase in land value that will arise from development decisions taken in Cambridge by central and local government.

To make sure that the city grows in a sustainable way that protects its central character, the government is examining major new urban quarter opportunities, plugged into and connected with the existing city. Any new quarter must embody the commitment to design and gentle density set out above, built in a way that is in keeping with the historic centre and that maintains proximity to the countryside. A sustainable transport network will also be key – including, for example, streets, bike paths and mass transit options – that connects new areas to existing ones and improves traffic flow.
It is in this way that an expanded Cambridge can provide a network of beautiful and wellconnected town centres and economic clusters, where active travel is prioritised and with all the social and health facilities required to service local communities. While no decisions on the location of any new quarter have been taken, this pattern of development aims to protect and enhance what is special about Cambridge and will be central to assessing future options for sustainable growth.

Cambridge has the potential to be an exemplar of urban expansion that enhances the natural environment, with great parks, generous local allotments, tree-lined streets, wildlife corridors and easy access to nature through the ‘green fingers’ that already stretch into the countryside. Work is already underway to increase the nature reserve around Wicken Fen to the north of the city, which will contribute to Greater Cambridge’s healthy and beautiful natural environment.

The government’s ambitions for growing Cambridge will require a step-change in the type and scale of infrastructure that we plan for, and we will need to take a longer-term view of growth than is required generally by Local Plans. The emerging Local Plan looks to 2041. Our timeframe is to 2050 and beyond. By setting up a development corporation with the powers and funding to consider the infrastructure needs of all parts of an expanded Cambridge, and using its convening power, the government will be able to facilitate and drive forward sustainable infrastructure-led growth.

The government will ensure that the East West Rail Growth Board, chaired by HMT, includes consideration of how the new rail connection into Cambridge can be best integrated into the city’s transport network for the future. As we reommended in an article here it gives Freiburg im Breisgau as an example of how to do this

The Leader of Cambridge City Council, Cllr Mike Davey, said: “There has been no public engagement, and the City Council has not been involved in the writing of the ‘Case for Cambridge’.

The Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, Cllr Bridget Smith, commented: “There is a lot to digest here, but there are parts of today’s update we can welcome – including the focus on resolving the crucial water supply issues which we have been pushing hard on for several years. …

“However, we still need to understand what these tens of thousands of new homes and jobs would look like and where they would all go. Residents and locally elected representatives also need assurance that they will be able to have their say on all such major proposals, even those from central Government. 

…given all the investment made by both councils in joint working, including the creation of an award-winning shared planning service to manage future development across the area, I remain unconvinced at this time that a Development Corporation is the most appropriate means to implement these plans.”

High Court Rejects Gove’s M&S decision for Making Policy on the Hoof

BD

Shock move follows two-day appeal launched by the retailer against last year’s landmark ruling

The High Court has quashed Michael Gove’s refusal of Marks & Spencer’s plans to redevelop its flagship Oxford Steet store.

The shock decision comes after a two-day appeal launched by the retailer to challenge last year’s ruling, which has been seen as a landmark case for demolish and rebuild projects.

M&S operations director Sacha Berendji said the court had agreed with five out of six counts brought forward in a decision which he said “couldn’t be clearer”.

“The result has been a long, unnecessary and costly delay to the only retail-led regeneration on Oxford Street which would deliver one of London’s greenest buildings, create thousands of new jobs and rejuvenate the capital’s premier shopping district,” he said.

“The Secretary of State now has the power to unlock the wide-ranging benefits of this significant investment and send a clear message to UK and global business that the government supports sustainable growth and the regeneration of our towns and cities.”

The proposals, designed by Pilbrow & Partners, would replace three buildings on the site including the 1930s Orchard House with a 10-storey retail and office scheme.

The scheme was rejected by Gove last year on the grounds of its heritage impact on nearby buildings, including the Selfridges department store, and over the carbon impact of rebuilding the site instead of refurbishing the existing buildings.

New West End Company chief executive Dee Corsi, said the High Court’s decision to quash Gove’s ruling was a “just result for Marks & Spencer, whose proposed development is a key part of Oxford Street’s and the West End’s future growth story”.

“We are hopeful the successful appeal will now lead to enhanced clarity in the planning system for all developers to benefit from, whether they are pursuing a retrofit or a redevelopment,” Corsi added.

“We like, Marks & Spencer, are in full support of a planning system which prioritises sustainable retrofits, where they are both commercially viable and have a clear environmental pay-off over the long-term.

“This added clarity can only be positive for our city centres – from flagship retail and leisure destinations, like Oxford Street, to local high streets – and would drive growth and investment within the U.K.’s property sector.

“The landmark decision to move forward on Marks & Spencer’s flagship redevelopment plans sends a positive signal to other investors that Oxford Street and the West End is a world-leading destination to do business.”

James Souter, a partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, said: “[The decision] could give developers greater confidence in bringing forwards contemporary new-build schemes, even where the possibility of retrofitting existing structures is theoretically possible.

5th Studio Propose New Reservoir and National Park plan for Fens and Cambridge

View of their proposed multipurpose reservoir – the first in a generation – at the intersection of the River Cam and the Ouse

AJ Firewall

North of Cambridge, the landscape gives way to the Fens – largely at or below sea level – and some of the most productive arable land in the UK. Intensive agriculture, energy generation and nature conservation vie for space. Here, the park amplifies ongoing work to restore the area’s wetlands and rediscover the rich pre-enclosure landscapes.

Wicken Fen is 125 years old and one of the most species-rich places in the country. The National Trust has long-term plans to extend the fen into Cambridge, open up walking and cycling routes and convert monocultural farmland into wild countryside.

This vast area plays a pivotal role in flood storage and water management. Anglian Water plans a new reservoir, the first in a generation, in a remote Fenland location fed by the Ouse system. We suggest a better location, where it can be truly multifunctional, at the confluence of the Rivers Cam and Ouse. Here it can be linked to a northern [sic southern as the land is higher to the north] extension of the Wicken project and accessed and enjoyed for leisure by the railway and existing cycle links to Cambridge and Ely. This is in the true spirit of Grafham Water – the last reservoir to be constructed in the UK and the first to be explicitly planned to play multiple roles beyond water storage.

IIts a bold idea but I dont think it would fully replace the Anglian Water proposal as the area in question, Adventurers Fen, has a limited volume close to sea level below the levels of the adjoining villages

Though you could see a smaller multifunctional reservoir here as part of a wider (regional not national park). Plans around Cambridge need a regional multifunctional landscape vision – it cant all be about housing.

CMA publish Final Report into Housebuilders – Finds Build Out Rate designed to Ensure Prices Do Not Fall

Here

In terms of how quickly housing is built and the price at which it is sold, instead of building houses as quickly as possible, a range of evidence shows housebuilders tend to build them at a rate that is consistent with the local absorption rates, ie, the rate at which houses can be sold without needing to reduce their prices.

(a) The extent to which housebuilders can expand their supply in a local area is inherently limited by the extent to which they can get hold of further land with planning permission in the area. As a result, the effect of lowering their prices is more likely to bring sales forward in time, rather than increase their overall sales over the medium term; therefore, doing this will rarely be a profitmaximising strategy for housebuilders. Given that it is costly for housebuilders to have capital tied up in partly finished or finished, unsold homes, they are incentivised to control their build-out rate to a level that maintains selling prices.

(b) Builders’ incentives to pursue the strategy of maximising sales prices are reinforced by the way they compete to purchase developable land. Most land is bought under the residual valuation model, meaning that when housebuilders bid for land, they offer a price that is affordable based on their estimate of the value of the homes they can build on it. Given the competition we observe for land, housebuilders must offer the highest possible price to secure it. With all housebuilders subject to the same market forces, this further incentivises housebuilders to build out at a rate that supports high prices, rather than (outside of a housing market downturn) reducing prices to increase the volume they can sell.

…

Let me repeat 1,000 times The ‘Tilted Balance’ never applies on Sites allocated in a Local Plan – Some Dodgy Committee Reports in North Tyneside

If a site is allocated in a development plan para 11a applies

If it is not or otherwise contrary to a development plan, considered as a whole of course, para iid applies

You cannot apply both 11a and 11d, 11d is designed as a matter of policy to override the development plan (iid), I call this the ‘totally wobbly balance’ approach to writing committee reports.

If a proposal complies with a development plan there is nothing to override. You cannot have two incompatible NPPF decision tests applying at once.

Rather the failure to have a 5YHLS for a policy compliant scheme is simply part of the normal planning balance. It should be approved anyway if there are no strong other material consideration. There is nothing to tilt.

This point is the single greatest source of error in committee reports – as here In North Tyneside which will probably lead to a deserved JR

The committee report uses a template and as such does not tell members:

a) whether the scheme is in line with the development plan

b) What decision test in the NPPF 11a, or 11d to apply

C) How to apply the planning balence

And as such members would have been completely confused and will lead to an unnecessary JR

Rather than thoughtlessly applying template paras supplied by legal, which might not apply, just write the committee report a, b, c and you will be supplying members the info they need to make a decision, and inspectors too. What is the point of quoting paras of the NPPF that cannot legally apply?