What lesson should the Chancellor draw on Planning Approval times in Germany? #NPPF

Her has drawn the wrong lesson.  Today on the Andrew Marr show he said he was ‘deeply frustrated’ at the planning system holding up growth and businesses told him that it ‘only takes a third’ of the time in Germany to get consent for a warehouse as opposed to the UK.

One might point to any measure in the NPPF that will improve processing times by 2/3rds, or even 1 minute as it it is entirely about policy and leading to an appeal led system will completely bog the system down.

One might also ask if the Treasury or the DCLG has commissioned any comparative work to look at what lessons on process can be learned from Germany?  None.

Knowing a fair bit about the German planning system  – which after all is the oldest statutory system in the world – so there are lessons to be learned.  Those lessons though are about the importance of straing planning controls to help assert economic growth not weak ones.

Certainly it does take less time in Germany to obtain consent for a development in a area which allows warehouses, however if the area is not zoned for that use it can take 2-3 years or more to obtain consent.

The reason of course is that Germany has a ‘zoning and subdivision’ based system of planning as opposed to the UK ‘discretionary development management’ based system.  In fact the only jurisdictions in the world which have the ‘uk model’ are as far as I know are England, Scotland, Wales, The Republic of Ireland, The Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney.  Everywhere else uses a ‘zoning and subdivision’ based approach.  Even former English colonies or protectorates were set up by the English with zoning based systems because these systems allow for faster based build outs in rapidly developing areas and are less labour intensive, an essential issue when you had very few planners for a whole country. The English system seems to have arisen as much by accident as design, there was no clear finding as far as I can see in the 1947 Act or the wartime reports that led up to it to reject a zoning based system, though the UK profession seemed to have been influenced by Patrick Geddes’s view that the ‘Prussian’ system was overly rigid, not based on social science based evidence, and did not allow for sensitive building by building interventions.    Rather the main reason I think was that it arose because the regulatory model was plan approval for public health and safety reason and the development control system as we know it seems to have gradually accreted from the 1950s to the 1970s into the system we have today.  A key turning point was the Skeffington (1968) and Dobry (1975) reports.  Before Skeffington development mangement nee control was a one man and a dog affair, I can remember one old time planner telling me how his first job was being handed a huge folder of files for the Brutalist Chalkhill Estate in Wembley (now demolished) and being told to write it up for the next day for approval!  There was very little consultation.  The Skeffington report led to formal consultation but the system soon clogged up and the Dobry report led to much more professionalism and the system we have today (though the key recommendation of procedures split by application complexity have never been introduced in English Law and only in Scotland in their 2008 planning act).  With the ending of 60s type comprehensive development, the slowing down of New Towns, and the inability to get on with plan making because of the fiasco of local government reorganisation in the early 1970s and the disruption caused by the introduction of structure plans there was a mass shift in the profession from filling in inks on zoning maps to case by case development control.

Germany- or rather Prussia –  introduced zoning laws in the 1870s.  Although most of the world knows zoning from the system that America adapted.  In an American style zoning and subdivision system if there is a zoning plan you have what is know as an ‘as of right’ ability to develop the land for a specific use specified in the zoning  plan.  You will also need consent to subdivide land to create a ‘plat’ – that is a legally defined area where a building can be built on which is likely when the plot is sold to become a separate hereditiment.  The US took the tools of Prussian zoning but applied to it much more rigid riles to separate out land uses, and critically at the beginning of the 20th Century, to segregate areas by class and race. On top of the ‘as of right’ zoning there may be conditions upon it and in some zones requirements for development review/design review, when it becomes much more like ‘development control’ though crucially the process for control depends on the sensitivity of the site and in less sensitive areas they is likely to be no additional controls at all.  There may also be ‘bulk zoning’ controls such as Floor Area Ratios maxima and/or minima.    In some jurisdiction, notably in Vancouver and some Australian states zoning has developed into a hybrid system more recognisably like UK development control.

The Prussian system by contrast if you read its regulations or plans was much more about civic design, it is based on the division of areas by road lines and building lines, ‘zones’ and ‘plats’ were defined by these and not vice versa.  Its mainspring was orderly development, as landowners did not know how to divide land for sale on the edge of rapidly growing cities until they knew the layout of public roads and public works, and neither did the state or local government in reverse.

Even today the German system is more to do with urban design, indeed there are two tiers of zoning, conceptual zoning at a city or town level,Flaecbennutzzmgsplan,  known as an F-Plan, – completed only every 10-15 years, You can think of it as a function plan. and much more detailed Bebauungsplans – with an omolut over the last a – often known as just a B-Plan – can zoom down to Block Plan level – at 1:500 or 1:1000 scale.   This detailed planning was introduced in 1960 and many parts of Germany still have old style and less detailed plans.   Detailed block level plans only exist for a minority of areas, typically the most sensitive and most under pressure areas.  If not there will only be conceptual zoning at an area scale.  These differ from American style zoning however as a range of uses can be permitted within each (nationally defined) zoning category.  So for example a residential zoning can have ‘local’ uses such as neighbourhood shops, but not large supermarkets.  There is also a general ‘fitting in’ rule so if an area has a mix of uses that can continue.  So you tend to get much more zoning for mixed uses.  The detailed B-Plans contain details that would shock many UK planners, containing highly detailed rules on matters such as access points, fire access, set backs, plot coverage – they are design led exercises, similar to form based zoning.  The notation is standard nationally but their is considerable local discretion on drawing them up, rather than an obession with just centralised planning or localism German planning is based on the ‘cross current principle’ , top down and bottom up processes influencing each other.

Now with F-plans often being out of date there are many requests from developers that the municipality creates a B-Plan, and this process can take time – at least six months.  If the F-Plan needs amending this can take years.

Since B-plans are created for future development, some areas of a city do not have one. In these areas, small-scale new development generally is allowed if it is similar to the current context according to the ‘fitting in’ principle.

Diagram Showing how the Many Controls in a 'B-Plan' are oganised

A B-Plan

So if you are proposing a warehouse in an area with a B-Plan and in line with that B-Plan you will get in done in 1/3rd of the time – if not you will likely take longer than England. The German Planning system is frontloaded, depending on up front consultation on regional and city plans and detailed urban designs – so the formal building permit is a formality. Osbourne is comparing chalk and cheese. Of course it has taken 140 years of plan making to get to this point. The real lesson from Germany is to be be pro-planning and pro-plan making – that way you get form documents that can be used to aid and guide investment.

There are many ways to take the best of this system and apply in in England within existing legislative tools – local development orders – which I have to say where my idea and I persuaded Mike Ash in 2003 to introduce them, influenced by German B-Plans, can and are being used in enterprise zones and to introduce form based zoning of masterplans so that the reserved matters stage becomes much quicker and simpler.