Statue of the Last Conservation Officer in Birmingham

2050 and the Tour Guide waved her umbrella over to the reclining Bronze figure in Chamberlain square.

‘For many years this statue was wrongly thought to be of an economist, but now we know it to be of the last Conservation Officer in Birmingham and England – Steven King’

‘Who wrote the Shining?’ Asked the little girl.

‘No that Stephen with a p, they spealt funny in olden times.’

‘It is clear from the archaic clothes from another age and the use of pen and paper rather than electronic pads that this is the new extinct and past obsessed profession known as the conservation officer.’

‘The statue is to be melted down next week to fund another year of the tourist information service.’

The tour guide moved on

‘Now here used to be the Town hall’.

 

Labour Will Scap New Homes Bonus – But Replacement will Offer No Incentives to Housebuilding

Buried deep within the public spending announcements this week is that Hilary Benn will scrap the New Homes Bonus and replacement it with a ‘more equitable’ arrangement of funding.  This is capitulation to a campaign from UNISON that it redistributes to wealthy authorities.

Yes the New Homes Bonus is a hopelessly badly targeted scheme that grants money to areas if they have high demand irrespective if they actually lift a finger or bust a gut to improve housing supply.  But it was a replacement for measures designed to put plans in place.  The ‘replacement’ will get swallowed up by adult social services I guess or simply be a cover for a cut making the likely cuts to planning under any Labour government worse than the 47% under the coalition.

What they should be doing is offering a grant based on advance payment of DCLG grant pro rata population per unit allocated in development plans (50% on plan submission, 50% on adoption) which LPAs could then use to borrow against for infrastructure.   This I suspect would not breach treasury rules as the 25% (say) affordable housing of units completed would save on the astronomical costs of homelessness and housing benefit.

But seriously is Labour not offering any carrot to positivity on new housing supply or just the stick of the Lyons review duty to meet need?

Greater Sheffield – No Elected Mayor No Strategic Planning Powers

Ben Harrison Centre for Cities

We have learned in the weeks following the announcement of the Manchester deal that the acceptance of a directly elected city-region leader was a non-negotiable issue for the Chancellor and the Treasury. Their position has been clear from the outset that for substantial new strategic planning and economic development powers to be transferred to the city-region level, the existing combined authority arrangements would need to be strengthened by a directly elected Mayor….

The same cannot be said of the current deal in place for the Sheffield city-region. Although featuring a number of encouraging commitments to explore new working arrangements between local leaders and National Government, the city-region is not being handed new powers or direct control over substantial revenue streams or the critical drivers of growth on anything like the same scale as Greater Manchester. There is, for example, no Sheffield equivalent of the reformed ‘Earnback’ infrastructure investment arrangements, nor devolved transport budgets, nor the housing investment fund that Greater Manchester stands to benefit from.

The primary reason for this appears to be that an agreement could not be reached locally over the establishment of a city-region-wide Mayor akin to the London or new Greater Manchester models. Indeed, when assessing the potential for further devolution, the document states that “Sheffield City Region will consider different options for improving local governance and accountability. In response to any further agreements on local governance, Government will consider what further powers and funding could be devolved to Sheffield City Region over time”.

Crystal Palace Needs to Go Gorky Park not Freeschool

It was right that the Mayor of London took over the fragmented and neglected Crystal Palace Park. The LDA developed a restoration masterplan for the Paxton landscape which has now been partially funded and is in the process of being implemented.  Uncertainty surrounds two sites, the former Crystal Palace, where an architectural masterplan is soon to be launched under Arups aegis for ZRG groups plan to rebuild the Place. I wont be concerned with that here.  The other uncertain site is the national athletics centre, now redundant after the Olympic Site (at least as a national athletics centres) and Grade II listed.  The Swimming pool site and surrounds are to be restored, great, but rather bizarrely Boris has consulted on plans to develop within the sports centre structure a free school and college.  This seems to stem more from Boris desire to use the limited GLA landholding for free school where he can rather than a rational consideration of the best use of the site. Boris is consulting on four options for the outdoor sports arena. Two would lead to the track being demolished altogether, and two would see the only the stands removed. All options include building a college and a free school.

Schools however well designed will always need to secure their perimeter.  They are not an appropriate use on Green Belt or MOL.  MOL policy in the London plan is now stricter than Green Belt since the NPPF came out as you cannot simply develop inappropriate uses on previously developed sites if you meet the openness test.  There is still a presumption against development.

Large sports uses even if not open to the public are acceptable uses because they are synergetic to the open space.  By contrast you only put schools on MOL if you have nowhere else to put them.

A good parallel with Crystal Palace is Gorky Park in Moscow – with a masterplan by London’s LDA design. Originally designed as a constructionist public, left to episodic development and neglect and now restored.  There is an excellent piece on the restoration in todays Guardian.

Following the wildly popular transformation of Gorky Park, presided over by “Moscow’s hipster culture minister” Sergey Kapkov, the renovation of the city’s public spaces has become a priority for those in the municipal government. In 2011, the Soviet-era park underwent a multimillion dollar revamp; out went the rusting funfair rides and passed-out drunks and in came ping-pong tables, a contemporary art gallery, free Wi-Fi and a dozen new cafes and bars. For the first time in years, Muscovites felt as if their city was becoming liveable.

This, and similar projects such as the Berlin Templehof park plan, should be the model.  A creative fun place.  There is always a danger than Crystal Palace is treated with high Victorian mannerism (for example locala who turned their noses up at being able to buy a drink there!) rather than the palace and park of fun it was meant to be – with colourful dinosaurs, family’s flocking their and Nikki Lauder and James Hunt bombing around their in Minis.

The school plans by CSM Strategic, with FMG Consulting and GT Architects are deathly dull and not up to the standard we should accept for this London wide resource.   The school would be nothing more than a concrete fortress.

What I think should happen is that the former athletics track should become a public square (which is now the plan for some of Brazils white elephgant world cup stadiums) around which are raked active frontage creative uses in the former stands.

Irish Style “Special Development Zones’ – A Case for them in England?

The recent Autumn statement included a clause for planning reforms to ensure ‘the principle of development’ only need be established once.  There was great debate over what that meant,  Some thought it meant a return to ‘redline’ style approvals, as advocated in the Lyons review. I thought not because:

-Redline approvals were always granted by the same legal provision we have now – outline approvals;

-Today with EA etc. it would be very difficult to submit large scale applications with just a redline, and

-Even with reforms to reduce the amount of supporting information it still would not ensure a single stage approval for the principle of development, you have still the local plan zoning and the outline approval.

So in a previous post I offered my theory that this was a  further move towards a continental style ‘zoning and subdivision system’.

I have long argues on this blog that such systems manage to deliver more housing (when their is proper investment in them) in other jurisdictions.  I don’t think this hasn’t escaped the attention of the DCLG either.

Now what options exist for reform?  Well we could simply rip up the planning act and translate the Dutch one for example.  No-one would advocate that.

Secondly their already is a model on the UK statute books, the ability of New Town Development Corporations to grant consent according a planning scheme under section 3.  Whilst the New Towns act 1946 can and should be updated the problem is it was drafted in advance of comprehensive planning legislation and sits rather uneasily within it. I dont think we want to go back to a system of where local plans are simply black holes where development corporations are designated or worse only regulate changes of use and extensions to buildings already granted in New Town areas.

There is a useful model which is worth studying which is based in part on the model of the New Towns Act but embeds it within a plan-led system.  The Irish ‘Special Development Zone’ regime introduced under their 2000 Planning and Development Act (as Amended 2013) part IX clauses 165-171 are relevant.  The powers in summary allow a ‘development agency’ to designate a SDZ and then prepare a planning scheme for the area for approval by the planning authority which then becomes part of the development plan for the area.  This avoids the clear conflict of interest of Nw Town Development Agencies approving their own masterplans.

The key operative clause is section 170.

a planning authority shall grant permission in respect of an application for a development in a strategic development zone where it is satisfied that the development, where carried out in accordance with the application or subject to any conditions which the planning authority may attach to a permission, would be consistent with any planning scheme in force for the land in question, and no permission shall be granted for any development which would not be consistent with such a planning scheme.

This is pretty much exactly the same as an application for a No Objection Certificate in a zoning and Subdivision jurisdiction.

The clause is clear and straightforward – though a little blunt to English planners used to a disctionary regime.  It establishes the principal of development once and voids the pre plan-led archaisms of the 1946 act.  One problem with the Irish wording, it can be seen as a presumption against development where there is no exact conformity.  I would suggest the following instead

–Conforms =shall grant permission

–Substantially conforms =may having regard to the development plan and other material considerations

–Substantially non conforms =shall refuse.

The Irish regime was originally crafter to give the IDA a one stop shop regime to attract inward investment, but more recently to aid regeneration of Dublin Dock.  Here you can see a recently submitted SDZ scheme which is pretty similar in form to a LDO, though as part of the development plan rather than the development order. I think these are easier for planner  (as opposed to lawyers) to draft and allow for more discretionary wording.  I think though with more judicious editing it can be a quarter of its length and far more visual and exciting.  The Grangegorman SDZ I think is more professional and a better read (note this is wider than a SDZ scheme and includes regeneration sstrategy requirements under other legislation – it is a spatial plan not just a land use plan).  This was created following an international competition and extensible consultation.

I would strongly recommend these be studied by the DCLG for Enterprise Zones and Housing Zones (where LDOs are not always the best approach, LDOs are mush better for small changes to an already masterplanned scheme – SDZ are better at defining a masterplan or development framework) and Garden Cities. Another lesson I think that can be learned from Grangegorman is that the legislation needs to be flexible eniugh to craft a proper sptial plan (a lesson lost in England).