Following the election and the Conservative pledge to revisit the planning system constructed by Mr Prescott's office, some first intimation as to what is to come were revealed to us at a meeting of the Chiltern Society Planning Committee to which we are affiliated. These are still early days but the first impressions are as follows.
Regional plans will be discontinued. In July the South East Plan itself was abolished. The whole concept of central planning and the imposition of the massive housing targets will be replaced by local assessments of local needs. South Bucks District Council had a very low housing target and it has revised it upwards, but this revision should not affect us in Taplow.
Without the South East Plan the role of the Regional Authorities themselves is seriously diminished. This decision is the first step in implementing an election promise made by the coalition, namely of returning power to the local communities. This has to be good news leading as it does to devolution of power downwards and may well mean that the Parish Council will have more say. The need to make the most efficient use of the land still remains an overriding concern owing the our burgeoning population. We are warned that government funding for planning may be seriously cut back and the effect of this still remains to be seen. There is one particular possibility being raised by the government which is a worry in that in an attempt to speed up approval of planning proposals, where there is little local opposition, the developer may offer to pay or recompense affected people for their loss of amenity: that is, effectively, they may buy off the objectors.
We have a key government guidance document called PPS3 which has been modified to remove the minimum build of 30 units per hectare requirement which was the prime developer's incentive to build high density blocks of apartments rather than houses; to designate gardens as greenfield and not developed land; and to no longer require planning permission for change of use from single to multiple dwellings.
The downside in the changes, as far as we can ascertain, is that there are two grounds for appeal: firstly, procedural, in that irregularities were identified in the process of constructing the plan and secondly, showing that the proposal is not in accordance with the Local Plan. South Bucks District's approach to the development of a new Local Plan is still unclear in that the base document, the 'Core Strategy' was an amplification of the District's responsibilities in implementing the South East Plan. A number of councils across the country have already abandoned their version of the Core Strategy following the abolition of the South East Plan but here in South Bucks it is understood that they are still seeking adoption. At the moment of writing it is not clear who will provide this approval. This leaves us somewhat in limbo since it means that we are still bound by the dictates of the original, and now woefully out of date, Local Plan in the old format.
It seems that the Government wishes to create a presumption in favour of sustainable development (whatever that means) and may even make it
unlawful to refuse permission. This is pretty strong stuff since the definition of sustainability is largely a matter of opinion rather than fact, and to make rejection of any planning proposal unlawful simply on such a flimsy premise as sustainability is a precedent to be avoided at all costs.
How the slimmed down and localised planning system will work in practice no-one knows but hopefully it will be a more comprehensible system than the present one. The Local Plan is supposed to be drafted in a flexible manner; however if developers are not to run a coach and horses through it the Local Plan should be relatively watertight. Flexibility and watertightness do not sit comfortable together and there may be interesting times ahead! We can imagine that planning 'legal eagles' and developers might have a field day.
So, for the moment, Localism is the way forward, let the locals decide what's needed and get the country building again.
Eva Lipman and Fred Russell
