It took some time after I became a parish councillor to realise that planning departments of district councils do not actually do much planning as most of us would understand this term.
In everyday use, the word ‘planning’ means the activities of setting out an objective to be achieved at some defined point in the future, identifying the steps needed to achieve it, and specifying the resources required for each step. Effective planning does a lot more: it investigates the possible threats to the implementation of the plan and the preferred response to them, it estimates the scheduling of the various steps so that resource costs can be minimised, and it considers how the people involved in implementing the plan should be informed and trained. A lot can change after a plan is made, and so delays in implementation may result in action being based on obsolete data. So good management involves rapid planning followed by a timely implementation. There should also be review stages, so that the planning team can check progress and adapt the plan if this is required.
How much does the work of planning departments correspond to this definition? Planning departments have two main activities: they produce a ‘local plan’ for their area, which specifies where and what type of development should take place; and they recommend what should be done about applications to build, modify or demolish buildings. The two activities are related - permission to build is not usually recommended in areas not so specified in the local plan, while the local plan also defines some places as being ‘conservation areas’, in which there are tight restrictions on what can be built and what changes can be made to existing buildings.
The local plan-to-be in my part of England is called the ‘South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP)’ and covers the area of three local councils: Malvern Hills and Wychavon District and the City of Worcester. I call it a ‘plan-to-be’ because it is still being formally examined by a planning inspector appointed by the Government, after which, if he finds the plan ‘sound’, it will have the full legal force of a local plan. But until then, there is actually no local plan in force for the entire area, which means that, according to Government policy, almost anything can be built almost anywhere.
This situation has come about because of the inordinate time taken to complete the SWDP. Work seems to have begun in 2010, followed by publication of a draft in 2011, followed by lots of consultation, followed by a new draft, followed by the planning inspector indicating that insufficient sites for new housing had been included, followed by another revision, followed in 2015 by the current round of ‘examination’ by the planning inspector. This length of time does not seem to be unusual for local plans. However, all this shows that the process of planning has become more important than the actual plan itself.
Why these delays? The problem lies in the way in which planning law now operates. Gaining planning permission to build houses on farmland results in a massive increase in the value of the land. The designation of areas for development in a local plan and the consequent granting of planning permission therefore has the effect of donating large sums of cash to selected individuals. This creates a sense of injustice among those refused planning permission, anger in communities which see their neighbourhoods despoiled, and a temptation for corruption among councillors and planners. As a result, planning has become a prolonged quasi-judicial process, with extensive periods of consultation, appeals, and examinations.
What of the contents of the SWDP? Well it certainly looks like a plan - there are high-sounding statements of objectives, maps, lists of ‘policies’ (ie quasi-laws which define what development can be permitted), and various estimates of population growth. But it fails the definition of ‘planning’ as set out above for several reasons. In particular, it is concerned only with ‘spatial planning’ - the allocation of land for specific purposes. This means that although the SWDP analyses the growing number of older people in South Worcestershire, it has nothing to say about the implications of this trend on local health and social services, the potential impact on the need for public transport, or how local communities can best cope with a larger elderly and infirm population. This is a product of ‘departmentalism’, or the way in which governments partition inter-dependent activities between different departments and agencies. Each of these then avoids trouble by keeping within its own area of responsibility. So healthcare is planned by the various local agencies of the NHS, social care and transport by the County Council, and spatial planning by the district councils. Each then generates their own separate sets of plans and strategies for their particular topic.
There are other problems with this spatial planning approach. By focussing on the allocation of land for specific purposes, local plans include nothing about the appearance of the whole place. So the policies in the SWDP relating to leisure and recreation are concerned with the use of community centres, village halls and playing fields because these all take place on defined bits of land. But the most popular recreational activity were I live (and probably in most of England) is walking in the countryside. This can hardly take place where extensive housing estates are built over fields and where woodlands become thin strips dividing various estates of suburban dwellings.
A further problem is that planning in England has become almost entirely reactive. Planners react to population change (including high rates of immigration), to speculative applications from developers, and, more generally, to the desire of most English people to own a house with a garden in a low-density suburb while also preserving the countryside. This can be seen in the way in which the planning authorities approve individual applications to build. Here is an example from my own village. Our primary school is large by village standards, with 140 pupils. It occupies a site near the parish church (the school was founded by the Church of England) which has gradually been built over as the school has expanded. There is now no room for further expansion on the current site. Expansion will be necessary in the near future because 75 new houses are being built in the village, while some smaller schools in neighbouring parishes will probably be closed and their children transferred to our village school. Fortunately, there is a decent-sized field next to the school that would be suitable for expansion. Good planning would therefore involve purchasing the land for the school or, at the very least, preventing it being used for anything that would impede expansion. However, the land is in private hands, and there is much more money to be made selling land for housing than selling land for school expansion. So the owner duly applied for planning permission for 14 new houses, which the District Council (against the advice of the parish council) has approved.
I do not believe these problems with local planning in England have come about because of any personal shortcomings among our district councillors or our local planners, who I have always found to be capable and willing to help members of the public. But, as I learnt when I was a social worker, the most capable and earnest people can have all their best efforts rendered ineffective when they have to cope within an unworkable system.
See also: The horrors of planning 1
The horrors of planning 2
In everyday use, the word ‘planning’ means the activities of setting out an objective to be achieved at some defined point in the future, identifying the steps needed to achieve it, and specifying the resources required for each step. Effective planning does a lot more: it investigates the possible threats to the implementation of the plan and the preferred response to them, it estimates the scheduling of the various steps so that resource costs can be minimised, and it considers how the people involved in implementing the plan should be informed and trained. A lot can change after a plan is made, and so delays in implementation may result in action being based on obsolete data. So good management involves rapid planning followed by a timely implementation. There should also be review stages, so that the planning team can check progress and adapt the plan if this is required.
How much does the work of planning departments correspond to this definition? Planning departments have two main activities: they produce a ‘local plan’ for their area, which specifies where and what type of development should take place; and they recommend what should be done about applications to build, modify or demolish buildings. The two activities are related - permission to build is not usually recommended in areas not so specified in the local plan, while the local plan also defines some places as being ‘conservation areas’, in which there are tight restrictions on what can be built and what changes can be made to existing buildings.
The local plan-to-be in my part of England is called the ‘South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP)’ and covers the area of three local councils: Malvern Hills and Wychavon District and the City of Worcester. I call it a ‘plan-to-be’ because it is still being formally examined by a planning inspector appointed by the Government, after which, if he finds the plan ‘sound’, it will have the full legal force of a local plan. But until then, there is actually no local plan in force for the entire area, which means that, according to Government policy, almost anything can be built almost anywhere.
This situation has come about because of the inordinate time taken to complete the SWDP. Work seems to have begun in 2010, followed by publication of a draft in 2011, followed by lots of consultation, followed by a new draft, followed by the planning inspector indicating that insufficient sites for new housing had been included, followed by another revision, followed in 2015 by the current round of ‘examination’ by the planning inspector. This length of time does not seem to be unusual for local plans. However, all this shows that the process of planning has become more important than the actual plan itself.
Why these delays? The problem lies in the way in which planning law now operates. Gaining planning permission to build houses on farmland results in a massive increase in the value of the land. The designation of areas for development in a local plan and the consequent granting of planning permission therefore has the effect of donating large sums of cash to selected individuals. This creates a sense of injustice among those refused planning permission, anger in communities which see their neighbourhoods despoiled, and a temptation for corruption among councillors and planners. As a result, planning has become a prolonged quasi-judicial process, with extensive periods of consultation, appeals, and examinations.
What of the contents of the SWDP? Well it certainly looks like a plan - there are high-sounding statements of objectives, maps, lists of ‘policies’ (ie quasi-laws which define what development can be permitted), and various estimates of population growth. But it fails the definition of ‘planning’ as set out above for several reasons. In particular, it is concerned only with ‘spatial planning’ - the allocation of land for specific purposes. This means that although the SWDP analyses the growing number of older people in South Worcestershire, it has nothing to say about the implications of this trend on local health and social services, the potential impact on the need for public transport, or how local communities can best cope with a larger elderly and infirm population. This is a product of ‘departmentalism’, or the way in which governments partition inter-dependent activities between different departments and agencies. Each of these then avoids trouble by keeping within its own area of responsibility. So healthcare is planned by the various local agencies of the NHS, social care and transport by the County Council, and spatial planning by the district councils. Each then generates their own separate sets of plans and strategies for their particular topic.
There are other problems with this spatial planning approach. By focussing on the allocation of land for specific purposes, local plans include nothing about the appearance of the whole place. So the policies in the SWDP relating to leisure and recreation are concerned with the use of community centres, village halls and playing fields because these all take place on defined bits of land. But the most popular recreational activity were I live (and probably in most of England) is walking in the countryside. This can hardly take place where extensive housing estates are built over fields and where woodlands become thin strips dividing various estates of suburban dwellings.
A further problem is that planning in England has become almost entirely reactive. Planners react to population change (including high rates of immigration), to speculative applications from developers, and, more generally, to the desire of most English people to own a house with a garden in a low-density suburb while also preserving the countryside. This can be seen in the way in which the planning authorities approve individual applications to build. Here is an example from my own village. Our primary school is large by village standards, with 140 pupils. It occupies a site near the parish church (the school was founded by the Church of England) which has gradually been built over as the school has expanded. There is now no room for further expansion on the current site. Expansion will be necessary in the near future because 75 new houses are being built in the village, while some smaller schools in neighbouring parishes will probably be closed and their children transferred to our village school. Fortunately, there is a decent-sized field next to the school that would be suitable for expansion. Good planning would therefore involve purchasing the land for the school or, at the very least, preventing it being used for anything that would impede expansion. However, the land is in private hands, and there is much more money to be made selling land for housing than selling land for school expansion. So the owner duly applied for planning permission for 14 new houses, which the District Council (against the advice of the parish council) has approved.
I do not believe these problems with local planning in England have come about because of any personal shortcomings among our district councillors or our local planners, who I have always found to be capable and willing to help members of the public. But, as I learnt when I was a social worker, the most capable and earnest people can have all their best efforts rendered ineffective when they have to cope within an unworkable system.
See also: The horrors of planning 1
The horrors of planning 2
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