The Planning Reform Bill and white paper will be published shortly. Roisin Wilmott looks at what to expect and the implications for housing supply
Planning, for many, is the answer to everything. To some, it will solve obesity, traffic congestion, the housing crisis, protect the great crested newt and a plethora of other problems; to others it stops development or allows too much in the wrong place. Understanding that all of these perspectives exist helps you appreciate that planning attempts to balance all of the competing demands on the use of land for the long-term good of the public.
The Welsh Government has been developing a national planning policy framework that is tailored to the needs of Wales and this is a continually evolving process. Primary legislative powers now give an opportunity to develop a system that can service our policy ambitions. The Welsh Government has been commissioning research to support its evidence-based approach to formulating the Planning Reform Bill and accompanying white paper, both of which are due to be published in draft for consultation at the end of 2013. The Independent Advisory Group (IAG) was the most wide-ranging piece of evidence to feed into this process. All of the evidence completed to date is available to view on the Welsh Government’s website.
What will the bill deal with?
The Bill will make changes to the planning system: the nuts and bolts of how it operates and who does what. Some describe this as the ‘skeleton’ of the system. Planning policy is not included in legislation: that would make it inflexible and unresponsive and planning policy
can be thought of as the ‘muscle’. Instead the Bill could deal with how policy is set, what structure there is and the process for determining planning applications. The white paper will be able to discuss the measures in the Bill within the context of a wider set of proposals that don’t necessarily need legislation to be taken forward.
We don’t yet have an indication of any specifics that will be included in the Bill; work is still going on behind the scenes. However, given the evidence published to date, there hasn’t been a call for a wholesale radical change to the system – whether that is the planning application system or the local development plan system. John Davies MBE, chair of the IAG, described there to be a need for an ‘evolution of the original 1947 planning system’.
What does this mean for the supply of housing?
The Bill and white paper won’t make changes to national planning policy or of course local planning policy with regard to housing. There is a piece of research underway by Arup and Fortismere Associates on behalf of the Welsh Government to examine the barriers to the delivery of timely decisions for housing developments. This may make recommendations on changes in the system to ensure that applications for housing development are made in a timely manner. The study is due to report in the autumn.
As many of you will be all too aware, there are constant discussions about where housing should be located on a regional/ sub-regional basis. Earlier this summer, RTPI Cymru pulled together a group of stakeholders to build consensus around some big issues raised by the IAG report. The very positive meeting agreed that there is a need for strategic planning on a scale between national and local, though not necessarily in all of Wales, to discuss some themes such as housing, transport and economic development. This strategic level would need statutory underpinning to be effective, requiring accountable collaboration to produce agreed documents and action plans. We wait to see if this will included in the proposals.
Infrastructure investment
The role of planning is to direct development to the right locations, integrated with transport, particularly walking and cycling opportunities to promote healthy living. As a society, we can no longer support isolated developments without services and effective infrastructure investment.
The culture of the planning system, which, using the analogy of the body, can be described as its ‘character’, cannot be dealt with by the Bill either. But a positive approach to planning is essential. This isn’t just about the approach taken by local planning authorities, working cross-departmentally within a proactive democratic structure, promoting long-term solutions, but also needs developers to work collaboratively and understand the long-term impacts of their proposals and of local communities in accepting appropriate developments.
We now need to wait just a few more months until the publication of the draft Bill and white paper. It is important that we then constructively examine the proposals and feed in our views, remembering what the Bill is able to do, and what should be done through other mechanisms.
Roisin Willmott is national director of RTPI Cymru