The TCPA’s Director of Policy, Hugh Ellis, argues that the changes set out in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill risk being divisive and counterproductive.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill (PIB) will resume its passage through the House of Lords in early September. The government believes it has been successful in neutralising the opposition of environmental groups through minor amendments to Part three of the Bill.
In reality, that deal is already unravelling; partly because the government changes really are meaningless, and partly due to the growing realisation that the new system will allow the local sites and protected species that people care about be destroyed in a process of crass environmental offsetting.
The end of local democratic accountability?
But whatever pressure is applied to the environment sector, much less attention has been paid to the PIB’s aim of ending local democratic accountability for the majority of planning decisions. The latest changes in the PIB fundamentally reverse the post-war Labour government’s commitment to local decision-making.
The latest changes in the PIB fundamentally reverse the post-war Labour government’s commitment to local decision-making.
Some of the implications relate to further curtailing opportunities for community engagement in major infrastructure projects. Others relate to the creation of Spatial Development Strategies (SDSs) – which do not have a right for the public to be heard at their examination.
A scheme of delegation
But the single most dramatic move is to impose a national scheme of delegation, whereby government will dictate centrally what kinds of applications will be determined by local planning committees, and which ones will be delegated to officers.
The powers are extensive and can be used by this or future governments to completely bypass local democratic control over a wide range of decisions. According to the Bill’s associated consultation papers on new thresholds for housing development, the government is considering delegating all applications of fewer than 49 homes – that is to say, the vast majority of housing applications.
The original working paper1 which proposed bypassing democratic accountability suggested that delegation would apply only to applications that were in accordance with a local plan. This meant that the public at least had a right to be heard when the plan was made. That safeguard was dropped from the most recent consultation2 so that any application, regardless of whether it conforms to the plan and so long as it is fewer than 49 housing units, could be delegated.
This creates a system whereby a planning application for development which has not been considered at any stage of plan-making can be delegated to officers. This bypasses the planning committee and removes the limited opportunity for members of the community to present their case in front of elected members. This means that for the first time since 1947, planning decisions can be determined with no local democratic accountability at plan stage or final approval.
Why it matters
The net effect of the PIB in its current form is to create a system that locks out communities from decisions that affect their lives. The question is, does this matter? There are three reasons why it does.
The first is a matter of democratic principle. The 1947 Town Planning Act considered giving planning decisions to a central land board rather than to local authorities. But politicians at the time recognised that the decisions which have a profound impact on localities are best made at local level. In a democracy, people have a right to expect a measure of control over the decisions which affect their lives. Removing that accountability erodes the basis of our local democracy.
Secondly, strong and meaningful participation shapes better development because it’s based on detailed local knowledge and can meet people’s needs in more meaningful ways.
Finally, removing community voices from legitimate democratic processes is counterproductive for those of us who want to see development take place. The government believes that communities will simply accept being locked out of decisions. But if the government tries to impose development without attempting to generate a meaningful consensus about growth, communities will resist, and they will do so through direct action. Community resistance to the roads programme of the 1980s, fracking, opencast mining and countless other forms of development, shows how politically potent planning campaigns can be. Trying to squash democracy will hurt everyone.
Trying to squash democracy will hurt everyone.
The need for good governance and public trust
What is so regrettable is that the end of democratic planning was avoidable. First, because people were not the cause of ‘delay’ in the system – partly because the opportunities for participation are already so limited; second, because a political consensus about the need for change was there to be seized – not just around genuinely affordable housing that meets local needs, but also about the need to transform our energy systems and make our communities resilient to flood risk.
What is certain is that the government’s determination to ignore the most important part of successful planning reform, good governance and public trust, risks condemning their changes to failure.
