Planning law in England and Wales

[purpletigron]

Not as boring as it sounds?

"The Treasury has decided that the planning system is a barrier to business. They want to remove what they see as obstacles – including you and your community getting involved."

http://www.planningdisaster.co.uk/

Comments

Wow

[vixter.livejournal.com]

Haven't these people seen how well that works in Texas?

Although the lack of planning came out differently in Japan. Within one block you may see an apartment house, single family houses, a rice field, and a place with a few shops. Don't forget the electric vending machine that sits out by the road, too. The whole place is like that. The cities of course have higher density stuff but there was a rice field very near Nagoya airport in a prime development location.

[carandol.livejournal.com]

Email duly sent to Chancellor.

We have something of a Situation in Lancaster at the moment. A big area of old buildings, many derelict, right next to the city centre. Council brings in developers Centros-Miller. "What would you like here?" says Centros-Miller. "We're open to your suggestions."

"Well," say the people of Lancaster, "we'd like little shops and cafes for local businesses, mixed in with residential areas and green spaces, all in a friendly, car-free environment. And we'd like you to keep the nice old buildings and incorporate them into the new structures."

"Right," says Centros-Miller. "We hear you. So we'll flatten the lot, put in little chain stores and chain cafes, and as a centre-piece we'll build a huge Debenhams and a multi-storey car park."

The battle continues...

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the system is broken, both in administrative terms and in its fundamental principles.

The administration is opaque, over-complex, and provides little or no linkage between decisions and outcomes, and the 'inputs': the local development strategy and overlapping conservation policies, and the actual merits of the planning application in question.

The reasons for the administrative complexity are sordid and insidious, and they have so far proven intractable: all too often, a planning decision is the source of massive profits - 'planning gain' - in the value of land and commercial property; this profit is not made available to those who suffer loss of amenity, nor are there any direct channels by which the gain is returned to the local community. Yes, there are compensation payments to affected households, and yes, there are legitimised financial incentives in the form of payments for infrastructure improvements to support the new development... But the planning process generates wealth to a privileged few, and this is a recipé for administrative corruption on the one hand, and a severe distortion of local democracy on the other, because local politicians who aren't on the developers' payroll have much to gain from exploiting the intense resentment that planning decisions arouse in the local community - even when there are obvious economic benefits.

Every planning application has these issues - be it a loft extension, a workshop, a new supermarket or a motorway. The gains and losses to not fall in a fair and rational way on all participants, and the predictable result is that back-channels of corruption and perverse political interest have grown up.

There are formal channels by which affected individuals and conservation groups can register their views but, with such an inequitable distribution of the 'planning gain', this channel will always be a negative input. It takes the form of objections, attempts to block the proposal by special interests who may have a worthwhile case - but they are financially-interested parties and single-issue campaign groups, and as such they are deeply undemocratic; arguably, they are even less legitimate that the Home Secretary's fiat over the whole process. At least he's answerable to Parliament, however contemptuous the Executive branch has become of late.

The 'big picture' is just as bad, and far less visible: local, regional and national development plans are not decided by consultation and there are no meaningful channels of democratic feedback - has anyone told you about your Local Development Plan? Without a sense of 'ownership' over the decisions that formalise 'the common good', there is no hope of democratising the scrutiny of individual planning decisions, and the distorted political process that arose from this mess has perverse incentives not to straighten out the tangled planning administration.

The Treasury is stepping in because planning delays are a drag on economic development; worse, they are biased in favour of large corporations, disenfranchising small-to-medium sized businesses and landowners who do not have the resources to push through a seven-year battle against the bureaucrats. 'Joined-Up-Government' has noticed that the companies who generate the most economic growth are being impeded by the planners - and who is going to do anything about it? At least the Treasury is relatively incorruptible, and infinitely more rational than the planning committee of your local authority.