Proposals to redevelop the former Filton Airfield on the outskirts of Bristol with a major new housing scheme have been approved by South Gloucestershire council.
The development is part of a wider plan to build 5,700 new homes on the edge of the conurbation to meet increasing demand.
The 134-hectare site near Cribbs Causeway is owned by BAE Systems. The plans include provision for up to 2,675 homes, business units, a 120-bed hotel, a secondary school, two primary schools, two nurseries, a park and a supermarket.
BAE Systems has insisted that the project will be an “employment hub” generating 7,785 new jobs over time.
Plans also include a museum to house Concorde 216, which has been parked uncovered at the airfield since its final supersonic flight in 2003.
Planning committee chairman Trevor Jones said the scheme would “bring many benefits to South Gloucestershire”.
However, there have been concerns about increased traffic in an already congested area. Bristol North West MP Charlotte Leslie warned last year that the wider Filton/Patchway housing plans were “designed for gridlock and economic stagnation”.
But Bristol City Council, which is among those consulted on the application, says “significant progress” has now been made on traffic issues and the vexed question of access to public transport.
View more information on the South Gloucestershire council website
Roger Milne
Councils wary of NPPF viability test and affordable homes
A majority of English councils believe the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)’s viability test has hampered their ability to deliver affordable housing.
That’s the main finding of a survey compiled for a research report jointly published by the Association for Public Sector Excellence (APSE) and the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA).
According to the survey, some 54 per cent of authorities polled said the policy had negatively impacted social and affordable housing provision, against 14 per cent who said it had helped. The remainder was undecided.
The report,’ Housing the Nation: Ensuring councils can deliver more and better homes’, calls for local government to get a stronger voice in the delivery of new homes, with a beefed-up role in co-coordinating land assembly and planning, plus greater powers to lead development.
The two bodies recommend that the NPPF viability test should be amended to allow the wider economic benefits of new social and affordable housing to be considered.
View the press release on APSE’s website
Study on new development impact on house prices
A new study has shown that new house building appears to have little discernible and consistent impact on local house price patterns.
That was the conclusion of a report by researchers at the London School of Economics jointly commissioned by Barratt Developments, the largest house builder in the UK, and the NHBC Foundation.
The research examined the impact on local house prices of eight recent residential Barratt developments. The selected sites all involved fewer than 300 units and were substantially completed within the last five years. Spread across the South and Midlands these sites are typical of housing development outside city centres or wholly rural areas.
The aim was to exemplify ‘ordinary’ developments mainly on sites where there had been objections (some significant) at planning permission stage prior to development.
The research concluded that prices did not decline as a result of development, although sometimes there may be some limited impact during construction. The researchers found almost no evidence of longer-term negative impacts on house prices in the area of the new development.
Government housing taskforce announced
The Prime Minister’s Office has announced the membership of a newly established Cabinet-level Housing Implementation Taskforce.
The focus of the task force will be on increasing the supply of new housing, helping first-time buyers onto the property ladder, implementing Right to Buy and progressing public sector land sales.
The new taskforce’s membership includes Communities Secretary Greg Clark, Business Secretary Sajid Javid, Environment Secretary Liz Truss, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Letwin, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Greg Hands, Paymaster General Matt Hancock, planning and housing minister Brandon Lewis and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for NHS Productivity Lord Prior of Brampton.
Like the other Whitehall taskforces, it will report to the Prime Minister and Cabinet on a regular basis.
View more information on GOV.UK
London round-up
- London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced he is inviting developers to transform an empty piece of industrial land in Rainham, Essex into a new neighbourhood with nearly 2,000 new homes and a train station. The 29-hectare site in Beam Park, bisected by the Beam River, is one of the largest areas of land earmarked for new development. The site is currently owned by the Mayor of London and the last major site released for development.
- MEC London Property (General Partner) Limited has submitted a planning application to the City of London Corporation for an office led redevelopment. The plans involve the demolition of existing property and the construction of two new buildings, one of which will be a 40-storey tower at a 0.45 hectare site between Bishopsgate and Leadenhall Street.
- Wandsworth Council has approved plans for a residential-led mixed-use development of the former Battersea gasholder site located within the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area. The applicant is St William Homes LLP, which is a joint venture between National Grid and The Berkeley Group Holdings. The gas holders on the two-hectare site will be replaced with 12 new blocks ranging from 7–26 storeys high and providing 839 new homes.
- Camden Council has submitted a planning application for the new council homesneeded to replace those set to be lost to High Speed 2 (HS2) on Regent’s Park Estate. Over 200 homes in Camden are earmarked for demolition due to HS2, many of them occupied by council tenants and leaseholders.
- Tessa Jowell, Labour’s candidate to be the next London Mayor, has pledged to build more new affordable homes in the capital by establishing a new housing body, Homes for Londoners, which will be a housing equivalent to Transport for London. Homes for Londoners will act as a developer and will be led by a Homes Commissioner.
- Architect Robert Adam’s controversial proposals to demolish Athlone House in Highgate have been rejected by a planning inspector. The inspector said the plan to replace the Victorian villa with a new, classically inspired eight-bedroom mega-mansion would have been out of place with other buildings in Hampstead.
Minecraft aids Dundee waterfront planning
Dundee school pupils have put forward their designs for the future of the city’s waterfront using the popular videogame Minecraft in a project led by the city council and the university.
Warwick local plan hits the buffers
The planning inspector examining Warwick district council’s local plan has told the planning authority that the housing provision set out in its draft local plan is “not positively prepared, justified, effective or consistent with national policy. It is not sound.”
The inspector’s stance has dismayed the council which has been effectively told either to non-adopt the plan or withdraw it. The inspector argued that suspending the examination would be inappropriate in the circumstances.
View the press release on the Warwick District Council website
Legal round-up
- US billionaire Donald Trump has lost his latest legal challenge over an offshore wind farm project near his Scottish golf resort.
- The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames’s enforcement officers have removed and destroyed illegally moored boats and also removed unauthorised structures on the riverside. The action came as part of a wider joint initiative between neighbouring planning authorities bordering the River Thames which involved both the Metropolitan Police and the Environment Agency.
- A basement construction company has been fined £15,000 after pleading guilty at Hammersmith Magistrates’ Court to 11 charges of the display of unauthorised advertising boards and shrouds at two properties in west London.
- Plans for a new four-storey building in the centre of St Albans will have to be reconsidered after the owners of an adjacent block of flats won a court battle at London’s High Court to quash planning permission because of ‘overshadowing’.
- CPRE Kent has begun legal action over Dover district council’s approval of proposals for 500 new homes at Western Heights and Farthingloe in an AONB.
Norfolk urban extension approved
South Norfolk Council has given outline approval for an urban extension of over 900 new homes, which would double the size of the village of Easton near Norwich.
The proposals, which include a primary school extension, village hall, a green and a shop, have been drawn up by a consortium of local landowners that include Easton and Otley College, the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association, Norwich Diocesan Board of Finance and the Rampton Property Trust. Just over a quarter of the new dwellings would be affordable homes.
There is local opposition to the scheme because of its impact on the existing settlement and fears over flooding. Historic England is concerned that the proposals would harm the setting of a Grade 1-listed church.
View more information about the development
Brownfield land eco-advice
A group of environmental charities has published guidance on what constitutes brownfield land of high environmental value for wildlife.
The charities hope the advice will make it easier for local authorities to safeguard such land from re-development when they produce brownfield development land registers, a statutory requirement under government policy proposals.
A total of eight organisations, all members of Wildlife Link, are behind the advice initiative.
Northumberland solar farm
Northumberland county council has proposed an ambitious renewable energy programme beginning with plans for a 10-hectare solar farm at Ashington on the edge of the 135-hectare Ashington Community Woodland.
Birmingham office tower
Proposals for the tallest office block currently planned outside London are back on the table for Birmingham city centre.
The scheme would see the old 22-storey NatWest Tower demolished and a £60m, 26-storey office block erected in its place in Colmore Row.
The planned new landmark would also include a rooftop restaurant offering 360-degree views across the city and a winter garden and café at street level.
Cornish food enterprise zone
Farming minister George Eustice has confirmed that funding linked to a new government-backed Food Enterprise Zone (FEZ) initiative will help boost Cornwall’s first dedicated food village at Norton Barton Farm, near Bude.
Cornwall is one of 17 areas in England awarded a share of £830,000 of government funding to develop a FEZ, which is built around a Local Development Order to overcome barriers to planning permission and fast-track the expansion of food and farming businesses within the zone.
The Department for Communities and Local Government has just published new guidance detailing changes in the methodology it is using to produce land use change statistics. The guidance sets out the changes and the effects on the data produced.
View the press release on GOV.UK
RTPI bursary scheme
The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has launched a Future Planners bursary scheme initially worth £1,000 per student.
This initiative, which involves 16 universities across the UK and Ireland, is designed to encourage more students, particularly from related subjects such as law and geography, to study planning at Masters level. The scheme is also supported by a number of employers.
View the press release on the RPTI website
‘Black spider’ letters
A freedom of information request from the Guardian followed up by a legal challenge, has finally led to the publication of some of the detail from the so-called ‘black spider’ correspondence between Prince Charles and former government ministers.
An outline of some of the material has been published on the Department of Communities and Local Government website.
This confirms that the heir to the throne intervened over eco-towns, affordable rural housing and regeneration and heritage issues.
View the Prince of Wales correspondence with government departments
Bicester garden town feasibility studies
The government has confirmed a £1.47m grant to Cherwell District Council to fund feasibility studies for its Bicester Garden Town project. The project planned to deliver a new settlement of 13,000 homes in two phases.
The first will be in line with the local plan, which outlined the delivery of 10,000 homes at north-west Bicester, Graven Hill and south-west Bicester between 2014 and 2031.
The funding will be used for studies looking at issues such as green spaces, transport links and the possibility of a new motorway exit south of junction nine on the M40.
View the press release on the Cherwell District Council website
River Teme makeover
A multi-million pound plan to restore the River Teme has been backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). It has approved a grant of £204,000 to allow the Severn Rivers Trust, an environment charity, to apply for a £3m grant for its Springs of Rivers Project.
The project aims to conserve more than 200 kilometres of the river and build a visitor centre. The river extends across four counties (Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Powys) and the trust said the project would cover the entire length of the river, “from source to Worcester”.
Read the press release on the HLF website
Seaside wrangles in Brighton and Portsmouth
A row has broken out about the future of two tourist attractions on Brighton seafront where the proposed i360 observation tower is due to open next summer.
The developers of the observation tower are objecting to the fact that the owners of the Brighton Wheel, also on the seafront, have applied for permission to stay another five years after arguing there’s sufficient business for both. The team behind the tower doesn’t agree and claim the wheel will be unfair competition.
Meanwhile, Portsmouth city council is reviewing plans to paint a major landmark in the colours of a rival football team.
Last week the council announced a £3.5m sponsorship deal with the Emirates airline which would have seen the Spinnaker Tower painted red and white, which happen to be the colours of Hampshire rival Southampton FC.
Following an online petition against the colour scheme the Conservative leader of the local authority Donna Jones has announced a review of the plan “to better reflect the city’s own football team, the Royal Navy and local heritage”.
Clive Dutton RIP
Clive Dutton OBE, formerly one of England’s most high-profile local authority planners, has died aged 62 after a long battle with cancer. Before starting his own urban regeneration consultancy he played a key role in the planning and regeneration of east London’s Newham in the run-up to the Olympics and between 2005 and 2009 he was instrumental in establishing a strategic framework for Birmingham city centre.
Roger Milne
As you may have noticed, the Planning Portal suffered two significant site outages this week. One on Monday afternoon and another on Tuesday morning.
We can only apologise for the inconvenience this will have caused you and your customers. We pride ourselves on our customer service and feel we’ve let you down on these two instances.
We are currently investigating the detailed reasons why these outages happened with our technical supplier. The initial findings are that the system that manages the user log-in failed and this caused other areas of the solution to fall over.
Update: 17:30 – the site issues have been resolved. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.
We are currently experiencing technical issues on the Planning Portal website.
The site needs to be taken offline to resolve these.
We anticipate the Portal site will be unavailable for up to two hours (from 15:30).
We are very sorry for the inconvenience this inevitably causes you.
Updates will follow on here and on Twitter.
Planning applications submitted online in May totalled 41,648. Once again that’s an increase on 2014 numbers – this time up 13% on the same month last year.
For the maths wizzes out there, you will have no doubt already worked out that this means around 2,000 applications are going through the Portal every work day to LPAs across England and Wales.
Lord Kerslake, formerly the top civil servant in the Department of Communities and Local Government, told ministers this week that two new key Conservative policies were wrong in principle and practice and threatened to reduce the stock of affordable housing.
Cross-bencher Lord Kerslake, also a one-time chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency and head of the Home Civil Service during the time of the Coalition, attacked the government’s proposals to extend right to buy to housing associations and to force local authorities to sell off their highest-value properties as they become vacant to pay for the discounts to be offered to tenants.
Lord Kerslake, who is now chairman of social housing provider Peabody Estates, argued that housing association stock could not be considered as government assets for sale as the associations were mainly private and mostly charitable bodies,
In his maiden speech on Tuesday evening Lord Kerslake said: “There is a good case for local authorities being able selectively to sell off some of their high-value properties to reinvest.
“However, a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach is contrary to the spirit of greater devolution and will bring with it unintended consequences. In London, for example, the top third by value of properties will be concentrated in the central London boroughs of Wandsworth, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, which stand to lose nearly two-thirds of their stock over time.”
The cross-bencher commented : “There are also real doubts in my mind as to whether the receipts from the sale of high-value local authority properties can simultaneously cover the cost of the discount, the re-provision of new affordable homes and a contribution to the brownfield regeneration fund.”
He added: “At the very least this should be subject to a full independent financial review. Ultimately, the route to more home ownership, which I support passionately, is to build more homes. There is a real risk that these polices will distract from that vital, urgent task.”
During the Lords debate on the Queen’s Speech opposition peers lined up to remind ministers that as well as housing associations the CBI, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, rating agencies and London Mayor and Tory MP Boris Johnson were all critical of the proposals and concerned that housing supply would be adversely affected.
View more information on the Lords debates on the Queen’s Speech
Roger Milne
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has confirmed that the HS2 high-speed rail project as well as investment in new transport infrastructure as part of the Northern Powerhouse initiative is key priorities for the new administration.
In a keynote speech in Leeds he stressed that rolling out a national high-speed rail network – both HS2 and East-to-West links – would be at the centre of the government’s plans.
The HS2 hybrid bill committee will restart Parliamentary scrutiny of the bill for phase one – between London and Birmingham – shortly.
The government will announce the way forward for phase two from Birmingham to Leeds and to Manchester later this year. During this Parliament the government will also make significant strides in getting HS2 to the north sooner and maximising the regeneration benefits.
The Transport Secretary confirmed that legislation would be prepared in this Parliament, looking at bringing HS2 to Crewe faster than planned, subject to further analysis and decisions on the preferred route.
Work will also continue to look at ways of using the HS2 line to introduce faster regional services and at the case for speeding up construction of the Sheffield to Leeds section.
The government will also progress plans to transform east to west rail connectivity with high-speed services linking Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and Hull, radically reducing travel times, and increasing frequencies.
As well the government is making major improvements to the A1, M62, M1 and A555 and looking at building a road tunnel under the Peak District; building the Northern Hub to transform the rail network across the region; introducing new trains on the East Coast Mainline and adding capacity for 44 million more rail passengers.
In a separate move Manchester Airports Group has announced a decade-long £1bn plan to improve facilities at Manchester Airport which will include the expansion of Terminal 2, self-service check-in facilities and a larger security hall.
The work will also include improvements to Terminal 3 as well as create new food and retail outlets.
View the press release on GOV.UK
Roger Milne
The cities and local government devolution bill has been introduced in the Lords and will have its second reading next week (8 June).
The legislation will pave the way for cities and counties around the country to gain new wide-ranging powers an let combined authorities control transport, housing, strategic planning, health, social care and skills training to boost growth.
Communities Secretary Greg Clark said: “We’re determined to end the hoarding of power in Whitehall and rebalance our economy – unlocking local flair so our cities, towns and counties can reach their full potential and become their own economic powerhouses up and down the country.
He added: “This bill will deliver the historic Greater Manchester devolution agreement and set the wheels in motion for other areas to follow.”
Northern powerhouse minister James Wharton said: “The new powers will give Greater Manchester the reins on decision making over important local priorities, including economic development, local transport, housing, skills and vital public services like health and social care.
“It will also allow for the creation of an elected mayor for the whole of Greater Manchester’s combined authority area. The new mayor would have a range of powers and act as the police and crime commission for the area.”
Responsibility for cities policy has transferred from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the administration told Parliament on Monday.
There has already been devolution in the form of City Deals, Growth Deals and the more recent devolution agreements between the government and Greater Manchester, Leeds City Region and Sheffield City Region.
View more information on the cities and local government devolution bill
Roger Milne
Shropshire Council has denied media claims that councillor concern over the planning authority’s delegation regime has prompted a review of the committee and delegation procedures.
The council has an adopted scheme of delegation as part of its constitution and currently delegates around 94 per cent of planning applications to officers. This is a figure in line with near neighbour unitary councils and many others nationally, the council claimed.
The local authority has acknowledged that there have been “some complaints about a limited number of schemes recently that have been delegated rather than referred to committee”. However, it insisted that the delegation criteria has been applied in each case.
The council’s planning services operations manager Ian Kilby said: “The important point is that planning committee continues to deal with those applications that are complex or contentious and that will remain the case in the future.”
The council has set up a so-called ‘task and finish’ group to look at the delivery of the planning committee process “to identify what will work best for Shropshire, not as quoted in the Shropshire Star because there had been complaints about the level of delegation,” said Kilby.
To date the task and finish group has met on two occasions. “It will be reviewing the practices of other similar council’s and include stakeholder engagement to determine the best outcome for Shropshire” added Kilby.
Roger Milne
The Welsh Government has started consulting on how its proposed new regime for Developments of National Significance (DNS) will work. In essence this is a Welsh version of the Planning Act 2008 regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs).
The administration’s planning bill introduces the concept and a consultation paper just published is canvassing views on thresholds for proposed schemes, how secondary consents may be submitted for consideration and determined alongside an application for DNS and how pre-application notification, advice and consultation will be undertaken.
Under the proposed new regime Welsh ministers will determine proposals at or above a specific threshold for various categories of infrastructure development, many of which are energy- based.
Listed are gas storage and terminal projects, new airports, new rail links, rail freight interchanges, new dams and reservoirs, major new pipelines, wastewater treatment plants, hazardous waste facilities, water transfer schemes and power plants.
Currently the proposal covers plants of between 25 and 50 megawatts in capacity. In future this threshold will increase to 350 megawatts, once other legislation is passed.
Angus Walker, Bircham Dyson Bell’s infrastructure guru pointed out: “Although the DNS system mirrors the Planning Act regime, note that it is still technically a grant of planning permission, whereas development consent under the Planning Act 2008 is different to and instead of planning permission.
“This means that it has to work within the conventional town and country planning regime rather than start from scratch, so can never be as comprehensive as the 2008 Act.
“It is intended to be a one-stop shop, as far as possible, and a list of 15 ‘secondary consents’ that can be applied for at the same time as the main DNS consent is proposed.
“Again, these consents cannot legally be dispensed with, so the regime does what it can to make it appear to be a single process from the outside. Compulsory purchase is in the list but only for the purposes of regeneration, which may be a problem.”
View the Developments of National Significance consultation
Roger Milne
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