Green belt re-think urged
Architecture and urban design company Broadway Malyan has urged the next Government to “re-think the green belt and the protection it affords areas of land which could contribute a greater value to society through sustainable development and providing new homes”.
The company has published a report which concluded that “a re-calibrated green belt, coupled with strategic growth of towns and centres will have a significant impact on resolving the housing crisis.”
The report included an online survey by pollsters YouGov which found that two-thirds believed that the number of new homes built should be increased, with over two-fifths agreeing a significant increase was needed.
One in five respondents said that housing was one of the most important issues that will decide how they will vote in the general election.
However, just over two-thirds of respondents said that they were opposed to house building in green belt locations while 48 per cent opposed house building on greenfield sites. Only 27 per cent said that they supported house-building on green field locations. Some 83 per cent of respondents supported house building on brownfield land.
Read the full ’50 Shades of Green Belt’ report
Dover waterfront development agreed
The Port of Dover Authority has signed a deal with a real estate company to develop the town’s waterfront as it presses ahead with plans to build a new cargo terminal.
The Mermorandum of Understanding involves London-based developer Bride Hall. The new entity will be known as Dover Waterfront Limited and will look at proposals for new retail activity as well as hotels, bars and restaurants.
Dover District Council chief executive Nadeem Aziz said: “We will be working with the port’s new waterfront regeneration arm and Bride Hall to ensure all of our plans for the regeneration of Dover are coherent, joined up and offer the best opportunity to make a once-in-several-generations difference to our community and Dover as a thriving destination.”
Read the Port of Dover press release
Neighbourhood planning assistance
Planning Aid England has produced a suite of resources to assist those developing a neighbourhood plan.
The resources provide practical tips and advice on various stages of the neighbourhood plan process from designating the neighbourhood area to submitting the plan for examination. They are designed for community groups to use.
They include a series of” how to” guides, templates and videos. Topics include:
- project planning;
- resourcing your neighbourhood plan;
- engaging with landowners and developers;
- developing a vision and objectives; and
- writing planning policies.
Visit the ‘Forum for Neighbourhood Planning’ website (not currently working)
Outline permission agreed for 3,000-home scheme in London docklands
Newham Council in east London has agreed in principle to grant outline planning permission for the mixed-use regeneration of Silvertown Quays in the capital’s docklands.
The proposals involve 3,000 new homes, 179, 000 square metres of office space and 222,000 square metres of brand units, restaurants and a new school.
The scheme needs the approval of the Mayor of London and both the Communities Secretary and the Transport Secretary.
Norwich Passivhaus initiative
Norwich City Council is seeking housing association partners for a £300m programme to build hundreds of super energy-efficient homes.
The city council has gone out to tender on proposals which could mean the construction of 900 so-called Passivhaus homes – which are built to rigorous design standards to ensure they are highly energy efficient – over the lifetime of the four-year scheme.
Proposals for 287 Passivhaus homes are already in the pipeline in Norwich
Brixton makeover
Muse Developments has submitted planning applications for a major Brixton town centre in south London redevelopment called ‘Your New Town Hall’.
The planning applications, for ‘The Triangle’ and ‘Olive Morris House’ sites facing onto Brixton Hill, are part of a project which will ultimately reduce Lambeth Council’s core office buildings from 14 to 2, saving taxpayers at least £4.5m a year.
The proposals include the refurbishment of the Grade II listed Lambeth Town Hall; a new 120,000 sq ft, energy efficient civic building; a total of 194 new homes and new landscaped public areas.
View further details on the scheme’s website
Hampshire development approved
East Hampshire District Council has approved the largest application it has ever considered which will see lead to the transformation of the garrison town Whitehill & Bordon with 2,400 new homes, jobs, essential infrastructure, facilities and a new town centre.
The town was one of the previous government’s “Eco-towns” and has recently been awarded ‘Housing Zone status’ by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
It has also been designated as one of five ‘step up towns’ by the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership in recognition of its regional importance.
View full details of the application
Elephant and Castle move
Notting Hill Housing has received planning permission from Southwark Council for the regeneration of the Aylesbury estate in the Elephant and Castle area of south London.
Southwark Council’s planning committee last night gave the green light to two separate applications – one for the first development site to the south-west of the estate, bordering Burgess Park, and one for the outline master plan for the remainder.
At the first site, 830 homes will be built, including specialist housing for older people and homes for people with learning disabilities, as well as a community facility and extensive new public open space including two new parks.
Phases two, three and four of the regeneration come under the outline master plan permission. This will see 2,745 homes built, as well as the creation of office space, retail units, a new public square with a health centre and early years care, and more public open space, such as pocket parks and playgrounds.
View details of the applications from the Southwark Council planning committee adgenda
Bath wrangle
A row over whether a block of flats in Bath should be demolished or altered will now be determined by the planning inspectorate. City councillors say the scheme as built bears little resemblance to the scheme they approved.
Last week they refused a retrospective application which has now been appealed by Landmark Developments Ltd.
Dorset solar farms planned by council
Plans to generate solar power on farm land owned by Dorset County Council could generate solar energy for nearly 10,000 homes, the authority has claimed.
Solar panels would be installed at 11 farms, owned by the council, covering a total area of about 67 hectares under plans approved by the council cabinet.
The locations of the specific shortlisted sites will be made public once full assessments have been carried out and planning applications have been prepared.
Wind farm deal
Glasgow-based renewable energy firm UrbanWind has announced plans to develop on-shore wind farm schemes across the UK after signing a £30m funding deal with a private equity firm.
Zouk Capital will provide finance for smaller schemes which have won planning permission but lack funding to proceed. Under the agreement, Zouk and UrbanWind will create a joint venture to develop suitable projects. UrbanWind says it has about 100 sites in the development appraisal phase.
Read the UrbanWind press release
Legal round-up
- A naturist spa located in Surrey Green Belt near Staines has lost its High Court challenge over an enforcement order requiring the demolition of new buildings which the judge ruled were “inappropriate”.
- Campaigners objecting to plans from Barratt Homes approved by Bradford City Council for 176 houses at Derry Hill in Menston, West Yorkshire have persuaded the Court of Appeal to reinstate all its proposed grounds for challenge. Bradford Council gave Barratt Homes planning permission in August 2014 for the scheme at Derry Hill in Menston, subject to certain conditions.
- A parish council has failed in a High Court bid to quash, in part, the aligned core strategies (ACS) of three councils in Greater Nottingham. Calverton Parish Council had made the application under s. 113 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 over the ACS, adopted by Broxtowe Borough, Gedling Borough and Nottingham City councils in September 2014. The parish is within Gedling’s area and has been described as an enclave within Green Belt. It feared that the village would increase in size by a third.
- A Crown Court has ordered a third party to contribute to the costs of a successful prosecution by a local planning authority under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, linked to a Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 application. According to Francis Taylor Building, the Court in Ipswich found that the non-defendant layperson had exhibited “serious misconduct” at various stages during the proceedings.. The third party was ordered to pay a contribution of £14,000. “The order is considered to be the very first obtained within England and Wales, specifically in a planning enforcement context,” FTB said.
- The developer behind Winchester’s controversial Silver Hill scheme has been refused leave to appeal a High Court decision which quashed proposed changes to the £165 million development. Now TIAA Henderson Real Estate, which sparked a storm of protest last year when it dropped affordable housing and a bus station from the project, plans to take the case to an oral hearing.
Council serves enforcement notice over ‘red tape’ stripes
A woman in west London’s Kensington has been told to remove the red and white stripes she had painted on her house in protest over a rejected planning application.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea have served an enforcement notice on the owner ordering the stripes’ removal after neighbours complained.
The stripes appeared earlier this month after plans to demolish the house and replace it with a new house and two-storey basement were refused.
Roger Milne
A Norfolk district council has established a new form of property joint venture that could see the development of more than 140 sites across the local authority area.
The joint venture – Breckland Bridge Limited – involves Breckland District Council and developer Land Group and is initially expected to revitalise Thetford town centre, bringing a new cinema, hotel, restaurant and retail units and improved public realm on the Riverside site.
It will also involve the development of new residential sites in Attleborough and Mileham. It is understood the JV could be used to develop a further 142 sites once those first three are delivered.
Law firm Trowers & Hamlins advised Breckland on the initiative. Helen Randall, the partner at Trowers who led on the deal, said: “This project is particularly innovative because the joint venture has been uniquely structured as an evolved and more sophisticated variant from the standard local authority asset backed vehicle (LABV) to give the council more flexibility, greater certainty of delivery and the ability to apply a funding model which provides better value for money than traditional LABVs”.
Council Leader Michael Wassell said: “This innovative approach means that our key regeneration projects will bring new jobs, improved leisure facilities and much needed new homes for Breckland residents.”
Roger Milne
A millionaire property developer has admitted in court that he should not have modernised Llanwenarth House, a Grade II listed property in the picturesque Usk Valley in Monmouth shire.
The Georgian-style manor house was built in the late 16th century and is where Irish composer Cecil Alexander is thought to have written the lyrics to the famous hymn ‘All, things bright and beautiful’.
Newport Crown Court heard how Kim Davies, 60, made extensive changes after buying the house in 2007, wrecking its Regency features and replacing them with modern and mock-Tudor ones. One bedroom had been converted into a bathroom fitted with a mosaic-carved jacuzzi.
At an earlier hearing in Abergavenny Magistrates Court, which could not be reported until now for legal reasons, Carl Harrison, for Brecon Beacons National Park Authority said Davies had destroyed the character of the building – one of the top nine per cent of listed buildings in Wales.
Davies had previously denied any wrongdoing but has now pleaded guilty to five charges under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990.
The court heard that the renovation work carried out between June 2006 and August 2012 were deliberate breaches of planning law.
Penalties for unlawfully altering a Grade 11 Listed building include a maximum 12-month prison sentence or an unlimited fine. Davies is due to be sentenced on 15 May.
Roger Milne
Proposals for a potash mine in North Yorkshire have made progress after planning permission for part of the £1.7bn project was given the go-ahead by Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.
Sirius Minerals has had its application for a mine and mineral transport system near Whitby approved by the local planning authority, which has yet to pronounce on a related application for a materials handling facility.
The company still needs approval from North York Moors National Park Authority for the fertiliser project, much of which inside the boundary of the Park.
It also requires a Development Consent Order for the scheme’s port facilities on Teesside. Revised proposals were submitted to the Planning Inspectorate last month.
The proposed site for the mine head is at Sneaton, three miles south of Whitby, in the north-east part of the designated area. The mine head is in a pleasant, wooded area close to the popular long-distance Coast to Coast trail between St Bees in Cumbria and Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Yorkshire coast.
Sirius wants to mine the fertiliser from underneath the North York Moors National Park and use an underground tunnel to send it to Wilton, near Redcar, for distribution.
Chris Fraser, managing director of Sirius, said: “We are delighted with the positive decision from Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council for this substantial part of the project and look forward to further progress with our other applications”.
View further details on the scheme’s website.
Roger Milne
A commitment to Garden Cities – not to mention towns and suburbs – is a feature of some of the current crop of election manifestos with the most gung-ho proposals outlined by the Lib Dems and Labour.
However, neither the Green Party nor UKIP are flying the flag for 21st century versions of Ebenezer Howard’s ideas.
All five parties want to see more brownfield development for new housing and promise continued or greater protection for the green belt. The Conservatives would create a brownfield regeneration fund.
In terms of housing supply – a key issue – there is no consensus on numbers.
Labour is promising one million new homes by 2020 and have promised to implement the recommendations of the Lyons Commission.
The Lib Dems want a strategy involving 300,000 new homes a year while the Conservatives have plans for 200,000 new Starter Homes as well as an aspiration of 120,000 new homes courtesy of its Help to Buy initiative plus a further 95,000 as part of the Housing Zone regime, already signalled. The party has also confirmed move to establish London Land Commission.
The Greens want to “break up” what they call the “big builder cartels” and would oversee the provision of 500,000 social rented homes. UKIP has set its sights on one million new homes built on brownfield land and would offer grants of up to £10,000 a unit to help developers remediate contaminated sites.
Labour is proposing “greater transparency” in the land market and would give local authorities new “use it or lose it” powers to encourage more building. It favours a strengthened “brownfield first” policy but would “respect local decision making over green belt configuration”. All five of the UK-wide political parties want to see more custom-build activity.
Neither Labour nor the Conservatives are proposing radical or comprehensive changes to the planning system.
The Conservatives want more neighbourhood planning and a stronger Right to Bid regime. Labour says it will give local communities more power to shape the High Streets and councils more powers over the clustering of payday lenders and other retail categories.
For major changes you will have to look at the Lib Dems, the Greens and UKIP. The Green Party would repeal the National Planning Policy Framework and its presumption in favour of economic development.
UKIP would replace the NPPF and “introduce fresh new planning guidelines “with a “presumption in favour of conservation” instead of the NPPF’s backing for development.
UKIP wants to give local people control over planning through the use of binding local referenda on such proposals as large out-of-town supermarkets, wind turbines, incinerators, solar farms and major housing schemes. It would merge planning and building control departments.
The Conservatives have committed to ending onshore wind subsidies and would ensure that local people would have the final say on wind farm applications. They also want to give local businesses more say over minor planning applications.
Both the Greens and the Lib Dems want a community right of appeal in some circumstances. The former also wants to restrict ministerial call-ins and greater local authority powers over change of use. The Lib Dems would scrap the recent extension of permitted development to offices to homes conversions and would “end ideologically motivated interference in local planning decisions for wind farms by government ministers”.
The party also wants statutory 15-year housing plans, more cooperation by neighbouring authorities over housing provision and more restricted appeal arrangements for developers. It would update planning law by introducing the concept of so-called “landscape-scale planning” to make sure new developments promote walking , cycling, car-sharing and public transport, while improving rather than diminishing access to green spaces.
The Greens would make the planning system ensure that everyone lives within five minutes walk of a green open space and oblige Government departments and local authorities to consider climate change and carbon reduction in all their planning activities and with a long term horizon of 50-100 years. All local authority planning decisions would adopt that timescale.
The Lib Dems would expand “accessible green space” with new National Nature Parks chosen by the public. The Conservatives have promised a “pocket parks” programme while Labour also wants the local planning system to promote green spaces.
The Conservatives remain firmly behind HS2 and Crossrail 2. Labour still supports the former. Both the Greens and UKIP would scrap HS2. The Greens don’t want any new airport capacity. Labour wants a new National Infrastructure Commission which, amongst other things, would prioritise investment in flood prevention and the party has promised tougher controls over fracking.
The Conservatives would create a sovereign wealth fund for the North of England bankrolled from unconventional oil and gas development, including fracking. It blows warm on more City Deals.
The Lib Dems are committed to introducing a Land Value Tax which would replace Business Rates in the long term.
Access the main parties manifestos on the following links:
Roger Milne
A plan to expand England’s second biggest onshore wind farm, located in the Lancashire Pennines, has been submitted to Rochdale and Rossendale Borough Councils.
Scout Moor Wind Farm Expansion Ltd, a joint venture between United Utilities and the land’s co-owners Peel Energy, want to build another 16 turbines between Rawtenstall and Edenfield.
The move comes after proposals to double the size of the 65 megawatt wind farm were scaled back last year after Rossendale residents objected. The developers had originally sought to build a further 26 turbines but agreed to add just 16 after a public consultation.
The decision to opt for a smaller scheme means it is no longer categorised as a nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP). Scout Moor became operational in 2008 after a public inquiry.
The scheme includes proposals for the restoration and management of some 900 hectares of degraded moorland peat habitat within the application site, including the erection of temporary fencing. Also involved will be the creation of new pedestrian and horse-riding routes and a Community Benefit Fund and the opportunity for the local community to invest in the project.
The wind farm extension will be connected to the national electricity grid via underground cabling. The developers will create of temporary off-street car parking facilities for residents in Edenfield during the construction phase.
View full details of the application on the respective local authority websites:
Roger Milne
East London local authority Tower Hamlets was the biggest beneficiary of the Coalition’s New Homes Bonus scheme over the past five years.
It was paid £74.7m according to figures just released by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
Birmingham City Council came second with £53.7m while Cornwall Unitary Authority (UA) came third, with just under £45.4m.
Local authorities from the capital filled 20 of the top 50 slots. Local authorities from the North and the Midlands were sparingly represented in the top 50 group. Only Barnsley, Bradford, Cheshire East, Coventry, Durham UA, East Riding of Yorkshire UA, Kirklees, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham Salford, Sheffield and Wakefield clocked up allocations of over £15m during the scheme’s lifetime.
The Government bankrolled the scheme to the tune of nearly £3.4bn. DCLG calculated that the scheme rewarded delivery of 700,000 net additional dwellings and over 100,000 long-term empty homes, which were brought back into use.
DCLG’s assessment of the scheme concluded that shire districts were the highest net beneficiaries while more negative impacts were found in the north of England, Yorkshire and the Humber.
The department found no evidence that the initiative “was providing an additional incentive in increasing support specifically for more affordable homes”.
View details of the New Homes Bonus scheme and download the statistics
Roger Milne
Developer Gladman Developments Ltd has withdrawn its legal challenge in the Court of Appeal over the “making” of Winslow’s Neighbourhood Plan by Aylesbury Vale District Council (AVDC).
The Buckinghamshire planning authority had formally approved the plan, following a local referendum in September 2014.
Gladman initially challenged that move in the High Court on a number of grounds, including the reasoning of the independent examiner who scrutinised the plan and the lawfulness of the council’s decision to formally make the plan.
However, a judge dismissed the developer’s case in December 2014. A subsequent appeal against that decision was made to the Court of Appeal in March this year.
However, AVDC has now been informed that the developer has withdrawn from the Court of Appeal proceedings and is also no longer challenging Community Secretary Eric Pickles’ decision to refuse planning permission for a 211-dwelling residential scheme on land off Verney Road in Winslow.
AVDC had refused this scheme and the developer appealed. The inspector who held the recovered appeal had recommended approval but the Secretary of State disagreed, citing the neighbourhood plan.
Susan Kitchen, who heads the council’s development management team, said: “This is fantastic news for the residents of Winslow. A huge amount of work went into drawing up the plan by the Winslow community and the withdrawal of this challenge removes any doubt over the status of the plan when making decisions on planning applications in the area it covers.
She added: “Although AVDC was confident that the Court of Appeal would dismiss this latest challenge to the plan, Gladman’s decision to drop the action is very welcome. We will be pursuing the recovery of our legal costs, where permitted.”
Meanwhile, in a separate move Mendip District Council has confirmed that Gladman has dropped its High Court challenge to the council’s local plan over the adequacy of the strategy’s housing provision.
View the Aylesbury Vale District Council press release
View the decision letter and inspectors report
Roger Milne
The Liberal Democrats’ Manifesto commits the party to at least ten new garden cities (where locals back the idea) and a slew of new garden villages and suburbs to help provide 300,000 new homes. Up to five of these major new settlements are proposed along a new rail link between Oxford and Cambridge.
The party plans to end ideologically motivated onshore wind farm decisions, pilot capturing land value increases from grant of planning permission for garden cities and would require local authorities to plan for 15 years of housing need, a move which will need a strengthened duty to cooperate with neighboring authorities.
Like the Greens the Liberal Democrats favour a community right of appeal. The latter has pledged to introduce so-called “landscape-scale planning” to encourage access to green spaces and would revoke both the new offices to residential permitted development regime as well as the exemption for schemes of ten homes or fewer to meet zero carbon standards.
Both the Greens and UKIP want to scrap HS2. The latter would replace the National Planning Policy Framework with guidance encouraging brown field use and protecting the green belt. The Greens want to scrap the NPPF. UKIP has declared it wants to allow referendums to overturn large-scale housing, wind farm, solar, incinerator and supermarket permissions.
The Greens want to ease planning constraints for wind and solar, in particular for onshore wind schemes and insist that climate change and carbon reduction should figure in all planning decisions.
Roger Milne
Nexus Planning, on behalf of Commercial Estates Group and the Bird Group, has submitted an outline planning application for a proposed new settlement on land adjacent to the village of Lighthorne Heath, near Gaydon, Warwickshire.
The application for a first phase of 2,000 new homes includes a village centre with supermarket and elderly accommodation, a new primary school, community hub, health centre, sports and recreation facilities and a 47-hectare managed ecological reserve.
The 140-hectare site forms the first phase of a 300-hectare strategic allocation identified in Stratford-on-Avon District Council’s emerging core strategy for 3,000 new dwellings, 100 hectares of land for the expansion of Jaguar Land Rover, and 4.5 hectares of land for the expansion of Aston Martin Lagonda.
Nexus Planning submitted the planning application in collaboration with place-making practice, John Thompson & Partners following extensive public consultation over the last two years.
The site is located along the M40 corridor within an area of high-value automotive-related research and development activity. Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin Lagonda employ around 7,000 staff in their research and production facilities immediately adjacent to the site where there is scope for further expansion.
When complete, the new settlement will be the second largest settlement in the district with only the Warwickshire town of Stratford upon Avon town being larger.
Read the Nexus Planning press release
View details of the Stratford-on-Avon District Council core strategy
Roger Milne
Planning Portal Blog 