Plan-making and decisions on major schemes across much of Northern Ireland are now in difficulties following a High Court judge’s ruling over the status of the Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan (BMAP).
Mr Justice Treacy held that SDLP Environment Minister Mark H Durkan acted unilaterally and unlawfully in authorising the BMAP in September 2014 without the agreement of Northern Ireland Executive colleagues.
The successful legal challenge was mounted by the then Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party.
The judge backed claims that because the plan’s significance stretched across a number of separate departments it needed approval from the Stormont cabinet.
“In the present case, the minister having failed to achieve any agreement at the Executive sub-group, acted unilaterally and unlawfully by authorising and directing the Department to adopt the BMAP without informing the Executive until after the event and despite objections having been raised by other ministers” the judge ruled.
The court heard that the legal action involved a disagreement along party political lines, with the DUP opposed to the restrictions on retail activity adopted by the SDLP minister in the BMAP which meant that a long-proposed John Lewis store could not be built at the Sprucefield shopping centre on the edge of Lisburn, Co Down.
A DOE spokesperson said: “The minister is currently considering the judgment of the Court.”
Enterprise Minister Jonathan Bell insisted: “The judgment will mean that a revised BMAP will be brought back to the Executive for consideration and agreement. The significant area of concern with BMAP as it stands is the restriction that it would have placed on retail development at Sprucefield.”
Individual council local development plans and major planning applications are meant to comply with the regional land-use blueprint, the BMAP.
The plan covers Belfast City, Carrickfergus Borough, Castlereagh Borough, Lisburn City, Newtownabbey Borough and North Down Borough Council areas where some 40 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population live.
View more information on the Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan
Roger Milne
PD changes
The Department for Communities and Local Government has laid before Parliament the regulations which make office to residential conversions a permanent feature of permitted development rights from 6 April.
The rights were first introduced on a temporary basis nearly two years ago.
An amendment to the General Permitted Development Order includes a new condition which allows local planning authorities to consider the impact of noise from commercial premises on occupants of the housing.
The time-limit on exemptions obtained for parts of London and Manchester will run out in May 2019. Planning authorities will be able to apply for Article 4 directions to remove the rights.
The change to permitted development to facilitate residential conversions will also apply to launderettes and, from 2017, light industrial up to a maximum floor space of 500 square metres.
New permitted development rights for mineral exploration which will allow for boreholes for specific monitoring purposes where there is preparatory petroleum exploration are also coming into force.
Sluggish utility companies restricting housing growth
A new Housing & Finance Institute report has highlighted sluggish performance by utility companies as a factor restricting housing growth.
The report has recommended that local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships undertake so-called Infrastructure Dependency Mapping at a local and sub-regional level to get a better handle on the needs of electricity and energy companies.
The institute also proposed that the Communities Secretary should be given powers to force tardy utilities to provide utility connections “in a timely manner”.
Capital developments
- London Mayor Boris Johnson has published a slew of planning guidance this week. This includes new Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) covering the so-called Central Activities Zone. For the first time this states that new residential development is not appropriate in the commercial core of the City of London and the northern part of the Isle of Dogs. The SPG pinpoints geographical parts of central London where commercial use should be given priority over new residential developments. The mayor has also published new Housing Supplementary Planning Guidance as well as the Minor Alterations to the London Plan (MALPs).
- In addition Johnson has announced 11 new Housing Zones in London funded by an additional £200m of his housing budget. The new zones, which will deliver a total of 24,554 new homes, include sites in Barking, Catford, Feltham, Kingston and Romford.
- Meanwhile Wandsworth Council has launched a competition to select a partner for the regeneration of the six-hectare Alton Estate in Roehampton south-west London where approximately 1,100 new homes will be built as well as additional social rent, affordable and private housing.
Clark blocks West Sussex homes scheme
Communities Secretary Greg Clark has agreed with the recommendation of the planning inspector who argued that an appeal over a 25-home scheme at Loxwoood, Billingurst in West Sussex should be dismissed. The scheme, eleven of whose units would be affordable, had been refused by Chichester District Council.
The Secretary of State agreed the proposals were in conflict with both the local plan, the now made neighbourhood plan and were not suitably sustainable to justify overriding the planning policy objections
The Loxwood Neighbourhood Plan was the subject of two unsuccessful judicial reviews.
View the recovered appeal: land south of Loxwood Farm Place, High Street, Loxwood, Billingshurst
Guidance on caravan and houseboat dwellers
The Department for Communities and Local Government has published draft guidance related to the new duty on English planning authorities, included in the Housing and Planning bill, to consider the needs of people “residing in or resorting” to a district in either caravans or houseboats.
It shows how the government wants councils to interpret the changes to accommodation needs assessments in both those respects and highlights the need to cooperate with neighbouring local authorities.
Bedforshire ‘mansion’ faces demolition
Extensions and alterations to a house at a green belt location in Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire will have to be demolished within a year following a decision by a planning inspector.
Random House, originally a bungalow, owned by Mr Syed Raza Shah, was granted planning permission in 2011 by Central Bedfordshire Council for the ‘erection of single storey side extension and roof alteration with rear dormer windows.’
But when the development was finished, the floor space had increased by 165 per cent, turning the property into a three-storey mansion.
Subsequently the building has become the focus long-running and acrimonious planning and legal dispute between the local authority and the owner.
View more information on the case
Rochester regeneration
Medway Council has announced it has selected Countryside Properties and Hyde Housing as its partners for its ambitious 30-hectare Rochester Riverside regeneration scheme.
The developers are set to transform the area over the next 12 years, building around 1,300 new homes, of which 25 per cent will be affordable housing.
They will also provide a new school, nursery, hotels, restaurants, gym, healthcare facilities, office space and a number of retail units as part of the £400m project. The developers are set to submit their first planning application by the end of the year.
Rochester Riverside has over 2.5 kilometres of frontage on the River Medway and adjoins the town centre and new railway station.
The scheme is backed by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), which is the co-owner of the site and has invested around £60m in preparing it for development.
City help urged
A new report by the think tank Centre for Cities has urged greater government focus on addressing the economic challenges facing some of the UK’s fastest-growing and strongest-performing cities.
The report was published in association with the Fast Growth Cities group, which represents five of the most vibrant medium-sized cities: Cambridge, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Swindon and Norwich.
All five places enjoy higher productivity levels than bigger cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. They also have higher than average levels of employment and business start-ups.
However the report warned that these cities face a number of significant economic challenges including lack of new homes, increasing transport congestion and a growing skills gap.
Brownfield register pilots
Communities Secretary Greg Clark has named the 73 councils across England which will pilot one of the new brownfield registers. These will provide house builders with up-to-date and publicly available information on all brownfield sites available for housing locally.
They will also allow communities to draw attention to local sites for listing, including in some cases derelict buildings and eyesores that are primed for redevelopment and that could attract investment to the area.
Registers will eventually become mandatory for all councils under proposals going through Parliament in the Housing and Planning bill.
Each council agreeing to be part of the pilot project will receive £10,000 government funding to help prepare their registers.
Developer Grainger, the UK’s largest listed residential landlord, has submitted a detailed planning application to West Berkshire Council to develop land between Newbury railway station and Market Street as an “urban village” providing 232 new homes, around 950 square meters of offices as well as new station plaza, car parking and a new bus station. The majority of the site is owned by the local authority and is currently a combination of parking spaces and the existing bus station.
Energy moves
- Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has granted a development consent order (DCO) for a 19 kilometre long gas pipeline designed to link the proposed Thorpe Marsh combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant near Doncaster with the high-pressure gas network at Camblesforth in North Yorkshire.
- In an end of an era development Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, the last deep coal mine in the UK, has been capped off. It was shut-down in December bringing to an end centuries of deep coal mining in Britain. The site has been earmarked for potential redevelopment including housing.
- Meanwhile Communities Secretary Greg Clark has agreed with the inspector who held a recovered appeal inquiry into a single turbine proposed for land west of Moor Lane, Caistor and dismissed the project originally refused by West Lindsey District Council. His decision letter concluded that the benefits of the scheme were outweighed by its disadvantages which included its impact on a Grade 1 church, appreciable harm to the local conservation area and its effect on landscape character and views to and from the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, as well as its adverse impact on users of the Viking Way.
Neighbourhood plans support
The arrangements for claiming financial support for neighbourhood planning have been reviewed, updated and set out in new guidance published by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The letter from DCLG planning director Ruth Stanier to English chief planning officers also clarifies latest planning guidance on how planning applications should be decided where there is a made or emerging neighbourhood plan but the local planning authority does not have a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites.
Affordable housing stats
Figures highlighted in this year’s UK Housing Review from the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) reveal that while the government is investing a total of £42bn in the private market only £18bn will be spent on affordable rented housing, just 30 per cent of the total investment in housing.
The CIH insisted these figures meant that investment in affordable renting will fall to its lowest levels since the Second World War.
It noted that of the government’s target for new homes to be built by 2020, only 12 per cent will be affordable rented homes.
CIH research and analysis suggested that by 2020 there will be a 9 per cent loss in both council and housing association properties let at social rents, equating to the loss of over 350,000 social rented homes altogether if further investment is not made.
Terrie Alafat, chief executive of CIH, said: “We need housing policy for the 25-30 per cent of the population who will never be able to afford to buy a home of their own.”
Community pub aid
A new support and finance programme worth £3.6m over the next two years designed to help people take control of their local pub has been announced by Community Pubs Minister Marcus Jones.
TCPA good practice guides
The Town and Country Planning Association have launched a set of practical guides to help local authorities and developers create high quality new communities.
The first three guides (out of a series of six) unveiled this week cover:
- Planning for energy and climate change
- Homes for all
- Planning for arts and culture.
Another three guides will be launched after Easter on: locating and consenting new garden cities; finance and delivery and, finally, design and master- planning.
New Pins chief executive in post
The Planning Inspectorate’s new Chief Executive Sarah Richards took up her post this week. She was previously Strategic Director Regeneration, Housing and Resources at Slough Borough Council. Before that she had worked for the Greater London Council, Essex County Council and Test Valley Borough Council and helped set up and lead the Planning Advisory Service. She also had a spell as a Managing Partner for Zurich Municipal Management Services, part of Zurich Insurance.
Legal round-up
- Campaigners are using crowd funding in a bid to challenge Greenwich Council’s grant of planning permission for an international cruise liner terminal on the River Thames.
- A High Court judge has rejected a legal challenge to Denbighshire County Council’s compulsory purchase order over a 20.6-hectare former hospital site the subject of a repairs notice the owner failed to comply with.
Roger Milne
I’m delighted to be able to tell you that we are re-launching the Planning Portal website over the Easter weekend.
The current Planning Portal will remain fully active until 17:00 on Thursday 24th March. Planning Portal user account details will be transferred to the new site. We will make the new site available at 09:00 on Tuesday 29th March.
The new Portal will be faster and mobile-friendly with better focus on key user tasks.
We’re not going to be turning the service on its head – we’ve had a strong focus on continuity in development. Everything will look familiar but we’ve introduced some exciting improvements to make the application process faster and easier.
We’re very excited that we can finally take the wraps off what we’ve spent the last few months working on.
In case you missed them. Here are all the preview videos for the new Portal website. (Please note there is no sound on these videos.)
We’ve completely modernised the forms while keeping the familiar layout of the questions. We’ve also been able to make some huge improvements to the ease of use and gotten rid of a number of old bugs.
The materials section always caused a few issues for users.
Likewise the hours of opening section.
Supporting documents is another area where we’ve been able the keep the familiar layout you’re used to but make a number of significant improvements to make it easier and faster to work with your files and drawings.
We’re also introducing a brand new service to help teams collaborate on planning applications – Workspaces.
We’ve streamlined LPA functions to let local authorities work with the Portal more effectively.
Finally, a quick look at the new home page.
Update (20:15): the Portal came back online around 19:30. Our technical supplier identified the root cause and applied a fix. Apologies for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage.
As you may be aware we’ve been having some technical problems today. The Portal site has been offline for some time with issues relating to one of our databases.
Our technical supplier has been working hard to restore the service but the problem has persisted and we currently don’t have an estimate of when the service will be back.
We’ll keep you updated on this blog and on Twitter and above all we are very sorry for the inconvenience this is causing.
Last week I posted the latest set of online application data. In summary we had our best month ever for electronic apps with almost 47,000 submitted via the site.
There was some discussion in the comments section about what could have caused the increase. I mentioned then that we had seen submission numbers rising across the board but with a particular surge of householder applications.
DCLG this week published their latest statistics on application numbers and they report a rise in household planning permissions granted.
The government’s figures show that as well as rising numbers of planning permissions for homes, the number of permissions granted overall between October and December 2015 was up four per cent on the same period a year ago, with councils granting 92,000 decisions.
You can read more on the GOV.uk press release.
The commission set up by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) to consider how to solve the capital’s housing crisis has recommended a radical package of measures. These include sweeping new powers for the Mayor as part of a ground-breaking devolution deal with central government.
Under these proposals the London Mayor and the London boroughs would commit to doubling the annual supply of new homes of all types and tenures by 2020.
In return the government would exempt London from the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), give the Mayor’s London Plan the same status as the NPPF and provide the Mayor with the power to force boroughs to change their plans if they don’t identify enough land for housing.
Under these proposals the Mayor and the boroughs would form a joint London Housing Committee to coordinate housing policy across the capital and to set planning fees for the capital.
Local authorities outside London would have duty to cooperate with the Mayor to help solve the capital’s housing crisis.
As part of the proposed devolution deal both the Greater London Authority and the boroughs would be allowed to borrow more for house building and infrastructure. The proceeds of stamp duty would also be devolved to the capital.
Boroughs would be allowed to levy, at their discretion, council tax on developments that fail to meet agreed building targets.
The commission, chaired by former Department for Communities and Local Government permanent secretary Lord Bob Kerslake, argued that the Mayor and boroughs should commit to identifying sufficient land to deliver 50,000 homes per year for the next decade. They should also significantly increase the volume and speed of planning approvals by increasing the capacity of planning departments and create a London planning inspectorate.
Roger Milne
Aylesbury Vale District Council announced on Monday (7 March) it will no longer contest the legal challenge made by developers, Lightwood Strategic Ltd, over the Haddenham Neighbourhood Plan. The case was due to be heard Wednesday (9 March) in the High Court.
As a result the housing policies in the neighbourhood plan have been quashed and removed from the land use strategy.
The plan was approved in September 2015 and since then the developer has been pursuing a judicial review claiming mistakes were made in its preparation.
Although parish councils prepare neighbourhood plans, AVDC has to respond to, and fund, the often significant costs of any legal challenges.
Further evidence was submitted by the developer last week and AVDC consulted its barrister about the impact of that evidence and the prospects of the case being won. On the basis of subsequent legal advice, AVDC has “regrettably” decided that the best interests of the council would be served if it dropped the case.
Councillor Carole Paternoster, Cabinet Member for Growth Strategy, insisted: “This decision should not be seen as a lessening of the authority’s support for neighbourhood plans generally, as the exact circumstances of this case are very specific to the Haddenham Neighbourhood Plan.
The planning authority is no stranger to going to court over its neighbourhood plans and has already defended successfully its Winslow plan in the High Court.
Councillor Paternoster added: “We will defend all plans where the prospects of success are reasonable. However, AVDC must take its decisions on the basis of the best interests of all its residents.”
AVDC will continue to help Haddenham Parish Council renew its plan as soon as possible. It will also be reviewing what other measures may be needed to minimize the chances of such errors occurring again with other neighbourhood plans.
The developer has submitted a planning application for land at Haddenham which is the subject of a forthcoming public Inquiry.
Roger Milne
The government was warned this week that starter homes in London would be inaccessible to between 70 and 80 per cent of private renters and in most of the country, those on low incomes will not be in a position to benefit from the initiative.
That was the stark message highlighted in the Upper Chamber where the administration’s flagship Housing and Planning bill is being scrutinised line by line.
The messenger was crossbencher Lord Bob Kerslake the former permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government who quoted figures from the latest assessment produced by housing pressure group Shelter.
The peer stressed: “these figures put it beyond doubt that, at least in London, those who will benefit from this gift are a very small proportion of private renters”.
Peers on all sides are frustrated that the government has not yet published the secondary legislation and draft regulations that will flesh out the starter home regime.
Government minister Baroness Williams of Trafford has been unable so far to promise that these will be published by the time the legislation reaches Report Stage in the Lords.
During exchanges last week, though, she did promise that the department would “bring forward” a technical consultation on the bill’s Clause 4 which sets out the requirement for the provision of starter homes in residential development.
“The consultation will recognise that there are some developments where the inclusion of starter homes could help to secure a diversity of tenures and support mixed communities, but that compulsory inclusion could alter the viability [of some regeneration schemes]“ she explained.
View the latest news on the progress of the Housing and Planning bill
Roger Milne
Mixed fortunes for two significant housing schemes, both the subject of recovered planning appeals determined by Communities secretary Greg Clark recently.
One involved proposals for up to 220 new homes, 66 of which would be affordable, and the provision of new playing fields on land at Loose near Maidstone, Kent next to the campus of the New Line Learning Academy which also included a free school, the Tiger Primary School and a special needs school run by the county council which was involved in the application.
The project was originally refused by the borough council on the grounds of lack affordable housing and impact on an area of ancient woodland. Subsequently the planning authority withdrew those objections. At the hearing the council could only point to a 2.1 year supply of housing land. The planning inspector who held the inquiry recommended the appeal should be dismissed and the SoS agreed.
Clark’s decision letter refusing the scheme acknowledged the housing benefits of the proposals but agreed with the inspector that the design of much of the scheme was “cramped, unrelieved and somewhat anonymous”. It was also in conflict with the development plan and posed significant traffic and safety issues for the local highways network.
The other set of proposals involved plans for around 180 new homes on two sites at Buntingford which the local planning authority, East Hertfordshire District Council, had failed to determine within the prescribed time. The inspector recommended the appeals should be allowed and Clark agreed.
His decision letter agreed with the inspector that the proposals would be sustainable developments and provide both market and affordable housing in an area with a significant under-supply of homes. Clark acknowledged the loss of 14 hectares of the best and most versatile agricultural land and the fact that the schemes were in conflict with local development policies, albeit ones which were mainly out of date.
View the recovered appeal: Area 2 and 3, land south of Hare Street Road, Buntingford
View the recovered appeal: land at Boughton Lane, Loose, Maidstone
Roger Milne
Concerns over noise and local air quality which pose a major question mark over the expansion of airport capacity in south east England are significant but not insurmountable issues according to a report from the Independent Transport Commission.
The ITC is Britain’s foremost independent land use and transport think tank and reflects the views of many transport academics and professionals.
The report noted that continuous improvement in automotive technology should significantly reduce the impact of airport traffic on NOx levels (currently a major problem).
It also argued that the introduction of aircraft built on new technology like the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 would deliver “quantifiable improvements in noise”.
However the commission has highlighted that the two airports vying for expansion (Heathrow and Gatwick) remain behind global leaders in terms of high levels of access by public transport.
The report called for closer integration of the airports’ public transport access with the rail network not just to London but also the rest of the South East, Midlands and the West.
“These findings suggest that noise and local air quality impacts can be managed downwards given the right mix of operational, policy and technological development, while incremental improvements in carbon emission output are being delivered on an annual basis” insisted ITC commissioner Dr Stephen Hickey.
Roger Milne
Planning Portal Blog 