Planning Portal Blog

Latest UK house-building figures

House building activity in the UK this year is set to top levels seen during 2014, according to new figures just released by the NHBC.

The new home registrations statistics reveal an increase of 11 per cent for the rolling quarter June to August, compared to the same period last year. A total of 40,101 new homes were registered in the UK during this period, up on the 36,149 new homes registered in the previous year.

The private sector increased by 12 per cent during this period (30,210 in 2015; 27,072 last year), with the public sector increasing by nine per cent from last year (9,891 in 2015; 9,077 last year).

However, registrations for August were down marginally by 6 per cent (10,362 compared to 11,037 last year) the first time since January that figures fell below last year’s respective monthly totals.

For the month, the private sector was marginally down by 1 per cent (8,401 in 2015, 8,476 August 2014), with the public sector down 23 per cent (1,961 versus 2,561 last August); this decrease follows six consecutive months of growth when compared to last year for the public sector.

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Go-ahead for huge Loughborough housing scheme

Outline proposals for a 3,200-home sustainable urban extension on 465 hectares of mainly farmland west of Loughborough and close to the M1 have been approved by Charnwood Borough Council.

Developers William Davis and Persimmon Homes scheme also includes 16 hectares of employment land, retail and business units, two primary schools, sites for gypsies and travellers, open spaces including allotments, improvements to junction 23 of the M1 and the restoration of Garendon Park.

The site was identified for development under the Leicestershire District Council’s draft Core Strategy which has just been confirmed as “sound” by a planning inspector and will be formally approved by the local authority shortly.

Party conferences prioritise housing

The Labour Party’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to start a “new, very large council house building programme” that would pay for itself. Housing would be a priority of any incoming Labour administration he promised in his first party conference speech as leader.

Meanwhile in his first party conference speech as Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said that the Liberal Democrats would build ten new garden cities, including five major new settlements along a garden cities railway between Oxford and Cambridge and confirmed the party’s target of 300,000 new homes to be built annually.

Cardiff city centre progress

Legal and General has signed a deal to back the £400m redevelopment of Cardiff city centre. The move represents one of the biggest-ever property deals in Wales.

The move sees the financial services giant taking a major stake in Cardiff’s Central Square project (which involves the redevelopment of over 92,903 square metres of the capital) transforming the area around the city’s station into a thriving business district.

The deal struck between the property investment arm of L&G and developer Rightacres Property includes the proposed new headquarters for BBC Cymru Wales at the heart of Central Square, the completion of the No 1 Central Square building, the proposed No 2 Central Square office scheme.

Also involved is the Interchange development, which as well as serving as the location for a new bus station and transport hub, involves plans for new office space, a 150-bedroom hotel and 200 private flats.

Energy project round-up

Electricity generation giant Drax Power has said it will not continue with plans to develop the White Rose carbon capture and storage (CCS) project beyond the initial development phase, blaming the Government’s shift in energy policy. The project involves proposals for a 400 megawatt commercial-scale coal-fired plant fitted with CCS technology. There is now a big question mark whether the scheme will climb off the drawing board.
Communities Secretary Greg Clark has refused planning permission for a four-turbine eight megawatt wind farm on arable land at Thorney near Peterborough which the city council was about to approve last year before it’s call-in by the then Communities Secretary Sir Eric Pickles. The scheme, proposed by REG Windpower Ltd, was recommended for approval by the inspector who held a public inquiry earlier this year’. Clark rejected this advice arguing that the planning impacts identified by the affected local community had not been addressed, citing visual and residential amenity concerns. The SoS insisted the scheme was being refused because it fell foul of the Government’s written ministerial statement of 18 June 2015 which said wind farms needed to demonstrate community backing.
End of an era as the iconic twin chimney stacks of Cockenzie power station in East Lothian were blown up and part of the main building at the Didcot power plant complex in Oxfordshire was demolished.

London round-up

London Mayor Boris Johnson has called in two contentious schemes in the capital. They are the £800m Bishopsgate Goods Yard mixed-use scheme proposed by developers Hammerson and Ballymore which is being considered by Hackney and Tower Hamlet Councils. He has also intervened over British Land’s planning application for Blossom Street, a 32,516 square metre mixed-use scheme on the City fringe, which was rejected by Tower Hamlet councillors against the advice of officers.
Planning and transport consultancy Arup has been appointed to help the pedestrian safety pilot scheme in south west London’s Tooting town centre. Arup will support Transport for London and Wandsworth Council to deliver a transport strategy and action plan to address pedestrian safety and to increase the level of walking in the area.
The planning application for the Somerleyton Road scheme that would bring three hundred new homes, a theatre, chef school, children’s nursery and new business opportunities to Brixton in South London has been submitted to Lambeth Council which is closely involved in the new neighbourhood project.
The Thames garden bridge project is looking increasingly unlikely now Lambeth Council has pulled out of negotiations for some of the land needed for the scheme, already under fire because of spiralling costs.

Brighton and Hove Albion’s new development goals

Leading Championship football club Brighton and Hove Albion is hoping to build a 150-room hotel as well as a cancer treatment centre next to its stadium.

The club said the complex at the Amex stadium would boost the local economy by £6m and create more than 80 jobs. The hotel would provide accommodation for fans as well as visitors to the nearby University of Sussex.

Before going ahead, the scheme would need to be approved by the club’s board and Brighton and Sussex University Hospital NHS Trust as well as the two planning authorities involved, Brighton and Hove City Council and neighbouring Lewes District Council.

Green light for Kent out of town retail park extension

Ashford Borough Council has approved plans to expand an out-of-town retail park known as the Ashford Designer Outlet Centre.

The 9290 square metre extension will add 40 new stores, six restaurants and cafes as well as creating up to an additional 700 jobs. The plans include the largest vertical ‘green wall’ to be built in the UK. The existing outlet has 90 stores and currently attracts nearly three million visitors a year.

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Legal round-up

The Department for Communities and Local Government has been given permission to appeal last month’s High Court ruling in favour of West Berkshire District Council and Reading Borough Council over the affordable homes threshold.
A riverside hotel and leisure club has decided to mount a legal challenge to Richmond Council’s decision last week to approve a hydro-power scheme on the River Thames in south west London at Teddington weir.
Friends of the Earth NI is taking the Department of the Environment to court over what it claims is a failure to protect Lough Neagh from the activities of sand dredging.
A High Court judge has refused to grant permission for a judicial review challenge over the Forest of Dean District Council’s grant of planning permission to the Homes and Communities Agency for a major mixed-use regeneration project. At issue was the impact of the residential-led scheme on the local bat population.

New EA chief executive named

Sir James Bevan, a 56-year old career diplomat, has been named as the next Chief Executive of the Environment Agency.

Sir James is currently the UK’s High Commissioner to India. He was appointed to the top job at the agency after a competitive recruitment process and will take up the post at the end of November.

He replaces Paul Leinster, who left the EA last week after 17 years with the green regulator. David Rooke, the agency’s current executive director for flood risk management, will act as chief executive until Sir James takes up his new role.

Roger Milne

September 30, 2015

Welsh Government increases planning application fees

by sarahchilcott

Welsh Government increased its application fees on the 1^st October 2015.

Applications submitted after the 30^th September 2015 will incur the higher fees.

All Welsh fees have been updated except the fees for ‘Approval of details reserved by a condition’. There are also some minor issues with the exemptions and reductions. We are in the process of updating our system to reflect these changes. In the interim, please contact the authority to ensure you pay the correct fee.

View the full updated fees schedule for Wales (PDF).

Online submissions continue to outstrip planning application growth

by sarahchilcott

The number of planning applications submitted through the Planning Portal continue to grow faster than the overall number of applications.

DCLG this week published their total applications figures based on LPA’s quarterly PS1 and PS2 returns.

According to DCLG’s figures, 123,543 applications were submitted to English planning authorities between April and June. Separately, 7,397 applications were submitted to Welsh LPAs in the same period. This gives us a total of 130,940 applications for the three-month period.

Compared to the same quarter last year, this means the total number of applications submitted grew by 0.6 per cent – while the number of applications submitted via the Planning Portal increased by 12.8 per cent compared to 2014.

Ministers clarify new shale gas planning regime

View the written statement

The Government has clarified the planning regime for shale gas applications and outlined the circumstances which could trigger ministerial intervention.

The administration has also set out the criteria for identifying under-performing planning authorities in respect of shale gas exploration and development schemes.

This will be separate from the existing statutory system for identifying under-performing local authorities. It will be similar but non-statutory.

Under these new arrangements a table setting out local planning authority performance on speed of decision making, specifically on onshore oil and gas applications, will be added to DCLG’s quarterly planning application statistical release, starting with the one published this week.

The measure of speed of decision making and the assessment period will be the same as those set out for major development. The same threshold will also apply for the identification of local planning authority underperformance in respect of its oil and gas applications as for the designation of underperformance in respect of major development, currently 50 per cent or fewer applications being made within the statutory determination period or such extended period as has been agreed in writing by the applicant.

Ministers will identify any underperforming local planning authorities in respect of oil and gas applications annually, in the final quarter of each calendar year. Where a local planning authority is identified as underperforming in respect of planning applications for oil and gas, it will remain as such for a period of one year.

In a Parliamentary statement Communities Secretary Greg Clark also confirmed that his call-in powers would be amended to specifically cover onshore oil and gas application appeals.

Roger Milne

Government urged to treat major housing schemes as key infrastructure projects

Ministers should consult on bringing large-scale housing schemes within the Planning Act 2008 regime for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), a report commissioned by law firm Bond Dickinson and planning consultants Quod has urged.

The report, based on the views of housing and planning experts in both the public and private sectors, claimed that use of the NSIP regime could harness the power of the private sector and “relieve hard-pressed local authority budgets”.

Less than half the estimated 240,000 new homes needed each year were completed in 2014, and the last six years had seen the lowest level of house building since the Second World War, it added.

The report insisted that there was widespread support for creating new settlements on the scale of the post-war New Towns to address the housing crisis.

However, it argued that this was unlikely to happen without policy and legislation that overcame the current barriers to bringing forward large-scale housing and mixed use projects within the current planning system.

The report noted recent research suggesting that only 25 per cent of local planning authorities had a local plan which had been adopted as sound since the publication of the government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in 2012.

The NSIP regime’s advantages included fixed timescales for decision-making, a single consenting process that includes compulsory purchase, and the confidence provided by the upfront establishment of need.

Other ways of delivering large-scale housing were reviewed for the report, including existing mechanisms such as Urban Development Corporations, updated New Towns legislation, the use of expanded Local Development Orders, some form of deregulated New Homes Zone, and new proposals such as garden city commissions. However all of these “rely on the public sector to rise to the challenge,” argued the report.

Quod director John Rhodes, who was last week appointed by the Government to chair a panel examining ways to streamline local plans, said: “Remedying the chronic under-provision of housing should be an economic and a social priority.

“At present, however, developers are denied access to the national infrastructure planning process for housing proposals and thereby denied the use of the single most effective regime for delivering development.

“With appropriate safeguards in place, the use of the NSIP regime would transform the ability of the private sector to make a meaningful contribution to the national housing crisis.”

Roger Milne

Police probe over Staffordshire council planning chairman’s comments

View the story on the BBC news website

Police are investigating allegations that the chairman of a Staffordshire council’s planning committee abused his position.

Michael Worthington, chairman of Staffordshire Moorlands District Council’s planning committee, was caught on camera saying he was “under instructions” to vote a certain way. He denies being influenced to approve a planning application.

His comments were made after the planning committee he chaired voted in favour of a planning application for up to 10 new homes on the site of Endon Riding School near the village of Endon which is six miles north-east of Stoke-on-Trent. Officers had recommended the scheme should be rejected.

Campaign group the Whiston Action Group passed their allegations to police and wrote to the Prime Minister calling for a public inquiry.

Staffordshire Police confirmed it had received “an allegation of ‘misfeasance in public office’ and the matter has been passed to our investigative services for them to review.”

Mark Trillo, executive director and monitoring officer at the local authority, said: “The council has received complaints in relation to this planning application and these complaints are now being considered in accordance with the council’s procedures.

“In the meantime, given the issues that have been raised, the application was reconsidered at the planning applications committee last Thursday”. It was refused.

Roger Milne

RTPI sees red over lack of planners on Scottish planning review panel

The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Scotland has voiced dismay that the independent panel announced last week by the Scottish Government to review the planning system does not have a chartered planner on it.

Pam Ewen, RTPI Scotland convener said: “While the members of the panel bring a lot of expertise, I am astonished and very disappointed that there is not a planner on the panel with recent practical experience of the planning system.

“The success of the review will depend upon knowledge and expertise of how the planning system works from the inside as well as the outside.”

The RTPI has written to planning minister Alex Neill requesting that a chartered planner plays a role in an advisory capacity.

The institute’s concern surfaced after Neill announced an independent panel to conduct what was described as a “game-changing” review of Scotland’s planning system. Its role is to bring together ideas for “a quicker, more accessible and efficient” planning process.

The three-person panel includes representatives of Planning Aid Scotland and the Scottish Property Federation.

It will examine issues such as development planning, housing delivery, infrastructure development, and resourcing and community engagement.

It will be led by Crawford Beveridge, who chairs the Scottish government’s Council of Economic Advisers. The panel is due to report back in spring 2016.

Roger Milne

Statutory development plan for key area of Northern Ireland approved

Northern Ireland Environment Minister Mark H Durkan has launched a new statutory development plan designed to boost balanced growth, development and tourism in the Causeway Coast and Glens Council area.

The Northern Area Plan came into force this week. It covers around 14 per cent of Northern Ireland’s land area and over eight per cent of the Province’s population.

The blueprint recognises not only the importance of developing the larger towns of Coleraine, Limavady, Ballymoney and Moyle but also small towns and villages as rural service centres by identifying development of an appropriate scale to sustain rural communities.

It promotes the continued development of Coleraine and Limavady as main hubs, and Ballymoney and Ballycastle as local hubs as well as recognising residential, recreational and tourism potential of Portrush and Portstewart while enhancing their character and identity.

The plan Identifies appropriate development land, within the six towns of Ballykelly, Bushmills, Cushendall, Dungiven, Garvagh and Kilrea and 25 villages and 34 small settlements within the plan area.

The strategy complements existing environmental protection by designating Local Landscape Policy Areas, Sites of Local Nature Conservation Importance and the Dunluce Area of Significant Archaeological Interest with associated policies for their protection from inappropriate development.

The plan also proposes Areas of Townscape Character in Armoy, Coleraine, Limavady and Portrush where appropriate design guidance will protect their existing character.

Roger Milne

Planning round-up 24 September

View the planning application statistics

Latest figures show housing approvals are on the up

During the second quarter of this year district level planning authorities in England received 123,500 applications for planning permission, up less than one per cent from the corresponding quarter of 2014.

Decisions were up three per cent from the same quarter in 2014 and the planning authorities decided 78 per cent of major applications within 13 weeks or the agreed time, down from 79 per cent a year earlier. These latest official figures showed that the LPAs granted 11,300 residential applications, up 10 per cent on a year earlier.

In the year ending June 2015, district level planning authorities granted 362,800 decisions, up four per cent from the figure for the year ending June 2014. Some 44,900 of the granted decisions were for residential developments.

Of 11,000 applications received for prior approval for permitted development rights during April to June 2015, prior approval was not required for 6,400, with permission being granted for 2,600 applications and refused for 2,100.

A total of 75 per cent of all applications related to larger householder extensions, with 9 per cent relating to agricultural to residential changes and 8 per cent relating to office to residential changes.

Warning over changes to environmental challenges cost protection regime

A leading planning barrister, Jenny Wigley of No 5 Chambers, has warned that the government’s latest proposals on cost protection rules in environmental challenges could “drastically reduce the costs certainty currently afforded to judicial review claimants”.

The current limits in relation to costs liability are £5,000 for individual claimants and £10,000 for organisations. The liability of the defendant is limited to £35,000. Proposals now out for consultation could raise the standard cost caps to £10,000 for individuals, £20,000 for organisations and reduce the reciprocal cap to £25,000.

The Ministry of Justice has also started consulting on the scope of the regime in terms of the types of cases that are eligible for costs protection and whether the regime should be extended to apply to certain reviews under statute like recovered appeals.

View the consultation

Transport developments

The case for the HS2 high-speed rail line came under fire during a debate on the economics of the project in the House of Lords.

Peers lined up to criticise the scheme, the first phase of which is due to operate from London to Birmingham starting in 2026.

Businessman Lord Hollick, a Labour peer and chairman of the House’s Economic Affairs Committee which published a critical report on the scheme, complained: “Much of the evidence presented to justify HS2 is either defective or unconvincing or out of date.”

He told the Upper Chamber: “While investment outside London is long overdue, the committee was not convinced that the government had shown that HS2 is the best way of stimulating growth in the cities of the north and the Midlands.

“If London commuters benefit the most from the increase in capacity and London benefits the most economically, HS2 could actually widen the north/south divide.”

Meanwhile Birmingham’s revamped New Street Station was opened at the weekend. The station now has a new concourse, a huge atrium and a shopping complex.

View more information on HS2

Energy project round-up

Ministers have given EdF Energy a s36 consent for a second gas-fired power station at Sutton Bridge near Kings Lynn which has been under consideration since 2005.The business case for the 1,800 megawatt combined cycle gas turbine plant has yet to be settled.
Green energy company Estover has announced plans for a multi—million pound biomass fuelled facility at Cramlington in Northumberland which would provide both heat and power.
Consultants acting for Derbyshire Dales District Council have recommended that the local authority’s currently withdrawn local plan should proceed on the basis that some 6,440 new homes need to be built over their plan period up to 2033. That figure is over 2,000 dwellings more than the original strategy catered for and represents an annual building rate of 322 homes annually, taking into account population growth, employment needs and affordable housing provision.
Planning permission has been granted for two turbines that will create England’s largest onshore wind farm. Peel Energy and United Utilities want to add a further 16 turbines to the existing 26 at Scout Moor, on land between Rochdale and Rossendale. Rochdale Borough Council gave the go-ahead for the final two at a meeting this week. Rossendale Borough Council approved the other 14 at the beginning of the month.

Basement bill

A bill designed to help local planning authorities restrict the size and depth of basement development has had its first reading in the House of Commons. The proposed legislation has been drawn up by Westminster North Labour MP Karen Buck.

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Go-ahead for giant warehouse project at Didcot

Corporate Pension Fund clients of Savills Investment Management (formerly Cordea Savills) and Lingfield Securities Plc have been granted outline planning permission for a new industrial and warehouse development called Giant at Didcot Distribution Park, Oxfordshire.

The scheme involves 87,720 square metres of grade-A warehouse and office accommodation set across 26.3 hectares. This includes outline planning permission for a single cross docked unit of 77,316 square metres. This represents the largest facility of this kind located in the A34 corridor in the Thames Valley.