Can we have the promised “presumption in favour of sustainable development”?
On Monday, I gave a guest lecture on the UK Planning system to civil engineering students at Durham University. Having served on Newcastle Council’s Planning Committee (then called ‘Development Control’) for two years, spoken at many meetings of that Committee as a local representative and taken part in three planning inquiries, I have quite a bit of exeprience in the field. I also get very grumpy about much of the public discourse on planning, which has raised its head again ahead of the Chancellor’s growth-at-all-costs speech this morning.
The fundamental principle in the planning system is:
Presumption in favour of Sustainable Development
This means that any proposed development should go ahead unless there is a clear breach of national or local planning policy (which tend to be identical – we have very little devolution in this country). So every time some supposedly wise head says “just one objection can hold up a major project”, I scream at the radio “yes, but only if it is a valid objection!” A thousand “I don’t like this”-style objections count for precisely zero. Likewise, I’d like to know which ‘statutory consultees’ such as the Police, highways authority and flood authority should be cut out of the system? In any case, most of them don’t bother giving a response if they feel there is no major issue to raise.
Obviously with my interests, I dug into how ‘Sustainable Development’ gets interpreted in the system. It’s one area where biodiversity is arguably treated above climate change as an issue. It is true that a protected species can block a development, and the biodiversity net gain regulations provides at least a funding stream for nature projects. But carbon emissions? Part L of the Building Regulations (thermal energy efficiency) is about the only enforceable restriction. The words in national and local planning guidance are like candy floss – sweet but insubstantial.
This is a real problem, for every non Net Zero building that gets built locks carbon emissions into the system for decades (barring an expensive retrofit) and yet there is nothing there. The proposed hotel I used as my main case study is a case in point. It had a clear south facing aspect, yet the potential for any renewables (including solar PV), was dismissed by three short, vague bullet points in the consultant’s report. Instead they were taking a ‘fabric first’ approach ie being a bit better than Part L. It made me proud that, as a Sustainability Consultant myself, I don’t spend my time writing reports to defend the indefensible…
Many years ago, I got the ‘Merton Rule’ added to the Local Plan. This said that developments over a certain size must generate 10% of their energy use from renewable resources on site. This meant developments had to drive down energy usage to make that 10% viable. Unfortunately I don’t think checks on compliance with the rule post-construction ever happened, and it was quietly dropped from a later revision. At least I tried.
If we are serious about Net Zero, we’re going to have to toughen up the planning system, not water it down. It makes much more economic sense to get these things right first time rather than bodge a fix later. Over to you, Chancellor.