Planning and places

I’ve been busy of late, working on the campaign to improve the current proposals for the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). It’s been fascinating to be part of this work, which has been inspired by the idea that the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ at the heart of the NPPF is, in reality, a charter for development of any kind.

On the day the NPPF was launched, we put pages up on the National Trust website, inviting people to exercise clictivism by signing our online petition.

We also invited people to tweet us their postcode and a short statement of why their local place matters to them – to reiterate the point that it is ordinary, local places that are potentially at threat from the overdevelopment that could follow the NPPF.

We drew an immediate response from Government, although they spectacularly missed the point by appearing to think we were campaigning about the specific protections for heritage and nature. These are of course important, but our point was much wider – concerning the very purpose of planning as an economic agent.

The wider role of planning was then thrown into new relief by the shocking riots that took place in early August.

The Chancellor had already staked a claim for the deregulation of the planning system as being a fundamental part of his plan for promoting growth and reducing the deficit. With the riots, Ministers went even further. The Prime Minister cited planning regulations as being partially responsible for the damage caused to town centres across the country – arguing that, in Wolverhampton, planning restrictions had meant shop owners could not fit metal shutters.

In other words, planning was being held up as part of the problem for the economic and social ills of the country, rather than being part of the solution.

Another way of looking at the riots, however, could lead to a completely different conclusion. The days after the main riots in London, Manchester  and other cities saw spontaneous clean up events, as local residents took to the streets to repair the damage. In Peckham, a local group commandeered a boarded up shop front to provide a platform for people to express, on post-it notes, their love of the place where they lived. (The wall is now to be protected, say the local council.)

This is precisely what planning should be about. It needs to enable local people to articulate what matters to them about their local area, and then use efficient and effective regulations to keep that ‘spirit of place’ alive. Not by blocking all change, but by managing change and growth in ways that are sensitive to local needs and the wider public good.

As it is, the NPPF puts economics first, in an effort to rescue the country from its economic doldrums. The trouble is, the facts just don’t stack up. Planning itself is not holding back the economy. As the FT reported, some 170,000 new homes have had planning permission, but remain unbuilt. It’s not planning permission that developers need - they are simply waiting for the market to rebound. Weakening the planning rules simply serves to allow a lot more substandard development to take place.

It seems the anger at the NPPF is mounting. It features as a major story in my local freebie newspaper this week. If articles like this are appearing in local papers all over the country, it would seem that communities are waking up to the dangers that the Government’s proposals represent.