TLDR: Local design codes are a brilliant idea. So were neighbourhood plans (I know, I wrote one). But many a government good intention has died on the alter of the bureaucracy. Design codes will be no exception, unless we fix a fundamental failing of the planning system: ‘Latest plan prevails’…..
On 30 January, Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP published the Government’s response to the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission report ‘Living with Beauty’, setting out how its recommendations would be translated into new planning law.
This is an extremely welcome and bold set of reforms – particularly around the requirement for councils to create local design codes.
But as always, the devil is going to be in the detail. The paper promises a:
“local community fully involved in how they want new developments to look and feel.”
By:
“Encouraging all councils to publish their unique design code, so residents have a real say in the design of new developments in their area.”
So all good, right?
This is where the mechanics of the planning system – the old system, that the Government wants to radically change – start banging into each other. At the heart is a core rule of planning: ‘Latest plan prevails’.
Which in this case is potentially going to be a very bad thing.
The newly published National Model Design Code is a well written document that does a good job at defining what ‘beautiful’ should look and feel like (and it’s telling that planning folks are lining up to tell us how terrible an idea this is…)
The design code says:
“Neighbourhood planning groups may choose to produce their own design codes or guides as part of the neighbourhood plan process.”
I have put the emphasis on ‘may’ deliberately. The guide goes into detail about creating area-specific guides, rather than a vague, one-size-fits-all guide for the whole planning area. But the guide isn’t specific about how these area guides get approved and adopted.
And this matters, for two reasons:
A place like Rushcliffe – where we are based – is made up of numerous, reasonably large settlements with their own identities – so they are best placed to write their design codes.
The ‘latest plan prevails’ principle is how what these communities want will be ignored.
Sounds a bit harsh? Let’s consider the evidence.
Here in Rushcliffe, as in much of the country, there are a number of Neighbourhood Plansnow in place, covering places such as East Leake, Keyworth, Gotham, Radcliffe-on-Trent etc – with others in various states of preparation.
All have a number of things in common:
They all have a strong focus on the importance of local design
They have all been developed by local people, and voted on by local people in a referendum
They have all been sidelined or ignored completely by Rushcliffe Borough Council’s planners.
In an open letter to other Rushcliffe parishes in January 2018, East Leake Parish Council held nothing back about its frustration with how Rushcliffe has treated its Plan:
“We have been appalled at how Rushcliffe Borough Council appears to ignore its policies in preliminary discussions with developers and when determining planning applications.”
The parish felt much of the blame lies with:
“The attitude of Rushcliffe’s planning officers and committee, giving insufficient weight to the policies in our Neighbourhood Plan.”
And concluded saying:
“We have been sickened at how Rushcliffe Borough Council seems to have ignored the wishes of East Leake residents.”
This letter arrived at the point that Keyworth Parish Council was finalising itsNeighbourhood Plan. I was a parish councillor at the time, and heavily involved in writing it. East Leake’s experience has certainly been repeated in Keyworth. In 2019, Rushcliffe wrote its Local Plan Part 2 – which chose to ignore the recently adopted Keyworth Plan and pick a site for development previously rejected by the local community.
In another open letter to Rushcliffe, the parish said:
“We wish to express our extreme disappointment that RBC is apparently ignoring the explicit wishes of the residents of Keyworth, in a manner which runs contrary to local democracy.
“Seven years of hard work went into producing the Keyworth Neighbourhood Plan(KNP). Consideration of appropriate sites dates back even further.
“Those involved in this considerable body of work and consultation….felt that the time and hard work of those involved, plus approximately £25,000 will have been wasted if RBC totally ignores the recommendations of KNP at the first opportunity to endorse it.”
Spot the pattern here??!
There’s a debate to be had about “The attitude of Rushcliffe’s planning officers” – but there’s a bigger problem at the heart of this growing, frustrating democratic deficit. This isn’t, to be clear, unique to our local council. In October 2018, the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) published ‘Where next for neighbourhood plans?’. It said:
“It has become all too apparent that one of the major problems threatening the future of neighbourhood plans is that of ‘keeping in alignment with’ and conforming to local plans.”
The report highlights a number of case studies similar to the experiences of East Leake and Keyworth, concluding:
“This entire scenario has the potential to be repeated in many other parts of the country.”
And this is why, as a nation, we need to revisit, grapple with, and obliterate the tradition of ‘latest plan prevails’.
In the old days, this principle made absolute sense. The council writes a plan, uses it for a bit, and then writes another which then takes over – which is obvious, and everyone knows where they stand.
Then came the Neighbourhood Plan era. Suddenly, there’s a whole new set of people writing planning policy locally. And – shock horror, oh no! – these people are mere AMATEURS. They know nothing about planning! Not like us highly trained, highly skilled professionals!
Maybe not. But they are keen and passionate and knowledgeable about their community, and want the best bits protected and the new stuff to be worthy of the best existing bits.
So local planning authorities are told to adapt to this new reality – and they get to oversee the process, alongside independent inspectors – to make sure the plans are sensible and deliverable. So far, so good.
….and then the council writes a new Local Plan…. And the entire Neighbourhood Plan, lovingly created by those passionate locals for years and years, is effectively junked in the bin.
You can see the consequences of this ruthless application of ‘latest plan prevails’ in countless officer reports to planning committees.
So let’s return to East Leake to see how this works in practice, specifically:
20/00888/FUL: The erection of 51 dwellings with associated access, parking and landscaping. Land Off Rempstone Road*
This particular application was part of a much bigger one. Previously – on appeal – the developer had ‘won’ permission for 235 homes, along with a much needed new primary school.
And now, as developers do, they were coming back for more – basically packing them in, using up what was previously set aside as public open space.
(Context is everything here. East Leake has had 1,400 really bang average, ‘could be anywhere’ houses forced on it, the majority AFTER the adoption of its Neighbourhood Plan. Every single one of these houses will need retrofitting, at vast cost, by 2050 if the country wants to be truly ‘net zero’ carbon. The village expected to get around 400 new homes. And Rushcliffe’s new local plan promised to not identify any more sites.)
In their response to other applications in the village, the council pushed hard on this, refusing to consider any schemes, no matter what their merits, because East Leake was already ‘full up’ (full disclosure – that includes a 22 net zero carbon home development by Positive Homes).
The officer report* to the Planning Committee is very revealing:
“East Leake Parish Council object to the proposal on the following grounds:
a. Loss of green space
b. Impact on infrastructure contrary to Policy H1 of the Neighbourhood Plan
c. Housing Mix does not comply with Policy H3 of Neighbourhood Plan
d. Walking distances to the centre of the village.”
So how many times does the report reference the Neighbourhood Plan after that? How much weight and relevance does the planning officer give it? Drumroll…..
There are just TWO references – paragraphs 112 and 113. That’s it. Nothing to address the other Neighbourhood Plan policies, nothing about local people’s feelings about loss of green space.
There IS however an acceptance that the extra 51 homes will result in a net loss of biodiversity…. Which is, yep: Against the Neighbourhood Plan, Rushcliffe’s own rules – and also, very shortly, to be against the law of the land (the report deals with this by saying the Environment Bill hasn’t become law yet, so we can ignore its requirement for a 10% gain in all new schemes. Wow.)
*Visit Rushcliffe’s planning website and enter 20/00888/FUL into the ‘simple search’ box.
Now let’s compare this with another planning application in East Leake – the one mentioned above: Ours, for 22 ecohomes**.
The scheme is the ONLY one proposed for the village that meets the requirements of every criteria of the Neighbourhood Plan (Rushcliffe try to claim otherwise, but they are wrong).
However, the council’s ‘Statement of Case’ to the non-determination appeal (they had eight months to make one, and refused) is clear:
6.32 Regardless of whether these criteria are met or not, it is considered that the East Leake Neighbourhood Plan (2015) is in conflict with, and superseded by, the Local Plan Part 2 (2019).
The irony here is the council is arguing that the site is in the countryside. It decided this because of a policy in their Local Plan Part 2. And what does that policy say about how we decide what is and isn’t countryside?
“The Local Plan does not identify the settlement boundaries…. beyond which Policy 22 will apply. In the case of settlements which are surrounded by open countryside, settlement boundaries could be established through a Neighbourhood Plan.”
So it’s really clear – the latest plan, which prevails, says it’s up to the Neighbourhood Plan to define the boundaries. Which it does. It also sets out how the villagers want their village to grow.
But Rushcliffe don’t want to hear it, so refuse to accept the inescapable logic that they can’t choose to define a site as open countryside when they’ve already given up that right to the existing Neighbourhood Plan.
**Visit Rushcliffe’s planning website and enter 19/02205/FUL into the ‘simple search’ box.
Fundamentally: This is NOT how a civilised, mature democracy is supposed to work.
The two most recent and very readable Policy Exchange reports Planning Anew and Rethinking the Planning System cover the big picture issues well – but are completely silent on this structural issue about how the different neighbourhood and local plans relate to each other.
In Planning Anew, Professor Robert Adam argues:
“In the control system itself, vague policies and private agendas are rife as the complexity of the system makes it more bureaucratic and less democratic. Imprecise policies give detailed power to individual bureaucrats as interpreters and gatekeepers to valuable permissions.”
Doesn’t that sound rather a lot like the examples above? Funny that.
No wonder the planners are increasingly against reform – they fear for their jobs, their power from getting to effectively be judge and jury over every application (the vast majority of applications never reach a planning committee don’t forget…)
In our case, and that of the 51 home scheme, the planners were happy picking and choosing what rules to follow, and equally happy to make up new rules as they went along.
Our case is an example of how, if the rules were applied properly and consistently, neighbourhood plans and local plans could rub along just fine. The 2019 local plan is explicit in saying that its up to neighbourhood plans (existing or otherwise) to set some rules. This both respects local democracy AND keeps to ‘latest plan prevails’.
All you have to do is to extend this simple example out, so that the starting point for all local plans is ‘we will adopt all the policies of all the existing neighbourhood plans’.
Easy. So easy, so fair, so respectful of all the hard work those passionate locals put in, that you would think that should just be a given, right?
What prospects then for design codes and democratic, decentralised planning?
In this context of how planning authorities treat neighbourhood plans, what chance do local design codes have? Can Robert Jenrick’s reforms really make a difference?
You can easily make a case for them being doomed from the off, because the planning authorities will simply overwrite or ignore local people’s sincerely expressed wishes.
We can’t escape the conclusion that the planners will simply stop at nothing to destroy anything that restricts their ill-gained, undeserved authority. The talk about ‘how can you possibly define beauty’ is a classic wedge issue – kill the argument on that and you can delegitimise the whole ‘planning for the future’ reforms.
Asking the planners to reform themselves is never going to happen. The force has to come from without, not within.
Passing new laws is only the start. The only way this will work is if the national politicians grapple with something they rarely do – the nuts, bolts, quirks, failings, strengths and weaknesses of how systems work and things actually get done. The Boring Stuff in other words.
The Government’s belief is a noble one – that, when invited to have their say properly, local people won’t simply be against everything. In fact they will actively participate in deciding how their communities should be best developed.
But, by not fixing this issue of ‘latest plan prevails’, the most likely outcome is more people turning into ‘NIMBYs’ even faster, as they grow even more frustrated at how the system ignores their wishes.
The simplest way to start that, is to start from a principle of the ‘localest’ plan must always prevail – be it neighbourhood plans, local design codes, whatever.
Mandate that no new local plan can override an existing one of these, and we might just be onto something.