The planning system has become the whipping boy of our new government, blamed for many of the country’s economic ills. The government wants to to ‘cut red tape to speed up growth’, and with the right tapes cut, that could definitely help.  There can be no doubt that in some cases planning applications are frustrated (in the legal sense), when objections are piled up, and the usual suspects marked down as NIMBY. But nationally there’s been a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ for over a decade in the NPPF, and it’s even less of an issue in dense urban areas such as London because of the additional regional level represented by the Mayor’s London Plan.

Plan hierarchy

In this article, we dare to suggest that many of the problems lie closer to government, where the ‘red tape’ appears strongest, with recent announcements suggesting that they may have realised. A background can be found in A Brief History of Bureaucracy, while remembering that Einstein said ‘Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work’.

With the London Mayoral prerogative automatically mandated for projects of any size, supported by the option of call-in,  plus the largely unaffordable cost of (legal) challenge, there are actually vanishingly few opportunities for NIMBYs to stop a development blessed by the Mayor.  In extremis, this leads to Mayoral Opportunity Area developments like Nine Elms, Stratford, North Acton or indeed more locally, White City, where planning controls are more lax, especially on tall buildings, and locals haven’t been much considered. Earls Court is the next such Opportunity Area to be developed, and one in which we’re been actively engaged with several neighbouring societies.

Nine elms

Stratford (GLA)

White City Living

White City 2021

North Acton OPDC

Earls Court phase 1 proposed

A thoroughly unscientific review of preferences expressed on our Instagram feed over the last five years shows what real people like, and it’s not the images shown here, it’s rather closer to the CreateStreets or new urbanism view of the world, to the possible chagrin of some (male) architects.

Despite the government’s belief, with the NIMBY option already unavailable where housing demand is greatest, lining the barricades won’t work as a way to contest a poorly thought-through development.  But to improve them, we can and do suggest to developers, planners, local and Mayoral administrations, that they should be using the enormous accrued experience and skills freely available across the civic movement – help they claim to desperately need – and are required to properly consider under the 2011 Localism Act.

A Reality Check

In the specific case of Earls Court, a review of the combined comments of local civic societies, including ourselves and the London Forum representing over 100 similar societies, shows that typical push-back is rather more prosaic, being about working to existing Local and London plan policies, improving the living conditions and amenities for the majority of the population, particularly transport and infrastructure, and providing a measurably good standard of  actually affordable accommodation. It’s not about Nimbyism or improving developer return, and therein lies a problem.

It’s unhelpful then, that government frequently blames ‘The Planning System’ which can appear partly as a cipher for Nimbys, while simultaneously bemoaning the “lack of expertise”, or “shortage of resource” (planners) to get applications approved when:

• Government at every level produces planning legislation containing poorly written or superfluous requirements, later amending them to make them even more impenetrable, not clearer, as we highlighted in a recent article on Permitted Development.
• Local Planning Authorities in councils feel obliged to respond to the resulting gobbledegook with endless conditions (AKA requirements), and developers end up expensively producing what often amount to boilerplate documents in response. Planners have limited time to read them, comment (or perhaps even have the skills to review), let alone enforce.  A recent article by the London Forum titled “Planning officers overwhelmed“, referencing an NLA piece, provides the background.  By way of a local example, a memorable 2017 consent in LBHF had no fewer than 59 long and detailed conditions attached. The proposed architecture and civic amenity values weren’t improved as a result.
• A substantial amount of the planning workload is not actually town planning, that a planner might recognise, which isn’t good for recruitment and retention.
• Developers such as the Earls Court Development Company feel they need to respond to planning requirements with an impenetrable 826 documents, a proportion of which will probably never be read, while the resource used, which isn’t infinite, reduces focus on matters of concern to the public, and increases their costs, which they then pass on.
• Government – in the widest sense – too often listens to its civic societies and local communities with a tin ear, and fails to engage their skills for the benefit of the wider community in getting plans knocked into better shape at an early enough stage. A peek at stories produced by The London Forum’s 100+ civic societies clearly illustrates this very common issue.
• There’s very little external funding for actually affordable housing. The 35% mandated by the London Plan, and 50% target in this borough, mean that prices and/or building heights rise to pay for it, as the easiest, but least liked option.

It’s a case of the Emperors new clothes, the legislators might therefore be seen to be their own worst enemies, with the red tape lines of a well established requirements drafting industry regularly crossed.  In a forthcoming companion article, we’ll look more deeply at how the plan writing process might be improved using some well established methods.