Memorandum by North Yorkshire County Council
(UWP 28)
THE PROPOSED URBAN WHITE PAPER
1. Introduction
1.1 North Yorkshire County Council is pleased
to assist this Inquiry into the proposed Urban White Paper and
invites the Committee to consider its evidence which is based
on long experience of planning at the strategic level through
both the regional and structure plan processes.
1.2 North Yorkshire is a large, predominantly
rural county situated between concentrations of urban population
in Teesside to the north and South and West Yorkshire to the south.
Nevertheless, within the North Yorkshire there are significant
urban areas at Harrogate and Scarborough and a range of market
towns which act as service and employment centres for the surrounding
rural areas. The adopted Structure Plan makes generous provision
to meet the needs of the resident population, while seeking to
regulate the overall pace of housing development. In-migration
to the County is a more potent influence on population trends
than natural change. Even within the current policy of restraint,
provision for in-migration from the surrounding conurbations accounts
for over two thirds of housing development.
1.3 Successful implementation of the Government's
policy of urban renaissance is expected to have a significant
effect on the pressure for housing in the towns and villages in
North Yorkshire, on green belts and on the increasing level of
commuting.
1.4 The County Council has consistently
expressed its concerns over the problems facing rural areas and
its support for urban regeneration in its response to Government
consultation documents. This includes its recent comments on the
discussion document on rural community and environmental matters,
"Rural England", which emphasised the County Councils
support for sustainable development and the need to balance the
needs of urban and rural areas. The County Council also submitted
evidence to this Committee in January 1998 in relation to its
Housing Inquiry. This again emphasised the importance that the
County Council attaches to urban regeneration and the re-use of
previously developed land within urban areas.
2. Which of the recommendations of the Report
of the Urban Task Force should be a priority for implementation?
2.1 The Report of the Urban Task Force offers
104 separate recommendations on the way towards an urban renaissance
in the UK. Taken as a whole the Report contains a set of inter-related
and mutually supporting measures covering funding, implementation
and design. The Report acknowledges that urban regeneration is
a long term objective and that sustainable development will not
be achieved in the short term.
2.2 In this context, phasing the introduction
of the recommendations is therefore inevitable. There is, however,
a danger that identifying individual proposals as matters of priority
without implementing other complementary elements of the Report
may tend to undermine the overall effectiveness of the proposals.
The Government's objective of an urban renaissance will only be
achieved if this is matched by a long-term commitment to implement
most of the Report's proposals simultaneously.
2.3 In relation to land use planning there
are a number of measures that could be implemented without significant
delay through amendments to national policy guidance in the appropriate
Planning Policy Guidance Notes. These include:—
— the de-allocation of greenfield land
for housing from development plans where allocations are no longer
consistent with planning objectives;
— implementation of the sequential
approach to the release of land for housing, as previously outlined
in the draft PPG3, Housing;
— reallocating surplus employment sites
for housing;
— refusing planning permission for
new housing where density levels are low;
— introducing maximum parking standards
of one parking space per dwelling in all new urban development;
and
— encouraging the use of planning agreements
to secure planning gain to provide and improve local facilities
and amenities.
3. How should policies for employment, competitiveness,
housing, transport and public transport be integrated to foster
urban regeneration? The role of other Government departments and
Government agencies and the Regional Development Agencies.
3.1 It is widely accepted by the Urban Task
Force and others that the principles of urban regeneration will
need to under-pin a broad range of central and local government
intervention so that they act to reinforce each other, rather
than conflict. The provision of housing within urban areas will
only be successful in stimulating regeneration and preventing
the erosion of the countryside if it is viewed as one element
of a wider package of environmental, social and economic measures
aimed at ensuring that urban areas and town centres provide safe
and attractive locations where people want to live. This will
involve improvements in education, health, public safety, pollution,
social deprivation, employment and training and public transport.
Responsibility for implementing the necessary changes across all
these areas must rest with the Government.
3.2 It will be important in implementing
policies aimed at urban regeneration that measures dealing with
all these areas of concern go forward together. The provision
of housing in urban areas without improvements to the economic,
social and physical environment will simply result in greater
social polarisation as those who can afford to do so, move out
to the more attractive suburbs and rural areas.
3.3 Land use planning should not necessarily
be regarded as the prime instrument of public policy in this respect.
It is one component in a package of mutually supporting measures.
Fiscal, transport and other measures, for example, can have a
more direct and immediate influence on people's activities than
land use planning.
4. The consequences for the urban renaissance
of housing and business development on greenfield sites.
4.1 The extension of existing built-up areas
onto green fields or other open land at the urban fringe has represented
the major source of new housing in the past. For many years rural
areas, particularly those like North Yorkshire that are well related
to major conurbations, have experienced considerable development
pressures. Clearly, this past rate of incremental development
on the market towns and villages that characterise rural counties
cannot be sustained without serious adverse consequences.
4.2 The comparatively small size of market
towns and villages means that incremental peripheral development
at the rate that has been experienced in the past takes place
at the expense of their character, environment, historic form
and setting. The experience in North Yorkshire suggests that environmentally
acceptable sites are becoming scarcer and that in many settlements
continued peripheral development is having an adverse effect.
Many of the smaller market towns and villages have a limited service
base and an infrastructure that is ill equipped to accommodate
development at the rates that have been experienced in the past.
While developer contributions to overcome such deficiencies can,
to some extent, be legitimately negotiated as planning gain there
is usually also a call on public expenditure. Rural authorities
are not in a position to answer this call satisfactorily when
it stems from dispersed incremental expansion of towns and villages.
4.3 In its evidence to the Committee's Housing
Inquiry in 1998 the County Council expressed the view that housing
needs should be met as far as possible where they arise and that
the continued dispersal of housing growth away from these areas
to adjoining rural areas would not serve the best interests of
either urban regeneration, the Government's approach to sustainable
development or the protection of rural resources. The successful
implementation of the Urban Task Force's recommendations would
represent an integral part of this wider approach.
5. How should planning authorities be encouraged
to bring about the speedy release of brownfield sites and foster
creative urban design?
5.1 Much of the brownfield land available
in the country will be difficult to redevelop for housing. Many
sites are former industrial or contaminated land or require assembling.
Others are poorly related to areas of housing demand either at
the regional or local levels. In these circumstances the private
sector alone may be unable or unwilling to undertake the necessary
investment to ensure that sites come forward for development.
It may therefore be necessary for the Government to pump-prime
the process of reclamation and site assembly. The Urban Task Force's
recommendations in this area are therefore to be welcomed.
5.2 For the most part local planning authorities
are already committed to the redevelopment of disused and vacant
land within their areas. In North Yorkshire, for example, development
plans have given priority to the use of such sites since the Structure
Plan was first approved in 1980. There are however a number of
factors that authorities need to consider when dealing with proposals
for the redevelopment of a previously used site, any of which
may quite reasonably delay the granting of planning permission.
For example, the views of local residents and neighbours, the
standard of the design and layout, negotiations with the developers
over planning gain, the impact on local services and facilities
and the loss of what may have become informal open space may all
suggest a more cautious approach.
5.3 Since greenfield sites are usually easier
to develop and in locations which are often more attractive to
developers it will be important that any public sector intervention
to encourage the re-use of brownfield sites is accompanied by
steps to restrain the release of alternative greenfield sites.
To be effective, proposals to increase the re-use of brownfield
sites will require a package of both "carrot" and "stick"
measures. Government proposals in the draft revision to PPG3 for
the sequential approach to housing are therefore welcomed by the
County Council, but these would benefit from a clearer indication
of how the approach would be expected to operate in practice.
It is also important that the approach is fully reflected in decisions
by the Planning Inspectorate in determining planning appeals and
making recommendations on development plans.
6. Policies relevant to towns and suburbs
as well as cities, including their boundaries.
6.1 It is unclear whether the Committee's
examination will extend down to the level of market towns. However,
it is important that the new urban agenda does not lose sight
of rural needs and expectations. Given the opportunity the County
Council will wish to make its views known on the contents of the
proposed new Rural White Paper, building on the comments already
made in response to the "Rural England" discussion document.
6.2 The County Council considers that the
future prosperity and cohesion of rural areas in general lies
in the maintenance of strong and vibrant market towns. These should
provide the focus for development, although not necessarily accommodating
the high levels of inward migration that have been experienced
in the past, as well as a wide range of employment opportunities,
services and facilities capable of serving the needs of the rural
population within this wider hinterland. Without the market towns
the rural community and its economy would be very difficult to
sustain.
6.3 The County Council believes that there
is a need to develop and manage locally owned, holistic action
plans and partnerships, which address economic, community and
environmental issues and activities in an integrated way. To this
end it is actively working with local communities, other public
sector providers and the private and voluntary sectors to put
appropriate strategies in place. This approach is supported by
the emphasis which the recently submitted Regional Economic Strategy
prepared by Yorkshire Forward places on market town regeneration
and by the positive transport policies for market towns in the
Regional Transport Strategy. The County Council's own Local Transport
Plan also identifies the market townsas the focus for investment
in public transport services and gives priority to improving access
to themfrom surrounding local communities. However, some of the
transport solutions in the cities are not expectedto be applicable
in country towns where the scope for such measures as parking
charges, park andride and congestion charging is limited if the
towns are to serve their rural hinterlands where, despiteattempts
to improve public transport, a heavy reliance will remain on the
private car to accessservice centres.
6.4 Maintenance of an adequate supply of
housing, which reflects the needs of rural areas and the capacity
of market towns to accommodate it without serious adverse environmental
effects, is an important element in this process of revitalising
the rural community and the rural economy. It is important that
it is not overlooked as a result of the new urban agenda.
January 2000
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