Examination of Witnesses(Questions 300-310)
MR TONY
MCNULTY
AND MR
MICHAEL BACH
TUESDAY 17 DECEMBER 2002
Chairman
300. It disappointed you.
(Mr McNulty) Yes, that is exactly the word.
Dr Pugh
301. Do you have any evidence of regional planning
influencing the development of clusters?
(Mr McNulty) The evidence is patchy thus far. The
notion of further development of clusters is an area that we would
actively encourage, not just in the Bill but subsequently.
(Mr Bach) If I can give you some of the evidence from
our research. Planning was not an impediment to clusters but it
did not actually actively help them. Other issues other than planning
were much more important, like the availability of skilled labour.
The planning system has not been unresponsive but what it has
not done is positively promote those clusters. Things like business
planning zones will be an opportunity for doing that.
302. Inward investment, has that been decisively
effected by planning, do you have any evidence to that effect
or does it happen anyway when it is going to happen due to market
tendencies?
(Mr McNulty) Part of the complexity of all this is
almost unpeeling the onion and seeing where the planning process
impedes or assists and where it is down to an enlightened RDA
chair or an enlightened county council leader. In terms of substantive
evidence I would have thought in one sense that the planning process
is the second stage on from what initially attracts people to
invest in a particular area.
303. Have you not attracted occasions where
some policy has been revised and almost immediately there has
been a flood of inward investment bottled up waiting to get in
there?
(Mr McNulty) I can think of such examples but they
are not terribly useful ones. My background is overwhelmingly
Irish and every now and then I go over to Ireland and see empty
IDA sheds all over the place as a consequence of fiscal breaks
and rapid changes to the planning process to assist this inward
investment that disappear like grains of sand five years later
when the tax regime runs out. The interaction between what the
RDAs do in economic development, the regional planning framework,
the regional political leadership and the regional economic activity
are all crucially important. How to unpick them and how useful
that is I am not sure.
304. Would it be fair to say that it is easier
to track some of the negative effects of planning, keeping development
out rather than planning bringing development in?
(Mr McNulty) As Michael has said, we have fairly significant
evidence from the trawl we have done. At best the plan is not
an impediment but at worst it is fairly neutral. Back to Mr O'Brien's
point about, yes moving forward in terms of being proactive and
working with the RDAs in economic development to assist inward
investment and all those elements while still holding the ring
in terms of a balance between a fair land use of development control
system, the communities, the consequences for them and the attraction
of economic activity and everything else.
Mr Clelland
305. What has been done about the problem of
regions and local authorities competing with each other for new
business investment in their area and all the dangers of driving
down standards?
(Mr McNulty) Part of that process with the new Bill
is the Regional Spacial Strategy, which I know is a clumsy title
but it is meant to be all embracing in terms of picking up and
identifying far more than simply land use and development control
but about infrastructure and so much more which will almost predefine
and compliment the local development frameworks from the other
end of the process and where key aspects of development should
be in any particular region. That is not going to pre-empt or
stop in the end that almost mutually assured destructive nature
of some of the intense competition but it will assist the process
and get us to a stage where people are not taking a step back
and taking that broader regional view. That needs to be seen in
the context of a lot of the other development will happen at a
local level. It sounds mundane but the development and the review
of much of what we are doing on the planning policy guidance will
work with that process, not least in terms of where some of the
things I have seen, where there is this kind of cut-throat competition
for things like out of town retail, near out of town or the next
town, or whatever else. The assorted PPGs will deal with that
as readily as the RSSs
306. You mention the RSSs, in the Committee
on Planning Green Paper we recommended that RSSs should take precedent
over all other regional strategies. In its response the Government
did not seem to go along with that, why was that?
(Mr McNulty) I think we need to get them in place
first. I think a question from Dr Pugh earlier, ultimately—and
it is not for me to rewrite the Bill on the day of the second
reading—these things are organic and I would suspect not
too long down the line not only will all of these regional activities
be interwoven and interacted but I think the RSSs will end up
predominating and getting broader in terms of what they do. They
are intended to be fairly all incumbent and far more than simply
local plans. They are pretty all-incumbent documents already and
they will lead the process. The RPPs will work very closely with
the RDAs and other regional authorities, some elected and some
not subsequently, to drive the process forward in terms of a planning
regime, an economic development regime and broader strategies
for each week.
Chairman
307. Do you have any comments on the literary
review that Roger Tym did for us?
(Mr McNulty) I thought it was very good.
308. That is excellent, you do not need to go
any further.
(Mr McNulty) It sat very readily with much of the
research that we had already done. What was most interesting from
our point of view was there was nothing stark that stood out from
his conclusions that jarred in any sense with our conclusions,
not just from the research but from the broad interaction we have
had with consultees on the planning Green Paper. It was very useful
in that sense.
309. There does seem to be a lack of research
on the benefits of planning. Has the Department any plans to do
any research in this area?
(Mr McNulty) In one sense that is right, but in one
sense it is a tad unkind in a sense that every time we review
a PPG or a PPS there is in that particular slither of that particular
area a goodly body of research underpinning it. I could wax lyrical
but shout about the huge body of research that has gone into the
development of PPG 23 by Lester Hicks on waste, minerals and general
extraction. It is a huge and very definitive seminal piece of
work in that area, which I will happily send copies of, and the
research to the Committee. In terms of the initial development
and the subsequent development of PPG 3 on housing and PPG 6 there
has been a huge body of research underpinning those that do summarise
the benefits, or otherwise, of the prior regime and what may need
to change. Taking a step back and saying, in a global sense has
that happened? I think one of the things the paper did show was
the pro-active, which it clearly showed, as well as the porosity
of sustaining evidence to say that the anecdotal planning is terrible,
it is an impediment and we will all be running off into sunny
uplands with twice the growth rate we got if it was not for the
planning system.
310. We will look forward to that Christmas
reading. Meanwhile can we let you escape to go back to the Department
to peel the onion? I did not realise it was quite that difficult
in your Department.
(Mr McNulty) At least we found the onion!
Chairman: On that note thank you very much indeed
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