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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 709-v House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE
HOUSING: BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE?
WEDNEsday 13 OCTOBER 2004 MR MIKE OXFORD MR BOB ROBERTS, MS JOANNA RUSSELL and MR TERRY ROBINSON MR KELVIN MacDONALD and MR DAVID BARRACLOUGH Evidence heard in Public Questions 477 -580
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee on Wednesday 13 October 2004 Members present Mr Peter Ainsworth, in the Chair Mr Colin Challen Mrs Helen Clark Sue Doughty Paul Flynn Mr Mark Francois Mr John McWilliam Mr Simon Thomas Joan Walley ________________
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Bob Roberts, Programme Director, Ms Joanna Russell, Senior Planning Adviser, and Mr Terry Robinson, Principal Manager, London and Thames Gateway, Countryside Agency, examined. Q477 Chairman: Thank you for coming and thank you for your written memorandum. I should like to ask you about one of the issues that often comes up. We know about the balance that needs to be struck in relation to all this housing development, but you seem to take issue with Kate Barker over the extent to which there should be trade-offs between the three of those. Is not the problem that everywhere you look in dealing with environmental issues this issue raises its ugly head, and on all occasions really the economy and the arguments in favour of economic progress win? Are you not being a little unrealistic in rebuking Barker for the position taken on this? Mr Roberts: I hope we are not rebuking it too much, but I do think we should always challenge the claim that it is necessary to lose one thing in order to gain another. It may sound a little idealistic but we should always start off by looking at what is termed the win/win answer, so we should be looking for ways of reconciling and gaining environmental benefit from for instance economic development, rather than starting off with an assumption that it cannot be done. It is quite right that there are sometimes trade-offs, but increasingly, if we think hard about things, there are opportunities to come out winning on several points. It is that starting assumption that we did not like, that there always has to be a winner and loser. Q478 Chairman: Can you give us some examples? Mr Roberts: I will give you a nice controversial example. We might think of an area of land which is currently undeveloped and a green-field site, and people might say it is undesirable to develop, but if that site is a very sterile, biologically/ecologically poor piece of land, it might be producing fabulous cabbages but from an environmental point of view it might not be terribly productive. It is not impossible that you could develop that land if there were other benefits in developing it, and increase biodiversity. If you were really good at design you might even be able to develop it in such a way that it is a very attractive development. I would say that that could be an example of win/win. Q479 Chairman: How confident are you that that sort of thing can be achieved? Notionally, it is easy to accept what you say, but in practice there is very little evidence that that ever happens. That is probably what worries me. Mr Roberts: It worries us as well, but you start off saying what you want to achieve and the ideal. We have three choices in a sense. The first choice is to be defeatist and say that you cannot get these big multiple wins, so you do not even try to do it - and that must be wrong. The second choice is to be so pessimistic about the chances of achieving it that you adopt the NIMBY approach and say that it can be done, but it is unlikely to be done, and therefore oppose it. The third option is to say, "we want to achieve this; how can we achieve these wins?" I have not seen the report, but I think CABE came out with a statement earlier in the week about the amount of development they thought was winning, in terms of being sustainable, and from memory they said something like 17 per cent or 20 per cent that they thought was good, and the rest was not so good. That was played as a bad headline. When I heard that, I said, "gosh, I did not expect it to be as good as 17 or 20 per cent", so it can be done. Q480 Chairman: It is a matter of judgment in the end, I suppose. Mr Robinson: I would point you, for real examples, to the two developments the National Trust is sponsoring at Dunham Massey and Cleveland. In those cases they would be able to point you to a lot of people winning, although at the outset the prospect for many National Trust members, being a member of an organisation that then becomes a development agent, was quite strange. However, they have seen that process through, and they have seen it through by applying a tremendous amount of effort to searching for solutions where there are lots of gainers. It is very easy to walk away and think you have got a solution where there is not enough winning going on. A lot of the secret of sustainable development is to go on looking, because there is often a solution that is beyond the one you think you have got, where there are more people winning than there are with the second group solution. Q481 Chairman: Do you see Barker's proposals as a threat to the countryside? Mr Roberts: Could be. It is like a lot of things; it depends on the extent and how they are taken. We agree that housing needs to become more affordable, and it is difficult to disagree with that at the moment. We accept in general terms that part of the solution to affordability is increased supply; although the report does seem to go a long way in terms of treating supply as being the answer when there are a lot of other things, but there is a lot of scepticism about the relationship between supply and affordability. We accept that increasing supply is probably one way of improving affordability. We also accept that in some circumstances some of that new supply will probably have to go on green-field sites. We strongly support the idea of brown-field development. We applaud the successes that have been achieved, but we understand that that will not always be able to provide what is needed and where it is needed. That leads you to a solution that says that every proposal must be strongly tested, but it must be tested locally not in some sort of universal way. We are very opposed to the 20‑40 per cent additional land bank idea because that does not fit in with regional and local sensitivities. It very strongly directs you towards an approach that where you do develop and have gone through all the tests, you have to have high quality, because for sustainability you have to have high quality in terms of resource use and things that fit the place and improve the place and give quality for the community. Q482 Chairman: None of that, of course, is in Barker at all. I am not asking you how it may transpire eventually into government but I am asking you specifically about Barker's recommendations. Were they to be directly implemented policy, would that represent a serious threat to the countryside? Mr Roberts: The biggest problem is the implication that the planning system would be by-passed. If there is one thing that we would want to emphasise, it is that we think for all of the problems and stresses, the planning system is the answer to a lot of these problems. It is not the problem itself; it is part of the solution. It is rather worrying that in several places Barker quite directly suggests ways of - sometimes it is called "accelerating" but it sounds and looks very much like going past or over the planning system when phrases like "alternative routes to planning permission" are put in. That is quite worrying, and we would be opposed to anything which did not use the planning system to seek solutions. Q483 Chairman: The basis for that is your concern, I take it, that to go down that route would lead to urban sprawl. Mr Roberts: It could do. There is a flavour in there, which is what is called "economic benefit", which seems to boil down to employment benefits and monetary benefits largely. There is a danger that they become predominant and override other values. That has always been a danger when dealing with environmental values because it is so difficult to monetarise them. Q484 Mrs Clark: You are one of the organisations that are very much thinking that a national housing strategy is not required and that the sustainable development strategy, provided it has enough environmental aspects, should be enough to address the situation in order to establish a stable housing policy. Is this really going to occur? Are you hopeful? What I would like to say about a sustainable development strategy is this. I know what it is; members of this Committee know what it is; there are a small, but dare I say select group of members of parliament of all parties who know what it is; but there is nobody in my constituency who has got any idea what it is, to say nothing about the general public elsewhere. Is this not the strategy that dare not speak its name, that nobody knows anything about; and so why are you putting all your eggs in that rather useless basket? Ms Russell: We feel the sustainable development strategy should be the over-arching strategy that embraces all the others. There is a danger of strategy overload. We have got the new planning system which requires a lot more strategic thinking and regional spatial strategies, local development documents which in themselves ----- Q485 Mrs Clark: What does that mean? How are you going to engage local authorities? How do you see it engaging local authorities? Ms Russell: The sustainable development strategy? Q486 Mrs Clark: Yes. Ms Russell: That sets the framework for all the strategies that the regional planning bodies and local planning authorities have to prepare so they know what the principles are and they take it forward into their strategies at regional and local levels, which will engage with the public so that the public will get involved with sustainable development issues at their local level. We do not see the need for yet another stand-alone strategy that might not be embraced by all the decision-makers or by the public. Q487 Mrs Clark: I am probably going off the brief here, but I am just going to give you a local example. Peterborough is a growth area. It is not at all apparent to me that the local authority - and I am not talking about officers, you understand but about the administration - has any idea about the sustainable development strategy, or how it might integrate with housing policy. What do you see as your role and government's role in informing them about that - not just my authority but others? They have no idea what it is and how it links in, and so consequently there is a huge protest locally about housing growth. Ms Russell: I think you are right. Government and local authorities have a very important role to play in raising awareness of the public, and the issues and the context within which very difficult decisions locally have to be made. There is a lot of general interest in environmental issues like climate change, and the public are becoming more and more interested and more engaged. It is the job of the professionals in the field to try and do what they can to engage people with those issues in a way the public can understand, so they get on board and can accept the need for necessary development and can have a say in how that development should take place at local level. The new planning system is predicated on far greater community involvement in the system, and we embrace those objectives. We think that is vitally important that everyone should have a say in the future planning of their areas and should engage with the issues; and that is what is going to help achieve more sustainable communities in the long run. Q488 Mrs Clark: I am not normally an advocate for my neighbouring Member of Parliament Sir Brian Mawhinney, but he has fought a long-standing campaign in terms of his concern about planning committees and the planning process; and he is concerned, as am I, about the fact that planning committees and planning concerns do not seem to be at all tuned in to government policies or whatever. How are you going to see your role as actually informing them about this? Furthermore, how would you look at a housing strategy with specific environmental guidance, actually targeted at all those involved in housing? Do you think that is a role for you? Is it a role for voluntary organisations; is it a role for the Government or ministers - what? Ms Russell: It is a role for all stakeholders. The Countryside Agency has a role because we are a statutory consultee. Q489 Mrs Clark: Is there discussion between any of these? Ms Russell: All the stakeholders get together at the regional and local level, and the new planning system encourages that. It is a much more all-embracing system. Special planning is going to embrace all relevant participants at the local level to work together to achieve better quality development and sustainable development. Mr Roberts: I have some sympathy with what you say, which is that it is not easy. Q490 Mrs Clark: It is not transparent. Mr Roberts: No, well it is not transparent enough. It is a bit unreasonable, I think, to write off the existing planning system - it is a damn sight better than an awful lot of other planning systems that are around, or non-planning systems. It is a relative issue. The latest changes are attempting to introduce higher standards and more transparency. I think there are two ways of looking at this. One is the question you have asked, which is to what extent is government going to make known to local authorities the new rules, and help them to implement them - and there are measures going through to do that. The other is to what extent planning authorities are going to be influenced from the bottom up. A great deal of our own work and a great deal of what we have produced and encouraged over the last ten years or more has been about community involvement. Our theory is that the more you can involve the community, the more you can engage the community; and the more you can give the community benefit from proposed developments, very tangible benefits - and that is something that is very interesting in Barker and what comes out of that - the more likely you are to come out with happier communities, rather than them feeling things are just being landed on them all the while. Q491 Mrs Clark: You are saying it is about sharing and discussion and working together for solutions, rather than top-down imposed. Mr Roberts: Yes. Mr Robinson: I want to go back to your observation that not many people understand sustainable development. Q492 Mrs Clark: They do not. Mr Robinson: Which is very easy to agree on that. What they do understand is better places to live; a more thriving local economy which is based on the local opportunities and builds on local opportunities; services and infrastructure which feed and help build proper community cohesions, so that their quality of life - which is what I quickly find when we talk about sustainable development, that we come to talk about quality of life much more quickly than the rather technical areas of sustainable development; and, on top of that, more prudent use of natural resources, better use of techniques where we are less wasteful and do more recycling. All of that seems to me to be being picked up quite rapidly, both at the political level by local politicians and in a lot of the stakeholders. What the new planning system delivers for those local authorities which can gear up to take advantage of it - and I am tempted to say, "woe betide those that do not" - is the opportunity to use the planning system to broker the sort of improvements people want where development acts as a vehicle to deliver those improvements, rather than the current situation which is a perpetual stand-off between those that want to develop and the rest who see development as some threat that we should all be frightened of. Q493 Mrs Clark: That is very helpful. Speaking from a previous incarnation, as an ex English teacher, and someone involved with the Plain English organisation, the phrase "quality of life issues" or "quality of life commission" would seem to be much more readily understandable to people in constituencies up and down the country, rather than "sustainable development", which we have even had problems with in this Committee in defining - so that is a very valuable comment to make. You have said in your submission that you would like to see the wording of the draft PPS1 to be beefed up. How would you see that exactly? Ms Russell: In the wording on sustainable development it talks about integrating economic and social objectives, which we welcome, but it is the point the Chairman made earlier about economic objectives perhaps overriding environmental ones. To reiterate the point we made, we think it should be strong. The PPS1 is the over-arching planning statement that all other planning statements are in conformity with, and regional and local plans are in conformity with; so it is really important that we get this one right. I would think the wording should be strong on integration, aiming for the win/win solutions ----- Q494 Mrs Clark: Can you take me back? Can you explain "integration" a bit more, please - integration in what way? Ms Russell: Economic, social and environmental issues together to achieve improvement in quality of life. That is sustainable development, and that should be strongly stated in the guidance. Q495 Mrs Clark: Again, we have got to put that into plain English, have we not, in terms of people within their constituencies and their daily lives? Ms Russell: The second point I would like to make on PPS1 is that it talks very much about improving the quality of the planning service, and we recognise that that is important; but we would like to see greater emphasis on improved planning outcomes, the quality of development on the ground. That should be in there strongly. Q496 Mrs Clark: What do you mean by "future planning outcomes"? Ms Russell: The development that is delivered. The development itself should be high quality; it is not just the process of getting there, in terms of dealing with the planning application efficiently, it is to do with the quality of the outcome that is delivered on the ground. Q497 Mrs Clark: Finally, do you think that PPS1 will have the effect the Government wants it to have, of putting sustainable development right in the centre of the planning process? Is it going to have that outcome; and, if not, why, and how would you amend it? It is a difficult question. Mr Roberts: We do not have our crystal ball with us today! Ms Russell: It is certainly the starting point, if that is backed up by appropriate guidance and support and training for local authorities to help deliver that, with awareness campaigns and the publication we talked about earlier is all part of a mix that should help ensure sustainability is at the centre of decision-making. Mrs Clark: Thank you very much. I love your phrase "quality of life". Q498 Mr Thomas: When we are talking about PPS1 or any other government definition of sustainable development - you have already made it clear to the Committee that you are afraid that the economic bottom line is the one that wins over. You said quite rightly that you are looking for integration and win/win situations, but when we cannot achieve that, when we are faced with a choice in which there is a conflict, do you as the Countryside Agency take the view that it is the environmental consideration with sustainable development that should in those cases - not all cases perhaps - be uppermost? If you do not take that view, where does that leave the countryside and the environment? Mr Roberts: We do take that view where the environmental values are very high and very clear. For instance, in designated areas there are some very clearly-stated objectives, very important environmental qualities to protect and preferably enhance. We do not think that they should be diminished, reduced or got rid of for economic gain. In other areas, the environmental features and qualities might be relatively few - back to the cabbage field I mentioned at the beginning. In those circumstances, the environmental reduction might be relatively modest. There would be a loss of productive capacity for example in some ways; but actually it would not be huge relative to some potential local economic and social gains. It is horses for courses. It is not an easy answer, but we must of course improve environmental quality and preferably improve it. The key concept is to use development to make places better. I think we are in a mindset because probably the lifetime experience of most of the people in this room is predominantly that development is bad news; so we have a knee-jerk reaction and when somebody turns up and says they want to change the place in some way we think it is going to be worse. However, if you think about it over a longer period, development has created some of the places that we value most, some very beautiful and attractive places. It sounds very idealistic, but the trick is to use development to begin to recreate places that we think are beautiful and attractive and that we want to live in for the 21st century, rather than preserve some sort of mythical 18th century idyll. Q499 Mr Thomas: I can see how that approach works quite well in the context of a local environment or specific location, so you can take a monoculture agricultural field and say that in terms of biodiversity it is rubbish anyway, and 20 houses with nice gardens would be better. I can see how it works in context but what about the wider question, for example the effect of flooding in relation to development in a particular area; or the wider question about transport and the additional emissions that might be caused by the fact that a development is here, but the jobs are there, or the village or the markets are there? How can you take that view and apply it on a wider basis? It may work for the particular cabbage field, but how can you make sure it works in the wider context? Mr Roberts: That is precisely the job of the local planning authority, to receive information on those things from the Environment Agency or wherever the expertise lies, to properly take them into account and come to a decision in the light of that information. That is precisely what the planning authority is there for. When you ask how you do it, the answer is, "with difficulty". Sometimes there are conflicts. We know what the consequences of building on flood plains are now. We are not the Environment Agency, but I guess I know what they will say about it. What you have described is the planning process; it is receiving the multiplicity of information and attempting to resolve it with the maximum possible gain. Mr Robinson: The communities that fare better at this are those which are - and we hope in increasing numbers - using the planning system to prepare for this. You are very poorly equipped to get these sorts of solutions if you sit there waiting for something to be sprung on you. The planning system has to be steered round to - we advocate a visioning process whereby at community level the community comes together and gives the planning authority the information it needs to say, "this place is not going to be the same in ten years' time as it is now; what sort of change do we want; what sort of community do we want to become; and therefore what is on our shopping list, and what of that can we achieve through a development process?" I want to refer to a lot of success we have had in terms of quality, although it has not been adopted in a large number of places yet, with the technique we developed jointly with the Environment Agency and English Heritage and English Nature, called a quality of life assessment, which is a consultative process where basically, because you cannot put economic costs on ----- Chairman: We are coming on to this. I am anxious to make progress. Q500 Joan Walley: I wanted to follow up Mr Thomas's question about the relevant planning authorities and how you feel that special delivery vehicles in the planning process fit into that. Mr Robinson: They are obviously going to be most heavily prevalent in the Government's growth areas, and it is early days to know how successful it will be. We have learnt enough about how not to make them work in the past, and I think if we take on board lessons and make sure they operate on the basis of sustainable development in a proper collaborative way, looking at the right partnerships and alliances, and keeping the right contact with existing stakeholders, they stand a good chance of driving forward the sort of development that will be seen as beneficial in the long term. Q501 Mr Francois: Can I focus some of my points on the Sustainable Communities Plan itself. I declare an interest in that my constituency in Essex is just to the north of the Thames Gateway, so I am just on the northern fringes of that. The Sustainable Communities Plan has very significant implications for the growth areas as you have already intimated, and the countryside around them. You state in your memorandum that you are working in the growth areas to demonstrate how quality sustainable development can be achieved in practice. How are you doing this exactly? Can you give specific examples? Mr Robinson: We have been at work both in the planning arena and in developing greater awareness of the value and the wasted opportunities that exist in the countryside close to towns, which can be seen as the most important countryside we have got because it is the local countryside for those people. It is on the basis of a lot of experience with projects that led to the Groundwork Movement, the 12 community forests, and then individual planning techniques and countryside management techniques. We have got about twenty at the moment, which we put together in, I am afraid, yet another toolkit we are calling the Sustainable Communities' Cookbook. We are just poised to be at large in the growth areas with a team of people with a message saying, "we believe everyone is of one mind as to how they want this growth to happen and what legacy we want to leave to future generations". However, we also understand that sustainable development can be just a high aspiration and not much else; there are simple, straightforward techniques for achieving it. We have the answer to some of them, and we hope others will join in in that process as well, but there is a lot of good practice and a lot of good technique that is not well shared, and we want to help share some of the fairly straightforward ways of making things happen, for example in terms of planning. One of the techniques would be selling a concept statement of planning, whereby you get a community to look not just at where development will take place, but at the quality and the criteria for that development to take place on that site and the other benefits it will bring with it. Q502 Mr Francois: We have certainly not lacked an input of paper into this inquiry so far. You gave some specific examples and you rattled through them rather quickly, but would it be too much of a burden to ask you to provide us with a note? Mr Robinson: We have a sales leaflet which promotes these techniques, and I will certainly let you have some copies. It is very much based on the premise that we are not sending out bits of paper, we are sending out people to go out, because there is a lot of hand-holding needed to give people the confidence to do this. Q503 Mr Francois: Do you have any concerns about how the Communities Plan might be affecting the countryside, in the South East in particular? Mr Robinson: We are embarking on some research, which is remarkably non-existent at the moment, because it is quite hard to predict - we are doing some research that has not got any findings yet, on the impact of urban development on surrounding rural communities. In terms of environmental damage, if we adopt the sort of approach to planning that we have been advocating, we think that towns and cities can expand if it is handled properly in a way which still leaves you a decent hinterland on the edge of the town and good countryside for rural people and others to enjoy. Q504 Mr Francois: On a specific point, what are you views about the current environmental concerns and principles that are being incorporated into the Sustainable Communities Plan? Is that happening? Mr Robinson: Yes. I think the Government has set very high standards and is giving effective leadership in saying that the Sustainable Communities Plan is not just about a step-change in the number of houses being built; it is a step-change in the quality of the environment that people are going to be living in; and it is picking up all the green space issues and a lot of other issues - for instance, in the Prime Minister's speech a few weeks ago about the quality of the new housing development that will take place in the Thames Gateway. I think it is leading off that very strongly. Q505 Mr Francois: As an MP from the area, I think you have still got some work to do. Mr Robinson: Yes, we are aware of all of that; we have all got work to do. Q506 Mr Francois: One of the results of the Sustainable Communities Plan and Barker's recommendations, if they were to be implemented, would be that many areas that are currently rural, or at least urban/rural fringe, would effectively become urbanised. What do you see as your role, as the Countryside Agency, in protecting this? Mr Robinson: It is very hard to put a finger on it, but it is quite clear that we can do better than the practice which we see, which our planning system until now has helped deliver, of having town stop and countryside start, and a very hard line between the two. There are ways in which you can get a much better intermingling - green fingers and extensions - having much more sophisticated relationships with the countryside around - more convoluted boundaries, a softer boundary between the two, than having a hard planned edge to a town or city. That is one of the main ways to achieve that. Q507 Mr Francois: There is another way of looking at it. Once that green belt boundary is bridged, once you are in, you are in; and a lot of developers would welcome what you have just said. There is some protection, and once you start to fudge that protection, you are in danger of a free-for-all. Mr Robinson: I do not think we are talking about abandoning the green belt. Q508 Mr Francois: Forgive me, I did not put those words into your mouth, but what I did say is that you have talked of making softer boundaries; and once it becomes a softer boundary, by definition it is more easy to breach it, and there is a risk in that. Mr Robinson: Yes. Q509 Mr Francois: You acknowledge that. Ms Russell: There is a risk but there is also opportunity. We are placing a lot of effort on what we call A New Vision for the Rural/Urban Fringe. We have prepared a consultation document in partnership with Groundwork, and we think it is that area that in the past has been neglected and under-utilised and its potential has not been realised. We want the best quality development we can, but, yes, we want all the other things that Terry has talked about in terms of softer edges, strategic planting, better links with the rural communities. If the rural/urban fringe is treated in an integrated, holistic way, and a strategic approach is taken to it, with all partners signed up to it, you can have a long-term vision for that area of rural/urban fringe, and you have identified exactly where future development might be acceptable if it is needed, and areas where it will not be appropriate to build, and where you will put your efforts into extensive tree-planting, like community forests, or whatever is appropriate in that locality. If you have that vision, and it is signed up and endorsed by stakeholders at a local level, which would involve cross-boundary working, because it is not usually in the hands of one local authority and there are lots of players involved, if you have that vision and strategy and it is planned effectively, for the long term for that urban/rural fringe you can achieve those ----- Mr Francois: I am going to recommend you for the most buzzwords in a single response! Q510 Mr Challen: I am slightly alarmed by this soft urban fringe because I represent a seat that is on an urban/rural fringe, and it has been my experience of watching planners that where you have a jagged line on a map of a built-up environment, they want to have straight lines to define that town or area. If you are saying there is a soft urban fringe, that anticipates that it will extend some jagged lines a bit, where at some future date we would have more building because they will want to tidy it up and make it neat, because this is the way they are. Mr Roberts: I think what you are saying is that we are full of theory and no practice. I think practice is not huge, but there are examples of good practice, particularly with community forests, which have been quite effective in some places in England. There is considerable experience of this sort of approach in continental Europe, and if you go to many Danish, Dutch and German cities, you will find exactly this; that they have got a very well-managed urban fringe, often which is highly treed but highly managed and highly invested in, which is a buffer zone, and does allow urban development to go out through it in some places. The difference - and this is from my experience as a student a long time ago - looking at what has happened in this country in the last 20 to 30 years is that they invest in it. What we have done with our urban fringe and green belt is to have frozen it by preventing development and not done much more, so a lot of it has stagnated and has not been managed or utilised; it has been held for "hope" value. That is part of the problem, the absence of positive management. Q511 Chairman: Mr Robinson said he did not think you were talking about eroding green belt. You have just criticised the green belt as something frozen and static, and by inference unattractive. Mr Roberts: The green belt has been very successful in one way, because without it we would have had urban sprawl; but it has not been entirely successful because it has tended to lead to stagnated management and some land horticulture, which is the phrase that used to be used, and other land simply being held on hope value for long-term development. What seems to have happened in other places in continental Europe is that the land has been taken into positive management for things like recreation, and have been positively managed for those uses. It seemed them to be something of an asset. Q512 Mr Francois: You can move green belt boundaries. You can consult locally and sometimes local authorities, in their plans, do agree to move them. It is one thing to change where the line is; it is another thing to fudge the line. What concerns me is that what you are talking about this afternoon is not so much moving the lines but fudging them, and in some ways that is more dangerous. You said you want all aspects of the Sustainable Communities Plan to be rural-proofed. Imagine that the Chairman of the Plain English Campaign were sitting behind you; what do you mean by "rural-proofing"? Mr Robinson: Rural-proofing is an exercise introduced in the rural White Paper whereby all Government departments are required to look at the rural impacts of their policies. In regard to the Sustainable Communities Plan we are asking no different to what we ask the Lord Chancellor's Department or anyone else; that that plan should be examined for any impacts it might have on the quality of life of rural communities. Q513 Mr Francois: Other than Greening the Gateway, the Government's green-space strategy for the Gateway, is there anything specific that the Government is doing to address the environmental issues in the growth areas? Mr Robinson: It has just published a document for the Northern Way, which is a possible extension of the growth area concept there, which has had quite active input from the community forest that we sponsor in that area, so that is one example. In the Milton Keynes/South Midlands area there is a very well-regarded green infrastructure document, which has recently been absorbed and is one of the key documents for the way that development is planned. Q514 Mr Francois: There are lots of documents and lots of strategies; there are innumerable concepts: I think what people require in order to believe any of this is hard evidence. Forgive me, but again we are hearing about multiple concepts and strategies. The one example you have all referred to several times is the community forest, but perhaps what is lacking is real hard evidence as opposed to great theory, if I may say so. Mr Robinson: Maybe plans are the best we can hope for at the moment because the money has only just started to come on-stream - but there is a fair amount of money now coming on-stream. There was £12 million announced a year ago in the summer, and a fair chunk of that is outside the Thames Gateway. I cannot remember the sum in the Thames Gateway. That is the first tranche of money that has been specifically voted for environmental green-space initiatives, and that will buy things on the ground. It will buy real enhancements to make what we call green infrastructure - sorry about the language! It will buy that sort of substrate in which the development can take place; and we believe it will be of a higher quality. Mr Roberts: We do agree with you that the proof of the pudding is going to be in the eating, and we are as keen as anybody else to see this green infrastructure, to see the trees planted and to see the land identified as public open space, to see access improved in these areas, in advance of and during the harder development process. That is critically important. I am a landscape architect by training, although I have not done any for a long time, but one thing I used to get fed up of when I was practising was the money running out at the end of the scheme, so there was never any money left to do the good bits at the end. We definitely do not want that on a large scale. We want to see this infrastructure being put in place and we want people to be able experience it before and during the building, not a promise for the end of the building. Mr Francois: To give an analogy, Mr Roberts, we have been sitting in the restaurant for quite a few years and we are still waiting for the starters to turn up! Q515 Sue Doughty: We have had a memorandum from the ODPM to say they are in the process of commissioning a research project into the implications of additional housing supply for sustainable communities. What do you think should be in it? Mr Robinson: I do not know. Q516 Chairman: That is an honest answer! Let us move on! Mr Robinson: I do not know about the work. Mr Roberts: I think you have caught us out there; it is an initiative we have not got sight of. Q517 Sue Doughty: It is obviously something we are interested in, and as far as I am concerned it is good news that they are starting to research the implications of this development on sustainable communities. Obviously, it is a matter of trying to find out what they are going to do, and we hope that we are going to see the research. Mr Robinson, you touched on this point earlier, but it is worth re-visiting: in the Egan Review of Skills for Sustainable Communities, his definition was this: "Sustainable communities meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents, their children and other users, contribute to a high quality of life and provide opportunity and choice. They achieve this in ways that make effective use of natural resources, enhance the environment, promote social cohesion and inclusion and strengthen economic prosperity." Would you want to make any comments on that definition? Mr Robinson: We looked at the Egan Review definition of sustainable communities. Someone needed to pin down the definition, and by and large we think he has got it right. Sue Doughty: So you are reasonably comfortable now that there has been an improvement on that. Q518 Joan Walley: I remember going to Paris in the early eighties and looking at the Pompidou Centre and thinking, "wow, I have not quite seen new architecture like this in Stoke-on-Trent". It was completely different. I was interested in the evidence you have given, though I have not read the detail, to know what you mean by the "new vernacular" in relation to buildings. I can see Mr Robinson smiling! What do you mean by that? How would you sum it up? How would you describe to the Committee what you are looking for, in terms of the new vernacular? Mr Robinson: It is new development which feeds off the character of the place itself and what exists there while at the same time feeding on modern design practice. There is some success in getting new development that does not fall into the trap of being anywhere, with bog-standard boxes everywhere, but also which does not fall into the opposite trap of being pastiche and just copying "ye olde village street". We have been doing some work on it, and some architects have been helping us with it. It is a concept that we think we are going to be able to make some progress with. It stems from the work we did on village design statements. There are over 600 of those in existence now, where communities have come together and said, "we recognise that there has to be development here; let us characterise it: what is special about this place now, and therefore what features should new development incorporate in order to harmonise with what is here at present?" Not surprisingly, some of the development which took place in those design statements has been criticised for being a bit like pastiche, so we moved quickly on to seeing how we could avoid the pastiche. Q519 Chairman: What is the vernacular in the Thames Gateway on which to build ----- Mr Robinson: It varies because the Thames Gateway is a jolly big area, and the vernacular down on the Kent Marshes is very different from that nearer London. Q520 Chairman: So you take a particular location and think, "the buildings here are like that, so we will build them a bit like that" and then somewhere else will be a bit different. Mr Roberts: It is character reflecting local materials, traditions and culture. Q521 Joan Walley: What interests me about it is how narrow your definition is, and how much your definition of vernacular includes the concept of sustainable development. This Committee went to Aberdeen and saw an absolutely cutting-edge new build, a house that was built in the local vernacular, but which in terms of not just its outward design but interior had the cutting-edge of technology in terms of energy efficiency standards and insulation. It had water conservation, and local materials were used in the construction that would fit into our definitions of sustainable development. I am interested to know whether your definition of vernacular is not just one where you take something from the dictionary and say, "it is like the black and white houses in Cheshire" or whether it is breaking new ground in some way like the Pompidou Centre, something which is now incorporating an understanding amongst the public of what it means to be building sustainable properties. Mr Roberts: It does embrace those broader values. It should be the modern, the creative, the exciting use of materials to create things of beauty and usefulness; and in the same way that there was a vernacular style of Georgian England, there could easily be a vernacular style for the 21st century, with very high-quality, very modern, very exciting use of local materials in a very creative way. I know you are not going to like this but we are about to produce a report on new vernacular design, and we are organising a little conference on it later in the spring. We would love you to come along and see what we are talking about. I absolutely agree with you that the produce of new vernacular design should not be a pastiche; it is not old-fashioned, it is very new, and using, as you say, the cutting edge of design and technology to produce things that are very, very appropriate for their location and which are very efficient in terms of energy use and everything else we need to achieve to get to sustainability. Q522 Mr Francois: Can you send us a copy of that because when you talk about the Essex vernacular people might think you mean something else! Mr Roberts: Yes. Q523 Joan Walley: For the record, can I just say that you suggested I would not like it much, but I would like to know about what you are organising along those lines. Why did you feel the need to get involved in this kind of work at the Countryside Agency? Ms Russell: I think because we have past experience of getting involved in design initiatives in rural areas such as our village and town design statements process. As Terry mentioned earlier, we were concerned that perhaps they were looking backwards always to try and create buildings that were a reflection of the old historic village styles, and not looking forwards to encompass all the environmental performance and sustainability principles you have talked about. It is about moving that agenda forward into the 21st century so we can have both high environmental performance but also buildings that are appropriate in terms of their character and distinctiveness, particularly in rural areas, because to put something brand new and innovative and modern next to a traditional Cotswold village core might not be seen to be appropriate; so it is how you can match the two. Q524 Joan Walley: You would not just restrict this to rural areas, or would you, because your remit obviously countryside? Mr Roberts: No, of course not. Q525 Joan Walley: Is it a question of you leading this, or are you responding to some demand from the public that you should be doing this; or is it the architects who have an interest? Who is driving it? Ms Russell: We are leading this because we are looking for a new design initiative to make sure that our design initiatives encompass the sustainability principles we have talked about, so that we can move the agenda forward. Q526 Joan Walley: What kind of response have you had? Ms Russell: It is early days yet; we have only produced this initial report and are hoping to take it forward into a larger programme next year. Mr Robinson: The response to the previous stage of the village design statements, which has now run into town design statements as well, has been extremely healthy and enthusiastic. Q527 Joan Walley: Going back to our earlier discussion about planning, would you see difficulties in terms of getting standards linked into building regulations possibly as well, linked into the planning regime? In my constituency, I am finding a world of difference between avowed intent and willingness of developers coming in to want to do anything other than the bog-standard building. Mr Roberts: The sustainable construction work that Sir John Harman has been involved in and published is pointing exactly in that direction, is it not, of using the building regulations and other existing mechanisms to encourage high-quality sustainable development? I think we have to be optimistic about that and have to encourage and push it. Joan Walley: Perhaps I can use your best practice with the developers interested in my constituency. Q528 Sue Doughty: On the topic of encouraging developers, what we are really seeking is a little bit more about requiring developers, because councils try to oversee these designs with the worthiest of intentions in regard to sustainability, but they too see these things disappearing away, because once somebody comes to test the contract, unless there is a very hard requirement in the local plan and everywhere else, they will challenge when the costs start mounting up, and that is the first plank that goes away. How do you see this problem between aspiration and clear requirement? Ms Russell: It is absolutely essential that the planning system is used to set out not only a framework for development but the requirements that developers must meet, the conditions that a development has to meet to be sustainable to fill all the community's aspirations in terms of what it can provide. We think it is absolutely essential that the new plans are setting out in no uncertain terms all those requirements - but that is provided developers and local communities have been engaged in the planning system at the outset so that there is a consensus about what should be provided so you are signed up to that vision of what that development will look like. Once you have got that vision and that participation, and people are signed up to it, the planners should set out what is required from development. Tools such as the concept statements we talked about are a way of doing that; it is a way of setting out what this development on this particular site should look like, what facilities it should provide, what the standard of building should be and all the requirements to ensure high-quality development. Mr Roberts: You lock that into the deal with the permission. It is going a step further than saying "build on this land". You are locking into the deal some quite specific conditions about the nature of the development. After that, it is down to the local planning authority to enforce it. Mr Robinson: The development industry, when we tested these ideas among them several years ago, before we came out with our planning policy, said, "that is fine by us so long as we are all on a level playing-field, and so long as this is made clear early enough on so that we do not pay a price for land which means we cannot afford it in our budget." It might be a bit late to set this hare running, but when the Barker Review makes a proposal for some sort of way of extracting money for the public good from the uplift that occurs when land gets designated as development land, it is something that has got something going for it and is worth thinking about. Q529 Mr Challen: I have one question about the new vernacular. It strikes me that part of the old vernacular of the English countryside are places like Ferrybridge and Drax, the fossil-fuelled power stations, leading to all sorts of pylons and other rather ugly features stretched across fields and so on. In terms of new vernacular, are you integrating things like micro-power generation into building design and the development of housing estates so that from the very beginning that is integrated into that a community power scheme, rather than saying, "that is not for us; that is for some old industrial area where they have a power station"? Mr Roberts: The answer is "yes". One of the things we are closely involved in is the Community Renewables Initiative, which is very much aimed at very directly helping local communities to come up with their own proposals for the use of renewable energy, for their own benefit and also of course for the wider benefit to society. It is trying to leapfrog straight into the community and get them to think about what they would like, what would be good for them, rather than having things done to them and rather than somebody else deciding that the best way they can get their power is from whatever it is - a generating station 50 miles away. They can think themselves about what the choices and alternatives are, and can be given direct help with the very detailed technical issues that they come up against when they want to use local power generation; so we are very much into that. Q530 Mr Challen: How advanced is that work and what kind of reception has it had? Mr Roberts: It has been running for a couple of years now and it has had quite a good reception. We can send you details about the schemes - and we are into reality here - that have been created on the ground using various varieties of technology. It is real. Like everything else, it comes under constant pressure because there is lots of competition and, at the moment, we are thinking about whether or not or how we can actually keep it going in the future, but it has been very successful. Q531 Mr Challen: What do you mean, whether or not you can keep it going? Surely this is something that has to be kept going. Is it a question of money or resources? Mr Roberts: It is a question of money. Q532 Mr Challen: So, the builders are not saying, "Here you are, here is some cash from our vast profits, so let us do more of this work"? Mr Roberts: The scheme is being funded by DTI at the moment; the money that we are spending on it actually comes to us from DTI which is a nice change. Q533 Mr Challen: How much is that? Mr Roberts: I would need to write to you on that but it is the in order of a couple of million pounds a year I think. I would need to write to you on that to get it right and I will do that. Q534 Mr Challen: Can we turn to the quality of life assessments that you have developed with English Heritage, English Nature and the Environment Agency. In what way is that different to what the Government approach is, if it is indeed different at all? Mr Robinson: I do not know of anything the Government have come forward with which is similar to it. It is really a framework for a community brokerage to go on where the community does do things. It says, "What is special about living here?" and that is not just environmental, it is whether it has a good dinner party circuit or something. It is really free for all. You get catalogued what is special to the people there and they go through a much more difficult process of saying, "What of that is tradable? What is actually sacrosanct?" So, what is capital and what is tradable? On the basis of that, they then take forward what is tradable on what circuit, and what are the terms that we would extract if we were prepared to give up some of this and what would we expect back, and it actually results in a framework through which you can take much more informed and much more confident decisions about the sort of integration of benefits that we were talking about earlier. Q535 Mr Challen: Would it be possible for you to characterise, if you like, how, say, one place in a town which did not have this part of this development as part of the process against and another part that did? Would you be moving from some sort of bland, horrible and bleak area to some sort of Prince Charles-like arcadia? What actual difference would you notice on the ground as a result of using this assessment? Mr Robinson: You would notice development and decisions about change being taken which were far better controlled and there would be far better buying by the community because they had made up their own minds about what they were not going to give up under any circumstances and the terms under which they were prepared to see other things alter. Mr Roberts: I think the critical point was made at the beginning. This is not just about environment, it is about what people want. So, you might not actually see visually a big difference between one place and another but hopefully, where this exercise has been gone through, you would be getting things which people have actually said they want and they will themselves had prioritised what they want. That might not be visible but it might be tangible in other ways in terms of community satisfaction. Q536 Mr Challen: Is this what used to be known as popular planning back in the late '70s and early '80s? Mr Roberts: I do not know, I am not familiar with that. Q537 Mr Challen: It is a more democratic approach. Mr Roberts: Yes, it is involving people and asking them what they want rather than telling them what they want. Mr Robinson: It is more than that. It is driving people towards marshalling their ideas around the idea of change and then stating the terms under which that change can be broken. Q538 Chairman: Well, I wish someone would tell the developers in my constituency! Thank you very much indeed for your evidence. Is there anything more that you would like to say? Mr Roberts: I would just like to make a couple of points to leave you with. I get the impression that you think a lot of what we say is a bit sort of soft and cuddly and that it is idealistic. Yes, we are idealistic actually because, if we are not, if we do not start off, as I said earlier, with aiming at something which is good, then we are doomed because if we start off saying, "This is not doable, development will always be bad", then you are definitely doomed. You have to start off with some ideals and we have some ideals and we have set them out in the paper. We also have some quite hard-edged things that we have said as well. We have said that we are not into predict and supply which is what we think Barker is moving back towards. We think that is wrong. It has all the hallmarks of transport policy which says, "If only we could build enough roads, we would get rid of the traffic jams." It sounds the same. We thought we had got rid of that and we do not want to go back to that. We do not want the planning system to be bypassed, superseded or overridden by anything. We want the planning system to be given the chance to work and given the resources to work and that is pretty hard edged, that is quite real. We think there is something quite interesting in Barker about returning financial benefit from development to the community, this business of actively pursing measures to share windfall gains. Unfortunately, it is then spoilt by talking about them disappearing into the Treasury and there is a funding stream for other policies which we do not like. We think it is really interesting about harnessing the significant uplift in values. We really are looking for definite results on the ground and we are not going to be fobbed off with promises - this business about new growth areas. We want to see this new infrastructure appearing, as it did around Amsterdam after the war and as it did around a lot of German cities which have been rebuilt after the Second World War. They actually did it. They planted those forests first and then they did the development. So, we are quite serious about all that. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Memorandum submitted by Royal Town Planning Institute Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Kelvin MacDonald, Director of Policy and Research, and Mr David Barraclough, Planning Policy Manager, Royal Town Planning Institute, examined. Q539 Chairman: Welcome. Thank you very much for coming and thank you very much for your memorandum and your patience in sitting through the previous session. I am hoping that we will be able to wind this up by around 5.20/5.25, just to give you some idea of time. We will see how we go. You have just heard that the Countryside Agency has been pretty critical of the Barker agenda, indeed we have had a lot of evidence that is critical of it, concerns particularly being expressed about the erosion of democratic responsibility for planning and the marketisation of the whole planning process, but these seem to be things that you are pretty relaxed about; is that right? Mr MacDonald: We are not relaxed about them. Clearly, our evidence says that we welcome overall the Barker Review but we welcome it on the basis that, in terms of housing numbers and the facts that it points up with regard to the housing crisis that we face in this country, it is nothing really new. So, in those terms, we do not think it is a step change. That is not to say that every aspect of the Barker Review we welcome equally. Q540 Chairman: I am just going to quiz you on the housing crisis. In your memorandum, you say that there is nothing new about this and that this has been going on for years, governments have been making predictions for years. What kind of crisis is a crisis that goes on for years? A crisis is something different from a state of affairs which has existed for a very long time, is it not? Mr MacDonald: I think in some way it is a growing but hidden crisis. For example, we are approaching the figure of 100,000 households in temporary accommodation. I would see that as being a crisis. Q541 Chairman: So, there is something new about it? Mr MacDonald: It is exponential in its growth; it is reaching the level of a crisis. What we are saying is that the figures are not new. Under the previous administration, we had 4.4 million I think it was, after that we had 3.8 million, then it was 4.1 million, and we have just had household projections released two weeks ago which put the figure up again. So, the overall figure of the number of new households in this country is not new. That is what we are saying about Barker. I was going to say that that does not mean to say that we welcome every aspect of the Barker Review. We do have serious concerns, for example, not about affordable housing but about this affordability trigger that the planning system is meant to adopt as some sort of local measure of when new housing is needed. It is very clear that the affordability of housing certainly relies on the supply of land and that relies on the planning system, but it also relies on a whole range of other factors that are beyond the control of a land use based planning system. So, to use that as a simple, if not simplistic, indicator of need, we do have our concerns about it. We are not just welcoming Barker point blank and saying that this is all wonderful, we do have our concerns. On the final point you were making about loss of democratic control, some aspects of Barker, as again we mentioned in the evidence, could open the door to a greater public involvement and greater democratic control. When the Barker Review talks about, for example, indicating to communities the real values and the real disbenefits of development in a way that I do not think has been done properly up until now in order that they can make the decision on a sounder basis, I think that can lead to greater democratic control rather than less. Q542 Mr Thomas: I want to look at some of the aspects of the Barker Report now and we may as one start with the one you have just mentioned which is the automatic trigger. You sound a little sceptical now and, in your memorandum to us, you said this was not much different to the fact that there is an inbuilt sort of five-year process already there with unity development plans, that local authorities are already looking to 2011/2012 in what allowance they are making now. What do you see being different in the triggering process to that which we have now? Mr MacDonald: Two things. Clearly, the Barker Review is economically based. The triggers that she uses in the review --- Q543 Mr Thomas: They are solely price based. Mr MacDonald: Yes, so that is new and I am sure that the Committee has had a whole range of definitions of planning, but one of the roles of planning is not just to take one single indicator and say that mechanism has been triggered and therefore we need to release more land, there are a whole range of other factors that need to be taken into account: the capacity of the area to take more growth and the external factors that lead to that mechanism being triggered. So, that focus on that trigger is new. The second thing is that policy is moving on and the point we were making in the evidence about the five-year supply was with particular reference to the Barker recommendation that local planning authorities should almost over-allocate 120 or 140 per cent of their land. The point we are making here is that, even as we speak, new mechanisms for environmental assessment and sustainability assessment are coming through the planning process and the point we are making is that, if you over-allocate and you need the environmental assessment of strategies, then that needs to go through that mill as well. So, you are not saying to step outside the planning system with this, you are saying that you cannot just --- Q544 Mr Thomas: Will you caution against an automatic trigger? Will you caution against purely price-based trigger for release in a particular area? Mr MacDonald: A purely price-based figure, yes, we would caution against. As a rider, what I do agree with and what the Institute agrees with is that the planning system does need to be perhaps more sensitive than it is to understanding the market and to understanding the effects of their decisions on the market but also how the market is operating. So, we are not again going into our little sort of land use shells. We are saying that we need to understand the market but to just have one trigger is insufficient. Q545 Mr Thomas: It seems to me therefore that we have two really big conflicts here. We have one where you say that the planning system should be more understanding of the market - I am a sceptic; I do not believe that the market is delivering affordable housing particularly in my constituency now for example, so I would be a sceptic there, but let us just think about how that may happen - but also you mentioned earlier about how this whole process, the Barker Review and what flows on from that, could be more democratic. It could empower people in communities to say what they would like to see developed and so forth and we heard from the Countryside Agency earlier about some of the processes about managing change that will be happening in local communities. Where do you, as an institute, see the process - and I think we have to talk in a sense about control in that process here because, at the moment, it is fairly clear that it is the local planning authority that controls that process - in the future being controlled particularly under the Barker Review and how do you see, what I would suspect is in most communities, conserving inherent conservatism, to keep what they have and not to barter and trade it, actually meets with a market imperative to provide more homes? We know that, with or without Barker, you would want to see the planning process development happen. Mr Barraclough: I think the control, as you put it, remains within the planning authority. Whatever the housing figures that you are providing for in your new local development framework, those figures have cascaded down from some regional spatial strategy and it is for the local planning process to at least deliver the sites for those houses on the ground. Given the Government's very heavy emphasis on frontloading of the new plan-making process - involve the community, involve absolutely everyone at the outside, though you cannot actually make people involved but perhaps that is another matter, and the local planning authority is charged with going out there and discussing its proposals at a very early stage with the whole community, the whole stakeholders, groups and what-have-you - that is the process by which you finish up with X, Y and Z allocated for housing in your development through the normal democratic process. Q546 Mr Thomas: I can accept that you are not challenging the fundamentals of the planning process, you are asking for further consideration to be taken into account if you like, but where does that leave the under-tendency? It seems to me that, within planning at the moment, there are two conflicting tendencies: you have a tendency, perhaps represented by the Countryside Agency, to be very locally based, looking at local needs assessment, visioning, 20/20 vision and all the rest of it, working with local communities in a very intense way to get them to think about what their local community could look like in a few years time and how they might prepare for that, and you have this other process which does not really hold any hostages which simply says, "We need an extra 100 homes here because there is a development coming in there." How do you marry those two? Mr Barraclough: It is not quite like that. Q547 Mr Thomas: It looks like it sometimes. Mr Barraclough: You might question where the regional housing figure comes from and I would point to things like our notion of a UK spatial development strategy and things of that sort ... Q548 Mr Thomas: Which you have always been keen on. Mr Barraclough: ... to provide some overall context for planning at the regional level, but the regional planning process - and there are arguments about democratic deficit and all sorts of things which we need not go into now --- Q549 Mr Francois: Why not? Mr Barraclough: I can if you like! ... finishes up with in effect an allocation of housing numbers and whether it is Barker 120 per cent of the figure you first thought of or whether it is the 100 per cent, it allocates those at local authority county or district council level depending on the structure of planning authorities in the region. So, that has gone through some sort of democratic process in the first place ending up at that regional distribution and it is left to the individual local development plans, forgetting all the acronyms in the new system, to sort out the site specific allocations and whether we are talking about a new settlement or developing this brownfield site here or whatever. That, in theory, goes through the participatory process and it is a democratic decision of the local planning authority at the end of the day. We are all old enough and wise enough to know that it is not always perfect and the system is not ideal and the present system that we are talking about has not even been tested of course, its commencement was only last week, so we will have to wait a month or two before the first plans appear. Q550 Mr Thomas: We will indeed and I think we will probably have to wait for another debate to really think about how all these local plans actually work, but I am grateful that you have clarified about your attitude towards the trigger and the market-based mechanisms. Let us just assume for a second that, in some way, shape or form, Barker or something like it, is implemented and we are seeing these new homes developed. The next consideration must be about the impact of these homes on the local environment and in terms of sustainability in general, and again you said in evidence to the Committee that you thought that the Barker proposals would be fairly neutral in their effect on environmental sustainability. Is that not a disappointing thing to have given in evidence to this Committee? Mr Barraclough: It is in the context of what we said earlier, that the Barker figures are little different than those that have gone before, so Barker per se would have a fairly neutral effect on the need for a particular local planning authority area to accommodate a particular amount of new housing. Q551 Mr Thomas: I can appreciate that. Mr Barraclough: In the numerical sense we are saying that --- Q552 Mr Thomas: In a numerical sense they are fairly neutral but what about the qualitative sense about having more sustainable homes, better locations, passive solar heating and all the sorts of things that architects must be really fascinated in? Mr MacDonald: What we are saying, just to clarify again and at the risk of repeating ourselves, is that the Barker figures do not bring anything new, but clearly the need or the demand or whatever we want to call it for a very significant amount of new housing in this country can have serious environmental impact and impact on the sustainability of this country. One could look at it positively - and planners always look positively at everything - and say that this gives us a huge opportunity. Things like Thames Gateway and things like the growth areas give us a wonderful opportunity to say that we understand more about the impact of housing now in terms of drainage, insulation and in terms of all the other things that this Committee is considering. With this huge number of housing - it is not just odd job lots of housing here and there, it is mass numbers of housing - we have a really good opportunity now to say, "Let us build this thinking into the housing." Q553 Mr Thomas: Specially, Barker does not do that, does she? Her report does not do that. I am not saying that does not happen. Mr MacDonald: She does not bring that out sufficiently. She certainly talks through the land supply question because that is what she was meant to talk about and she certainly talks through the impact on land. One of the interesting figures in Barker is that she has calculated, as you know, that less than one per cent of the land area of the south east would be taken if you crammed all the new housing into that, but that of course is a negative side of the issue. Q554 Mr Thomas: It does not take account of the market either, does it? Mr MacDonald: No. It would be a wonderful settlement to see but it does not look at the positive aspect, it is arguing against the NIMBY tendency to say, "Well, it is not a huge land take." It is not saying, "This is an opportunity to really create something wonderful for the future." Q555 Mr Thomas: Different sorts of communities. Can I just ask you a final thing about that aspect of Barker. We talked a little about whether there is full consideration of the impact of this housing but it is also about the rates of development because it is not only about the amount that you propose, it is also about the time over which you propose to develop it because it has huge implications for the skills level in the construction industry and for the technology that might be available to come into a home whether it be market tested or we are talking about CHP or net metering or whatever it might be. Those may be a few years down the line, yet we are talking about the here and now. Do you really think that the sort of proposals there which are about density and brownfield construction in particular are going to ameliorate the effect of the rates of these developments in these growth areas? Are they sufficient? Mr MacDonald: I am sorry, you will need to clarify that. Q556 Mr Thomas: What I am thinking is that it seems to me that Barker says, "This is what we need to do." In fact, it will not be that bad because, as you just said, it is only one per cent of the south east and, what is more, we are going to use brownfield and there are all these things that may be happening to ameliorate the effect on the environment of this development. At the same time, if you just stop and think about what this is actually saying, the rate of development needed for the market to deliver, even under a market-based system, affordable housing down the line - presumably the market starts with the best quality housing and the most expensive housing and only later delivers the really affordable stuff - is going to ride roughshod over any real environmental benefit that comes from brownfield developments or intense development. That is what I am putting to you and I wondered what you thought of that. Mr MacDonald: I can see that argument clearly now. Again, I think there are a number of aspects to this and one is a fairly trite aspect. You mentioned brownfield development and clearly there is a target of 60 per cent brownfield development which means that 40 per cent of the growth must be on greenfield development, which is an aspect of the target that we tend to forget. Secondly, as you say, it appears - and I do not have evidence for this - that the Government are meeting their targets up to whatever it is, 64 or 65 per cent, partly because it is the easier sites that are coming on stream first and we are starting to come up against the sites that need remediation and that have been used for other uses, and I think that the Government do admit that - I am not an apologist for the Government - and they say that is why they are not changing the target because they realise that it is going to be harder to achieve in the future. So, you will not get that rate at the moment unless you look again constructively, if that is not a contradiction in terms, at development on greenfield land and do that again through the planning system in the form of planned settlements, in the form of settlements that take into account sustainability principles, not just in the case of individual houses and how they deal with drainage and all the other things but in terms of density, in terms of the location of work to home and all these things that we know more about. So, you will not meet the rate and it will be an unsustainable programme unless the planning system intervenes in I think a far stronger way than it has up until now. Mr Barraclough: Can I just add to that by saying that, on density, the jury is probably still out to some extent. There is no evidence that there is any real thought given to the figures that appear in PPG3, why those figures rather than any others were chosen, but there are question marks about market acceptability except in the case of probably very expensive town centre/city centre developments and there are also questions as to what is going on about the extent to which it is possible to put sustainable drainage systems and so on into a high density development. There is work currently going on about that. I think there are some question marks about the density question, if not the brownfield. Brownfield seems to be doing pretty nicely, thank you. Density is a different problem. Q557 Mr Francois: Gentlemen, you make the point about the new planning system being very heavy on front-end consultation, about people being consulted about where houses should be built, about the type of housing, what infrastructure they think should accompany it and I have heard all that but, from the point of the RTPI, is the one great weakness in all of this that the one thing they are not really allowed to be told about is the number of houses that are built in their district because that drives everything else and, under this system, they have no say in it? Does the RTPI agree with that or not? Mr MacDonald: It is a quirk of the system. Q558 Mr Francois: It is more than a quirk. Mr MacDonald: In terms that the regional spatial strategies, these wonderful regionally based things, are meant to set a broad strategy for the whole area in terms of a whole range of things but, when it comes to housing, they allocate the numbers down to the district level, which is what you are referring to. In some ways, can you do it in any other way? What one would hope would happen - and this is a hope, I must admit - is that it would be this sort of circular process. You were talking earlier about things like village design statements and one of the lessons from those, I think, is not necessarily the process itself but, when people talk about their own area and their local area, they also talk about housing need and they know people who are in housing need, they can see the need for housing, and when you talk through other systems like the community strategies that local authorities are producing, people are talking about housing need in a way that they do not through the planning system. So, if you can capture that sort of discussion about housing need and feed that back up through the system. I do not know how this is going to work and, to be honest, I do not imagine that that is how the Government think it is going to work, but you are going to get a very dangerous situation if those figures are just imposed on local areas through a regional spatial strategy. So, we do need to find ways and it may be through front-ending the local development framework system to feed that back up the way. Q559 Mr Francois: Just to make sure that I have understood you, I want to capture that because it is important. We could have, in your words, a very dangerous situation if these numbers are simply imposed on local communities. Mr MacDonald: Simply imposed, yes. I am using my words carefully. Simply imposed, both those words. Q560 Paul Flynn: The question of the availability of land and release of land. You have some very interesting figures talking about what the effect of this is when new land is available and you talk about, I believe, moderate impact on prices, but it would seem to be a significant impact and a widening of the availability to people you see as an extra thing: four per cent of households on average would be able to buy a home with the release of land. The amount of land clearly is finite, but it seems to be a demand for land by various people. Most families - and it would depend - have possibly half an acre for their homes and gardens but, if you happen to be the Duke of Buckley or the Duke of Cornwall or the Duke of Westminster, you will have 100,000 acres up to nearly 300,000 acres, which is not only not productive but has probably a negative effect on the economy, it produces possibly one per cent for farming in terms of GDP, but the three people I have mentioned are also entitled to £10 million up to £20 million in subsidies from the taxpayer. Is this kind of inequality and disparity and the under-use of agricultural land generally which could be used more productively for housing or other purposes a factor that you would like to see addressed or is it entirely a matter of planning and making the land available at a price that is attractive to the earls and dukes? Mr MacDonald: To start with the figures, I think what we are saying here, without looking it up again, is that we were quoting research which looked at the release of land and the effect on house prices and trying to say at least it is not as direct as one might think it is. Again, to take a fairly trite example, as we know, in London, house prices may be even falling, certainly the increase is ameliorating. We have not just released a huge tranche of land on to the London housing market. There is a whole range of other factors that affect house prices. Planning is one of them and we are not denying that, we are not stepping outside market forces, but we are saying that if people think that if you release half of the south east, then you are going to bring down house prices very significantly, then that is only half the picture. So, just to clarify that. Land ownership is another factor which I am wary of getting into. Q561 Chairman: I should stay wary if I were you. I am not sure that it is strictly relevant to our inquiry. Mr MacDonald: What planning did in 1947 was to nationalise the right to develop, it did not nationalise land itself, which was a very subtle distinction and I think we are staying on that side of the argument rather than the other side of the argument. Q562 Paul Flynn: The situation is that 70 per cent of the land of the country is in the hands of a tiny number of people and the rest of the population are confined to a minute share of that. Mr MacDonald: I am sure you know that the New Statesman is running a campaign on land ownership and housing and it is interesting that a lot of the responses that are coming back is that it is not the land ownership that is to blame, it is the planning system. Q563 Paul Flynn: I am aware of this and there was a very interesting book by Mr Kevin Kyle(?) on this subject a few years ago on how the rich and royal do have an enormous amount of land which is actually under-used. You support the idea of a national housing strategy as part of the UK spatial development framework. Could you give us an outline of what your proposals are as to the framework. Mr MacDonald: Some of it is jargon, so do not worry about the individual words. Q564 Paul Flynn: We will prepare ourselves! Mr MacDonald: What we are calling for is a UK wide, in this case - we need to start with England as a whole as a good start - set of policies which have, apologies for the jargon, a spatial implication related to location. This is one of the starting points. We have a whole tranche of Government policies which impact in different ways in different locations but are not articulated in a way that you can demonstrate those impacts. So, we need to bring those together for a start. We need to look at the infrastructure needs of this country, not just in terms of transport but in terms of deep water facilities and in terms of water catchment, all these things, on a national basis, not even on a regional basis, before we can start. We also need to have a far better overview, coming back to the point of your question, about the distribution of housing in this country. The sustainable communities plan in a way could be accused of being a south-east based plan. We have the northern way but it came much later. If we had a national view of housing and the distribution of housing in national terms, not just in south-east terms in the four growth areas but in national terms, we might find and I am sure we would find that some of that housing growth would benefit other areas of the country far more than it would benefit the south-east, but we do not have a forum within which that view can be put forward. We certainly do not have an official forum and we do not have an official planner. I am not necessarily talking about old-style land use plan where you say, "We will have a motorway here and we will have a port there", much as I would love to do that, but I am talking about a set of policies that take a national view as opposed to a series of regional or local views. Q565 Paul Flynn: I can remember these land use plans as very great job creation programmes for planners and I am sure this one would keep you going until way past your retirement. I can remember the Monmouthshire land use transfer plan that was published, I believe, in 1974 which forecast a motorway going from Gwent right into the middle of Bristol that never came about. Are the Government receptive to this idea? Do they see it as practical or is it another case of planning upon planning and report upon report that goes on ad infinitum? Mr MacDonald: That is a key question. They are not welcomed with open arms at the moment and one of the reasons why they are not is that they do not think it is practical. A short diversion, I hope: one of the ways in which we are trying to prove this wrong is to start the process ourselves of starting to think about the data needs and the policy needs and how you put this on a land-use base in different sorts of ways to try and persuade the ODPM that, yes, it is practical. If this is one of your worries, then the process is perfectly feasible. Having said that, we know that the ODPM is undertaking a project at the moment looking at inter-regional trends saying that if these trends continue on a straight line basis, then what will be the effect on policy? So, they are starting to have this thinking that crosses regional boundaries and so we always have great hopes that they will see the light. Q566 Mr Thomas: I think I am right in remembering that there is a Wales spatial development plan. Mr MacDonald: Yes. Q567 Mr Thomas: Is that the sort of thing you are talking about for the UK as a whole? Mr MacDonald: Absolutely. There is a Wales spatial plan and nowadays a Scottish one as well. Northern Ireland has its regional strategy and the Irish Republic has a national --- Q568 Mr Thomas: So, it is not the regions or the nations, it is ODPM. Mr MacDonald: It is England that does not have one. Q569 Paul Flynn: How does sustainable development including sustainable construction fit into this plan? Mr MacDonald: In its broadest sense, using the Egan definition and using the ODPM's own definition, in the sustainable community's plan it will be at the heart of this. Q570 Paul Flynn: What is your view of the sustainable communities plan? Do you think it is strong enough to encourage decent and good development? Mr MacDonald: Not in itself. I think it is a good start, having criticised it a bit for being south-east based. It is a good starting point because it has started this thinking process in a lot of people's minds and it brings a lot of different aspects together. In itself, I suppose one of the difficulties is that, in their definition and indeed in definition, there is almost internal conflict in that definition. Can you achieve these sustainable communities when you are trying to achieve high and stable economic growth and you are trying to achieve the protection of the environment when you are trying to get rid of social exclusion? A lot of things appear mutually contradictory. I think that we need to put it into practice more to see how it is going to work. In itself, it started a process but it is not strong enough in itself to change practice that much. Q571 Paul Flynn: Do you see the role of planners as vital in ensuring that sustainable development in housing within the context of Barker takes place? Is that one of your jobs as a planner? Mr Barraclough: Yes. Of course, people quibble with the use of the term but there is a sort of statutory purpose in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act to promote sustainable development. The new planning system at both regional and local level requires a sustainability appraisal which has never been part of the system previously and that obviously will have to embrace the requirements of the EU Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive. So, I guess we are really looking very seriously at the planning system to deliver sustainable development Q572 Paul Flynn: Part of the criticism of Government is the claim that they have been focusing too much on building houses too cheaply and too quickly to the detriment of environmental considerations. Is this a criticism with which you would agree? Mr Barraclough: There is no subsidy for proper planning. Mr MacDonald: Yes, it does come back to planning. In a way - and do not take this wrong - it would be good if they had built more houses more cheaply, so maybe they are concentrating on that in policy terms but we have not had the outputs yet. Certainly, the overall agenda does seem to be focused on certain things at certain times. Quite rightly in many ways because of what I was saying earlier about my own view of the housing situation in this country. We are focusing on the moment but perhaps it is going too far. There is a Government consultation and an ODPM consultation at the moment encouraging local planning authorities to look at their employment allocations to see if they can be turned over for housing. In some cases, maybe they can but, if we are looking at truly sustainable communities where people have access to jobs, then you still need land allocated for employment. You cannot just focus like a sort of narrow spotlight on one particular policy issue. Sustainable communities, if it means anything, means that you do not just focus on one particular outcome. Chairman: Could I possibly intervene to get us to move on because I, for one, am going to have to leave in about six minutes' time - I do apologise for that - and there may well be other issues arising from that dialogue which we might like to take up with you in writing, if that is at all possible. Q573 Sue Doughty: I would like to turn to the Egan Skills Review for sustainable development because Barker commented that 90 per cent of companies are experiencing a shortage of skills. Her interim report concluded that a modest growth in output would require 70,000 more workers in the house building industry and a substantial expansion could increase this up to 280,000. When Egan looked at what skills would be required for sustainable communities, he found a big shortage of generic skills amongst both core professionals and amongst sustainable skills and this was in about 100 occupations in total ranging right across the professions, even including town planners and transport planners. So he suggested the national skills centre. You contributed to this report; what did you feel about his conclusions? Mr MacDonald: In some senses, they are totally right. Whether a national skills centre is the right answer is another matter but, with only six minutes, I will not go into that. In some senses he is right, there is a need for different skills to be brought in. Where we thought he was not necessarily right was in recognising the work that was being done already particularly on generic skills. There are far more cross-professional degrees now and there is far more concentration on the skills that Egan mentions as being generic, project management and all those sorts of things. In many ways, this has been at the heart of planning education. Having been an academic in a previous existence, I know this. I do not think that Egan has recognised this but we are not complacent of course. We, for example, have instituted a one-year fast-track degree for planners, a postgraduate one-year degree for planners, which has come on stream this year with the help of the ODPM who have provided bursaries for students on that. They are all full up. So, we are changing our agenda to meet this and maybe the situation is not as totally bleak as Egan would paint it. Q574 Sue Doughty: That is very interesting because, bearing in mind what you have just said, obviously there are steps that you are putting in place, but realistically how long is it going to take to get not only the depth in the skills but the whole breadth in terms of the number of people we are going to need? Mr MacDonald: In planning terms, I cannot remember the exact figure but I think most recent studies have shown that we are something like 4,000 professionals down on what we need and I can check that if the Committee wish. So, with an output of I am not sure how many, 250 a year, it would take eight years. What we need to do as well is to say, can the job be done by bringing other people in, by not just focusing on the narrow professional agenda but involving communities and involving others in doing this job as well and getting away with these very narrow professional boundaries which I think the RTPI has done already? Q575 Sue Doughty: This worries me, particularly with the skills we need in terms of management and ownerships of sustainable buildings, not only just the design and builds but the long-term ownership. Sustainable buildings seem to be a particular problem and all the buildings have this particular problem in getting over that hump where people feel confident about investing in sustainability because it is not just what we want, it is what developers are prepared to go for and where people owning the buildings want to know that they are doing the right thing. Do you see an impact on that to have actually the confidence to go forward right from the beginning saying, "Yes, we are going to be build sustainably"? Mr MacDonald: I think in a way it is the other way round, that if we have strong enough planning and building regulations and other policies, then the skills will have to follow. Perhaps we are in an interim period where certainly the proponents, the evangelists of new types of building and new schemes and modern methods of construction and all these things, are ready to take the field, but perhaps it is too easy to resort back to the old ways of doing things and the new ways do need, as you say, a whole new set of skills and a whole new set of competences as well, but I think it is not worth waiting until the skills are in place. We do need to take a lead through the planning system and other ways to set that atmosphere where the skills are going to find a home. Q576 Mr Challen: You say in your memorandum in response to the question about ensuring sustainable infrastructure, transport and water supply, happening in a timely and efficient manner but this has always been somewhat problematic because of the number of players involved in the planning, delivery and infrastructure of the major developments, each with their own programmes and priorities. Which of these players do you want to see removed from the process? Mr Barraclough: I do not think that we were talking about removing anyone, just looking for mechanisms which meant they would get their act together better. Again, it sounds as though I have an awful lot of faith and confidence in this new planning system that they have just embarked on but the very fact that the new development plans are to be spatial plans and the local planning authority is charged with the duty of having regard to or integrating and bringing together the spatial aspects of the programmes over the whole range of players, whether it is the utility companies or the house builders or whoever, I think there is some prospect there that you will actually get to a situation where the services provision, for instance, for a new development is actually coming forward in sympathy with the --- Q577 Mr Challen: What about the hierarchy? Is it regional level or Government level? The people earlier talked about quality of life assessments, they are talking about local people being involved and there is clearly a mismatch now, is there not? Mr Barraclough: It is above. What I have just said applies to regional spatial strategies, so the broad strategy and the broad programme for development in the region should be embodied in the regional spatial strategy to which the water companies and Transco and all the other --- Q578 Mr Challen: But not local people. How can they become involved at that level? Mr Barraclough: That is a very good question and ODPM expects the regional planning bodies or regional assemblies to involve local people. I think, as Kelvin said earlier, there has to be a combination of bottom-up and top-down in the formation of regional policies. So, to that extent --- Q579 Mr Challen: It sounds like a somersault. Mr Barraclough: It is saying, for example, that if it had been at local planning level, there are real problems in achieving a particular ... The housing capacity, if you like, is way below the figure that would naturally go to that district, then that has to feed into the process, so the regional strategy does not overload that district with a totally impractical number of houses from a physical provision point of view. It is cyclical rather than somersault! Q580 Mr Challen: I hope so! Mr MacDonald: Just to add a couple of points, Kate Barker spoke at our national conference in the summer and she said at the end of her talk that, if she had been starting this report again, it would have focused on infrastructure far more. I suppose where you involve the people is through the planning process. What is happening is that places are getting planning permission - Kate Barker says 40,000 homes in the south east are held up because of infrastructure problems, not for planning problems. So, if you involve the people in the planning process, then you do not expect the Highways Agency or others then to start imposing conditions after that democratic process has taken place. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed and, as I say, we may be writing to you with a few further questions. You have been most helpful this afternoon and we are grateful to you for coming. |