Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-63)
26 JANUARY 2004
MR MARTIN
BACON, MR
EDDIE BOOTH
AND MR
DAVE CHETWYN
Q60 Christine Russell: So, the resources
are needed to, I assume, employ more planners.
Mr Bacon: That is right and also
raise the status—
Q61 Christine Russell: How would this
improve the skills?
Mr Bacon: Basically, we have lost
a lot of the strategic planners; they have gone out of the profession
because we have just become essentially a development control
planning system.
Q62 Christine Russell: Where they have
gone to?
Mr Bacon: They have retired or
they have gone to work for regeneration agencies or housing
associations or, as in my case, they left to become a chief executive
of a local authority. They became so fed up with working in the
planning system that any other job would do, actually.
Q63 Chairman: Mr Bacon, you referred
to the use of section 106 resources to permit public realm improvements.
We understand that the relevant circular already permits this.
Was there something perhaps briefly that you had in mind that
we had not understood?
Mr Bacon: No, not really but I
do think it is very important in regeneration areas to have a
strategy for the whole of the public realm in which these buildings
are fixed, so that in fact you can then allocate to particular
buildings the contribution you actually want up at the head before
these buildings are bought in the marketplace and so on and so
forth. So, again, getting back to the point that was made from
the big cities, certainty is what the development industry likes
and I think that if you have a very up-front public realm strategy
costed out, then developers know what they are going to pay and
usually, once they know what they are going to pay, they have
the certainty and they cough up.
Chairman: Thank you, that is helpful.
Can I thank you all for your evidence this afternoon.
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