Examination of Witnesses (Questions 500
- 519)
WEDNESDAY 13 OCTOBER 2004
MR BOB
ROBERTS, MS
JOANNA RUSSELL
AND MR
TERRY ROBINSON
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, yet 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 places
`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 has been positively managed for those uses.
It is seen then 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 with 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.
| 
