Examination of Witnesses (Questions 780
- 799)
WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2004
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY AND
LORD ROOKER
Q780 Mr Challen: What is the timescale
of getting this further follow-up done to Entec? It seems to me
that we are seeing some of the basic assumptions in the Barker
review, for example, being adopted or accepted by government.
Are we putting the cart before the horse?
Mr Morley: The Barker review itself
is a long term strategic approach rather than a prescriptive approach.
It is a long term process in relation to how we do this. We are
within the timescale but there are some quite important issues
to address. There is work taking place in parallel to that, for
example, with the Sustainable Buildings Task Force which I mentioned
at the last meeting and their report is out. They have produced
both a code of standards and proposals for raising building standards
starting in 2005. There is a great deal of work taking place.
Q781 Mr Challen: Can I ask if the
terms of reference for this follow-up study have been set and
could the Committee see them? When do you think the report of
that follow-up would be completed?
Mr Morley: The commissioning work
is underway at the moment. In terms of the timescale, I would
have to check that out for you and get back to you on it.
Q782 Chairman: Is it Entec who is
likely to be doing the work?
Mr Morley: Entec could do the
work. I have the timescale here. It is due to be completed in
2005, in good time to inform the Government's response to the
Barker review. The consultants have not yet been chosen. Entec
is a possibility.
Q783 Mr Challen: Can I ask both of
you a question about the new European Directive which only came
into force in July 2004 which introduced strategic environmental
assessments? I understand that the Scottish Executive has now
decided that they will apply those to a great many regional plans,
spatial plans and so on even when they are not required to. The
Sustainable Communities Plan is a national plan which Lord Rooker
has described as a big picture plan. Surely this is something
that an SEA should be applied to and do you plan to do that?
Lord Rooker: No.
Q784 Mr Challen: Why not?
Lord Rooker: Because it does not
apply. There is a big distinction between the communities plan
and the kind of things that it will be applied to like the site
specific plans, the regional, spatial strategies. It is a big
picture. It is high level and it is not at that level that you
could apply that technique.
Q785 Mr Challen: Is that not leaving
a gap in the planning process and environmental assessment?
Lord Rooker: No.
Q786 Mr Challen: In my own area in
west Yorkshire in the past we have been given housing targets,
for example, which are the global targets for maybe five or six
district councils and they have to accept them and divide them
between themselves. That obviously becomes a very specific figure
for each district. It seems that sometimes you have this wisdom
flowing down the hierarchy and at each level we are told, "This
is what you must accept. You decide locally how it fits in."
How do you question it further up the scale? Surely something
like an SEA would be a very useful tool, whether or not you are
required to apply it by law, nevertheless to make that process
transparent to all the rest of us who have to pick up the pieces
lower down?
Lord Rooker: You asked specifically
about the communities plan, this document here. It could not apply
to that. First of all, the community planning in terms of the
planning system for the country as set out in the new Planning
Act does not interfere with that. Therefore, we get all the planning
processes through the planning system, whether it is the regional
spatial strategy or the planning permissions. They have to be
tested. You asked specifically about the plan.
Mr Morley: It predates it as well.
Lord Rooker: I am not arguing
the predating because you can always do it retrospectively.
Q787 Mr Challen: Would it not be
good practice to do it anyway because that tells planners something
about what they are expected to do? It tells me what I think the
government's policy is. Surely that has an influence on these
decisions further down the hierarchy?
Lord Rooker: No because all the
additional work and the development that will flow from the communities
plan will be subject to that assessment. That is the detail. The
building blocks will be subject to that assessment. You are asking
specifically about this document. You could not apply it to this
document.
Q788 Mr Chaytor: The regional spatial
strategies will be subject to the strategic environmental assessment
process?
Lord Rooker: Because they are
part of the planning process, yes.
Q789 Chairman: Could you not have
suggested a choice of growth areas for a strategic assessment
of this kind? Would that not have been helpful as to where they
are?
Lord Rooker: The growth areas
were designated quite a long time ago. The Thames Gateway was
designated a growth area—I do not know what particular date
it was now—by Michael Heseltine, but nothing was done about
making it a managed growth area. The other three growth areas
were designated, so far as I am aware, by Stephen Byers prior
to ODPM being formed. They were designated following consultants'
reports which had all been commissioned, so they were independent
consultants' reports, on the issue of where extra growth could
take place. A lot more detail has gone in since then. Those consultants'
reports would have been commissioned probably in 2000 or maybe
even 1999. Those consultants' reports came off the production
line and the Milton Keynes one would have come off in 2002, before
the communities plan was written, because I remember launching
it in Northampton.
Q790 Joan Walley: Is this not part
of the problem ODPM has in balancing all of this? You mentioned
earlier on about playing catch up. The government is constantly
trying to put in place now, later, what should have been anticipated
at a much earlier stage in the planning process in terms of the
remits which went out to consultants all those years ago. How
do you balance now trying to make good something which should
have been fit for purpose at the time when the remits for the
consultants' reports went out? How do you genuinely try to fit
sustainable development into this catch up that you so rightly
identified?
Lord Rooker: We need to do that.
I fully accept that. It is no good just saying, "This all
happened a long time ago. We have a new system now and everything
will happen from day one." The developments that are envisaged
in the wider plan are over a 20 year period, somewhat longer in
some cases, so there is plenty of opportunity. In order to manage
the growth and the development, whether it be the pathfinders
or the growth areas, we have set up quite specific, dedicated
delivery vehicles. Not all of them have been set up because there
is a parliamentary process for some of them. They have all been
done by consensus, by the way. None has been imposed. I would
take the view that those delivery vehicles will look at the large
strategic sites and apply the new techniques, the new thinking.
In other words, while the overall plan may have come too soon
in that sense, as you are saying, when you get down to sites and
subregions within the areas we will have more than enough time
to take account of these new conditions. I think that is what
they will want to work to.
Q791 Joan Walley: Therefore, is not
the challenge that faces you how to now get into the remit of
those consultancy briefs that will be advising the new delivery
mechanisms and how to get sustainable development practices into
that in terms of balancing overall commitments towards the development
of sustainable communities?
Lord Rooker: Absolutely. We will
launch some of the documents in draft form at the Sustainable
Communities Summit at the end of January next year. Many of the
delivery vehicles are local authority led. There are partnerships
of local authorities with dedicated units. Others are Urban Development
Corporations using the powers of corporations in conjunction with
their partner local authorities. One of them is a sub-committee
of English Partnerships. They will be working to the most up to
date remits that we can give them.
Q792 Joan Walley: That will include
sustainable development?
Lord Rooker: Absolutely.
Q793 Mr Challen: I have been mulling
over your last answer on this. Since the Scottish Executive has
decided to apply this SEA system to areas which it is not legally
bound to and in the light of one or two of your previous answers
this afternoon when I was referring to the Entec report and Mr
Morley said that the timescale of that would be researched in
the follow-up but it would not interfere; or should I say the
government would not adopt things from Barker prior to getting
that information from that report, in paragraph six in your submission
to this Committee you say that Barker recommended that the government
adopt an affordability goal linked to housing supply at national
level which would then inform development of regional housing
targets. Those are very specific things. The beginning of paragraph
seven says, "The government have accepted this recommendation."
Those are paragraphs in your submission which say that the government
has accepted what Barker was saying. This to me seems very specific
and surely the Sustainable Communities Plan should be subject,
given the problem we have with important environmental dimensions,
to an environmental assessment. Why can it not be done?
Lord Rooker: It would be and it
will be when you get to site specific issues or subregional issues.
Q794 Mr Challen: I am putting to
you that that is too late because the guidance, the planning and
all the rest of it that flows from government policy sets the
framework in the context in which planners make their decisions.
Why leave the strategic environmental assessment to that late
stage?
Lord Rooker: You seem to assume
that this plan is that prescriptive. It is not. It is a set of
guidelines. It is a big picture plan. It does not give all the
details. It gives broad principles of sustainable communities.
That is the thing that underpins what we are trying to do in every
avenue. When one comes to looking at the application and the practical
effect of it, whether it is two years down the road or further,
we can apply those principles. In respect of Barker, it is an
independent review and the government will pronounce in detail
on Barker towards the end of 2005. By then we will have done the
work on the affordability goal. There is a huge amount of consultation
going on at the present time on Barker. It is true. Barker of
course starts from the communities plan. In other words, the indications
of what is in her report build on what is already in the communities
plan which was a modest amount of growth of 200,000 dwellings
on that which was already planned, which was 900,000, so up to
1.1 million. She proposes even more. We have not pronounced on
that in that sense. She takes as her starting point the delivery
of the wider communities plan agenda. By definition, if you go
to that extent, you have to make sure that you have as full an
assessment of the programme and the practical development as you
can possibly get. It would apply but we are not in a position
yet to say about the government's detailed response to Barker
which we said we would by the end of 2005. We looked on it as
an 18 month process from when it was published at Budget time.
Q795 Mr Challen: There certainly
is a mismatch between the environmental considerations and what
flows from Barker and this plan. Barker flows from this plan.
That is the timing, is it not? She has written her report in the
light of the Sustainable Communities Plan. She is making concrete
recommendations and she is putting affordability issues before
environmental issues. The Entec report follow-up is going to be
heaven knows when and we are not sure what the terms of reference
for that are either. Why in that case cannot this plan in the
interim be subject to something like a rigorous examination under
a structure that has been set up under this European Directive?
Lord Rooker: Because it would
not work. This plan is not a master plan. It is not a national
spatial strategy. It is not written that way. You could not judge
this plan against those techniques.
Q796 Mr Challen: In other words,
environmental considerations have been more or less completely
sidelined in this process?
Lord Rooker: No, they have not.
I reject that completely and I invite you to read the plan.
Q797 Gregory Barker: Mr Morley mentioned
that you have published the code for sustainable building. Is
that right? We have not had sight of it.
Lord Rooker: We will have demonstrations
of the code in the Gateway. We wanted it to be rolled out nationally.
We also want to demonstrate it in the pathfinder area. We will
not get a national roll out of the code until 2006.
Q798 Gregory Barker: In your response
to recommendations of the sustainable buildings task force you
committed yourself to producing it by next January.
Lord Rooker: We are going to produce
a draft of the code at the Sustainable Communities Summit in Manchester.
Q799 Gregory Barker: You will not
be implementing it by early 2006?
Lord Rooker: It would be voluntary
anyway. We have to be careful about saying "We will implement."
We will get a national roll out for 2006. By and large, one assumes
there will be a full code following consultation and good practice
and we will get the industry to work to it.
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