Examination of Witness (Questions 1-19)
SIR JOHN
EGAN
28 APRIL 2008
Q1 Chair: The issue of planning skills
shortages seems to have been suggested for at least a decade,
and there have been other reports before yours: do you think the
situation had changed when you made your report or have things
changed subsequently, or have things stayed the same?
Sir John Egan: I cannot talk about
what has happened since the report. I can talk about the situation
as we saw it when we wrote the report. We were asked to look at
the skills required to create sustainable communities. We first
tried to understand what the Government meant by "sustainable
communities" and then looked to see whether that was indeed
what people wanted. We used the huge amount of evidence there
was from Mori polls and polls that we did ourselves to check what
it was that people wanted. The nice thing about it was that there
was very close similarity between what the Government had in mind
and what people wanted. Indeed, we thought that the creation of
sustainable communities was a very good end point for the planning
process. Instead of trying to make lawyers rich, we should try
to create communities fit for people to live and work in, and
we thought that the goal that the Government had created in its
definition of "sustainable community" was that these
were communities that people would like to live in.
Q2 Chair: I am interested in the
view that you seem to have that planners should have much more
generic skills training in project management and partnership
working.
Sir John Egan: Yes.
Q3 Chair: That is not an obvious
skill to a lay person that a planner should have.
Sir John Egan: When we looked
at the situation that we inherit today in most towns, the problem
is that I am sure no rational planner would have planned to have
the things that are there! Typically, you will have retail developments
here and housing developments here, and schools in the green belt
there, and hospitals in the green belt there, and no sense of
community and no sense of place. The new things that we have been
doing over the last thirty or forty years have not been sustainable
communities; they have been something quite different. It might
be very convenient to fit everybody's guidelines into these single
purpose developments, and we thought the biggest single contribution
we could make was to say that what we are doing now is not what
people want, and these are not sustainable communities; we should
be trying very much harder to create something closer to what
people wanted, and these tend to be much more mixed developments
than indeed what we have been creating. We thought it was more
important to be very clear on what we were trying to achieve,
rather than trying to achieve more of what we were doing today.
Generic skills: indeed, the whole planning process itself is very
wasteful, with loads and loads of misused effort and time, with
often the planning application going backwards and forwards between
the developer and the planning committee, with planning committees
not clear about what they were trying to achieve, with the communities
getting things they did not want. The whole idea of planning makes
most normal communities very unhappy because they assume this
new plan will be against their best interests. We were suggesting
that it was very important to have much more cohesion in the pre-planning
of a community. We needed a vision, a way of describing that vision,
processes to achieve it and processes to engage the community
and all the elements of central government in a common cause,
working together. We were struck, for example, by what people
wanted in their lives. It was extremely interesting. The thing
that people wanted more than anything else was to be safe. The
second thing they wanted was for it to be clean; the third was
for it to be friendly, and the fourth was that they wanted some
open spaces for their children to play in, and other things after
that: but nobody was attempting to do these things. The police
were certainly not involved in the development of any new community.
If we were going to plan places for people to live in, there had
to be far more cohesion between all the elements of local government,
with local government, before we could start to pre-plan the kind
of communities that people wanted to live in, and perhaps go back
and overcome some of the mistakes we had been making over the
previous thirty or forty years—so lots of skills required
here.
Q4 Chair: Do these same issues apply
equally to where you are doing relatively small developments in
a pre-existing, largely developed urban environment? Is it the
same thing for that as where you are building a wholly new development?
Sir John Egan: The committee's
view was that we should use the planning process to improve the
sustainability of a neighbourhood, and not just dump houses into
a field; put houses where they will have the best productivity
between retailing and business and so on—try to cut down
the car journeys. We were also thinking about CO2 emissions: how
do we really get environmental sustainability? Simply adding communities
and dumping them into a field and not worrying about their governance—who
is going to be in charge; who will give leadership; how will this
community work—we have to think about all of these things
if we are going to make each development an improvement on a neighbourhood
and not simply an annoyance to it.
Q5 Mr Betts: Are the terms "planning"
and "planners" trying to cover too much? On one level
you have skills about the visual environment, almost akin to architectural
type skills; and at the other end, on complicated projects say
in the city centre like regeneration schemes, you need skills
that are more financial, project-management related or even legal.
Can individuals encompass that enormous range of skills that would
make a planner capable of delivering?
Sir John Egan: To be honest with
you, these are skills that every business person should have.
They are the same skills that make businesses successful: communication
skills and project-management skills are all generic skills to
all successful businesses, and there is no reason why our planners
should not have these skills as well. Some of these planners are
planning huge projects that do require stages in them to make
them successful. They need pre-planning. They need the same kind
of cohesion of effort and thought as any complicated project.
I would say that the more complicated it is, the more skills these
people require. They are the normal skills of normal business
and are not really very complicated.
Q6 Mr Hands: On which of your key
recommendations in 2004 do you think little progress has been
made?
Sir John Egan: Has some progress
been made? I am saying I simply do not know the nature of the
progress that has been made, although since you asked me to give
evidence you said it was more in terms of the thinking behind
the report you were interested in rather than the progress, but
I have checked on some of the progress that has been made. One
of the things we did suggest, amongst all the skills, was skills
in central government to delegate to local authorities. We suggested
that communities that people wanted to live in were not going
to be designed here in Westminster; they were more likely to be
designed in local places. The skills to delegate to local authorities
were very important. I am delighted to see that some of those
skills are appearing. It is very important that we do not try
and do it all from Whitehall; that local authorities give leadership
to their communities. I am delighted to see that progress has
been made there.
Q7 Mr Hands: What about a council
of training, one of the things you talked about—unskilled
councillors or committees making decisions? I recall in the local
authority that I recently served on going on a training course
for members of the planning committee probably in 2002, quite
some time ago; but I cannot recall whether this is compulsory
now or recommended. I wonder if you can comment about how far
you think that is important and your impression as to how far
that has permeated down?
Sir John Egan: We thought it was
more important that councillors bought in to the vision for the
future and the strategy of development than it was for them to
do particular planning courses themselves. What we did not like
was the idea of councillors sitting on a planning programme who
did not agree with the general direction that the plan was going
to go in; so we wanted to see informed people agreeing with the
general vision and strategy of the community. We thought it was
important that they did have some planning background, but it
was more important that they bought in to the general plan, and,
secondly, that they represented the plan to the community they
served. That was more important than trying to become an amateur
planner.
Q8 Mr Hands: How much does that give
rise to a conflict for a councillor, if you are talking about
the need to communicate the plan and the vision for the community
on the one hand, and on the other to avoid any sense of predetermination
of planning application that might be given rise to if you are
talking about the general regeneration of an area?
Sir John Egan: I think you are
going to have to have some predetermined ideas as to the kind
of community you want to create. I think we have to be quite bold
here. We have done an awful lot of awful planning over the last
thirty or forty years—dreadful retail parks with barbed
wire around them, business parks with beautiful fountains in them
but barbed wire fences around them. The business communities,
which can give leadership to communities, are separated off by
these barbed wire fences. The person who is probably more likely
to be able to keep a neighbourhood clean is the guy who runs the
Tesco store; he knows how to keep places clean, so why should
he not be helping to keep the general neighbourhood clean? He
is the expert on getting sub-contractors to deliver to their contracts.
There is loads and loads of expertise in the business community
that is not being used to give leadership to their communities.
When you are starting to think about the governance of an area,
often the business people or the school leaders or the hospitals
could be giving leadership, but they are often split off from
the community they serve. Governance is an extremely important
concept for us to have at the back of our minds when we are looking
at the places people live in. It really is not satisfactory to
put 20,000 people into a huge field with houses of all the same
kind and expect somehow or other some governance to fall into
place. These huge housing estates that were built after the second
world war simply have not worked, and we need to retro-fit them
all, make them places fit for people to live in and put some leaders
in there who will help to keep the place clean and help to make
it work. These are simply things we have not done or even thought
about.
Q9 Andrew George: Sir John, would
you not agree that there are some "Emperor's Clothes"
which your review failed to identify or even acknowledge?
Sir John Egan: I am certain there
would be.
Q10 Andrew George: That is that the
planning system is fuelled by greed rather than by need; and that
if the process is driven by developers that want to maximise the
value of the planning permission secured, how are you ever going
to achieve sustainable communities?
Sir John Egan: Well, the planning
system also builds hospitals and schools. Do we need to put the
school into the green belt and have everybody drive there by car?
Do we need to have single-purpose retail developments? Do we need
to allow any of them? The one thing we did say in the report is
that we should stop creating any more of these awful places; just
do not allow them to be built. I agree with you entirely. I have
got no problem with what you have said.
Q11 Andrew George: If land is identified
for housing and the community needs affordable housing, how do
you achieve that under the present system? What skills are required?
Sir John Egan: There are two or
three things that we have to do. First, why should we necessarily
sell the land—if the Government has developed the land from
a brownfield site, we could quite easily split the ownership of
the house into the land perhaps and concentrate on getting high-quality,
low-cost housing on to this land.
Q12 Chair: Can I just take you back,
Sir John, to what this inquiry is about? In the context of Mr
George's question, what skills would planners need in order to
ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing within any development?
Sir John Egan: Affordable housing
is more complicated. Let us say good-quality housing is relatively
easy. We have to make sure they are part of mixed developments,
and not simply houses dumped into fields. We have considered the
governance of those houses and the nature of the community they
have gone into, and we have understood that these are places to
live—work and live proper lives with open spaces and so
on—and it is a little bit complicated but not over complicated.
Certainly the one thing we did see was that wherever you put huge
numbers of people of the same social class into one area, and
do not think about leadership and governance of that area, it
will not work. For example, we notice that whenever you have anything
more than, say, 30% of affordable housing, it becomes difficult
to create the open spaces and keep them clean and get the proper
leadership in there to keep it.
Q13 Andrew George: What skills are
required amongst planners to ensure that the local authorities
are not railroaded by the power of large businesses and developers?
Sir John Egan: I think what they
have to do is understand the nature of the sustainable community
as defined by the Government and make that their goal.
Chair: That takes us very nicely to John.
Q14 John Cummings: The Committee
has been told in evidence that the Academy for Sustainable Communities
has received to date some £13 million from the Department
of Communities and Local Government, and that is since it was
set up in 2005; and yet there has been immense criticism that
the result of that sum has been influencing the learning of only
1.3% of its target workforce. To what extent do you believe that
the Academy has filled the gaps identified in practical, technical
and generic skills?
Sir John Egan: I am afraid I was
asked to write a report and we made some recommendations, but
I have not been asked to speak to the performance of the Academy
at all. If I were running the Academy it might be different to
the way it is being currently run, but I do not know anything
about that, I am afraid. Nobody has kept me up to speed with its
performance.
Q15 John Cummings: It did not figure
in any of your investigations or inquiries at all?
Sir John Egan: It was not in existence.
It was brought into existence after this report, and I was not
asked—
Q16 Chair: But you did recommend
that the Government should set up a national centre for sustainable
communities.
Sir John Egan: Yes.
Q17 Chair: It could be argued that
the Academy for Sustainable Communities is what the Government
did to fulfil that particular recommendation, so I guess the question
would be: how do you think it is different from what you recommended?
Sir John Egan: It was not part
of my remit to keep in touch with it. I think I should have done!
I personally was not asked to keep any further contact in it at
all.
Q18 John Cummings: Having said that,
how do you think that the ASC could improve its operations? Do
you believe that we are getting good value for the £13 million
it has spent so far?
Sir John Egan: I think I made
it clear I was not able to give any evidence about what happened
after my report was written. We were asked to write a report,
and that is what we have done. I was hoping to keep contact with
it through the work I was asked to do on the Thames Gateway, but
that soon petered out. The committee did not meet very often,
I have to say.
Q19 John Cummings: Have you any personal
observations?
Sir John Egan: I cannot give you
any personal observations about the work of the Academy, no.
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