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Department for Communities and Local Government Select Committee Inquiry into Planning Skills

 

British Property Federation Evidence

 

 

Introduction

1. The British Property Federation (BPF) represents companies owning, managing and investing in property. This includes a broad range of businesses comprising commercial property owners, the financial institutions and pension funds, corporate landlords, local private landlords, as well as all those professions that support the industry.

2. We welcome the select committee's inquiry into planning skills. This is a timely inquiry as the government seeks to improve the planning process through a number of different initiatives such as the introduction of the Planning Bill through to the updating and revision of several Planning Policy Statements. Now is the time to be considering whether the planning system is fit for purpose and whether planners have the adequate skills to bring to fruition the government's commitment to creating sustainable communities.

 

Detail

 

Understanding commercial development

 

3. Our primary concern about planning skills is that both planning officers and planning committee members in local authorities are not being provided with sufficient training to help them understand the realities of commercial development.

 

4. The commercial development model is different from other types of development models. It is important that those charged with advising on, or taking planning decisions, understand a typical commercial development appraisal.

 

5. Two general areas where the private sector's view is that local planning authorities do not fully understand the perspective of a commercial developer are the financial costs of delay to a scheme and the level of profit that is required to make a scheme financially viable.

 

6. The cost of delay to a developer is highlighted by an example given to us by one of our members, which is typical of a wider experience of many commercial developers. The developer was seeking planning permission for a scheme but the local planning authority continuously delayed taking a decision for no clear reason. The delay was costing the developer in excess of £15,000 a month, money which seemingly could have been spent on a Section 106 agreement. Clearly adequate time must be taken to either accept or reject a planning application but local planning authorities who take an inordinate amount of time to reach decisions often fail to understand the effects of their non-action.

 

7. The BPF previously helped to fund and support an educational project called 'Financing the Urban Renaissance' (FUR) in conjunction with The Planning Advisory Service, the Academy for Sustainable Communities, the regional Government Offices and ContinYou. The project was designed to educate council officers and members about how commercial development works, using a fictional development appraisal as the basis for a one day training programme. The FUR programme has now come to an end and we have started to explore with the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Planning Advisory Service, new ways to institutionalise a better understanding of commercial development within the public sector.

 

8. We are also exploring ways in which the private sector can help to improve planning skills within local authorities and likewise the private sector can benefit from the knowledge of local authority planners. Perhaps one way to do this would be to encourage some form of private sector secondment / work experience for those seeking to obtain planning qualifications and subsequently work in the public sector and vice versa for those directly entering the private sector.

 

Compulsory training for councillors sitting on planning committees

 

9. It is essential that councillors who sit on planning committees are adequately trained in land use planning skills. The training should be well-rounded and provide councillors with a good understanding of the key issues. Whilst we recognise that many councillors do already receive some planning-related training, it seems sensible to ask whether this training should be made compulsory before members are allowed to sit on a planning committee.

 

Missing generation of planners and use of resources

 

10. Anecdotal evidence that we have gained through speaking to senior local planners and our own members suggests that there is a shortage of senior planners in the public sector. Whilst graduate recruitment has improved in recent years, we are led to believe that there is a missing generation of planners with many authorities finding it difficult to fill senior positions. In some circumstances this means that junior planners are being placed into complex negotiations they are not sufficiently experienced to deal with.

 

11. Given the shortage of senior planners, there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on using such highly trained planning personnel in the most effective way. We need to ensure that senior planners spend their time pre-and post-application on schemes that have the greatest capacity to transform areas and create sustainable communities, rather than on determining minor planning e.g. householder applications, which could be adequately processed by their more junior colleagues.

 

Major developments

 

12. Local authorities often lack the skills required when it comes to coping with major developments. We accept that it is not feasible for many authorities to maintain all the skills they may need in-house. This means that the role of agencies such as the Planning Advisory Service, English Partnerships (soon to be the Homes and Communities Agency) and Regional Development Agencies can be crucial in meeting the skills gap, although local authorities should also be encouraged to draw on private sector expertise, where this is possible.

 

13. It is crucial that appropriate skills are deployed at the outset of major projects - e.g. in drawing up any area action plan or supplementary planning document for the site, getting the procurement process right and entering in to any planning performance agreement etc. If not, the whole viability of the project could easily unravel.

 

14. The involvement of English Partnerships on a number of major projects has been highly valued. There is concern, however, that English Partnerships is constrained by the modest level of resources available to it and that its move into the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) may restrict its ability to facilitate or actively engage in schemes in the future. There is a particular concern that the HCA's emphasis on a housing-orientated agenda could prevent the new agency from playing the wider regeneration role that is needed in town centres and elsewhere.

 

15. One option that may be worth exploring in further detail would be new measures to encourage local planning authorities to create regional centres of expertise with regard to certain skills. For example, one authority building up expertise in a particular discipline such as the use of Compulsory Purchase Orders and sharing it with other authorities as required.

 

Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs)

 

16. We welcome the government's drive to encourage the use of PPAs. Pre-application negotiations between developers and local planning authorities are an important element of successful schemes, but the quality of service offered by different authorities varies greatly and needs to be improved. We hope that the government's further guidance on PPAs will help to achieve this.

 

17. The shortage of planners (as identified above) means that opportunities for pre-application discussion can be limited, which can lead to needless resubmissions of applications.

 

18. Larger local planning authorities are better experienced in negotiating with developers and minimising delays, which helps to maintain the confidence of applicants. However, smaller and medium sized local planning authorities often lack such skills and fail to appreciate the impact that delay and uncertainty can have on the developers' confidence and project viability. It is important, therefore, as we have emphasised above (understanding commercial development) that local planning authorities gain a better understanding of developers' perspectives, including their perception and anticipation of risk and how they seek to make returns. Such knowledge would help local planning authorities and prospective applicants together to structure more mutually beneficial development and planning obligations.

 

Community Infrastructure Levy and spatial planning

 

19. The BPF strongly supports the introduction of CIL, although we have specific concerns regarding the wording of the CIL Clauses in the Planning Bill.

 

20. CIL will require local authorities to assess the amount of infrastructure required to support the amount of development envisaged in the development plan. Many local authorities have already demonstrated that they possess the skills to assess what infrastructure is required in their local areas. It is something that they are already required to do, and this requirement has been re-emphasised in draft planning policy statement 12 on local development frameworks.

 

21. It will be hard, however, for local planning authorities to engage with other parts of the local authority that will necessarily have to feed into the process of working out the CIL. Spatial planning is fundamental to assessing the needs of the community and therefore, in turn, what infrastructure is required in the CIL. The different parts of the local authority that deal with housing, education, health, recreation etc. will have to engage with the CIL process; they must be able to forward plan their infrastructure requirements. This kind of integrated approach needed within local authorities and between local authorities and other service providers is often lacking and will require a significant effort to install.

22. It would seem sensible for government to offer assistance to those local authorities that may not be as advanced as others in this process. Training seminars, best practise information and possibly regional / central assistance teams could help local authorities with the CIL process.

 

23. Apportioning the level of CIL will be a new challenge for planners to address. For whilst the CIL will be based upon the amount of infrastructure required to support the amount of development envisaged in the development plan, it must be apportioned to different use classes and then tempered by local area viability i.e. what developers can afford to pay. This apportionment and assessment of viability will be a difficult task and one that many planners may not yet have sufficient experience of.

 

24. This is as much a concern for the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) as it is for local planning authorities, if as we envisage (and the government has said would ideally be the case), the level of CIL is set through the development plan process. PINS' role will be crucial and it is one that needs to be explored thoroughly as part of this skills inquiry.

 

Sustainability

 

25. Both the public and private sectors have to acquire the skills that will be needed to work towards delivering carbon neutral development and to increase the sustainability of the existing building stock. Local planning authorities will need to be active in developing sustainability strategies for their areas - ensuring that development is focused in the most sustainable locations (e.g. around transport nodes).

 

26. The planning system must be able to deliver the sort of renewable and decentralised energy solutions (such as combined heat and power plants) that will be increasingly in demand. The proposed new eco-towns might provide a good opportunity to help develop the skill sets that will be required to deliver sustainable communities.