Written evidence from Councillor Professor
Alan Townsend (ARSS 40)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
There is an urgent set of issues arising from the
revocation of Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs). This is unprecedented
in the period since the passing of the 1947 Town and Country Planning
Act, when expansion of travel has interlocked adjoining Districts.
In that context the Committee are wise to consider
"the suggestion that Local Enterprise Partnerships may fulfill
a Planning function". The view I published in October
2009 was that they should be statutory Planning Authorities;
eg the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire LEP, which includes 18 of the
newly independent District Planning Authorities, should broadly
work like the Greater London Authority does through the "London
Plan".
The Committee are wise to recognize that RSSs covered
a wide range of subject matter in all Regions, beyond
the problems of housing numbers in the south, following an increased
recent recognition in CLG papers of employment sites. There
is a strong business interest in co-ordination of 324 soon-to-be
independent Local Planning Authorities, and fear of wasteful competition
between LEPs and Local Authorities.
The writer is one of the few people who have worked
across both Town Planning and Economic Development issues
as Councillor, Partnership Chair and Professor, and wrote to the
Shadow Secretary of State a year ago (17 September 2009) that
"Someone said that Gordon Brown would have failed an exam
if he had written that he had "ended boom and bust":
equally, anyone who wrote that you could achieve the Planning
of England purely by Districts, without sub-regional or
regional powers would also fail badly.
Ie planning, housing and transport are not only necessary
to LEPs' working but need LEPs strengthening with formal Planning
powers for essential purposes of CLG and government at large,
and to complement the advances provided by localism.
Problems of co-ordinating Committees and Departments
from London may be offset by saving agreed parts of draft integrated
Regional Strategies, and re-convening Leaders' Boards with business
bodies in Regions that want this, co-ordinating LEPs.
The conserving and updating of Regional Strategy
data could be a task of continuing skeleton government Offices.
BRIEF INTRODUCTION
TO THE
WRITER
Professor of Regional Regeneration & Development
Studies, University of Durham, 2000-05,
responsible to CLG for nine reports. Career interests have been
in Physical Planning, member
RTPI; Chair of District Council Planning Committee.
Economic Development.
DTI Regional Offices; five books on UK
economic development at Regional and sub-regional scales; Chair
of District Council Regeneration Committee.
Joint activity; held
the economic desk on a Land-use Transportation sub-regional Plan;
Chair of Wear Valley Local Strategic Partnership.
Currently Vice-Chair,
Bishop Auckland College, and Greater Willington Town Council and
Rural Durham Employability Steering Group.
Relevant publications:
Can LEPs fill the strategic void? Town and Country
Planning, September, 2010 (with L.Pugalis).
The Planning of England-Relying on Districts,Town
and Country Planning,October, 2009.
Integration of economic and spatial planning across
scales', International Journal of Public Sector Management,
2009, Vol. 7.
The fluctuating record of economic regeneration in
England's second-order city regions, 1984-07 (with A.G.Champion,
in press Urban Studies).
CO -ORDINATION
OF ALL FIXED
INVESTMENT BY
LEPS
1. The peril is that the baby is thrown out with
the bathwater. I maintain that strategic spatial planning, ie
the Regional Strategy (RS) making process and the RSS exercise
before it, served a pragmatic and valuable role.
2. The present 324 second-tier and unitary authorities,
to which independent planning has devolved, are artificial creations
which vary considerably in their geographical degree of functional
independence and cohesion. Thus dropping RSSs without replacement
leaves, for example, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire with a total
of 18 independent District Planning Authorities. It was through
a reaction against the Maud Commission's work of 1,969 that the
second tier of local government was instituted by government;
a fresh commission then bolted together previous smaller authorities
to form minimum required populations.
3. Abolishing the regional tier of strategy multiplies
the potential number of boundary disputes, with many planning
practitioners suggesting that cross-boundary developments will
stall indefinitely.
4. Within a strategic framework, it is possible
to prioritise development schemes in a manner that shares and
minimises negative externalities from a wide range of necessary
developments. Shropshire, for example, was prepared to receive
aggregate waste under the last West Midlands Plan, but has now
withdrawn its cooperation under the prospective arrangements.
5. Efficient infrastructure and new development
have to be planned in relation to each other across the map,
as in the Milton Keynes South Midlands Growth Area; equivalent
bodies are now needed for areas which straddle different Districts.
Many past examples can be given of transport proposals which were
mistakenly confined within one lower-tier authority area, and
which were likely to be inefficient, while water and sewage have
to be planned across drainage catchment areas.
6. Regional targets have been discredited for
the time being while there is scepticism over the government's
proposed housing incentives. Nevertheless, housing in one second-tier
District may be complementary to employment growth in the adjoining
one. Constraining housing delivery could significantly hinder
economic recovery across the whole of the south. Alternatively,
undue speculative activity in some localities could destabilise
the wider urban land economy.
7. In terms of important theory, emphasis therefore
on the abandoning of regional planning would be on issues of duplication,
sub-regional displacement, negative externalities and efficiency
of infrastructure between authorities, along with the planning
system's existing machinery for avoiding wasteful competition,
as in retailing.
8. However, many of these purposes of strategic
spatial planning are not exclusive to the regional spatial level
and were previously administered at the level of counties, including
former metropolitan ones. We therefore anticipate the emergence
of a new sub-regional strategic planning geography and
suggest that the shape of Local Enterprise Partnerships, or LEPs,
is recreating such a map. For example, the 18 Planning Authorities
of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire mentioned above are now included
in one proposed LEP area.
9. But the LEPs' lack of statutory planning powers
may deny them the very certainty which planners, developers and
business demand, as in the letter of 30 bodies to the minister
of 5 August.
10. This author recognises the issues mentioned
by the Committee in waste, minerals, flooding, the natural environment,
renewable energy and would prefer some of them to be dealt with
continuingly at the Regional level. Climate change experts particularly
see the loss of the level as important. However, even on environmental
topics the proposed 56 LEPs are better than nothing for strategic
work. Socially, issues such as the handling of gypsies or the
inner city questions of greater Manchester or Tyneside will benefit
from an LEP approach.
11. Department for Transport issues are subject
to District Planning judgement in the absence of an RSS. For example
RAIL Magazine of September 8-13 cites two Freight Interchanges
which have been rejected since May; "this presents a possible
barrier to growth "where the parish council will decide what
is good"
12. The approach here is that of an expert on
travel-to-work since the 2001 census, noting that "functional
economic regions" have been recognised since for example
a work of 1947, "City, Region and Regionalism" (RE Dickinson,
Routledge). As part of their professional training of up to five
years, all Planners are taught the growing interdependence of
adjacent towns and suburbs for the activities of work, housing,
shopping, leisure and services, which have to be taken into account
in providing land, engineering calculations of road needs and
Planning approvals. By the end of the 1960s the Ministry of Labour
was linking local authority areas together in "Travel-to-Work"
areas. It was a normal requirement of Ministry of Transport that
new roads could be financed only by calculating detailed forward
travel needs in "Land Use-Transportation Surveys" for
conurbations and larger growth centres such as Northampton. The
Metropolitan Counties of 1974-85 had their own Structure Plans
which survived the closure of those Authorities. It is argued
here that these plans could not have been produced by the present
separate Metropolitan Boroughs.
13. The needs of the economy are intimately bound
up with the topics of housing, transport, infrastructure and planning.
Long-overdue integration of these activities was embodied in increasing
work between ministries in integrated Regional Strategies, which
were to be signed off by BIS and CLG jointly. It was equally correct
that the letter of 29 June announcing LEPs was signed jointly
by the Secretaries of State of both BIS and CLG.
14. It is argued here that it is necessary for
LEPs to embrace all these topics: and that not as another
"talking shop" but as bodies having statutory Planning
powers at the centre of their individual work. If, as often stated,
LEPs are responsible for "real economic areas", then
they must embrace the topics together, none of which can be dealt
with purely at the lower level of most Local Authority areas.
15. Because of the effects on social housing
and jobs, this is a moral issue. However, to argue this from an
economic point of view: much as one might welcome aspects of devolution
to the 324 Local Planning Authorities, the withdrawal of RSSs
without replacement nonetheless leaves a vacuum of uncertainty
for business investment
16. Briefly, having 324 separate Planning Authorities
could produce:
Unco-ordinated wasteful competition between new shopping
centres.
Unco-ordinated buck-passing by between nimby southern
authorities.
Irrational development of transport.
As an example in my letter of 26 July to the Minister
for Decentralisation, a major development area straddles the boundary
between Stockton and Hartlepool Boroughs: the otherwise excellent
Partnership (existing and proposed) between Tees Valley Authorities
leaves them as entirely independent sovereign Planning Authorities
17. The allocation of employment land by the
Planning system is of fundamental interest to business. For example,
successive strategies for North East England since the arrival
of the Nissan factory have allocated a small, set number of sites
for large inward investments: otherwise all the present 12 Unitary
Authorities would wastefully allocate one each.
18. The location of new growth is the more advantageous
if it is carefully calculated in relation to that of existing
and new housing and transport for goods and personnel. Quoting
the editor of PLANNING 9 August, p.9)
"Following the scrapping of regional spatial
strategies, just over half [of 70 LPAs surveyed] expect to review
their local development framework housing targets...Only one in
five authorities will review employment targets...How many employers
will spend big bucks investing in an area if there are serious
doubts about housing their staff?"
19. In short, the business and housing interest
is different from the outcome of what 324 Local Authorities might
decide. The last government responded to business and Treasury
influence in legislating for merging Regional Economic and Spatial
Strategies. This may have proved too cumbersome, but the lessons
must be learnt, that there needs to be economic input into Planning.
It is not the sum total of what Councillors on District Planning
Committees might think, and say to CLG ministers through their
national associations, when they might refuse applications of
interest to DFT, BIS etc.
20. It is now therefore argued here that LEPs
are of value to Planning and vice versa:
(1) It is necessary at all stages
that Planning is part of LEP work, but
(2) That is not sufficient as the only
proposal to fill the vacuum between the 324 Authorities and Whitehall,
(3) LEPs must have Planning powers: otherwise
much of their work could prove nugatory: for example, a LEP containing
say five Boroughs could find its separate Planning Committees
voting to develop or approve rival out-of-town shopping centres,
despite previous accords.
21. It is now argued that the LEP level is
the only one at which to resolve the strategic co-ordination of
Planning. This statement does not reflect criticism of the
dropping of the RSSs as such, but the surprise of many bodies
and of academics at their dropping without replacement.
22. RDAs have met almost unresolvable conflict,
sufficient to risk losing regional projects, between metropolitan
boroughs. A "law of the jungle" would leave disadvantaged
communities further behind, Bradford behind Leeds, or deprived
ex-coalfield areas behind those with Motorway junctions. When
we look at the eight leading provincial cities, we find that the
average proportions flowing in from adjoining areas summed to
no less than 42 % of all workers already by 2001.
23. LEPs provide a scale at which future essential
strategic planning should continue. Government Party speakers
over the last year have not been unaware of the gap which their
Planning proposals would produce between District and nation.
It would be a duty for their Local Development Frameworks "to
be genuinely spatial"; unless authorities contributed genuinely
to their cluster they would not get their regeneration money.
24. There is not a large volume of decisions
that cannot be transferred down to sub-regional level: they largely
concern transport systems from Birmingham northwards as between
the Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Leeds areas and between
Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the Tees Valley. On the other hand, the
324 Planning Authorities cannot be expected always to work in
the interests of all neighbours.
25. The power of RSSs and previous Structure
Plans was that their approved text provided legally-enforceable
certainty for implementation through Planning Inspector decisions.
Disputes about retail centres were decided on an agreed policy
calculated across the whole Plan area.
26. LEPs will need to have the legal right and
duty, in full consultation, to assemble and write the legally-enforceable
Plan for the whole area. This need not involve them in all the
myriad day-to-day decisions of the Local Planning Committees.
27. This leaves the issues of Chairmanship and
memberships of LEPs. There could be the view that Plans can only
be approved by elected Councillors, in which case they could convene
as a separate Planning sub-Committee for this purpose. In total
the situation would not be very different from the regime from
1974 to 2004 when County Planning Committees undertook strategic
work and a few larger decisions, while the lower tier of Districts
undertook all the detailed work in the implementation of Plans.
28. Following the rejection of the North East
Assembly through a referendum, many experts looked to the model
of two-tier planning of Greater London with its overall "London
Plan". Along with the two-tier Planning of the four Scottish
City Regions, the proposed use of LEPs would register a convergence
of views at a sensible scale.
REGIONAL LEVEL
DATA AND
CO -ORDINATION
BETWEEN LEPS
29. The Committee are right to draw attention
to the value of the data and analyses conducted for Regional Strategies,
which include the published Strategy in the case of North West
England.
30. It is important to note that these analyses
were publicly funded and reside in a public location. The fact
that a current London-based government does not prioritise policy
at this scale does not mean that data will not be needed by many
public bodies and local authorities in individual Regions. Further,
there are certain key data which are not currently available at
lower levels, and which it would be uneconomic to produce. ONS
are not stating that LEP level data can be produced under their
current contract. In any case, LEP agreements may be liable to
revision by members over time.
31. There is ample precedent from the breaking
up of Metropolitan and some other Counties in the 1980s for statistical
and policy units to be retained for the original wider areas,
and these continue today. There is an argument for retaining small
government staffs in Regions to provide a minimum of intelligent
co-ordination of London departments' activities, at least for
the Regions further in travel time from London. If on that basis
the southern Regions did not claim or recognize this need, then
the government would be entitled to implement a distinction between
North and South, which matches frequent practice in many analyses
and books.
32. Regional data should be maintained, updated
and be available free of charge in designated bodies. These could
be a function of skeleton Government regional Offices or of a
neutral statistical body—in the North East these could be
the Regional Observatory, ie the North East Research and Information
Partnership, or the Institute of Local Government. The 1979 change
of government brought the end of the "Strategic Plan for
the Northern Region", but its publication in seven volumes
in 1977 remained a publicly-recognised repository of new wisdom
about the regional economy.
33. This
leads on to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee's concerns
about co-ordination of roles between LEPs and "arrangements
for co-ordinating regional strategy". The underlying point
is that efficiency requires the salvaging of the best of Regional
thinking from ten years' recent work in Economic and Spatial Strategies,
and draft Regional Strategies as well as broader arrangements
across Sustainable Community Growth Areas.
34. There are problems in building up a single
and complete system of LEPs.
"It is essential that the Government should
give real assurances to those for whom a city-regional style of
government is inappropriate that the development of policy will
not result in a reduction of support for other areas."
(CLG Committee, Is there a future for Regional
Government?, Session 2006-07, para.179)
35. Statistical data over nearly 25 years indicates
relative success for the Manchester and Leeds City Regions over
their neighbours in Liverpool, Pennine Lancashire, Sheffield,
Teesside and Newcastle (Champion and Townsend, 2010). This government,
which is concerned with deprivation and the reduction of welfare
assistance, will want to retain machinery for assisting weaker
areas. These points raise the issue of retaining some measure
of co-ordination of strategy between LEPs at the regional level.
36. It is likely that, for individual functions,
the present system of eight units is capable of being cheaper
and easier to staff than a sub-regional system of about 60 LEPs,
and more capable of understanding and communicating with Whitehall.
What must not be allowed to disappear is a floor of basic machinery
for strategic co-ordination.
September 2010
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