HC 1526 Communities and Local Government CommitteeWritten evidence from the British Chambers of Commerce
Introduction
1. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry into the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). We would also welcome the opportunity to give oral evidence on this issue.
2. The BCC is an influential network of 53 Accredited Chambers across the UK. No other business organisation has the geographic spread or multi-size, multi-sector membership that characterises the Chamber Network. Every Chamber sits at the heart of its local business community, providing representation, services, information and guidance to member businesses and the wider local business community.
3. In summary, our position is the following:
Businesses of all sizes have long called for greater speed, clarity and certainty in the planning system. The results of a survey of over 5,000 of our members (conducted during the Summer of 2011) show that businesses view the current planning system as a barrier to growth;
We support the broad aim of the Government’s efforts to simplify national planning policy and guidance by establishing a single, clear and consistent framework;
This simplification, through the introduction of the proposed NPPF, will lead to greater consistency, speed and transparency around planning decisions—essential to re-building business confidence in the system;
The presumption in favour of sustainable development introduces greater clarity and certainty. It also has the effect of reinstating the original intention of the planning system that was set out in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act;
The safeguards currently in place to prevent over-development, sprawl and environmental degradation would remain under the NPPF;
Proportionality and pragmatism are required in any debate on reform—rather than hyperbole and hysteria.
Business View of the Current Planning System
4. Businesspeople recognise that the planning system has an important purpose in shaping our cities, towns and countryside. However, from a business perspective the system in its current form has developed into an overly complex, costly, uncertain and time-consuming process that discourages investment. Planning is regularly cited by our members as one of the key barriers to growth; this view is expressed to us by businesses of all sizes, throughout the country. Over the years we have heard of numerous examples of businesses that have looked to expand—and thereby creating growth and employment—but have had to abandon their plans because of the frustrations involved in going through the planning process.
5. In order to fully understand the difficulties businesses face we decided to conduct a major survey of business views of the planning system. The survey was carried out between the 12 July and 6 August 2011. In total we received 5,324 responses. The scale of the response indicates the level of business concern.
6. Initial results from the survey reveal that:
Seven in 10 (69pc) experienced applicants (who have been through the planning process on multiple occasions) believe planning decisions are taken on political grounds, rather than on the merits of the application itself;
Over half (54pc) believe that planning committees make decisions contrary to the advice of planning officers;
73pc of applicants say they have not been approached by a local authority about their views or opinions on the planning process;
Among those businesses who have never applied for planning permission, more than one in 10 (11pc) had not done so because of cost, complexity, delays, and/or a belief that they would simply not be granted permission;
And most critically for the purposes of this inquiry, nearly three-quarters (72pc) of experienced applicants say that the planning advice they are given is inconsistent across local authority boundaries.
7. Alongside the survey we also asked businesses to express in their own words their view of the planning system. Some of the comments we received included:
“There are too many political decisions in the Planning process rather than those based on logic.”
“Planning committees are populated by NIMBYs who have no knowledge of the planning process.”
“Planners lack any real business skills and are not qualified to judge business viability, and, this allows elected members to judge the scheme and they generally have their own political agenda.”
“All too often it’s the vocal minority that get listened to and not the silent majority. You only have to look at the furore around renewable technology to see people don’t think any bigger than what affects them directly. They are all happy using electricity as long as the power station is in someone else’s back yard.”
“Having negotiated approval relative to one issue, they came up with a new reason for rejection—which had not been mentioned before. This happened five times—over a two year period.”
8. The survey results suggest a loss of confidence in a system which is meant under the 1947 Act to determine positively where things should be built, rather than serve as a tool to block growth.
Business View of the National Planning Policy Framework
9. The existing suite of national policy statements and guidelines accumulated over a long period of time. They add up to a complex and often contradictory set of influences guiding development that are impenetrable to all but the most expert planning specialists. This makes applications more onerous because they must be in alignment with official planning policy and local plans where they exist; outcomes are less certain, and planning decisions less transparent, as a result. This complexity explains a key finding from our survey—that 71pc of Chamber members who put in an application now draw on paid-for external support during the process. So the claims made by some opponents of NPPF that the system is not too complex, and that planning fees are stable or falling, does not reflect the reality of the costs businesses face in this area. Specialist consultants, legal fees, and a range of other costs and charges have made the system extremely expensive—and all the more so if decisions go to appeal or judicial review.
10. When the Coalition Government came to power they pledged to reform the planning system, and, this pledge was broadly welcomed by the business community. For too many years problems with the system had not been adequately addressed.
11. There was much included in the Government’s early initiatives—such as measures in the Localism Bill and the Growth Review that was published alongside Budget 2011—that could lead to improvements in the system.
12. However, it was the pledge to replace over a thousand pages of national policy with simpler rules and to introduce a presumption in favour of sustainable development that had the greatest potential in creating a planning system that will enable, rather than hinder, economic growth.
13. Reducing complexity through establishing a simple, easy-to-understand national framework and clarifying objectives through a “presumption in favour” will reduce the complexity, begin to restore confidence in the system and increase the transparency around planning decisions. It should make planning applications less costly to make and give more certainty to outcomes. Taken together it is likely to speed up planning processes too.
14. When we consult our members on the NPPF they are strongly in favour of the proposals contained in the document. And when we speak of business we are mainly referring to micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses, not the major housing developers and retailers that are often portrayed as the only business sector supportive of the NPPF.
Response to Critics of the National Planning Policy Framework
15. Although the proposals in the NPPF are to be welcomed, we do consider them to be modest and incremental. We were therefore surprised by the level of opposition to the NPPF.
16. On the following four points we are in agreement with critics of the NPPF in regards to the type of planning system we want to see. They are:
We want the planning system to promote responsible economic growth;
We don’t want to see the concreting over of the countryside;
We don’t want a lax planning regime like those in Ireland, Spain or Greece;
We don’t want to see a planning system that fails to balance prosperity, people, and places.
17. However, we cannot agree with those opposing organisations that the NPPF will threaten any of the above four points. Opponents are simply wrong when they suggest that the NPPF reforms will result in urban sprawl, lost amenity, and developer free-for-alls. According to the Land Use Futures evidence study (BIS, 2010), less than 10pc of the total land area of England is developed now, and a similar proportion will be developed 10 years after these reforms are enacted, given the safeguards that will continue to operate under the proposed new system.
18. While there is a welcome emphasis on economic growth in the document, this is not at the expense of the environment. A careful reading of the NPPF shows that it reasserts the fundamental purpose of the planning system, which is to balance growth with the protection of the natural environment.
19. The document is clear that the core Green Belt protection is to remain in place. For undesignated areas of the countryside, local authorities will have the power to use their local plans to protect areas and to prioritise brownfields first (which nearly all are very likely to do). While the proposed Community Right to Build scheme would allow for some limited development on the Green Belt, the scheme has strict limits, is subject to local referenda, and envisaged to be small-scale, with approximately 5 to 10 units per scheme.
20. The safeguards for people and places that have always characterised the British planning system will remain, including strict environmental controls. For example, the SEA Directive and Habitats Regulations that steer away or prevent development on environmentally-sensitive and protected sites are outside the scope of the reforms and will remain part of the planning system.
21. The input of statutory planning consultees (eg Natural England, the Environment Agency, English Heritage, the Highways Agency, etc) remains unchanged. These organisations’ involvement in the process is heavily weighted in favour of bodies with agendas of preserving landscape, biodiversity and amenity. And the primacy of planning authorities and the link to local democracy in the system remains.
22. The changes proposed by the NPPF take us nowhere near the planning regimes in Ireland, Spain or Greece. In all three cases, an oversupply of housing due to market speculation—rather than lax planning controls—was to blame for overdevelopment in these countries. England’s market conditions are very different, and the NPPF will not allow for sprawl or ribbon development to occur, as fundamentally it is a simplification of the existing system more than anything else.
The Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development
23. We support the Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development. It is our view that the presumption will help deliver local growth and jobs.
24. The “presumption in favour”, as written, is not a developer’s charter. While it is true that many local authorities do not yet have finalised local plans in place, the presumption will speed up the plan-writing and plan-approval processes, which currently take far too long. It is our belief that the introduction of the presumption will in fact provide the strongest incentive to complete local plans and core strategies since these documents were introduced. Local companies and inward investors view these plans as critical to their investment decisions, so this will be another positive outcome of the process.
25. We also believe that the process to issue Certificates of Conformity to existing local plans will not be an insurmountable barrier, and that no “transitional free-for-all” will result.
26. We do not expect the presumption to result in increases in urban sprawl, environmental degradation or poorly designed buildings, and we would challenge its opponents to show exactly how those sorts of outcomes would come to pass.
27. Indeed, there was even a presumption in favour of development included in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act: the difference is that the NPPF incorporates “sustainability” in the presumption.
28. We do not however support the introduction of a rigid definition of “sustainable development”, either on the face of the Localism Bill or in the NPPF. Planning is, at its heart, a fundamentally subjective process, with judgments made by local authorities and assessed by the courts on appeal. The NPPF’s principles are flexible enough to allow a development’s sustainability to be assessed and tested on a case-by-case basis, without the introduction of more rigid and prescriptive rules.
Risks of not Implementing the National Planning Policy Framework
29. If the Government fails to deliver the NPPF and the Presumption in Favour, they run the risk of negatively impacting on the following:
Jobs: our survey showed more than one in 10 SMEs surveyed discarded expansion opportunities because of fears around the planning system. That means civic-minded companies, many of which have been around in their communities for generations, are not creating the sustainable local jobs our economy needs because they can’t get the premises required.
Housing: while we support using brownfields first, it is important to recognise that inner-city and edge-of-town brownfields alone will not satisfy Britain’s housing needs—let alone the wishes of the huge number of people with an interest in living in smaller settlements. According to the Land Use Statistics for 2010, 76pc of residential construction was on previously-developed land, with only 19pc on previously agricultural land. This is up somewhat from 2009, where it stood at 14pc, but there is no reason to believe that the safeguards in the NPPF, nor local planning committees, nor statutory consultees like Natural England, English Heritage, the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency, will allow this number to shoot up to 30, 40, or 50pc.
Inward investment: global companies do consider the UK’s planning system before investing here, and any signal to the markets that we are looking at keeping the current level of dysfunction could make major investors reconsider investing at a time that we need them most.
Business confidence: the failure of these reforms would have a significant and as-yet unquantifiable impact on business confidence. The Government has made a strong rhetorical commitment to simplifying the planning system. The Government must not retreat on that commitment.
September 2011