Pickles rejects Persimmon scheme due to poor design, despite no 5 year land supply

 

Alas in Lancashire not East Devon

http://www.building.co.uk/pickles-rejects-persimmon-scheme-over-design/5064476.article

Pickles approves 350 homes for Dawlish: no 5 year land supply

Story HERE.

He concluded that the “limited and localised” harm to the character and appearance of the countryside that the scheme would cause did not outweigh the benefits of the scheme.

What happens when you have no 5 year land supply

East Devon, thanks to the Local Plan Panel having had to convene twice because the first one, which sat for 2 years, achieved nothing much except visiting the sites of local developers (many of them EDBF members) and hearing their reasons why they should be allowed to develop them.  (Judge this for yourself by reading the agendas and minutes of the early meetings HERE  -these include the agendas and minutes of the early meetings that were kept secret until a local independent councillor successfully got them published)

From Planning magazine:

Pickles backs 450-home Tyneside appeal

By Michael Donnelly Thursday, 04 July 2013

Communities secretary Eric Pickles has approved plans for 45o homes on a greenfield site outside Newcastle-upon-Tyne after concluding that the council could not demonstrate a five year housing land supply

North Tyneside Council’s planning committee rejected the plans for the 450 homes on a greenfield site at Scaffold Hill in Holystone, against a planning officers’ recommendation of approval in August last year.

A planning report said that, as the council did not have a five-year housing supply as required by the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), it had to “consider planning applications for housing favourably, whilst having regard to other government policy advice.”  Developer Northumberland Estates appealed the rejection and, following a public inquiry, a planning inspector recommended that the appeal be allowed. The secretary of state then recovered the appeal for his own determination.  A decision letter sent on behalf of Pickles this week said the communities secretary agreed with the inspector’s decision.

On the key issue of housing land supply, the letter said Pickles noted that the developer and the council agreed that housing policies in the area’s local plan, the North Tyneside Unitary Development Plan 2002, were “out-of-date and that the council cannot demonstrate a five year supply of deliverable housing sites”.

It also said Pickles agreed with the inspector that the Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) housing figures for the area “remain the most appropriate indication of the borough’s necessary provision; and he notes that there is agreement between the appellant and the council on an absence of a five year supply when assessed against the RSS requirement”.

The letter said the secretary of state concluded that the scheme “would bring benefits in the form of an attractive, well-conceived mixed-use development that would deliver a substantial quantum of residential development including much-needed affordable dwellings, positively contributing to boosting the borough’s supply of housing”.

It said Pickles also considered that the scheme “would not have a demonstrably negative impact on the appearance or character of the area”, and that it would secure a sizeable extension to the neighbouring Rising Sun Country Park and enhancements to biodiversity.

It concluded: “The secretary of state concludes that the benefits of the scheme are not significantly or demonstrably outweighed by any adverse impacts, and that therefore the planning balance should be in favour of the scheme such that planning permission should be granted”.

Paul Diviani’s “explanation” / excuse about the lack of 5 year land supply

HERE.  Presumably he is expecting a lot of people to ask the question: “why are we in this mess? and has had this template put together in an attempt to justify the council’s omnishambles.

One of many, many questions immediately springs to mind:  how come this situation was predicted by your own Overview and Scrutiny Committee YEARS ago (see  many earlier SIN posts on this subject) and why did you and your councillors (particulary Councillor Brown and the East Devon Business Forum) spend SO MUCH time discussing and increasing the employment land supply (which was not a critical issue) and no time at all on the shortage of housing in the Local Plan?

Perhaps you have more questions – the letter certainly begs them.

5 year land supply does NOT apply to employment land

Quote from recent meeting of the EDDC Audit and Governance Committee:

In response to questions from the Committee, the Planning Policy Manager clarified that: the five year land supply did not currently apply to employment land;

Now that is a relief! But not sure about the word “currently”.

An up to date explanation of the implications of having no 5 year land supply

The blog is HERE.  Note what he has to say about the “Localism” bill – which is something many have been saying in this area since it was first published – it means pretty much nothing if you do not have a 5 year land supply or an up to date Local Plan, and even then might not mean very much!

Note the one very, very, very, very weak ray of light in the dark, dark, dark tunnel:

As the judge made clear, however, this is not to say that the absence of a five-year housing land supply will always be conclusive in favour of the grant of planning permission; the absence of such a supply is merely one consideration required to be taken into account, albeit an important one.

Although, to be fair, the rest of the article makes it pretty plain that if you do not have a 5 year land supply (or in the case of East Devon, a six year land supply) you are pretty much shafted if your local authority does not go in to bat for you.

East Devon District Council 5 year land supply tactics criticised

In the influential blog “Decisions, Decisions” in the entry on 10 February by planner Andrew Lainton.

He goes into detail on the recent decision to allow the construction of 130 dwellings east of Butts Road, Ottery and says, in conclusion:

The key (classic) tactical error here was to attempt to puff up the 5 year supply by inviting applications which is tantamount to saying there is not a 5 year supply.  If East Devon has admitted it did not have a 5 year supply, invited applications on favoured sites and then swiftly approved them it would not have had a problem.  The appellant would be arguing its case at the forthcoming local plan EIP instead as its application would have been approved as the current local plan would not have been ruled out of date.

Does anyone hear the sound of rolling heads at EDDC?  No, thought not.

 

 

 

5 year land supply (2)

We can find absolutely no mention online on the EDDC website of who sat on the 5 year land supply TAFF (see two postings below) nor any minutes of when it met, what evidence it took or who it interviewed, except for the final report referred to below, save for a brief reference to it in the Overview and Scrutiny Committee minutes of  1 July 2009 HERE  where it says the following:.

Councillor Phillip Skinner will brief the Members on the work undertaken by the TaFF on the review of the sites that make up the Council’s five year land supply for housing, and the recommendations as a result.  The TaFF was commissioned by the Scrutiny Committee at their meeting on 21 January 2009.

He did indeed brief members with the TAFF report highlighted in the postings below.  Shame that Councillor Skinner didn’t seem to follow up on the recommendations his TAFF made as it might have put us in a much different position now to the dreadful one we find ourselves in.

5 year land supply: problems known about in 2009

Interesting that the potential problems with the 5 year land supply were all highlighted HERE in July 2009 in the report of a Task and Finish Forum on 5 year land supply and that everything negative that was predicted in this document has come to pass.  Here are a few extracts, which need to be read with the post immediately below this one, which was written some four years later.

1. Our assessment of our District wide figures shows that we have only just over five years availability. An Inspector at a planning application appeal could take the view that this is close enough to the five year threshold to side with an applicant/dismiss our arguments.
2. The District wide five year figure is based on our assessment and assumptions we have made. A developer might challenge these and come to a different conclusion (i.e. that land supply falls under five years) and persuade an Inspector that his/her evaluation is the more accurate.
3. Circumstances change and assessment/s done at the present time (and initially in 2008) can and will be out of date in the future.

4.  In the past we had intentionally split the District in to two, 1. the West End and 2. the Rest of East Devon. ….. It is now considered, however, that it is more appropriate to have a single 5 year housing figure for ACROSS THE WHOLE DISTRICT. This will give the Council the ability to deliver housing outside the West End which will encompass not only the Towns but villages too.

Gobsmacked, only word for it, gobsmacked.

Why, when and how did our 5 year land supply go so terribly wrong?

As the unfortunate people in Feniton and Ottery St Mary are now finding out, two recent appeals allowed by planning inspectors have led to what is now a total free-for-all for developers in East Devon.

Why is this?  It is because two recent inspectors hearing appeals decided, after looking at (old and new) figures from EDDC about how much housing in our Local Plan is actually available now, they do not believe the figures and have questioned the way they were formulated (although to be fair,  in three previous appeals which EDDC won, none of the inspectors pointed this out).  In one of the recent cases, however, the inspector was quite clear that he believed the figures provided by developers at the appeal rather than those provided by EDDC and he believed that this basic mistake should allow the appeal, even though he agreed with objectors that there were many strong reasons why development should not be permitted, as having no 5 year land supply overrides all other objections according to the “bible” for this sort of thing – the National Planning Policy Framework.

So, why is a 5 year land supply so important?  Advice given is that:  The National Planning Policy Framework states that local planning authorities need to identify and update annually a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide five years worth of housing against their housing requirements with an additional buffer of 5% (moved forward from later in the plan period) to ensure choice and competition in the market for land. Where there has been a record of persistent under delivery of housing, local planning authorities should increase the buffer to 20% (moved forward from later in the plan period) to provide a realistic prospect of achieving the planned supply and to ensure choice and competition in the market for land.

The two recent planning appeals have made it clear that inspectors believe that EDDC does NOT have a 5 year land supply and IS (in the opinion of those inspectors) also a persistent under-deliverer of housing in the recent past.  As a result, many sites which are scheduled for use later on in the Local Plan (which goes up to 2026) will have to be brought forward much earlier OR developers may simply use the situation to build whatever they want wherever they want.  There is no information, at present, on how local authorities get out of this “special measures” situation, so we could face a future where our Local Plan is always lagging behind what the government says is enough and EDDC is always having to release more and more sites early or find more and more new sites or let more and more developers build where they like  – a nightmare scenario.

EDDC had used a completely untried and untested way of calculating the 5 year land supply in East Devon.  They split the district in two – west end (Cranbrook mostly) and the rest of East Devon and said that one side had an oversupply of housing and the other side not enough.   However, when you aggregate both totals (as you must as there is no procedure in the NPPF for splitting a district in half) the inspector decided that EDDC’s figures did not make sense and therefore more new building is now going on in Feniton and Ottery than was ever planned for.  In other words, EDDC relied too much on the west end of East Devon (around Cranbrook) to deliver new housing which is not coming forward fast enough.  Developers are now seizing the chance to use these two decisions as the basis for a free for all, until EDDC can get its house (Local Plan) in order.

How did this mess ever arise?  Who decided to split the district in half?  What was the justification for doing it?  Who agreed that this was the way it should be done – and why when the NPPF does not suggest it as a way of dealing with the methodology?

Well, for a start a great deal of blame must be laid at the door of the first Local Development Framework Panel – the one that met in secret for three years and achieved nothing except lots of visits topotential development sites of EDBF members and getting a select few sites brought forward rapidly before the new Local Plan comes into operation (e.g. the Cloakham Lawns development by EDBF member Axminster Carpets, currently subject to the judicial review process).  Had this three years not been wasted, we might now have a Local Plan that is fit for purpose and which protects areas of our towns, villages and countryside which are all now at dreadful risk.

The second Local Development Framework Panel (renamed the Local Plan Panel) had to rush through so much work so quickly that ought to have been achieved in the previous three years that, trying to do everything at breakneck speed, it obviously lost sight of exactly what it was supposed to achieve – a 5 year land supply throughout the whole district.

Councillors are amateurs and not trained as planners.  It is the qualified planners that councillors rely on to give them sound advice and sound figures.  What went wrong?  Will we ever know?  Or will “transparent” EDDC do its usual job of whitewash and hogwash on this too?

Councillor Mike Allen (Chairman of the second Local Plan Panel) himself said that the process of how the Local Plan was produced (by his committee) should be put to scrutiny.  However, a decision was made by the majority of councillors not to do this until AFTER the Local Plan goes to the Planning Inspector (currently scheduled for March 2013 but who knows?).  Just one or two brave souls such as Councillor Clare Wright urged that the scrutiny should be BEFORE the Local Plan is submitted but she was defeated.

What on earth is the point of working out what the mistakes were when it is too late to do anything about them and when there will be even  more delay in putting them right?

We will leave the “employment land” (i.e. industrial land) fiasco for another posting!