The New Towns Question (Again)

Whilst we wait for this planning policy paper, the speculation rises. Old ideas get dusted down again, pitches are rolled.

The post-war new towns programme saw 27 UK new towns built by state-sponsored development corporations under the New Towns Act 1946 and later amending legislation. One of the conundrums that successive governments have grappled with over the last 40 years or so is how to create the conditions in which the private sector, rather than the state, can bring forward and deliver residential-led proposals at scale, whether in the form of new towns or urban extensions.

The jargon doesn’t help. We don’t seem to want to call it what it is, so an urban extension becomes a “sustainable urban extension”, which becomes a SUE. A new town presumably is a bit much for our sensitive modern ears, so to big up the environmental credentials, and to tip a hat to Ebenezer Howard, it becomes a new garden village, garden town or garden community (or, when the “eco-“ prefix became fashionable a decade or so ago, eco-town). The precise terminology is usually driven by the Government funding stream of the day, eg

⁃ The Eco-towns prospectus, July 2007 (“Eco-towns are a major opportunity for local authorities, house builders, developers and registered social landlords to come together to build small new towns. Eco-towns should be well designed, attractive places to live, with good services and facilities, and which connect well with the larger towns or cities close by. Uniquely, they offer an opportunity to design a whole town – business and services as well as homes – to achieve zero-carbon development, and to use this experience to help guide other developments across the country. The essential requirements we are looking for are:
(i) eco-towns must be new settlements, separate and distinct from existing towns but well linked to them. They need to be additional to existing plans, with a minimum target of 5,000 – 10,000 homes;”
(ii) the development as a whole should reach zero carbon standards, and each town should be an exemplar in at least one area of environmental sustainability;
(iii) eco-town proposals should provide for a good range of facilities within the town – a secondary school, a medium scale retail centre, good quality business space and leisure facilities;
(iv) affordable housing should make up between 30 and 50 per cent of the total through a wide range and distribution of tenures in mixed communities, with a particular emphasis on larger family homes;
(v) a management body which will help develop the town, provide support for people moving to the new community, for businesses and to co-ordinate delivery of services and manage facilities.”)

⁃ The Locally-Led Garden Villages, Towns and Cities prospectus, March 2016 (“Expressions of interest are sought by 31 July 2016 for “garden village” projects defined by the Government as developments of between 1,500 and 10,000 homes that meet specified criteria. Up to 12 proposals are to be supported. The list of information required has now been published. This follows DCLG’s March 2016 prospectus that covered both garden villages and garden towns/cities (10,000 homes plus). Key criteria include:

⁃ backing from the relevant local authorities

⁃ engagement with the local community

⁃ embedding of “garden city principles””) (see 17 June 2016 blog post How Does Your Garden Village Grow?)

⁃ the Garden Communities prospectus, August 2018 (“The Government “will prioritise proposals for new Garden Towns (more than 10,000 homes), but will consider proposals for Garden Villages (1,500-10,000 homes) which are particularly strong in other aspects. For instance, demonstrating exceptional quality or innovations, development on predominantly brownfield sites, being in an area of particularly high housing demand, or ability to expand substantially further in the future.”) (see my 24 August 2018 blog post Let A Million New Homes Bloom).

“New settlement” is probably the least value-laden term and that’s what I’ll use for the rest of this post.

One of the current hot topics, ahead of this planning policy paper which may go in an entirely different direction, has been whether the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime under the Planning Act 2008 should be extended so as include new settlements and other major residential-led projects.

In some ways, this wouldn’t be a huge leap.

After all, the system was extended by way of the Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) Regulations 2013, to allow the Secretary of State to designate business and commercial projects as NSIPs (with very limited take up – two projects as far as I know, neither of which yet the subject of a formal application, the London Resort theme park proposal and the International Advanced Manufacturing Park Two project).

It was extended again in April 2017, by way of section 160 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, to allow NSIPs to include “related housing development” that has some special or functional connection with the particular infrastructure project, capped at around 500 homes (with no take up yet as far as I am aware).

At the time that the decision was made to allow business and commercial projects to use the NSIPs system, the idea of also allowing major residential development projects to be included was considered, but rejected:

“Planning for housing and the determination of planning applications for housing development is a primary role of local councils and the Government does not consider it appropriate to remove this responsibility from them. The Government has taken a number of steps to make clear the role of local councils in planning for housing including through the National Planning Policy Framework.

The Planning Act 2008 already bars dwellings from being consented as “associated development” alongside a nationally significant infrastructure project. The Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 additionally sets out that the Government may not prescribe housing as a form of business and commercial development. [This of course preceded the 2017 change!]

Given the strong support for the exclusion of housing from the nationally significant infrastructure planning regime and the Government proposes to take no further action in this respect”.

(Major infrastructure planning: extending the regime to business and commercial projects: Summary of responses and government response (June 2013)).

The Government hangs on to the mantra that new settlements must be “locally-led” but isn’t this just an attempt to avoid being seen as directly responsible either for the consequences of its own target-setting or for properly underwriting on a longterm basis the costs of delivery? After all, why shouldn’t business and commercial projects be “locally led”, and how does call-in fit in?

Since 2018 we have had the wording in what is now paragraph 72 of the NPPF: “The supply of large numbers of new homes can often be best achieved through planning for larger scale development, such as new settlements or significant extensions to existing villages and towns, provided they are well located and designed, and supported by the necessary infrastructure and facilities. Working with the support of their communities, and with other authorities if appropriate, strategic policy-making authorities should identify suitable locations for such development where this can help to meet identified needs in a sustainable way.”

But is it really satisfactory for the Government to continue with the position that planning for housing is the role of local councils and that it is not going to remove that responsibility from them?

The Government has sought to address concerns that proposals of this scale may be difficult to deliver by way of the traditional Town and Country Planning Act 1990 regime, even if there is local support (big “if”). By way of the New Towns Act 1981 (Local Authority Oversight) Regulations 2018, it introduced an option for the procedures within the New Towns Act 1981 to be used by way of the creation of a “locally-led new town development corporation” at the application of the relevant local authority or locally authorities. MHCLG’s 2018 guidance document explains how the process is meant to work, although you will have to blow the dust off it – another process which I do not think has yet been used (and I place local development orders in a similar category – very little take up, and what there has been has not been in relation to new settlements).

So if no appetite for state-sponsored new settlements, no appetite for local authority sponsored new settlements under the 2018 Regulations and great difficulty with delivery through the traditional planning system (eg the West of England and North Essex Authorities plans, and more besides) – what else can be done to unlock the potential?

It is unsurprising that thoughts turn again to the NSIPs process.

Think tank (groan) the Social Market Foundation published a paper in June 2020 Unlocking Britain: Recovery and renewal after COVID-19 with a disparate series of proposals across various areas of policy. It is curious that in relation to planning, the paper’s big idea is to greatly expand the use of the NSIPs process:

““Here are the simple legislative steps we need to take to achieve this, and it can all be done by changes to the Planning Act:

A. Remove the need for DCOs to be made in accordance with an NPS – this won’t work for projects that are not of national significance, and some NPS do not exist, or are out of date anyway;

B. Shorten the time period required for public examination to four months (rather than six months as currently) because we would be dealing with smaller projects;

C. Reduce the time for the planning inspector and the Secretary of State (separately) to make their decisions under this process from three months to two months;

D. Limit the ability for the Secretaries of State to extend the time period they have for final decision–making (currently three months, hopefully changing to two months as per the above) to only being for special circumstances, such as national security or a national emergency.

When considering the changes (A) to (D) above, these mirror the provisions within the Planning Act that already exist for “material amendment” to DCOs – so there is an existing legislative precedent for this accelerated procedure.

Overall, this will mean that infrastructure projects, or housing developments of more than 1,000 homes, can be delivered with a high degree of certainty of success, within 12 months of the plan being submitted.”

So the idea of residential-led NSIPs for schemes of 1,000 homes or more. I’m really not sure that such centralisation of decision making in relation to so many projects is remotely practical, let alone desirable (whether for promoters, local authorities or communities.

There is a great critique of the proposal in Lichfields’ blog post Following Orders: five actions necessary for DCOs and the NSIP regime to be used for large-scale housing (Matthew Spry and Nicki Mableson, 7 July 2020). Matthew and Nicki don’t leap to conclusions but examine:

⁃ What’s the problem for large scale housing projects?

⁃ How could DCOs help and what are the barriers?

⁃ What is needed to make a housing DCO regime effective?

They conclude that the potential is there, probably for schemes of more than 5,000 homes, but identify that action would be needed in at least five key areas, including the way that “need” and “location” are to be identified.

The post was published the same day as I was chairing a webinar discussion on exactly the same set of issues (panellists John Rhodes OBE (director, Quod), Bridget Rosewell CBE (Commissioner, National Infrastructure Commission), Gordon Adams (Battersea Power Station), Kathryn Ventham (partner, Barton Willmore) and Michael Humphries QC (Francis Taylor Building)). If you would like a link to a recording of the session please let me know.

Later in the week, a further much more detailed research document was published: Can development consent orders help meet the challenges of our time? by Barton Willmore, Womble Bond Dickinson, the Copper Consultancy. I recommend the document. It is written by people with practical experience of the subject and is based on solid survey work. It is everything that a think tank report is not.

Its recommendations:

“We also think that there are benefits to be gained from applying DCO principles to existing planning mechanisms as well as developing a DCO option for delivery of new settlements.

We therefore believe the Government and industry should look to explore the extension of the DCO process for new settlements and other complex developments by preparing a National Settlements Strategy (NSS) that:

• Identifies broad parts of the country suitable for new settlements/largescale developments (developed under DCO (and NPS) engagement principles with input from Local Authorities and devolved administrations);

• Enables different consenting and delivery models to be applied;

• Incorporates the DCO as a consenting model;

• Is drafted to provide the national needs case that gives certainty, to unlock significant financial investment from the UK and internationally; and,

• Is equivalent to the National Policy Statements.”

They conclude:

“In preparing a National Settlement Strategy we need to acknowledge up front that there will be some challenging issues, not least around managing engagement and Strategic Environmental Assessments. Equally, a DCO option for new settlements may look very different to a DCO for more established infrastructure projects. Therefore, we would welcome your views on some or all of the following questions, along with any wider reflections you have on this research:

1. How can a national settlements strategy be prepared in a way that engages regions and local communities alongside national infrastructure providers to create long term stability?

2. Which planning processes can benefit from applying the certainty principles established by the DCO process and how?

3. What could a DCO option for delivering new settlements look like in practice?

We will take these responses forward, along with our own thinking, into a second phase of work on how to make our recommendations a practical reality.”

Now that’s what I call a planning policy paper! We may see later this month whether these ideas are at all taking root.

Simon Ricketts, 11 July 2020

Personal views, et cetera

PS I got quite nostalgic thinking about failings of the eco-towns programme, having acted for the Bard Campaign in Bard Campaign v Secretary of State (Walker J, 25 February 2009). What a counsel team we had – Ian Dove QC (now Dove J), Chris Young (now QC) and Richard Harwood (now QC). This was a challenge to the Government’s April 2008 “consultation” document, “Eco-towns – Living a Greener Future”.

We basically challenged everything about it. Our case was that:

“In breach of the common law relating to consultation, the SEA Directive, the Aarhus Convention and the Code of Practice on Consultation, the Secretary of State has failed:
1. to consult on the principle of constructing eco-towns, alternatively any such consultation has to give sufficient reasons for particular proposals to allow those consulted to give intelligent consideration and an intelligent response;

2. to consult on the key locational criteria for eco-towns;

3. to consult at all on the 42 locations proposed which were rejected by ministers in favour of the 15 proposed locations;

4. to provide adequate information to enable informed representations to be made. Instead, information has been produced late, has dribbled out in response to requests and some relevant (and non-confidential) material is still being withheld from the public;

5. to provide adequate time for consultation, given the late production of material.

Additionally,
6. a declaration is sought (because this still appears to be in issue) that the Eco-Towns policies are subject to the requirements of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive and Regulations.”

We lost on all grounds and Keene LJ refused us permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal. But the programme was abandoned in the run up to the 2010 general election. It’s often not the law that gets in the way – it’s politics.