Battle of the planners

Nine miles from the centre of Cardiff on the northwestern fringe of the city’s municipal boundary, all is not well in the rural village of Creigiau.

It’s lunchtime and aside from the odd passing car, it’s fairly deserted; the commuters that make up the bulk of population are at work. It’s all pretty unremarkable, until you spot the banners dotted across the village on everything from hedgerows and houses to the local school. The message they carry - Help to save Creigiau! - refers to the prospect of 2,750 homes being built on two sites south of the village.

Expansion plans

Last year Cardiff Council included the sites in its preferred local development plan - a framework to guide the construction of new homes and infrastructure across the city between now and 2026. If both are developed it will more than treble the size of the village.

Stuart Thomas, resident for 30 years and member of the local community council, sums up the initial response of villagers in one word - ‘horror’. Creigiau is no stranger to change, having seen regular waves of housing development since the 1970s. But it’s the potential scale of expansion that has shocked local people and rallied them behind a campaign that’s already seen a protest outside County Hall and a petition of 1,100 signatures - almost one for every household.

The main road to Cardiff is already heavily congested, says Mr Thomas, and the primary school is so oversubscribed pupils are housed in temporary classrooms. Cardiff Council insists any development will be accompanied by the necessary infrastructure, but local people aren’t convinced.

‘It’s the same with all the planning in this area,’ says Mr Thomas. ‘It’s being done as a jigsaw without the picture. They are putting pieces down and hoping they match up with other pieces some time, some day.’

The LDP is, of course, designed to protect communities like Creigiau from inappropriate, ad hoc development. The alternative is exemplified by a development of 79 homes in a conservation area near St Fagans, just a few miles south of Creigiau, which was given the go-ahead by a Welsh Assembly planning inspector last year, against the wishes of Cardiff planners. Developers Charles Church and Harvington Properties appealed against Cardiff Council’s decision in 2011 to reject the application. The inspector stated the absence of an LDP for Cardiff had undermined the council’s case because it had too little land earmarked for development.

Lack of new homes

The need for new homes in and around Cardiff is one thing that is not in dispute. It has a housing waiting list of more than 10,000 households. But the city has had planning problems for years.

Local authorities in Wales are expected to have an up-to-date LDP in place and at least five years of land available for residential development; Cardiff currently has two-and-a-half years’ worth and is working from a plan dating back to 1996.

So is Cardiff finally about to get a working plan? And how fierce a battle is it set to face locally before the LDP is signed off? The most recent history is not encouraging.

A previous plan for 2006 to 2021 had to be withdrawn in 2010 because none of the 27,442 homes it included would have been built on greenfield land, something the planning inspector deemed unrealistic. One election and a change of administration later - from Liberal Democrat/Plaid Cymru to Labour - and Cardiff Council has just finished consultation on a new LDP containing provision for around 45,400 new homes, approximately 18,000 of which will be on greenfield sites like those near Creigiau. The finer details will come later before the LDP is formally adopted in 2015.

When it was made public last summer the scale of development sparked a whirlwind of opposition that shows no signs of calming. Ralph Cook, cabinet member for strategic planning, believes the figure is realistic given the demand for housing and the fact that an extra five years had to be added to the LDP’s lifespan as a result of delays. Of the three options considered by the council - 54,400, 45,400 and 36,500 - it went for the middle figure after commissioning research on population projections which came out lower than the Welsh Government’s own figures.

‘We’re still collating the responses but I would say housing developers have been unanimous that we should have gone for the higher figure while the rest of the public were almost unanimous we should have gone for the lower figure,’ says Mr Cook.

‘There’s a small percentage of what I consider to be really rational people [who agree with the council]. The vast majority are people just saying “don’t build on this land” - usually where they live.’

As well as being criticised by opposition councillors, the plans have been attacked by a number of Cardiff assembly members from Mr Cook’s own party, something he dismisses as ‘short-termism’ driven by fear of losing votes with existing households. But he finds it disappointing that AMs are questioning the figures when the government’s own projections would have meant setting a much higher housing target.

‘Housing is a real issue in Cardiff,’ he says. ‘Cardiff has probably the most expensive housing in Wales and a lot of it is the pressure of demand and the lack of building over the last 20 years.’

Blurring boundaries

Intriguingly not all of the people upset by Cardiff’s plans live in the city. Neighbouring councils have also chosen to object. Caerphilly believes the LDP could undermine its own housing plans, because if Cardiff is planning a large number of housing developments it will act as a magnet for investors and make it more difficult for developments in Caerphilly to get off the ground. Rhondda Cynon Taff is worried development in areas like Creigiau will overload key commuter routes between itself and Cardiff, while Newport believes there is a risk of blurring boundaries.

Mr Cook argues Cardiff is where developers ‘want to be’ and it is far more sustainable to restrict new development to the city than spreading it out across south east Wales. ‘With 8,000 houses in a single place you can plan out a community and make transport sustainable,’ he says. ‘With a few houses here and there you can’t.’ It also makes the LDP’s target of 40 per cent affordable housing easier to achieve, he adds.

One area where there appears to be consensus is the need to get an LDP in place as quickly as possible. The absence of an LDP has left Cardiff in a vulnerable position, says Roisin Willmott, national director of RTPI Cymru. ‘If you haven’t got a spatial planning vision in place where do you put things? How does the city grow physically? It’s also very difficult when you are dealing with specific proposals - your arguments are very weak.’

Cardiff not only runs the risk of sporadic applications it can’t defend itself against but also seeing developers taking investment elsewhere due to a lack of available land, according to Mark Roberts, a director at planning and design consultancy Barton Willmore. He believes the LDP’s controversial headline housing figure must be viewed in context.

‘Naturally, the headline figures are particularly startling, but must be taken in the context of us lagging behind. The fact that the last plan was in 1996 means we have a lot of catching up to do. We need houses because we haven’t been providing them for the last few decades.’

Richard Mann, director of development at housing association United Welsh, says the LDP will give social landlords greater certainty and ensure the ‘right set of tenures’. ‘When it’s in a structured plan it allows us to focus on the additional value that we bring,’ he says.

The merits of having an LDP in place will mean little to the residents of Creigiau while homes are earmarked for their doorstep. The council will listen to anyone who can counter the evidence for the LDP’s proposed sites, according to Mr Cook.

Graham Thomas, a Cardiff councillor whose ward covers Creigiau, agrees the LDP is essential but adds: ‘Where the concerns about this start from is the scale. Imagine the infrastructure needed to build so far out of the city.’

For resident Mr Thomas, making the case for Creigiau is vital: ‘The danger with all this is once this has been identified as a site you are not going to turn the clock back, even if these particular development plans don’t go ahead.’