Leap of faith

First they were discarded, now they’ve been revoked and in the Autumn they will finally be abolished. Is that clear at last?

I am of course talking about regional strategies (formerly regional spatial strategies) and the answer to the question from everyone from the Home Builders Federation (HBF) to the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) seems to be ‘clear as mud’.

In a written statement in parliament yesterday communities secretary Eric Pickles said: ‘Regional strategies added unnecessary bureaucracy to the planning system. They were a failure. They were expensive and time-consuming. They alienated people, pitting them against development instead of encouraging people to build in their local area. The revocation of regional strategies will make local spatial plans, drawn up in conformity with national policy, the basis for local planning decisions. The new planning system will be clear, efficient and will put greater power in the hands of local people, rather than regional bodies.’

The statement seems aimed at resolving the legal uncertainty caused by the gap between Pickles telling planners in May to treat the government’s intention to abolish the strategies as a ‘material planning consideration’ and the legislation that will actually abolish them that will be introduced in the Autumn. 

A letter to chief planning officers answers many of the questions raised in a parliamentary debate last week. Local development frameworks and core strategies will continue and so will the requirement to provide a five-year land supply. Local authorities will determine their own housing targets without any regional dictats.

The letter also confirms that councils will be able to replace regional strategy targets with ‘option one numbers’. These were the much lower targets for new homes that they put forward as part of the regional strategy process and were then told to increase. In the South West, for example, the option one total is more than 20% lower than the total in the draft strategy.

However, developers say they need precise details of the transitional arrangements. ‘We risk major problems ahead without direction that puts councils at ease and gives them confidence that going ahead with development will not lead them into costly legal challenges,’ says Liz Peace of the British Property Federation (BPF). 

Planning lawyer Michael Gallimore of Hogan Lovells says the result will be a further break on development. ‘There will be an inevitable hiatus in policy formulation at the local level whilst councils re-align their thinking and back away from the regional housing numbers,’ he says. ‘We are seeing that already with authorities now delaying their Core Strategies. The statement that the LDF system will be further reformed will provide an excuse for authorities who wish to tread water on Core Strategies and housing delivery.’

He argues that the new system of council tax incentives to deliver new homes lacks any detail. ‘It is a huge leap of faith to expect incentives to provide the necessary stimulus to deliver housing at a local level, particularly in parts of the South East where consenting new homes in the numbers needed is simply a “no go” for locally elected members.’

Even the CPRE, which welcomes the ‘goodbye to top-down housing’, argues that the abandonment of the strategies still leaves a ‘worrying gap’. 

‘Strategic planning has helped ensure local authorities make consistent decisions on development across their boundaries, including affordable housing, public transport and waste provision,’ says head of planning Fiona Howie. ‘These developments need a high level of cross authority working and the government will need to outline a credible alternative to fill this void.’

The HBF argues that the statement clarifies the position legally but does nothing in terms of the transitional arrangements. They say they have still seen no detail about how the incentives will work beyond hints that they may apply to homes approved now but not completed before next April.

And could the council tax incentives to approve more homes have the opposite effect in the short term? After all, if you were a planner what would you do now knowing that incentives are on the way?