Ty Un Nos CeredigionPart of the Lammas NetworkThis is the website of...
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STRATEGY GUIDANCE FOR LAMMAS GROUPS
Lammas groups look like starting in
Swansea, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion.
Broadly the Local Development Plan process is meant to be different from the
present system in that it is to be (as they say) "front loaded". What
this means is that they are meant to involve communities and public interest
groups in the development of policy rather than developing policy and then
going out to the public for comment. The other big change is that they have to
do the process in an agreed time scale so that plan preparation can't just go
on for ever. The first stage of this new process is what is called the
"Delivery Agreement". This is an agreement between the Local
Authority and WAG which sets out the time table for plan preparation and also
what is called the Community involvement scheme. They have to consult on this
document before finalising it. Different Local Authorities are at different
stages in getting this document together. eg Ceredigion are consulting on it at
the moment while Carmarthen have agreed with WAG to have theirs in place by
July. Lammas groups need to find out what stage things are at where they are.
The delivery agreement is very important for a variety of reasons. First it is
meant to tell people how they will be consulted and second when. It may be
written in a style which makes it difficult for people to engage with it/the
process. Also it may be silent on how it will reach certain sections of
"the public" eg those living in dwellings not sanctioned by the
planning system. Also the mechanisms for engaging may themselves be improvable.
For all these reasons and probably others which you will only be able to
consider when you read the document engaging with the consultation exercise is
important. Also of course it is your first opportunity to say to the Local
Authority that you want to be involved in the process. Saying this as part of a
group has obvious advantages. For a start groups tend to count for more because
they are representative of a body of people which gives them a sort of added
legitimacy. The bigger the group the better. Secondly if the group is itself
part of a larger movement then this again adds weight to what it says. It also
means that in formulating its views the group can work with groups in other
counties to build the strongest arguments and to put forward the best possible
policies for each county to adopt as part of their plan. Finally being part of
the Lammas "family" means that your groups details will be available
to all so that anyone from your county looking at the Lammas web site will know
what to do to join you in making a difference where you are. So far the Lammas
site has received over 3.5 million hits so this is a very effective way to
build a movement.
Once the consultation on the Delivery agreement has taken place each County
Council will finalise the agreement and submit it to WAG for agreement
(assuming you are in Wales). Once agreed they have to stick to the timetable
and they have to follow what has been agreed.
As mentioned above this involves consultation on possible policy approaches.
Here you need to do 2 things. The first is to look at their current Development
Plan. To find out what this is look at their site. It will probably be a
Unitary Development Plan supplemented by a local plan. Most policy makers start
from what they've got. So it's worth starting there yourself. Look at what it
says and ask what's missing and what you agree with. In particular note that
apart from Pembs you wont find a Low Impact Development (LID) policy there.
Then next thing to think about is what is needed by way of policy because it is
always good to have a clear idea of what you will argue for when consulted.
There will be plenty of time to develop these ideas and you will know from the
DA when you will need them by.
Above all make sure you are on the LA's database.
It will not be enough for counties to simply copy the present Pembs policy
since while it is a good start there may be elements of it which could be
improved.
Finally there may also be aspects of national policy that we can contribute to
including national policy on LID which is meant to be out for consultation
sometime later this year.
PLANNING EXPLANATION
The Planning system is intended to provide a comprehensive set of policies which cover the development of Land. Planning law states that each County must have a “development Plan” and that decisions on planning applications must be made in accordance with the Plan unless “material considerations” indicate otherwise.
Normally in deciding on the contents of the Development plan each County Council will consider National Planning Policy. But of course national planning policy may change. If it does then this could be a “material consideration” justifying a decision out of line with the Development Plan.
National Planning policy is set out in various documents the most important of which are Planning Policy Wales, MIPPS (Ministerial Interim Planning Policy Statement) and the various Technical Advice Notes (TANs) each of which covers a particular aspect of policy. For instance Affordable Housing guidance is to be found in TAN 2 while advice re development in the open countryside is to be found in TAN6.
In Ceredigion the Development Plan is called the “Dyfed Structure Plan”. This plan dates from the late 1980’s and is therefore very badly out of date.
Ceredigion’s attempts to replace it with a new Development Plan called the Unitary Development Plan (UDP) failed. The policies in the UDP remain “material considerations” in deciding planning applications and represent the most up to date information available as to the Planning Authorities thinking.
As a result of a change in the law all authorities in Wales are now required to create a new Development Plan to be called a Local Development Plan (LDP).
They are required to agree with the Assembly Government how they will do this and then to stick to that agreement. The agreement is called a delivery agreement (DA) and it should set out both how the LPA will engage the local community when discussing the policies that should go into the plan and the time table leading to the adoption of the plan.
Before a plan can be adopted it has to be considered at a public hearing by a Planning Inspector. The Inspector has to decide if the Plan is “sound”. What this means is not explained in the law but the Planning Inspectorate say this:
“LDPs must be sound in terms of their content and the process by which they are produced and must be founded on a robust and credible evidence base. The term “sound” ………… may be considered ……… within its ordinary meaning of ‘showing good judgment’ and ‘able to be trusted’ ……….
There are 2 very important ideas which underpin planning policy. The first is that development should be sustainable. This idea isn’t explained very well. Policy talks about different sorts of sustainability (eg Social, economic and environmental). There is now a requirement that the Development Plan be accompanied by a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) which would seem to put environmental sustainability as the first consideration but this is a new requirement and what it means in practice remains to be seen.
The second important idea is that the countryside should be protected from development. The justification for this is unclear. It is sometimes said that the Countryside is a resource in itself and should be protected as such. It is also said that in a world where people work other than where they live and shop in supermarkets in towns then building in the countryside is less sustainable since it is likely to involve more travel.
In practice Development plans have traditionally embodied these ideas in policies which work by assumption rather than evidence. For instance development in the countryside is curtailed while development in rural settlements is permitted even though in practice this has the same implications in terms of travel. Similarly development in the countryside is curtailed even though it may need the countryside’s resources because it doesn’t create money as an end product of the endeavour. This may be so even if allowing the development would actually be more sustainable.
The emphasis in LDPs on a “sound evidence base” may represent an opportunity to address these issues.
In terms of Low Impact Development (LID), policy both nationally and at County level has nothing to say. To the extent that these matters are addressed at all this tends to happen through the Building Regs which fix specifications for buildings. Here again though the regulations do not deal comprehensively with factors which might make a development Low Impact and tend to look only at how the building will “perform” rather than an overall consideration of eg the energy embodied in its creation. In any event the building regs only apply to buildings which have been given planning permission and at that stage very little consideration is given to either how people will live in the building or how it will be built.
This doesn’t mean that you cant get planning permission for a LID it just means that whether you can or not depends on the general policies in the Development plan together with any other “material considerations”. So for instance you could get planning permission for a straw bale house in a village within present policy (eg Rachel Whitehead's straw bale house in St Dogmaels).
Of course to do so you would first need to have a “plot” and this is where the relationship between affordable housing and LID comes into play because within a village the cost of a plot makes it unlikely that LID will take place. There is a policy which allows affordable housing on the edge of settlements where general development would not be permitted. In theory this means that the land should be cheaper but in practice land so close to a settlement will have “hope value”. In other words the owners will hang on to it in the “hope” that the village will expand and thus make their land part of the settlement. So very little such land in fact becomes available for affordable housing.
Land in the open countryside however which has no expectation of development changes hands at agricultural values. Typically this might be say £3000 per acre while building land would cost perhaps £200,000 an acre.
So land in the countryside is affordable. But its only affordable because you cant build on it. The minute you can its value increases.
The challenge then is to acknowledge the legitimate planning concerns about the countryside while challenging the assumptions which go beyond those legitimate concerns and to create planning policy which allows development in the countryside but subject to controls which maintain the affordability of the land. The justification for accepting this challenge is the creation of affordable low impact dwellings which can be lived in by those committed to a truly sustainable future.
So far the only county to take up this challenge is Pembrokeshire who have created a policy which draws on the guidance in TAN 6 but which removes the requirement in the TAN that the undertaking should be “profitable”.
The policy represents a brave start into uncharted waters. However not surprisingly the policy is unlikely to represent the last word in addressing these issues. It is better seen as a basis for discussion. What matters now is to ensure that discussion takes place and to bring to the discussion positive proposals as to how policy can be developed both nationally and at County level to ensure the growth of a vibrant and sustainable countryside in which people live and meet their needs.
There are 2 forums in which to progress matters one is the LDP preparation process within each county and the other is in seeking changes to national policy. In the latter regard there are plans to revise TAN6 to take account of LID and clearly a successful outcome to those revisions will help considerable in moving on the debate at LPC level.
There is one final source of policy which needs to be considered. In theory it isn't a source of policy at all but just an expansion of what's in the Development Plan. This source is called Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) and in practice it can be a very significant source of policy. For instance all of the stuff about needing to meet 75% of your basic needs off the land to be allowed to build LID in the countryside in Pembs is not in their Development Plan at all, its in the SPG. Although SPGs will be consulted on by County Councils they do not have to go to an examination in public in front of an Inspector so really they are an easy way for Local Planning Authorities to introduce policy with only limited discussion.