House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA / Councillor Malcolm Price
Shropshire Council
Shirehall
Abbey Foregate
Shrewsbury
Shropshire
SY2 6ND
14th April 2014
01743 252918
Dear Nick
Marches Local Enterprise Partnership Planning Delegation
Portcullis House 9th April 2014
I would like to thank you for making time in an evidently busy schedule to meet with Shropshire MPs Owen Paterson, Daniel Kawczynski, and Philip Dunne and a delegation of officers and members from the three Councils across the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP). These included Councillor Phil Cutter and Kevin Singleton from Herefordshire, Dave Fletcher from Telford and Dave Wallace and Ian Kilby accompanying myself from Shropshire Council.
This partnership of Council’s across the LEP have a pro-growth agenda and their high level objectives have been set out in a joint Housing and Planning Statement.
There is therefore a shared objective across the LEP area, which is predominantly rural, sparsely populated and typical of shire counties across England, to provide housing and employment opportunities to meet the needs of our communities in the years ahead.
As a testament to this, there are some 20,000 unimplemented permissions and allocations for housing across the LEP area, and it is not that these Councils have been slow or resistant to granting consents.
The primary issue is the perhaps unintended impact of the provisions set out in the National Planning Policy Framework for Council’s like ours (and there are a significant number across the country) where the Authority is unable to demonstrate a five year supply of housing land on the basis that the calculation is now required to be made. We provided a note for you at our meeting including examples to illustrate the problems arising, which are common across the LEP area evidence of the very real difficulties being experienced at a local level.
/cont’d…
Councils could understand being penalised for under-delivery against the target if:
- the under-delivery was caused by a lack of housing land supply rather than the market downturn;
- the Councils had direct control over land sales, land values and house-building;
- the Councils had deliberately planned not to meet the full, objectively assessed needs set out in adopted Plans.
…but don’t understand why they are being penalised when none of these are true.
The effect of paragraph 49 of the NPPF regarding policies for the supply of housing not being up-to-date is very significant for local planning authorities in weighing the material considerations of planning applications.
Whilst the presumption in favour of sustainable development sounds reasonable, the reality is that its tests are problematic in particular regarding:
- what is ‘sustainable development’;
- any adverse impacts having to ‘significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits’;
- no tests relating to scale of settlement or the cumulative impacts of successive developments in a short time period on a settlement – particularly small towns and villages in rural areas;
The consequences of this at a local level are not insignificant with a huge erosion of the relationship and trust with local communities developed through the plan making process now being borne out at planning committees where, in the absence of a 5 years’ supply of housing land (4.95 is not 5!) applications (many speculative) are being assessed on their broad sustainability credentials in accordance with the NPPF.
Taking Shropshire as an example, the county has approximately a 7 years’ housing supply when assessed against the planned rates in the adopted Core Strategy, but the Council cannot unequivocally demonstrate a 5 years’ supply calculated in accordance with the NPPF and Planning Practice Guidance. Despite this, and the large number of approvals granted in 2013/14, there will still be under-delivery against the planned targets due to the continuing weakness of the housing market and finance constraints…so the shortfall will have risen again from 1st April 2014.
There is real concern that, even on adoption of a NPPF compliant Site Allocations DPD, Councils may not be able to demonstrate a 5 years’ supply or, if they can, it will only be able to do so for a year or two. The 5 years’ supply calculation is unduly onerous in requiring both a 20% buffer for persistent under-delivery and any shortfall being added in over the five year period.
/cont’d…
The issue is also impacting upon the Neighbourhood Planning process, for example in Herefordshire more than 80 communities have signed up to produce a Plan but in many instances developers are proceeding to bring forward housing proposals in advance of the plan. Local communities are now questioning why they should bother engaging in this process as they consider such speculative housing schemes are undermining the process.
The Councils would urge you to look again at the impact of counting in all of the shortfall in delivery, primarily caused by the economic downturn, in the 5 years supply calculation, given that Councils can only count some of the supply, being those sites likely to be delivered in the first five years.
The Councils would also ask you to consider how the weakness of NPPF’s sustainability tests when considering successive applications, which can have major cumulative impacts on communities, particularly smaller towns and villages in the rural areas, could be addressed.
My understanding is that you were of the view that significant weight could be given to a Plan when it was submitted to the Secretary of State for examination (on the basis that the Authority should be confident about the deliverability of the sites being included in the Plan and therefore having a 5 years’ supply).
You indicated that the Planning Inspectorate could be expected to give significant weight to a Plan in those circumstances, and that this should be recognised by potential speculative developers when considering making applications and challenging Councils’ decisions.
On other matters, you also provided assurances that the amendments to the CIL Regulations would be limiting the scope for ‘self-build’ housing development to be used by developers to avoid paying CIL.
While I would like to take some comfort from these assurances, experience suggests that development promoters will challenge the weight that can be given to submitted plans, no doubt questioning the basis of plans in meeting objectively assessed needs as well as the suitability and deliverability of sites being proposed as allocations. It is very difficult for Authorities to have the confidence that you might expect when the examinations of the soundness of Plans and the outcome of appeal decisions are consistently knocking them back. Consequently I would welcome any further assurances you can give in relation to the points highlighted above.
As you will have gathered, the Councils are very concerned about the current situation and the very real possibility that outside the south east, where growth is slower, the persistent under delivery of housing could ultimately lead to a situation where it becomes difficult for a Council to ever demonstrate that its housing policies are up to date and consequently the principles of a plan-led system become lost.
/cont’d…
Thank you again for your time, it has been appreciated and I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely
Councillor Malcolm Price
Portfolio Holder for Planning and Housing
Shropshire Council
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