Notes on reform: an alternative Queen’s Speech
Here we go again, friends. Can you feel it in your bones? It’s bluebell time in Kent - as a famous judge once put it - and the sun is at least periodically in the sky. Which can mean just the one thing: it’s time for talk of planning reform.
And who’ll be doing the talking? Only in this lovely and peculiar country of ours would a radical agenda aimed at “levelling up” be announced by a nonagenarian monarch surrounded by peers of the realm, but there we are. It’s Queen’s Speech week. And this morning, happy days, “relaxing” the rules on housebuilding is front-page news again.
We still, of course, haven’t had the Government’s response to its consultation on last year’s white paper, Planning for the Future - see my quick-hit summary of it here, my take on its really radical (if largely unspoken) idea about a national housing plan here, some of the big political challenges it faced then and still faces now here, and my take on some of the consultation responses here.
Still, from the look of things in today’s Times, a new Planning Bill is on the way, and we all need to start getting comfortable with at least two big things:
So. We shall see what Her Maj has to tell us tomorrow. But what I see is an interesting lesson in our Government’s priorities. They shoot for the moon - the big, glitzy and headline-grabbing reform. And sometimes, the moon’s worth shooting for. But not if we miss the low-hanging fruit, the easy wins, which really could get more houses built right now. It’s a sad thing. Not enough papers save their front pages for talk of procedure. But in the end, it’s procedure that counts.
Just the other day, the court confirmed that virtual committee meetings would become unlawful after 6th May 2021. That date, of course, has now passed. The court said that there are “powerful arguments in favour of permitting remote meetings,” but the question was now one for Parliament. The Secretary of State was - bizarrely - represented at that hearing. His barristers had a tough case to run, i.e. that legislation from the early 1970s which talked about being “present” at “meetings” could be stretched far enough to include a world of Zoom and MS Teams. But why was it bizarre he was there? Because, unlike the other litigants in that case, it’s the Secretary of State’s system. If he doesn’t like it, great news: he doesn’t have to go to court. He can just re-write it. The Government had months to sort out virtual meetings beyond 7th May. For more on why that would’ve been a good idea, see my screed from March. But they didn’t do anything about it. Other than consult. Too late.
Which means that now, millions of us still aren’t vaccinated, there’s no provision any more for virtual meetings, lots of committees just aren’t meeting at all… so what? I’ll tell you so what. So hundreds of applications don’t get determined in time or at all. So the delivery of thousands of homes get delayed.
So. Here’s what I’d like to see. I’d like to see Her Maj kick off the big speech tomorrow with a paean to virtual committee meetings, with praise for the public servants who made them work (including the obligatory name-check for Jackie Weaver), and a Royal commitment to bring them back again, and bring them back now.
In other, more encouraging, news, for plan examinations and appeals - which, unlike committee meetings, can and are proceeding virtually - the Planning Inspectorate’s now told us that they “expect that the majority of cases will be heard through virtual events for the remainder of the year, with some blended or in-person events being arranged”. Bravo. As someone for whom those appeals and examinations are a day-job, I’ve been perpetually impressed by the skill and good humour with which the PINS support teams have made these often complicated and controversial events work. In a way that, as I’ve said before in these pages, doesn’t just match how accessible they were before. It makes those events much, much more accessible to a far wider range of the public. Keep it up, PINS!
And my last thought of the day for how the Queen could speed up housebuilding without a zone in sight takes us back again to Kent. The other day, the Secretary of State allowed an appeal for a client of mine and permitted an extension to Sittingbourne which includes 675 homes, a commercial centre, a primary school and a new rugby club. Now, on the one hand, for me, that counts as a pretty decent day at the office. Or it would’ve done, in the dim and distant days I used to go into the office. But on the other hand, have a look at this timeline:
July 2017 - Swale adopted a plan which allocated the lion’s share of our site for housing. Of course, the work which went into securing that allocation began many years before that, but anyway let’s start there.
October 2017 - in goes our planning application, supported by a full suite of technical documents, an environmental impact assessment, all the bells and whistles. We push and push and push for a decision. Months turn into years. Did the Council ever determine our application? No. They did not.
July 2019 - we appeal against that failure to determine the application. The appeal is recovered by the Secretary of State.
November 2019 - we head off to a 2 week planning inquiry facing not just the Council (who by now have decided, against officer’s advice, that they would’ve refused permission for a whole host of reasons) but Rule 6 interested parties too. It’s a good old-fashioned barrister-fest. Days and days of cross-examination. Thousands of documents. Anyway, we muddle through it, and it turns out that that Inspector issued his report to the Secretary of State recommending that permission be granted within a couple of months, and indeed recommending that the Council pay some of our costs.
And then……………… [tumbleweed]……………………. [more tumbleweed]……………………
29th April 2021 - we finally get our permission. And our costs award.
As Philip Barnes said about this case, it’s a “classic case of justice delayed is justice denied. Our Kent division will deliver far less homes than we had planned for next year, for people who need them, because of this nonsensical two year delay.” Amen.
Now, don’t get me wrong, if ever there was an appeal which makes a case for easing the transition from allocation to permission (well, hey there, growth areas) it’s this one.
But here’s my other big idea for the Queen’s Speech. And what’s so good about it is… it’s free. You don’t need to pass a law. Or run another consultation. This is what we do, your Highness. You send one of your decrees, handwritten, on parchment of some kind, direct to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the very good folks at the National Planning Casework Unit. And you say to them: “Make. Your. Decisions. Quicker. Best, E.R.”
Enjoy the speech, friends. Let’s regroup next week to see what the Government has in store for us. In the meantime, stay well, enjoy the bluebells and #keeponplanning.
