Virtual In-Planity: why remote events make planning better
Another week goes by, another columnist tells us why “the planning bill is unlikely to survive”. It’s a special power these folks have. You thought Mystic Meg was good (and, I mean, she was amazing, obviously). But Meg’s got nothing on this lot, who can (a) read a whole bill before it’s been published, and then (b) (having not read it) toss it into the dustbin of history. What’s the Planning Bill actually going to have in it? We do not know yet. Things change. Big time. They’re changing before our eyes:
How it started:
Bojo rallying the troops in August 2020 with a promise to “tear it down and start again”, selling us “radical reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War” which amounts to “building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England”.
How it’s going:
Robert Jenrick telling the Local Government Association last week that:
“I don’t think we need to rip up the planning system and start again. I think we need to improve the planning system and I hope we can work together across the party political divide to ensure that a system that is sometimes slow and bureaucratic with poor outcomes and a low level of public trust can be improved for everyone’s benefit.”
Got that? No ripping up. Or tearing down. At least, I think not. But who knows. Because (as I say almost every week in these pages) 1 year, 44,000 consultation responses, a Queen’s Speech, a select committee report and a couple of by-election defeats after the 2020 White Paper, we still don’t know what the Government actually wants to do about planning reform.
Here’s another thing we don’t know. We don’t know what the Ministry’s going to do in response to the consultation on local authority virtual meetings. Virtual meetings of local authority planning committees are currently unlawful. I think for reasons I explained here, that’s a disaster. Alas, even as we fall into a 3rd wave, it doesn’t seem to be a disaster that the Ministry is in any rush to fix.
When it comes to plan examinations and appeals, where no new laws are required to keep planning virtual, we’re now told that “once restrictions are relaxed [i.e. later this month] there is the possibility that face-to-face appeal hearings and inquiries hosted locally can once again play their part in safely progressing the Inspectorate’s casework, but now complemented by virtual participation where appropriate.”
Longer term? Who knows. I suspect the smart money’s on some kind of case-by-case, criteria-based tests for deciding how each appeal should be determined. But what are those criteria? And how will they be applied? Heavens knows. (A note for the #planningstatgeeks amongst you: the hot-off-the-press Planning Inspectorate data shows that (a) over the last 5 years we’ve had around 55,000 planning appeals which have, together with Secretary of State call-ins, granted planning permission for almost 120,000 homes, (b) 28% of the appeals have been allowed, (c) around 1,100 appeals have been determined at planning inquiries - of those, almost 50% have been allowed, and in case you were wondering (d) we’ve had 49 appeals for 50+ home schemes in the Green Belt. How many succeeded? 17.)
Now, long-time readers (yes, both of you!) already know what I think about this stuff. It’s a year since my first virtual appeal. And I was an instant convert:
My first take on 5 things I really like about virtual inquiries, and 1 thing I love is here.
Well, I’ve been doing them more or less every week since then. Back in November 2020, a few months in, I told you why I think virtual planning works and we should keep it: see here.
So, fair enough. My views aren’t exactly shrouded in secrecy. But look: we’re a year into virtual in-planity now. Lots of prominent industry figures - I see from my social media feeds - are gunning for the “good old days”. Dinners out. Months away in hotels. Painting the town red. Late night meetings with the team huddled over conference tables poring over papers. The camaraderie. The glamour of it all. Some say you can’t cross-examine as well over MS Teams [RUBBISH - ed.]. That you lose something “intangible”. The “human factor”. Eye contact. “Reading the room”. Some say their scheme is too complex to be examined virtually. Some (I suspect) just wouldn’t mind a few quiet nights away from home.
Let me, with the benefit of having done these virtual planning events for a full year, give you 2 big reasons why I’m so excited about them, and why we shouldn’t go back without a fight:
1. Wider access for the public:
Too often, planning inquiries only hear one side of a debate to which there are many sides. That side tends to be older, whiter and - generally, anyway - come from people whose needs (e.g. for housing) are already met. That isn’t an accident. It’s structural. To show up at one of these events, you need to have the time, the money and the support to be able to miss work, farm out the school-run and whatever else. Generally, the gig’s lot easier to pull off for those at particular stages in life - e.g. retirees. But much more challenging e.g. for working parents.
It’s a fact folks. Put something on the internet, live-stream it on Youtube, then make it re-watchable after the event. More people will watch. Different people will watch. Younger people. More people with jobs, families, caring commitments. People who cannot afford to sit in a Council chamber for weeks on end following the minutiae of the legal arguments.
And once they watch, once they understand what these processes are, what they’re about, and how it might actually affect their own lives… well, they might just start to get engaged. If you really do want to plan for the future (to coin a phrase) you need to bring planning to where people actually are. Online. Exhibit A: our opening submissions in the Holocaust Memorial inquiry were watched over 5,000 times. Try squeezing that lot into a Council chamber.
2. Wider access for us:
Before virtual planning, doing a planning inquiry meant being away from home - sometimes for weeks at a time. If you do lots of them, like I do, that means being away for months out of every year. Months. Touring the Premier Inns of England.
Now look, I knew about that when I signed up. It’s part of our job. A job I love. But - and now it’s honesty time - I think it’s by far the hardest part of this job. Not even close. And that’s because I have a young family and a (very naughty) dog. And you know - call me old-fashioned - but I enjoy seeing them. Every now and then. From time to time. For the occasional bath time (my son’s, not mine).
So for me, the last year of virtual planning has been - and I’m not exaggerating - miraculous. Because I get to keep doing the job I love. And I get to see my family every day. It’s a joy.
Now, you may be thinking, who on earth cares whether I get to walk my dog or not. Answer: nobody. Other than (maybe) the dog. But I’m declaring an interest so you can fairly weigh what I’m saying. Because this isn’t about me. This is structural. This is industry-wide. Across the board, the itinerant nature of planning appeal life has meant that those people who sign up to do a lot of it (as lawyers, as witnesses, as consultants, as planners, as surveyors, as architects, as Inspectors - all of us) have, at one time or another, had to make a choice. Am I prepared to give up a normal family life for this? Am I prepared to miss the dog walks? And the bath times? And the sports days? And the parents evenings? And the Christmas shows? And the incidental bits of time with our families which may not matter much on their own, but over the months and the years add up to something special - chatting over breakfast, reading a book together, going for a walk. Am I, some of us have had to ask ourselves, prepared to miss these every day, tedious, magical things? Just so I can do my job?
Some are prepared to do it. Lots aren’t. But here’s my question: why on earth would we design an important system in way which ends up excluding those people who want a healthier work-life balance? How is that possibly conducive to the public interest? To better planning? To a more rounded, diverse group of voices rising up in our industry? Particularly when, as I keep trying to say, there’s another way to do this, and it really works.
It isn’t conducive to better planning. We all know it isn’t. Some of us pretend that doesn’t matter, but that’s a tough line to sell. Particularly when, I am ashamed to say, at the Planning Bar - where I work - this year’s list of the top 54 QCs included…………… wait for it……………. 5 women. 5. Out of 54. Can we possibly look at numbers like that and think “yep, more of the same please”. Thank heavens, the picture is much better than that in the list of top junior barristers where my generation of pracitioners is far more diverse. But still. For the sobering numbers for planners, architects, surveyors, have a look at Sue Manns’ speech last year on equality, diversity and inclusivity. To state the blindingly obvious: we have a looooooooooong way to go to balance this industry.
And here’s my big idea. It isn’t rocket science. If you want a healthier, broader, more diverse range of men and women signing up for this work, choose the system where you don’t have to spend months of your life every year away from your family and friends in order to do your job.
Are there caveats? Come on - I’m a lawyer. There are always caveats. I know some cases present unusual features where in-person hearings may be important. Yep. I get it. We all get it. But those cases are exceptional. I know they’re exceptional because I’ve been doing non-stop virtual planning appeals for a year now. Including some complicated, big ticket schemes. And it’s gone swimmingly well. It’s amazing what you can get done with MS Teams, a supportive case officer (and the PINS case officers have been amazing), and a more diverse range of participants. Who knew, eh.
I also get that a team spending real time together, and not just virtual time, can be invaluable. So… you know… let’s arrange a proper meeting. Early in the case. Get the team together. Forge those relationships. Have some drinks after. Go for dinner. Heck, invite me - it sounds marvellous. But here’s what we don’t need in order to win our planning appeal: we don’t need to spend literally every day together - morning, noon and night - for weeks on end. Not in this brave new world of Zoom and Whatsapp. We just don’t. We might decide it’d be great fun, and do it anyway. But it’s not a need-to-have.
And even if we did need to do it (which, again, we don’t) - we’re #planoraks, aren’t we? Which means we know all about balance. Balancing things comes with the territory. It’s part of the job description. So we can see, can’t we, that even if there are some lovely points which favour physical events, the countervailing opportunities offered by virtual events are massive. They’re profound. They could change the face of this industry. This is once-in-a-generation stuff. And that’s before we even get to the cost savings which will, in the end, be eye-watering (albeit at the expense of Premier Inn balance sheets all over the country).
So - my plea to the powers that be at the Ministry and PINS: Keep. Planning. Virtual. Most of the time, at any rate. In a few years, we’ll look back on this time and marvel at how anybody ever thought it was a good idea to spend all that time and money holding in-person planning inquiries for perfectly straightforward schemes on the stages of our nation’s village halls.
Anyway. Rant over (for now, anyway). Well done England! I was at Wembley on Sunday night. Heart-breaking, of course. But what a fabulous group of young men. The worst thing about them - in all the interviews I’ve seen across all the various outlets over these Euros - do you know, I didn’t detect even a whiff of interest from the boys in the future of English planning reform. Very disappointing.
Stay well, #planoraks. Roll on the World Cup. And, most of all, #keeponplanning.
