Bold new Conservative policies to make planning system more responsive and accountable would allow local residents to decide on development close to Stevenage
North East Herts MP Oliver Heald has welcomed major new policies from Conservatives to reform England’s ‘broken’ planning system. A new system of ‘Open Source’ democracy and neighbourhood involvement will help deliver sustainable development across North East Hertfordshire and allow local residents in North and East Hertfordshire to decide whether they want even more development close to Stevenage. Whitehall targets and unelected quangos will be scrapped, to be replaced with collaborative working and new incentives to promote and reward local homes and jobs.
This comes as official Government surveys show only 1 in 3 people think they can influence decisions in their local area, and just 1 in 5 people think they can influence national decisions.
Under a new policy initiative, entitled Open Source Planning, Conservatives will:
• Abolish the undemocratic and ineffective tier of regional planning overseen by unelected quangos. This would include scrapping the East of England Plan for development
• Allow local communities to create ‘bottom-up’ local plans so residents shape and protect the character of their neighbourhoods.
• Maintain national Green Belt protection and other special protections for wildlife and the countryside, whilst allowing sustainable development elsewhere in accordance with the local plan.
• Reward district councils and communities through incentives to encourage building new homes and businesses, in contrast to the current regime where Whitehall effectively grabs back the money raised from new homes and business.
• Use new local infrastructure blueprints to coordinate strategic matters crossing boundaries, with a new duty on public authorities – including the Highways Agency and Network Rail – to cooperate with Hertfordshire County Council
• Abolish Labour’s new unelected and unaccountable central planning quango – the Infrastructure Planning Commission, whilst retaining a fast-track process to avoid planning inquiries taking years; and give Members of Parliament a new role to vote on and ratify national planning policy.
• Change Whitehall’s restrictive parking rules to ensure more parking spaces are provided in family homes and near local shops, taking the pressure off crowded residential streets.
• Increase council and police powers to tackle unauthorised traveller sites and illegal trespass.
Commenting Oliver Heald said:
“The Government’s planning system is a source of immense frustration and concern for many residents across North East Herts. Under Labour, planning rules are too complex and too many decisions are taken by unelected officials, ignoring the views of local residents.
“This bold new Conservative vision will put local residents in the driving seat to help shape our community, transferring power from Whitehall bureaucrats and Labour’s unelected regional quangos. This will help deliver new homes and jobs, whilst championing local democracy and protecting our local amenity and environment.”
Notes to Editors
DEVELOPMENT OF STEVENAGE IS A NATIONAL AND REGIONAL PRIORITY SET BY THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT
PEOPLE IN NORTH EAST HERTS CAN’T INFLUENCE DECISISONS
According to the Government’s own survey, just 35 per cent of people think that they can influence decisions in their local area and only 18 per cent of people feel they can influence national decisions; both figures have fallen since 2001 (the base year) (DCLG, Citizenship Survey, October 2009, p.2).
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/corporate/statistics/citizenshipsurveyq1200910
OPEN SOURCE PLANNING
Conservatives have published their planning policy paper, Open Source Planning.
http://www.tinyurl.com/opensourceplanning
Its proposals include:
Create a new system of collaborative planning
· Give local people the power to engage in genuine local planning through collaborative democracy – designing a local plan from the “bottom up”, starting with the aspirations of neighbourhoods.
· Encourage upper-tier authorities (e.g. county councils and unitary authorities), which are responsible for infrastructure such as waste, roads etc, to compile local infrastructure plans.
· Give all local planning authorities and other public authorities a duty to co-operate so that there is a sensible conversation between all those involved in shaping neighbourhoods and the landscape.
Eliminate large amounts of unnecessary bureaucracy
· Abolish the entire bureaucratic and undemocratic tier of regional planning in England outside London, including the Regional Spatial Strategies and national and regional building targets.
· Amend the Use Classes Order so that people can use land and buildings for any purpose allowed in the local plan.
· Abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans – so long as they comply with national standards are sensibly related to neighbouring communities, and have been developed by a fair and proper process, they will be approved.
· Limit appeals against local planning decisions (such decisions will be challengeable by developers or local residents only if they involve abuse of process or failure to apply the local plan).
· Change Whitehall’s restrictive parking rules to ensure more parking spaces in family homes and near local shops.
An open and responsive system
· Establish a presumption in favour of sustainable development: the presumption will be that individuals and businesses have the right to build homes and other local buildings provided that they conform to national environmental, architectural, economic and social standards, conform with the local plan, and pay a tariff that compensates the community for loss of amenity and costs of additional infrastructure.
· Ensure that significant local projects have to be designed through a collaborative process that has involved the neighbourhood.
· Give immediate neighbours a new role – with a faster approvals process for planning applications to which a significant majority of the immediate residential neighbours raise no objection. This will give developers an incentive either to design buildings in ways that do not adversely affect immediate neighbours (perhaps by involving immediate neighbours in designing these new buildings), or to reach voluntary agreements that recompense immediate neighbours for any loss of amenity.
· Increase councils and the police’s ability to tackle illegal development, trespass and unauthorised sites.
· Give councils stronger powers to tackle garden grabbing and over-development in residential neighbourhoods.
Infrastructure of national significance
· Abolish the unelected Infrastructure Planning Commission whilst retaining its expertise and fast-track process within government.
· Use private or hybrid Bills to promote very major linear projects like high-speed rail – ensuring a proper Parliamentary process.
· Ensure that all other major infrastructure projects like power stations: are considered at planning inquiries which have binding timetables, and which are governed by the national planning framework (see below), so that they focus on planning issues and are not held up by discussions of wider policy such as the desirability or otherwise of types of power generation; but are given final planning permission by a democratically accountable Minister, informed by the conclusions of the inquiry, with the decision subject to a specific time limit.
· Provide transitional arrangements for projects already before the Infrastructure Planning Commission to ensure that these projects are not disrupted or delayed.
Democratic national planning guidance
· Publish and present to Parliament for debate a consolidated national planning framework, which will set out national economic and environmental priorities, and how the planning system will deliver them.
· Issue a reduced number of simplified guidance notes, setting out minimum environmental, architectural, design, economic and social standards for sustainable development.
· Maintain national Green Belt protection, Areas of Outstanding Nature Beauty, National Parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and other environmental designations which protect the character of our country’s landscape, stop unsustainable urban sprawl and preserve wildlife.
ENDS