South West planning news, April 2018

 

Authorities and organisations across the South West are to receive £5.2 million in funding both from the Government’s Planning Delivery Fund and, as part of the West of England interim housing package, capacity funding to establish a strategic delivery team to progress large sites for housing development across the West of England Joint Spatial Plan area (Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset).

The £3 million interim package for the West of England is intended to increase the 4,000 homes a year that have historically been delivered to 7,500 homes a year over the next 3 years – i.e. the early years of the joint structure plan.

Seven projects across the South West are to benefit from £2.2 million committed from the Planning Delivery Fund, which is intended to increase planning capacity, fund design expertise and facilitate joint working across authorities.

For example, councils in Devon have received £706,000 to increase capacity for joint planning, Bath and North East Somerset have received £310,000 to deliver a new master plan and implement an independent design review panel, and the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has received £80,000 to deliver a tool to promote better quality green spaces.

In addition, two Housing Infrastructure Fund projects have progressed to the next stage of assessment for funding: WECA’s bid for £250 million for the Bristol Temple Meads to Keynsham corridor; and North Somerset Council’s bid for £80 million for enabling infrastructure for M5 to A38 strategic development locations.

The Government also announced a joint partnership between the West of England Combined Authroity, working with North Somerset, and Homes England on land acquisition and infrastructure. Homes England is reported as already being in early discussions with the West of England to identify sites for future development.

The Lockleaze estate in Bristol is to receive City Council funding; it is proposed to deliver 800 new homes. Around £8 million has been secured from various grant and funding sources to facilitate regeneration plans across five phases, with the first to involve the redevelopment of the Romney House office building site.

The plans are also intended to improve sustainable transport infrastructure and road connections between the neighbourhood and the new Cheswick Village, as well as nearby major employers including the University of the West of England and the Ministry of Defence. 

On 6 March 2018, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly LEP published an Action Plan outlining how Cornwall can play a leading role in the global space economy. The Plan sits alongside the Space Industry Bill, which received Royal Assent on 15 March, and which paves the way for safe, legal and commercial spaceflight from the UK.

The LEP’s Action Plan has an aim of creating 1,000 space technology jobs by 2025, and securing 10% of the global £400 billion space industry revenue, with the potential to boost Cornwall’s economy by more than 10% over the next two decades. Plans include a Spaceport, high-tech business cluster and space science hub focused on university expertise, with provisional locations including Newquay Airport, Goonhilly Earth Station and Tremough Innovation Centre.

Housing Secretary Sajid Javid has given the go ahead for plans to reorganise Dorset’s councils. In a Commons written statement, he has outlined plans to lay draft secondary legislation before Parliament, with an intended date for establishment of the new councils of 1 April 2019. Known as ‘Future Dorset’, two new local authority areas will b created: one centred on the urban districts of Poole and Bournemouth, with Christchurch; and one for the remaining rural authorities.

In addition, West Dorset and North Dorset Councils have announced plans to launch a Local Authority Trading Company to construct new homes of a range of tenures across the Districts.

Bath and North East Somerset (BANES) Council is consulting on introducing an Article 4 Direction to remove the office to residential permitted development right (PDR) in Bath city centre. The consultation will run until 16 April.

In May 2013, national PDRs were amended so that the change of use of offices (Class B1(a) use) to residential (Class C3 use) is permitted development, subject to the prior approval of the local planning authority.

If the BANES’ Article 4 Direction is confirmed, its effect will be to remove this right, so that planning permission will be required for change of use from Class B1(a) to Class C3,  Such planning applications would be considered against the policies in the BANES existing Core Strategy and Placemaking Plan, and would allow for affordable housing contributions to be sought alongside development. If the Direction is confirmed, it will come into force on 9 March 2019.

A major overhaul of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has been launched, the intention being to deliver the homes that England needs. Optimising the use of land, creating well-designed places, strengthened protection for the Green Belt and a greater emphasis on converting planning permissions into new homes are all at the heart of the new draft Framework.

Local authorities will have to satisfy a housing delivery test, focused on driving up the number of homes completed in their areas, in addition to using a new standardised methodology for ‘determining the minimum number of homes needed […] unless there are exceptional circumstances that justify an alternative approach’.

To provide increased certainty for the development industry, the new draft national policy also intends that plans should set out the contributions expected in association with particular sites and types of project. Draft planning practice guidance to accompany the new Framework refers to developer accountability and transparency in the context of viability assessments, in order to enable communities ‘to understand the outcomes of viability assessment and see what infrastructure and affordable housing has been delivered through developer contributions’.

An MHCLG consultation on developer contributions launched alongside the new draft NPPF follows on from announcements at Autumn Budget 2017. The Government is seeking views until 10 May on a series of reforms to the existing system of contributions in the short term; the intention is that the proposed reforms will ‘benefit the local authorities who administer them, developers who pay them and the communities in which development takes place’.

The proposals that are of particular note - all of which would require changes to legislation - are as follows:

• streamlining requirements for setting/reviewing community infrastructure levy (CIL) charging schedules;
• removing s106 pooling restrictions (for authorities that have adopted CIL, or that satisfy other requirements);
• allowing CIL to be based on the existing use of land;
• introducing a ‘Strategic Infrastructure Tariff’, for combined authorities, and joint committees with plan-making powers; and
• indexation being linked to house prices, or CPI/CPI and a factor of house prices for non-residential development.

The consultation makes it clear that the Government:

‘[…] will continue to explore options to create a clearer and more robust developer contribution system that really delivers for prospective homeowners and communities accommodating new development.’

And in the longer term:

‘[…] the Government will continue to explore options for going further. One option could be for contributions to affordable housing and infrastructure to be set nationally, and to be non-negotiable.’

The proposed reforms have been informed by the independent report of the CIL Review Group (February 2017), as previously reported by Lichfields, and a research ‘Report of Study’ that was published alongside the consultation. This latest report provides a number of key findings regarding the operation and value of CIL and s106 obligations across England. For example, despite CIL having been introduced in 2010, 85% of the value of planning obligations and CIL levies in England is from negotiated s106s – only 39% of authorities were charging CIL by the end of 2017.