Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
National Changes to Planning Law to 'Dilute Democratic Oversight and Choke off Affordable Housing'
According to a recent article in The Guardian, RIBA believes that the proposed changes to England's planning laws will 'democratic oversight, choke off affordable housing and lead to the creation of “slum” dwellings'.
The law change is currently out for consultation and I would urge any of you who care about your environment to review the proposals and contribute to the consultation.
Tags for Forum Posts: planning
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mavic Starfish on
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Hi Hugh
Do you think there are obvious area of haringey that would be targeted? I'm thinking Park View in N15 or any school with decent amounts of land around it would be looked at?
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Permalink Reply by Hisky0 on
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Can someone who is less stupid than megive me a few bullet points about the proposed changes?
Like what are the actual facts and deregulation going on.
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Here's a starter from Dezeen, not quite bullet points but snappy paragraphs. The Guardian article Hugh has linked to is more discursive but then that's the complex nature of planning and development.
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Only thing is, the current stuff they build is already shite, how bad can it get?
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Yes, I think the issue is that building will become rather wild-west. We might all have cause for complaint about Haringey Planning. But at least it provides some oversight in the name of community interest. If the proposals go through, developers and individuals will have more freedom to do what they want, no matter what the community at large thinks and irrespective of any negative impacts on the quality of life.
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Permalink Reply by Arkady on
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In theory it could be *less* wild-west though. If you have a detailed plan, ideally at neighbourhood level, then automatic recognition is granted against something that already has consent. That was very much the intention of the superb report which led to this proposal.
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There's a lot more to say about this than I could manage in a quick post, but several points:
1. The idea is to "front load" consultation at the plan making stage, and have a system where a great deal of development is agreed in principle at that point, with the approval process in growth and renewal areas being more around technical compliance. This provides increased certainty, but does potentially mean that a site could be approved in a growth area in the local plan, go relatively quiet for some time, and then a reserved matters application be submitted relatively unexpectedly.
2. The White Paper and associated consultation on technical changes to the current planning system doesn't really take London's circumstances into account, including the role of the Mayor and the London Plan (in particular, how the London Plan distributes housing targets across London according to capacity).
3. Greater clarification is needed on how the three categories of land (growth, renewal, protect) will operate in existing urban areas like London. For example, some boroughs are heavily covered by conservation areas, but some locations within those conservation areas would be suitable for greater levels of growth than some other locations outside conservation areas. Also, there would likely need to be a very fine-grained level of definition of the areas, and different densities, heights, etc within those areas, for it to be useful in the way envisaged; otherwise the growth areas would just be strategic / conceptual in nature.
4. The White Paper is very housing focused. There's little about providing for economic needs, and it would seem nothing about waste and minerals planning - the latter very important for the raw materials needed for the construction industry.
5. Some of the proposals around digitising the plan making system and moving more engagement online would have happened anyway (there's been a lot of talk in the industry about Proptech and Plantech for a while now), they've just been accelerated.
6. Our planning system is an anomaly by international standards. In most other countries, requirements are much more codified and the majority of projects will be assessed for technical compliance with standards (similar to prior approval) because the land is already approved for a given envelope of development based on the underlying zoning, rather than the policy judgement that is undertaken with a discretionary planning system.
7. There's also a devolution white paper coming up (will propose unitary authorities in 2 tier shire counties) and housing white paper as well covering social housing.
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One Very Good Thing about the proposals is restoring the importance of streetscapes and beauty in planning criteria. The intention is to bring back 'pattern books' that would be pre-agreed, potentially at street-level, with the intention that this would result in more handsome and locally-distinctive housing than the crap we usually get today.
The street-level planning permission ideas are also potentially revolutionary. If you can forgive the publication it's worth reading the article linked to in this tweet, and also the images included further down-thread: https://twitter.com/FTerryArchitect/status/1294560169205141505
One of the things that really caught my eye is the possibility of densification in areas of low-quality post-war housing in areas that in European cities would be much more successful mansion-housing: "Suppose a street of 1970s bungalows near a station in outer London voted themselves the right to turn into a five-storey Georgian-style terrace... every homeowner on the street would become an asset millionaire [and create] a shift to a more beautiful and sustainable urban form".
The key to all this will be local democratic buy-in, ideally building on the positive precedent already set by neighbourhood forums/plans - which are very much a precursor to all of this.
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So what happens when you move to a new area? The local plan is cut and dried, whether it was done carefully and well (i.e. a rich local authority) or hastily and full of loopholes (most of the rest). Either way, your own right to be consulted about new developments has already been sold down the river.
Arkady also gives himself away by imagining a street of 1970s bungalows 'voting themselves the right to turn into a five-storey Georgian-style terrace'. Where do the occupants live while these new buildings are taking shape, with their four extra storeys incidentally stealing the daylight from the existing householders all around? Why, in one of their other houses, of course - or just a long retreat to their place in the country.
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I'm not sure what you mean about Arkady 'giving himself away'. It sounds like a snipe. If it means what I think it does, you're probably basing your snipe on false assumptions. Could you explain what you mean, please?
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Certainly.
The Twitter link provided by Arkady is to the account of the modern classical architect Francis Terry https://ftanda.co.uk/, 'designers of new-build and restorations of classical Georgian style architecture and country houses'. The works illustrated are entirely of country houses and mansions, plus one project for a Cambridge college.
Those rich enough to commission such houses may well be in a financial position that allows them to demolish and rebuild a street of 1970s bungalows and maximise the value of the site by building a five-storey Georgian terrace instead, but for ordinary householders this is not so.
Arkady's posting is also strangely worded, in that he describes his imagined 1970s bungalows as 'voting themselves the right' to rebuild.
By transferring the act of agency from human occupants to the inanimate houses themselves, it seems to me that Arkady is imagining away the inconvenient human dimension of his case study. Instead, he concentrates both on aesthetic preferences associated with the elite ('Georgian-style') and on the imperatives of the property developer ('every homeowner on the street would become an asset millionaire' - except that these homeowners can't really be long-term primary residents, because their old houses have been demolished.)
Whether intended or not, the implicit disparagement of '1970s bungalows' also implies class-based assumptions which, to me, are unpleasant and unacceptable. The 1970s were the decade in which ordinary Londoners had the best chance of being well-housed at affordable rents, before the subsidised mass sell-off of council housing began. There is also a chronic and specific national shortage of single-storey social housing suited to the elderly and those with impaired mobility.
Such people may seem culpably unproductive to property developers and others in the 'asset millionaire' class, just as their little houses look like easy prey. But social cleansing is still social cleansing, and that is why I heard elite dogwhistling in Arkady's posting.
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