Phased release of land for development - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
Open group
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Started - July 2012
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Last activity - Today
Phased release of land for development
Can anybody offer a clear and unambiguous explantion of how, once an LP has been adopted, the LPA is able to prevent the 'charge of the developer brigade'. Also, once PPS3 starts to take effect and the new LDF system is in use by all, will it be any better? My LPA suffered, and is still suffering from, the negative effect of excessive land provision (effectively sanctioned by the Inspector at Inquiry by his inaction) and the rush by developers and landowners to grab their outline permissions once the plan was adopted. On taking control and despite our best efforts, we only managed to reduce a 2500+ extant permissions by 500 and just had to sit and wait for the rest to get built out or, if we were really lucky, lapse. My fear is, that with the push for increased housing numbers and the ever rising cost of buying a house, the same thing will happen again once our new LP hits the streets, because I cannot see any genuine mechanism for saying to an applicant that development control is closed for the next x months, please come back when we feel able to release some more land for housing. PPS3 draft refers to 5 year land availability, but the life of most plans is 20 years and the maps we issue are not marked as this bit from 2005 to 2010 and the next bit from 2010 to 2015, etc. All they show is where we are prepared to see houses built within the life of the plan. So my question is simple; has anybody seen a developer turned away from obtaining a permission for the development of allocated land because of prematurity (other than during a LP Inquriy phase) i.e. where an LPA says, we have already given out all our permissions for the next 5 years, come back later, and if so, was this upheld at appeal?
I am not a LA planner but.......Are you sure that you are worrying about the right problem? Is the issue a potential excess of consented land or a possible excess of actual new development? The market should impose some sort of rough discipline on the latter, certainly as far as mature sub-markets such as standard houses are concerned. Where you are, an excess of available development land should encourage comptetion among land owners to bring land to the market, thus forcing land prices down and giving your LA a greater opportunity to maximise S106 revenues. The problem with only allocating just enough land to fulfill needs is that it drives prices up and effectively enriches the lucky landowners at the expense of the scope for wider planning benefits
If you think that the purpose of the planning system is to build as many houses as possible and nothing else matters, over allocation or an excess of permissions is not a problem. If you have any aspirations to get difficult sites developed, to maximise the regeneration benefits of new housing, to focus development in sustainable locations, to get a planned urban extension off the ground, to link development to infrastructure provision or to avoid random splatter, it clearly is. Current market conditions are now mowing down Roger's 'Charge of the Developer Brigade'. Even this won't help him. PPS3's emphasis on delivery means that as completions dry up, more and more land has to be allocated or permitted. The weakened industry will only take the easiest and cheapest sites and can use outdated and over-optimistic needs projections to drive them through. You know it makes sense.
Falling outside the English planning jurisdiction, we've been able to do things a bit differently here. Our only 'greenfield' housing allocations are what we call Housing Target Areas. These are areas that are reserved for possible future housing development. They are brought forward through a formal addition to the plan in the form of an OPB - effectively an Area Action Plan in the English LDF system. The trigger for preparing an OPB is a shortfall of less than two years of effective housing supply. Since our Development Plan was adopted in 2002 we have not needed to bring forward any HTAs. Our housing requirement is being met entirely through brownfield development.