🏆 The #Planoraks 2020 🏆 - worst planning article of the year
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. And I know what you’re thinking: no festive season would be complete without the long-anticipated annual 🏆#Planoraks🏆, our run-down of highlights and lowlights of a year in planning. And what a year it’s been. Our field of nominations is over-crowded. So many twists and turns that - you might be thinking - it’s a tad premature with a few weeks of 2020 still to enjoy/endure to start handing out the big gongs. That’s what I’d thought too. Until I read this.
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian last week, laying into mutant algorithms.
Well, folks, the jury was unanimous. When you combine (i) the national profile of both the winning writer and the publication, which makes this rubbish liable to mislead and confuse lots and lots and lots of people, together with (ii) the sheer frequency of basic errors - some little, some large, all correctable if our winner had taken even a few minutes to Google some of this stuff… no other nominees came close. So here we have it. [Drum roll…] 2020’s worst article about planning. Enjoy it.
Now, I’ve said that almost literally every sentence of the winning article is wrong. Come on - you might be thinking - you can’t mean that. Well. I do. I’ll give you 10 big whoppers, roughly in increasing order of offensiveness, and you can decide:
(1) The White Paper “intends to throw open landscapes, especially across the south-east, to uncontrolled “build, build, build”.
False. If anything, it’s the opposite.
Through its “areas of protection” idea, the White Paper will perpetuate the very, very restrictive policies which curtail development in the south-east (e.g. the Metropolitan Green Belt, AONBs). For better or worse. No “throwing open” in sight.
Given enormous long-standing needs for more housing (I’ll come back to this in a sec) - and in particular more affordable housing - in this part of the country, it’s actually the failure to allow a little bit more “build, build, build” which presents the real problem: see my Surrey example here. Don’t get me wrong: there are problems with the idea for protect areas, but being too pro-development isn’t one of them.
(2) The White Paper “will abolish the ages-old distinction in British planning between built-up areas and the 70-80% of land that is still rural”
False. Again, if anything, it’s the opposite.
The zonal approach will perpetuate and reinforce distinctions between built-up and rural areas. As I’ve said, the way it does that may be too simplistic. But the idea that the distinctions will be “abolished” by a system which seeks to impose distinctions on all land into areas for growth, renewal or protection… well, it’s nonsense, isn’t it.
(3) “The white paper was slipped out with a minimum of publicity in August”
😂. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. (Just for fairness, half of those links are to pieces in the Guardian, and the last link is to the early August piece of… you guessed it… our winner himself who was then telling us all in a national newspaper about the very reforms he now says - in the same national newspaper - nobody knew about).
(4) The White Paper “was based on that latest Whitehall fad, an algorithm, prepared by various construction and development lobbyists and targeted at encouraging building where it was “most needed”, an outrageous euphemism for “most profitable”.”
False. Of course. But false in so many different ways:
The White Paper was not “based on” it - the formula for local housing need was part of a totally different consultation. But the only way of uncovering that would be………. to read the consultations.
The formula’s prepared by MHCLG. It’s not exactly shrouded in secrecy. You can Google it.
And it’s (obviously) not predicated on profitability. Of course it isn’t. Which our winner could’ve Googled also. It’s household projections aka demographic projections informed by population data which indicate the number of additional households that would form if recent trends continue.
And, as I’ve said many times now, under the current system the local housing need figures are the starting point, but only a starting point. Planning authorities don’t actually have to deliver those numbers. Au contraire, national policy allows them to undercut it for all sorts of reasons, and in particular in the heavily constrained areas of the south-east where building would otherwise be “most profitable”.
(5) “What has been dubbed the mutant algorithm has attracted the ire of the entire planning community…”
Did our winner check with you before writing that? It’s so odd. He didn’t check with me. Well. Maybe we’re not members of the entire planning community.
(I jest. I know he’s using a figure of speech. Or something. And we’re supposed to be taking him seriously, but not literally. Because that approach always works out so well).
(6) “Local planning authorities are told to zone some areas for “protection” – national parks, green belts and “outstanding” natural beauty areas – but elsewhere land is to be left free for building, with no need for specific planning permission.”
Just read the thing, dude. If you want to write about it in a national newspaper. And before you start slamming it with such conviction. Try reading it.
The White Paper isn’t perfect. I’ve been writing for months now about some of its big imperfections. But nobody who (i) speaks English, and (ii) has actually read it could’ve been left with the impression that land outside protection areas is “free for building” . Because it isn’t. Do we need to repeat this? In renewal areas, you need planning permission. Even in growth areas, you may have a very long way to go before you're left with a planning permission you can actually do anything with.
(7) “One of Johnson’s many glib promises is to build 300,000 houses a year. This figure snatched from the air seems vaguely related to household formation, immigration and price, the latter two of which are now falling.”
You can pick any annual need figure you want since Kate Barker’s 2004 review. Nationwide, our shortfall in housing delivery over the last 15 years isn’t in the thousands, or the hundreds of thousands. It’s in the millions.
You don’t have to look far to find the info. Heck, the BBC did a full (and very good indeed, I should say) briefing paper on it. Over a million people on Council waiting lists. Several million in sub-standard accommodation. Increasing populations. Soaring prices. People living longer putting strain on existing stock. The housing crisis isn’t something a few housebuilders got together and conjured up.
You don’t just have to rely on Boris Johnson, or development lobbyists. Ask Shelter. Ask them again. Ask the Affordable Housing Commission. Ask groups like PricedOut. The scale of the housing crisis in this country is catastrophic. Meeting it in a sustainable way is one of the great challenges we have.
(8) “Building round Cotswold villages is required almost to double.”
False. False. False. I’m going to start calling this the “Isle of Wight Fallacy”.
(9) “Planners expect that, among other results, this will put the overwhelming majority of farmland “into play”. One told me: “It puts every meadow under a death sentence.””
False. Obviously.
Now let’s be fair. It may be right that our winner managed to find a planner somewhere who actually said those things.
But what we can deduce is that this planner - wherever they may be - has not read (or if they have) has not understood any of the Planning White Paper. Which makes clear that areas of open countryside fall into the definition of “protection areas”. Which as I’ve explained, presents a problem. But certainly not the problem our winner has cooked up, i.e. death sentences for meadows and all of that.
(10) “A good planner – a near defunct profession in England […]”
Defunct? How very dare you, sir.
I get the feeling our winning author may not (yet anyway) subscribe to this blog? Come join us, Simon (free subscription is this year’s prize). And you might get a flavour for how offensive, silly and ill-informed that kind of rubbish really is.
🍾 Congratulations 🍾 - not just to our winner, but all the others who took part. Let’s hope for more clarity in 2021.
In the meantime, stay well, #planoraks. Do your best to avoid becoming defunct. And keep on planning.
