We’re all going to be film stars!

Not to be outdone by the forthcoming second series of ‘The Planners’ on the telly (which, by the way, is going to be re-titled “Not in My Back Yard!”), Uncle Eric has decided that the cameras should be allowed into planning committee meetings and planning hearings and inquiries.

New guidance is to be issued by De-CLoG, which "will make clear the rights for members of the press and public, including local bloggers and hyper-local [?] journalists, to report, film and tweet planning appeal hearings." In a press release, De-CLoG ministers express the hope that “this will open up a previously mysterious and rarely seen side of the planning process”.

The new freedom to record and film proceedings, including the use of digital and social media can be exercised in future in appeal hearings and inquiries, provided that it does not disrupt proceedings. According to the blurb, "Inspectors will advise people present at the start of the event that the proceedings may be recorded and/or filmed, and that anyone using social media during or after the end of the proceedings should do so responsibly."

Pickles is particularly annoyed, because previous guidance he published in June, which was intended to open up planning committee meetings in the same way, has been deliberately ignored by some councils. Unfortunately, he omitted to write this into recent changes to subordinate legislation on the conduct of council meetings, and so he can do no more for the time being other than to huff and puff about it (something Uncle Eric is rather good at doing).

The press release ‘names and shames’ several of the offending councils:

• Wirral Council banned a blogger from filming its planning committee on health and safety grounds, asserting the ban was necessary as they cannot ‘police’ people filming.

• Tower Hamlets stopped a 71 year old resident and OAP campaigner filming a council meeting in June 2013. Council officers asserted that allowing filming could lead to “reputational damage to the authority”

• Keighley Town Council stopped a council meeting when a group of pensioners started to film the meeting and called in the police who escorted the 11 residents from the town hall. Officials argued allowing filming would be a “breach of Standing Orders”

• Blogger Richard Taylor, producing a guide for citizens on how to film meetings, has warned that some councils have demanded identity papers, such as a passport, before allowing filming, and warned “be prepared for the police to be called and the possibility of arrest, especially if you intend to film, photograph, tweet or take notes on a laptop” (Apparently, he was threatened with arrest when he tried to film Huntingdon District Council.)

• Bexley Council has asserted it intends to continue to prohibit audio and visual filming due to its “agreed protocol”

• Stamford Town Council meeting has reaffirmed its ban on a newspaper reporter tweeting from a council meeting, due to “concerns about 140 character snippets of information not accurately portraying a debate”

I have no more sympathy than Pickles with these weak excuses. If meetings are open to the public (as most planning committee meetings must be by law), there can be no reasonable objection to the proceedings being filmed, photographed and recorded, or reported ‘live’ on social media.

On the other hand, if you have attended as many different planning committee meetings as I have, you may well understand the reluctance of elected members to have their ‘deliberations’ broadcast to the great unwashed. The sad fact is that the standard of debate in many planning committees is absolutely dire, and the poor calibre of elected members, their profound ignorance of planning principles and procedures, and general lack of common sense is appallingly obvious. When officers in one authority claimed that allowing filming could lead to “reputational damage to the authority”, their fears may well have been justified!

As for opening up planning inquiries and hearings to the cameras, camera phones and recorders, I rather suspect that interest in recording the proceedings in this way will rapidly wane. It is rare even to see a local print journalist at an appeal hearing or inquiry, and those members of the public who bother to attend mostly drift away by lunchtime on the first day. The plain fact is that for those not directly involved in the process, it is arcane and incomprehensible, and opening it up to the cameras is not going to change that.

Major public inquiries into controversial development proposals might attract the TV cameras, but they will have the same problem as print journalists who have tried to cover these proceedings in the past. The bigger the development scheme, the longer the inquiry, and for journalists and TV crews it is likely to prove as exciting as watching paint dry.

Still, it makes a good silly season story, and Uncle Eric can feel satisfied that he has taken yet another decisive step to improve the planning system. Never mind, that we are still not building more than a tiny proportion of the new homes that are so urgently needed. Never mind that local planning authorities are starved of funds and can hardly cope with their work as a result. And never mind that all Uncle Eric’s previous brave words and stirring deeds have done virtually nothing to make any really significant change to the planning system.
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UPDATE (30 August 2013): I am told that Merton Council has begun webcasting various meetings within the past few months, including its Planning Applications Committee (although I am told that after two meetings no further webcasts have been made due to "technical difficulties"). A correspondent has suggested that readers should watch the first three applications presented on 18 April.

The webcasts can be accessed on:

http://www.merton.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcasts

This is not a link, but if you copy and paste this URL into the address line on your browser, the page should open. Don’t panic when you get no sound at the beginning. The camera was switched on before the meeting began, and the sound only starts when the Chairman opens the meeting, 7½ minutes into the recording. (You can move the cursor along to get to this point without having to watch usual the pre-meeting comings and goings in total silence. Alternatively, the menu on the right of the page enables you to go straight to the start of each item. The first application is reached about 10¾ minutes ibnto the recording.)

The 18 April meeting seems fairly typical to me. One thing you’ll notice is that the proceedings might reasonably be described as ‘unhurried’. It takes over 20 minutes, including the planning officer’s introduction, and public statements, before the members of the committee start to discuss the first application around 33½ minutes into the recording.

Anyway, see what you make of it.


© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Judicial Review of office to residential changes

The High Court granted permission last Friday to four London borough councils to go ahead with applications for judicial review of the amendment of the GPDO that took effect on 30 May, allowing change of use of offices (B1) to residential use (C3). The hearing is currently scheduled for 4 December.

The fact that the High Court has granted permission for a full hearing merely indicates that there is at least an arguable point in the case, but this cannot be taken as an indication that these challenges will succeed. The ability of local planning authorities to make an Article 4 Direction if they are concerned about such changes in their area must surely be a strong argument against the legal challenge that has been mounted against this extension of permitted development rights. The timing of the application for judicial review might also be a problem for the local authority claimants if De-CLoG chooses to raise this (as I pointed out in this blog some time ago).

The number of prior approval applications received by some London Boroughs under the new rules has caused surprise and alarm in those authorities, but I am not convinced that an attempted judicial review of this subordinate legislation is the right way forward.

On the other hand, one of the grounds of challenge relates to the way that applications for exemption from the new PD rights were considered by De-CLoG. I did have misgivings about this at the time (which I mentioned in a previous blog post). This is one aspect of the matter in respect of which the government could be vulnerable.

If the hearing timed for 4 December goes ahead on that date, judgment will probably be reserved and is likely to be delivered either just before or shortly after the Christmas/New Year break. An appeal to the Court of Appeal by whichever party loses could well be on the cards, so a final answer may not be known for some months yet, maybe well into 2014. Meanwhile, there is nothing to stop applicants getting on with their prior approval applications. In fact the possibility (however remote) that these permitted development rights could be withdrawn as a result of this legal challenge may encourage an even greater number of prior approval applications to come forward in order to get these proposals through before the drawbridge can be pulled up.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Change of use of shops to residential use

NOTE: There have been significant changes to the law since this blog post was published, and so the material printed below does not accurately reflect the current position. For completely up-to-date and fully comprehensive coverage of this topic, we would strongly recommend readers to obtain a copy of the author’s new book on the subject - ”A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PERMITTED CHANGES OF USE” published by Bath Publishing in October 2015. You can order your copy by clicking on the link on the left-hand sidebar of this page.

As predicted in my post on 18 July (“And now – A1 to C3?”), De-CLoG has now published a consultation paper suggesting this and other changes to the GPDO which (among other things) would allow change of use of some shops to residential use. This consultation paper is only a week late, having been promised for “the end of July”.

These changes were foreshadowed in the 2013 Budget Statement. De-CLoG is proposing to create a permitted development right for change of use (together with the associated physical works – in contrast with the recent provisions for change of use from office to residential) from a small shop (Class A1) or from professional/financial services (Class A2) to residential use (Class C3). It also proposes to allow a change of use from retail (A1) to use as a bank or a building society branch (within Class A2) (but not to other uses within this use class) and from agricultural use to residential use. I will deal with these latter proposals in a separate post.

The department’s stated intention is to find new uses for shops that no longer have a future. The consultation paper gives a perfunctory nod towards the “town centre first” policy set out in the NPPF, but does not propose to restrict the new permitted development right to a particular type of retail unit or site (e.g. secondary retail frontage). The proposed amendment will allow for necessary works for the residential conversion, including a new frontage, windows and doors.

The developer will be required to apply to the LPA for prior approval in respect of design, the potential impact of the loss of the retail unit on the economic health of the town centre, the need to maintain an adequate provision of essential local services such as post offices, and the potential impact of the change of use on the character of the local area. This will allow the local authority to have regard to their local plan policies for the area. So LPAs will still have quite a wide discretion over the determination of these change of use applications. In practice, it looks as though this alone could largely negative the liberalisation that the government claims to be seeking. This point is impliedly recognised in the consultation paper, which points out that the refusal of prior approval will be subject to appeal if local authorities are found to be using it unreasonably to prevent these changes of use.

The proposed permitted development right will be limited to A1 and A2 premises of not more than 150 square metres floor area, and will allow conversion to a single dwelling house or a maximum of four flats (but not a small HMO). Premises in conservation areas, National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Broads and World Heritage sites (“Article 1(5) land”) will be excluded.

The consultation paper recognises that local planning authorities can issue Article 4 Directions to prevent or restrict such changes of use, although it does include a reminder that compensation may become payable.

Subject to the consultation exercise (which is due to end in October), the intention is that these further amendments to the GPDO should take effect in April 2014.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Flooding crisis – the blame game and the EA

My recent piece on the flooding crisis elicited the following contribution from David P of Sussex. I don’t necessarily agree with all he says, but I thought that it deserved an airing.

David P writes: -“Your blog post on this topic is most interesting. But have you considered that it is not so much the lack of money or people that is the problem, but more likely the allocation of them? Too many chiefs and not enough Indians? Good and capable people in the wrong jobs? I would suggest as an old farmer who has made his living from the land, that everyone in the EA employ wants an office job - nice and warm, better wages and higher status, so they try to climb up the ladder. Now I would suggest that for every person in an office job there should be 100 manual workers, four of whom should be supervisors or gang masters if you prefer. That’s where it goes wrong in every organisation and it brings them to the point that if it is a business it becomes top heavy and unviable, or if it is a public authority we all have to pay too much for the implementation of the service it provides and the service deteriorates to below an acceptable standard. We need hands on the ground, not in the air when it comes to flooding.

“By the way it’s not only the United Kingdom that has this problem; it’s worldwide in the west, particularly Europe. So I dare to say that, for the benefit of the community running properly, too much education can be a bad thing and a bit more manual graft and guts might just get things in proportion. Only the very best brains should have access to the ladder. A mini ‘cultural revolution’? A few less Lord Smiths and a few more Mr Smiths with old fashioned wheelbarrows and shovels? Perhaps the invention of paper has had some questionable benefits - by allowing more people than is necessary to spend their lives in centrally heated offices and achieving very little.”

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My thanks to David P for this contribution.

I have some sympathy with the view that we need more people in the field and fewer in the office. I have long felt that many organisations in the public sector (especially in local government, where I worked for some years in the earlier part of my career) are ‘over-managed’ and under-staffed.

There may be a need to re-balance the EA, and I wonder whether it might be advisable to revive the National Rivers Authority as a separate organisation, putting under it the sewerage and drainage functions currently carried out by the privatised water companies, so that the whole problem of land drainage is put under a single roof, in an organisation that can concentrate exclusively on tackling this issue in all its aspects. I also wonder whether this authority ought to be given powers to direct refusal where development is proposed on flood plains.

This is perhaps the answer to those critics who questioned the relevance to town and country planning of my piece on the flooding crisis. The answer, I suggest, is that it has a great deal to do with planning, and the need to ensure that new properties are not vulnerable to flooding is clearly going to be of increasing importance in the future.

© MARTIN H GOODALL (with acknowledgements to David P)

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Short term use of residential property in London

I have blogged on this topic several times in the past year, but I was wondering why the journos on the Evening Standard were getting excited on this subject in an article in today’s edition of the paper. The Deregulation Bill, which will enable the Secretary of State to relax the rules on short-term lettings in Greater London is still in the House of Lords, and the third day of the Report Stage is not due until Wednesday of this week, so Royal Assent is unlikely to be achieved until after both houses come back from their half term break after 23 February. By my calculation, that isn’t going to leave time for subordinate legislation to be laid before parliament so as to come into effect before the General Election (although I am open to correction on this, if any of you know better).

So what exactly prompted today’s article in the ES? I think it must have been De-CLoG’s publication today of a document entitled “ Promoting the sharing economy in London - Policy on short-term use of residential property in London”, which is yet another expression of the government’s wishful thinking, without actually telling us when we can expect the promised change to come about (if indeed it ever does, given the uncertainty over the likely result of the General Election).

The position today is, and will remain for the time being, that short-term lets (of less than 90 days) in Greater London are a material change of use (to a sui generis use) which requires planning permission. The ES seems to think that the change in the law is immediate, but it is not even imminent. That could conceivably change, but I am still not betting on its happening this side of the General Election; and what will happen after that is beyond the wit of man to foretell.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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