Tag Archives: localism

Osborne now does planning – apparently!

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You really couldn’t make this up, without being laughed at and yet it’s really happening.  Eric Pickles has decided that councils don’t known what they’re are doing when it coming to planning and has decided that a free for all is okay, as long as ‘the community’ agrees – it’s called Localism.

Meanwhile, the Tory chief bean counter, George Osborne, has decided that Vince Cable is actually the real expert on all things planning and has decided that if all the planning rules, along with the views of communities (remember that’s called Localism), were kicked in to touch, the country would be flourishing again by a week on Thursday!

So Pickles doesn’t like the planners and wants ‘the people’ to do it all and Osborne doesn’t like the planners or ‘the people’ and wants business to be able to do what the hell it likes!  Oh and by the way, just in case you didn’t realise, Pickles, Osborne and Cable are all supposedly on the same side!  Like I said, you couldn’t make it up.

Follow the link to read the full story, on how George Osborne wants to turn every high street into the American dream – to hell with what it looks likes, as long as they are all paying taxes. http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/osborne-rips-planning-rules

More like the Marx Brothers than Laurel & Hardy

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Richard Kemp – a LibDem councillor at the Local Government Assoc, but I try not to hold that against him – has described Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps as Laurel and Hardy and Bob Neil as Minime.  Not to be outdone, I’ve been trying to think of a famous foursome in order to include Gregg Clark, the Decentralisation Minister, as he is helping, if only by default, to kick the stuffing out of local government.

Gregg Clark is not as guilty as the others of banging the Localism drum with one hand, whilst waving the latest ministerial directive to local government with the other, but if you lay down with dogs you are bound to catch fleas.

I suppose if you leave out Gregg for the time being the other three could be collectively grouped as the 3 Stooges, which wouldn’t be a bad description, given their bumbling, slapstick approach to the job. 

However, I also think the Marx Brothers could be quite an accurate description for this government quartet.  They, the Brothers, also seemed particularly good at leaving a trail of chaos in their wake and they had a smart mouth called Groucho, who puts down anybody who challenges his view of the world, with a sarcastic and witty remark (Pickles can manage the sarcasm, but humour seems beyond him). 

I think Gregg Clark would probably be the one who doesn’t speak, in the quartet, because although he does have quite a lot to say, unlike the others, what he says tends to be focussed on his role as a minister and not on taking a swipe at local government whenever the opportunity presents itself.

PPG13 amendment not all that it seems

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Is there no hope for us?  Even the one man who should be above going off half cocked on all things planning – unlike certain ministers – has yet again allowed his name to be put to a piece of headline grabbing psuedo-localism.  This time in the form of another letter to all local planning authorities. 

The letter said: “…the Government is changing some of the text in Planning Policy Guidance 13: Transport (PPG13) to better reflect localism. The Government’s position on parking standards is that local authorities are best placed to take account of local circumstances and are able to make the right decisions for the benefit of their communities. As such, the central requirement to express ‘maximum’ parking standards for new residential development has been deleted.”

Parking standards will still need to be set, but it will be for local authorities to determine what that standard should be.

Wrong!  As pointed out by a planning professional in a recent email, what the chief planner has said, especially the bits in bold,  are just empty words, when it comes to any form of localism on this issue, because he has ‘conveniently’ forgotten to delete another bit of PPG13 that says:

Parking

50. In developing and implementing policies on parking, local authorities should:

2.  not require developers to provide more spaces than they themselves wish, other than in exceptional circumstances………’

So, having rushed to my copy of the Local Plan and scrawled out all references to  a maximum parking standards in residential development, in order to reduce the amount of pavement parking and front gardens being lost to parking places, I find that the developer is still able, with the blessing of government, to tell me to get stuffed!  Another victory for the localism agenda.

Localism Bill – anything goes!

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Personally, I’m still undecided about what benefits (if any) the Localism Bill will bring, especially given its inherent criticism of elected members.  How else are we to view the drive to introduce ‘local’ representation and neighbourhood forums populated by those who will not of stood for any form of election?

There is however, one bit of the bill that appears to be some sort of sop to those elected members who seem unable to present the views of their electorate without actually making those views their own.  I quote the text below.

Predetermination 　

Clause 13 　

(2) A decision-maker is not to be taken to have had, or to have appeared to have had, a closed mind when making the decision just because

(a) the decision-maker had previously done anything that directly or indirectly indicated 　what view the decision‐maker took, or would or might take, in relation to a matter, and

(b) the matter was relevant to the decision.  This Clause needs to be read in conjunction with a statement issued by DCLG (http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1768609) which says that:

These proposed legislative changes will mean councillors can be very clear and discuss freely their view and voting intention and publicise their views as they see fit.  However, councillors must be prepared to listen to arguments and evidence before making their decision.  These changes will reduce the threat of challenge.

I’ve no doubt some very clever lawyers at DCLG have drafted this clause to do exactly what the minister wanted it to – allow members to shoot their mouths off and get away with it!

Yes, very occasionally there will be issues that a person got themselves elected on and that it would be ludicrous to then exclude them from being involved in when it came to the debate and the subsequent voting process.  However, to suggest that, by simply producing the text above and make it the ‘law’, this changes completely the status of that members words in respect of pre-determination, is an insult to anybody who thinks they understand the English language.

The last paragraph especially demonstrates the nonsensical nature of this clause.

‘…….mean councillors can be very clear and discuss freely their view and voting intention and publicise their views……’

But then having done all of the above, ‘…..councillors must be prepared to listen to arguments and evidence before making their decision.’

I think they should change the word ‘prepared’ to pretend, because that it what somebody who has discussed and publicised freely, their view and voting intentions, will really be doing.

Worse still and hopefully an unintended negative effect of this clause, will be the pressure members will now come under to declare their view on an issue. It will no longer be acceptable to keep an open mind, listen to all the evidence, and maybe even put the case for those who have asked for your help, but then vote with your conscientious.  The public will now have the right to expect you to take a position or suffer the consequences.

No shortage of experts on the unknown

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Just before Christmas I got caught out by what must be the public sector equivalent of the time share scam.

You know the sort of thing, shiny brochure lands on the doorstep, or in this case, in the Inbox and before you know it, you’ve parted with your cash and your eagerly awaiting the opportunity to sample what you’ve bought.  Then you actually get there and very quickly realise that you’ve been had, it was all BS and bling and all you’ve got is a fancy venue and a shiny folder with next to nothing worth having in it.

My somewhat ham-fisted analogy, refers to a must attend seminar in London, offering to give me the inside story on the Localism Bill and how it would affect the way councils do planning.  This should have been just the job, after all it was scheduled to take place only a couple of weeks after the Localism Bill was published and one of the speakers was to be somebody involved in the whole process, the Chief Planning Officer.  One small problem; the bill was delayed, so what should have been a major piece of information transfer turned out to be various speakers waffling their way around a subject they either couldn’t talk about in any detail or didn’t know about because it hadn’t been published.

Since the end of the recent festivities, I must have had at least another half a dozen invitations to attend other ‘must attend’ events.

Apart from the fact that many of these events have a starting price of at least £299 (plus VAT of course) and some much higher, what really gets to me is their claims to be offering some really expert and invaluable insight in to the latest government thinking.  Trouble is, the government doesn’t actually seem to know what it’s thinking itself, especially when it comes to local government and the planning system, so what gives these so-called experts a view in to the unknown – psychic powers?

The 200+ clauses in the Localism Bill are still just that from what I’ve seen – clauses.  No meat on the bones yet; in fact hardly any bones!

The people churning out all this cyber trash must have missed the bit about 20%+ cuts in local government grant funding and therefore think that the local government cash cow is still ripe for milking.

The lesson to be learned from this? Save the taxpayer some money and don’t attend anything claiming to give you a head start on government policy until at least 6 months after it has been published.  In fact maybe don’t bother at all, after all localism is supposed to be about making up as you go along; just as long as you do it locally!