The London Green Belt Council Notes: Issue 133 November 2002

Beryl Webb MBE

I am very sorry to tell you that Miss Beryl Webb, who has been one of our assistant secretaries since 1989, died recently, following a stroke and a short illness. A lady of wide interests, she represented CPREssex on the LGBC but she had many other activities as well and was recently made an MBE for services to the community. She had a keen sense of humour and always seemed to be doing unexpected things. When already in her 80s, she suddenly announced that she had been on a day trip to Budapest, leaving her home in Rochford at 5.30am to catch a plane from Gatwick and returning to Gatwick at midnight to be driven back to Rochford. She will be sorely missed.

Public Service Agreements

Last August the Treasury issued a White Paper setting out Public Service Agreements (PSAs) for all main Government Departments for the period 2003-2006. PSAs are part of the Government’s commitment to better public services and include setting targets for major areas of work, and setting out how each Department plans to deliver its services. These ‘Service Delivery Agreements’ will be cast in a way that will enable the public to keep in touch with progress through reports on web sites.

Members should note that the PSA for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister includes:

‘Objective III: deliver effective programmes to help secure the quality of life for all in urban areas and other communities.

‘Achieve a better balance between housing availability and the delivery of housing in all English regions while protecting valuable countryside around our towns, cities and in the green belt - and the sustainability of existing towns and cities - through specific measures to be set out in the Service Delivery Agreement’.

It strikes me as odd that the bit about sustainability has been inserted in the middle of the above sentence. If it means anything at all (which I doubt) it should have a separate exposition. However, it is something that protecting green belt is a specific commitment; though I wonder what the word ‘valuable’ is intended to qualify - is it a way of inserting the concept of quality into the protection of green belt? Sooner or later some developer will argue that it does, and members must be prepared to challenge that.

Sustainable Communities: Delivering Through Planning

The Government’s Green Papers on speeding up the planning process have created a lot of controversy over the past year. Our comments on the four papers involved were set out in Notes 129. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), has now set out its reactions to the criticisms in a paper with the above title. Free copies can be obtained from the OPDM (sic. - presumably the distribution office thinks that Mr. Prescott is the Prime Deputy Minister!) Product code 02PD00393 Phone 0870 1226 236. The paper shows that the Government has accepted some criticisms but held its line in other matters. The key issues so far as our criticisms are concerned are —

• denying individuals the right to be heard at public local inquiries into draft local plans: the Government has withdrawn the proposal;
• abolishing county structure plans; and the huge gap which the proposals left between regional planning and local action plans. The Government has compromised by abolishing county structure plans as such, but giving county councils a new role as ‘agents of the regional planning bodies in providing technical expertise on issues and/or leading on sub-regional parts of the strategy (distribution of housing; for example). Through their representation on the Chamber the county councils will be able to play a part in the decision-making process’. (And this is supposed to be simplification);

• setting up Business Planning Zones where controls will be minimal: the Government is sticking to its proposals.
• major infrastructure projects. The Government’s proposal was that consideration of such proposals would start with a decision by Parliament on the principle involved, to be followed by a public inquiry into the details. Criticism was that, to reach sensible decisions, Parliament would need so much detail as to take up a large amount of parliamentary time. The Government agrees and has dropped that aspect of the package.

We doubt very much whether the proposals overall are an improvement on the existing arrangements but they are certainly not as bad as those first proposed. The earlier emphasis on the frenetic revamping of vision has gone, but experience will show whether it remains in fact. There was never anything in the proposals that bit specifically on green belt: it was just the general effect that seemed ghastly, and to a lesser extent still does.

Reviewing the Planning Enforcement System in England

This is another paper from ODPM, this time discussing possible changes in present practice in enforcement. The original Green Paper did not contain proposed changes, merely saying that proposals would be issued later. This consultation paper is the promised document. It does not seem to me to contain points which we need take up, but members with particular problems of this kind might like to see it. Phone number 0870 1226 236, product code 02PD000238. Comments by 31st December.

Local Government Ombudsman’s Digest of Cases in 2001

The Ombudsman's Office has sent me a copy of the above summary of selected cases. It covers the whole range of local authority responsibilities and makes interesting reading. Only two involve green belt, and then only incidentally to the main point at issue. It seems to me a pity that the offending authority is never named, but the Ombudsman can nevertheless lash out at times. For instance [This is my abbreviated summary]:-

Mr. S bought a farm in the area of Council A, intending to renovate it to provide a home on the same site and believing he did not need planning permission. An enforcement officer from Council A told him to stop because he did need planning permission, but the officer’s superior decided that the farm was in the area of Council B. The paper information was not checked against computer systems because it was known that the latter were unreliable, So the enforcement officer faxed a map to Council B, but it was a map of an entirely different property. Council B’s planning officer did not visit the site, but told Mr. S that he did not need planning permission and could start building again. Council B’s building control officer visited the site and told Mr. S. that the site was in the area of Council A. Council A then served a Planning Contravention Notice on Mr. S, who ceased building. Planning permission was then refused on the grounds that there was no longer lawful residential use and no reason to overturn the presumption against building in the green belt. Mr. S. appealed and lost and had to demolish the house. In preparation for the appeal Council A consulted Council B whose planning officer set out the position as he saw it in a letter to Council A. The Ombudsman said of this letter "there was hardly a line in the letter was free from error. The letter included euphemisms, half-truths, unchecked facts, inaccurate recollections, careless mistakes and wrong assumptions." The writing of that letter, the Ombudsman said, was gross maladministration.

The upshot was that Council A paid Mr. S. £3359 compensation and Council B paid him £67,327.

Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (2001/42/BC): Draft Guidance

This 60 page document is concerned with SEAs and SAs which are together described as SEA/SA (to which I think a final W should be added). SEA stands for strategic environmental assessment, an EC term "used internationally to describe environmental assessment as applied to policies, plans and programmes". SA stands for sustainability appraisal, a UK term used primarily in connection with regional planning guidance and development plans. The paper discusses how to modify present practices in order to enable the EC directive, with its SEAs, to apply to our present development control system under Town and Country Planning legislation, and to the regional planning guidance, regional spatial strategies, and Local Development Frameworks with which we are likely to be blessed in future.

Given its remit, it is a very comprehensive and well-constructed document. There are many lists, not so much of environmental topics as of the approaches that should be adopted towards possible topics so as to make sure that everyone understands the environmental effects of what might be done to them. Many of these tables are in the form of three columns, ‘What the Directive says’, ‘what to decide’ and ‘what to report’. The approach will, I suspect, create many local authority headaches but I do not think it is the sort of thing on which we can usefully comment. But I would be glad of other opinions, and you can get a copy from ODPM Free Literature (they have got the initials right this time!) phone 0870 1226 236, comments by 24/1/2003, product code 02DPL013.

‘Consultation Paper on Legislative Proposals for Integration of the Habitats Directive Provisions on Conservation of European Protected Species into the land use planning regime’ - issued by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

Having absorbed this almighty mouthful of a title, and the information on the inside cover that it was ‘printed on material containing 75% post-consumer waste and 25% ECF pulp’, I felt inclined to say ‘quite’ and put it aside. That would not do justice to the paper, which is clearly written and has the worthy aim of simplifying the overlapping processes in existence now and improving protection of rare species at the same time. At present, the planning system and the legislation protecting them operate independently, whilst for species protected under the EC Habitats Directive a further regulatory system is in place and separate licences have to be obtained after the grant of planning permission. The licences may be issued, for example, to permit development work to continue because there is no alternative, or because the species is not threatened by work at the particular site within their range, or because plans can be made to move the species elsewhere. The aim of the paper is to merge the different systems into one, which will require legislation, and to strengthen protection by doing so.

Local authorities and the building interests need to study the points on which DEFRA seeks comment more than do organisations like ours, though wildlife protection groups concerned with such animals as otters, bats, and great crested newts will want to know what is likely to happen. Copies of the paper can be obtained from DEFRA Publications, 08459 556000, comments to DEFRA by 24/1/2003.

Planning decisions

1. The DPM called in an application by Chelsea Football Club to build 12 pitches, an all-weather floodlit pitch, and ancillary facilities on green belt at Sunbury-on-Thames. The inspector agreed that the football would preserve the openness of the green belt, but he was less sure about the changing rooms, gym, hydrotherapy pool, ground floor classroom, offices and canteen that were also part of the scheme. Nor was he satisfied that the club’s limiting the search for possible alternative sites to a 30 minute drive from Chelsea was adequate. The DPM agreed and refused permission. Interestingly, another factor that he took into account was noise to nearby residents, including the peaceful enjoyment of visitors to a nearby cemetery.

2. A truffle farmer had an unauthorised building used as a dwelling on his truffle farm in Surrey, and Tandridge Council issued an enforcement notice for its removal. The inspector was not convinced by the farmer’s argument that truffle farming needed a permanent resident on site in order to measure the acidity of the ground. He upheld the enforcement notice, refused planning consent for a mobile home, and ruled that any interference with the appellant’s human rights was justified in the public interest.

3. Tewkesbury Council rejected an application for a Motorway Service Station, including a 58 bedroom travel lodge, 500-space Park and Ride facility, and a lorry park for 50 vehicles on land between Cheltenham and Gloucester. The DPM accepted the inspector’s recommendation that the appeal should be rejected on green belt grounds, particularly as regards maintaining the break between Cheltenham and Gloucester, and that no sufficient need had been shown to justify overriding these considerations.

4. There was an application to build five houses on green belt in West Yorkshire, the applicant offering to give up an existing right to station 11 caravans on adjacent land. The DPM called the application in and, agreeing with the inspector, refused the application. Though the caravan site would be visually more damaging than the housing, one could not be set off against the other, as they were on different sites. The fall-back argument applied only to proposals for the same site. He rejected the housing proposal. Presumably the possibility of caravans on an adjacent site is still open.

5. The owner of Gatwick Zoo wished to retire and sell the site to a leisure group which would treble visitor numbers. Mole Valley Council thought that this intensification would harm the nearby village, so the applicant proposed to build homes at a density of 19 per hectare on a quarter of the site and demolish all buildings on the rest of the site, resulting in a significant reduction of the developed area. The inspector recommended approval because, although it was inappropriate development in a green belt site, there would be an overall improvement to the openness of the green belt and the setting of a listed building. The DPM agreed, adding that the comparatively low density of housing would be justifiable because higher density would compromise the quality of the environment.