Daily Archives: 21 Aug 2014

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21 Aug 2014

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EDDC, Local Plan, NPPF

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The current situation with the Local Plan: worse than omnishambles

Below is a comment, left on a previous post, which is repeated here as it contains much useful information:

‘I have now had time to fully digest the report and do some further research and it looks like the LP resubmission is extremely unlikely to be this year, and possibly (if not probably) after the elections in May 2015.

A good starting point for documentation about the activities relating to fixing the Local Plan can be found at http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/lpsubmission which has a chronology and links to all the major documents.

My analysis of the situation is as follows:

1. The SHMA consultancy contract seems to me to be in a shambles.

However, Section 3 of this recent report gives the breakdown of this Best Practice into 6 stages, and paragraph 3.2 states that the work on the SHMA has only reached the first of the 6 stages in the PAS guidance.

Moreover, in a both letter to the Planning Inspector in mid-April 2014 http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/lettersinspector12.pdf and the draft action plan of 8 May http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/actionplan02.pdf attached to a letter to the Planning Inspector on 22 May 2014 http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/lettertomrthickett220514.pdf Mr Dickens was saying that the SHMA would be available in June 2014.

I have no reason to doubt that Mr Dickens was reporting these dates because that was what he was being told by DCA, but I cannot see how DCA could be reporting in May 2014 that they would finish in June 2014, and yet in August 2014 we have only completed the first of 6 stages to complete the SHMA.

The current report says NOTHING about the state of the SHMA contract with DCA. My experience in public sector outsourcing (having worked on both sides of the fence – though admittedly in IT rather than Planning Policy), this is likely now to be a major issue. DCA is certainly running late (and in consultancy, time is literally money) and so very likely to be running over budget and likely to make a loss on this piece of work, and it seems to me that there is a very high probability that there will need to be major contract renegotiations (DCA will likely claim a “change in scope”, EDDC will deny most of it, arguments will go back and forth – all of which will delay things further), and possibly eventually an agreement for EDDC to spend a lot more money spent to get this work completed by DCA – or worse still the contract being re-let and re-awarded to someone else to start again at the beginning.

So questions I want to know about the DCA contract:

A. Why has the SHMA not been delivered by DCA? Why were they still predicting they would deliver in in June as late as early May, and why were we surprised by its non-delivery with only 1 of 6 stages currently completed?

B. Is DCA still committed to deliver the SHMA within the current contract & existing costs?

If so, what is DCA’s revised schedule, and what happens if they miss it again?

If not, what are the EDDC plans to get the contract back on the rails so that the SHMA can be delivered, and what are the likely timescales and additional costs for revised or new contracts?

2. Timescales

The special DMC meeting on 8 May 2014 http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/combined_dmc_agenda_080514.pdf page 5 onwards, discusses the draft Action Plan response to the Planning Inspector, and on page 19 there is a timetable which suggests that by now they would be providing “Feedback report on comments received [from the Consultation on the new SHMA] to Development Management Committee” for approval so that “Feedback sent to Inspector” by the end of August.

However if you look at the draft Action Plan, it is clear that there are several other pieces of work to do before Feedback to the Inspector, so this seemed unrealistic even then.

As far as I can see, the following still need to be done:

A. The remaining 5 stages of the SHMA as documented in Section 3 of the current report.

B. The activities described in the draft Action Plan.

C. The activities in the timetable from 8 May.

Personally I cannot see these being completed this year, and I would guess that it might take considerably longer than that.

SUMMARY

The DMC needs to get a grip and take both control and responsibility for the completion of the Local Plan.

They need to find out the state of the contract with DCA and get it back on the rails.

They need to create a robust plan for redelivery of the revised Local Plan to the Inspector, providing additional resources to the Planning Policy unit if that is required to speed things up.‘

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21 Aug 2014

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Democracy, EDDC, Freedom of Information and EIA, Knowle/Honiton/Exmouth relocation, Skypark

EDDC v Information Commissioner – press release from J Woodward

Press release from Jeremy Woodward, Sidmouth resident, whose Freedom of Information request led to this case, and who will be allowed full representation at the Magistrate’s Court on 28 August 2014 at 10 am, Court 3:

“This Tribunal is the first of its kind for East Devon District Council.

The Council has acted as both executive and policeman, making key decisions in private and then determining which information it deems fit to be made public. And yet the default position is to make information available – but the Council refuses to abide by the spirit of Freedom of Information legislation.

The fact that the Council has appealed against the Information Commissioner’s decision shows how determined it is to keep these key reports on relocation from the public gaze: one wonders, therefore, what is hidden within.

This case is fundamentally about transparency of process. Research I have carried out strongly suggests that the political leadership at the Council has been making decisions about its relocation project in private without adequately informing Members. Moreover, it is clear from reports in the press and other documentation that the decision to relocate from Knowle was made well before 2012 – and yet the Council insists that there can be no disclosure of sensitive information because the project is still ‘live’.

This has had the effect of preventing any proper debate of the issues. There has been virtually no open discussion, hampered by the political leadership controlling the flow of information. I have argued that key documents which have guided decision-making on relocation should be published in full (apart from any company or private names, of course) to enable an informed debate to take place.

The fact that the reports were produced by external consultants Davis Langdon, who employs the author of the reports Mr Steve Pratten, simply consolidates the argument that these documents should be published.

The East Devon Alliance blog is following the case closely – with helpful directions to the Court for members of the public:
http://eastdevonalliance.org/

I will not be able to attend, due to professional commitments. However, I will be represented by Mr Richard Thurlow; he is also the Chair of the Save Our Sidmouth campaign, as well as the Chair of the Sid Vale Association’s planning committee. I am copying him into this correspondence as he will be taking any questions from the press next Thursday.”

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21 Aug 2014

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Affordable and Social Housing, DCC, Duty to co-operate, EDDC, Environment (local), Local Plan, Neighbourhood Plans, NPPF

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The delayed Local Plan – the missing document tracked down and a commentary on it (“What the Dickins”)

An EDA correspondent has tracked down the elusive “attachment” to the agenda of the Development Management Committee regarding the delay to the Local Plan (see post below)

DM260814-Emerging Housing Numbers

and a critique of this document is given below by the same correspondent:

What the Dickins?

A paper by Matt Dickins, EDDC’s Planning Policy Manager, to be presented to Development Mgmt Committee on 26 August  (see link above) makes for depressing reading. Residents of East Devon hoping that EDDC will finally be getting its act together on housing land provision will be deeply disappointed.

As many will know, EDDC is obliged to prove that it has an objective evaluation of housing land provision. The absence of such an evaluation, and EDDC’s failure to prove both a five-year land supply and have a Local Plan in place, means that it remains open season for developers. An objective evaluation of housing land need is achieved through the production of a Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA). In his scathing review of EDDC’s draft Local Plan earlier this year Planning Inspector Anthony Thickett called the absence of an up to date SHMA a “serious failing” on the part of the Council. (He also found that EDDC’s argument for 4,000 ‘overspill’ migration numbers, mostly from Exeter, had “no empirical basis”.)

Does Mr Dickins come bearing good news for EDDC and the people of East Devon that the day of the SHMA is at hand? Not at all. His paper comprises six pages of complacent waffle. Notwithstanding that some research should have already been done, “unfortunately there have been delays”. There may need to be discussions with adjacent authorities. (We know that, Mr Dickins. Exeter CC is looking to appropriate East Devon countryside.) While Mr Dickins’ paper points out that demographically East Devon is likely to see a major increase in population from the over 65s – surely implying a need for more sheltered accommodation in towns with services than new build on greenfield sites – his paper concludes lamely that “at this stage it is not possible to provide a timetable for completion of the full SHMA work”! The consequence? “We can only conclude that we do not have a 5 year housing land supply and continue to consider application [sic] accordingly”.

To translate: EDDC has no idea when the SHMA will be finished, it won’t even venture a guess, and in the meantime the lack of a five-year housing land supply [and Local Plan] means that developers will consider to maintain the upper hand in a district where two-thirds of the land is AONB. This is a woeful paper: DMC should send Mr Dickins to the Naughty Step and require him to try again. Time someone got a grip while there is any countryside left in East Devon.

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21 Aug 2014

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Affordable and Social Housing, DCC, Duty to co-operate, EDDC, Environment (local), Local Plan, Misc, Neighbourhood Plans, NPPF

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Local Plan delayed again – unlikely to be approved for many months

Recap: our draft Local Plan was thrown out by the Planning Inspector, Mr Thickett, because – oh, so many reasons – mainly because pretty much all of the figures in it were either too old or too unreliable. We were told to go back to the drawing board.

A crucial aspect of a local plan is that there must be a “5 year land supply” – i.e. enough available land to meet the district’s agreed needs for the next 5 years to enable building to start quickly and to keep up with demand. Those local authorities which had persistently underperformed in this area over the previous period were told that they would have to have a 6 year land supply – EDDC was one of those authorities.

Whichever way EDDC seemed to cut it, we never reached that magic 5 or 6 year level. As a result, developers are pretty much given free rein to build anywhere in East Devon unless EDDC can provide very strong reasons that they cannot – this as a result of the Coalition government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) which ripped up all previous rules and gave the green light to building just about anywhere.

EDDC thereafter took this to heart and passed pretty much anything and everything that came its way (and is still coming its way) from developers. It was left to local communities (Feniton, Seaton, Newton Poppleford) to argue their own corners and find their own money to fight developers. In Feniton and Seaton the communities rallied and defeated them (only to find that, in both places, it seems the developers are coming back to fight again). In Newton Poppleford there was a perverse decision from the DMC – yes to a Clinton Devon Estates development but no to another developer at Badger Close using the same reasoning, but turned on its head for the latter.

EDDC promised the Planning Inspector that there would be a fast review (which had to include dealing with other local authorities in the area where they said that they had run out of space for their developments and needed us to build to take up their shortfall). The Inspector told EDDC that he would be ready to re-examine the draft local plan in October or November 2014.

Bear in mind that the new draft local plan once again had to go out for public consultation – a project that lasts at least 6 weeks and then demands officer time to collate the results. It became pretty obvious that EDDC was not going to meet this target.

Now we have confirmation that this is the case. At the next

Development Management Committee on Tuesday 26 August 2014 at 2 pm

a report is tabled on the agenda entitled “Objectively Assessed Housing Numbers for East Devon – Emerging Work.

On that agenda, currently (21/8/2014 10.40 am) there is supposed to be a link to that report but the link is missing so anyone attempting to read the report will not be able to find it. However, an eagle-eyed correspondent on Councillor Claire Wright’s blog has traced it (unfortunately the link given does not work) and no amount of searching on the EDDC website brings it up.  However, this is what the document says:

“At this stage it is not possible to provide a timetable for completion of the full SHMA (strategic housing market assessment) work.  There are complexities to the task that will need working through.  However, officers of all the authorities involved in the commission are working together to come to a final set of recommendations on the objectively assessed housing numbers for the SHMA as a whole and for the individual authorities”.

It adds “In the meantime based on the available information we can only conclude that we do not have a 5 year housing land supply and continue to consider applications accordingly”.

It then suggests that the growth point area near Skypark will cause many businesses to set up and as a result housing should be factored in to address the extra jobs (see below for a post on those extra jobs which are mostly self-employment and particularly self-employment in the construction industry – ephemeral jobs).

So, the status quo continues.  No land supply, happy developers, very, very unhappy residents.