No doubt the developers will appeal – they wanted a situation where Neighbourhood Plans could NOT specify where development should and should not take place in that neighbourhood. Rather laughable when you think about it – they want Neighbourhood Plans with no plans!
Category Archives: Environment (local)
Is our MP’s Party “Committed to protecting our natural environment”?
Not in East Devon, nor indeed in the UK, as pointed out in this letter in the Exmouth Journal (04/12/2014):
‘Last week Hugo Swire told us that his party is committed to protecting the natural environment, keeping development sustainable etc. But that view is not shared across the country.
The Government planning policies have failed to protect communities from rapid and disproportionate development. That was the widespread view of those, like me, who had been invited form all parts of the country to Westminster in September to give evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee.
Everyone had stories to share of large tracts of agricultural land being built on; villages doubled in size; brownfield sites in the centre of old industrial towns being left, while the green fields around the margins are being built on because it is cheaper; extensive building in flood plains; the green belt eroded; AONB protection swept aside.
All this is happening under the guise of sustainable development because of the Government’s drive for house building at any cost and in any place. But the term sustainable is so ill defined that using wooden cladding or installing plastic plumbing in place of copper and a low flush toilet, ticks the box.
No thought is being given to social or environmental sustainability. Yes, we need housing to meet local needs, particularly affordable housing. But we are not getting it and we have sacrificed a lot of agricultural land in the process. Affordable housing promised in planning applications disappears when developers plead poverty. I understand none of the affordable housing promised by Tesco in Seaton, for example, will be built.
David Daniel’
Helpful advice for developers on EDDC website
Good to see EDDC keeping developers up to date with reduced requirements for open space provision on their website as we know developers need all the help they can get:
Southwest England ranked third top tourist destination in Europe
A correspondent writes: ‘There was a letter in the Western Morning News (03/12/2014) about Cornwall and the South West, mentioning Lonely Planet.
Looking further into this, here’s what I found:
Source Extract from WMN article dated 29th Oct 2014, and information from ‘Lonely Planet’, at the links indicated below:
29th October 2014
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/WMN-OPINION-Devon-Cornwall-proud-tourist-industry/story-24895756-detail/story.html
Lonely Planet included the region in its latest list of the top ten must-see locations and its travel experts rated the region’s rich moorland, rugged coastline and miles of sandy beaches as being on a par with heavyweight holiday spots Greece and Italy. We all know Devon and Cornwall are fabulous, it seems everyone else might be beginning to get the message too.
http://www.dreamsofcornwall.co.uk/blog/top-holiday-destinations-europe/
Coming third in their list of the best places to visit in Europe, the South West’s dramatic rural landscapes and breathtaking coastal scenery are among the reasons why the area is ranked higher than other European destinations such as Italy, Spain and France, placing Cornwall firmly on the map in the eyes of millions of travellers worldwide.
The Lonely Planet top 10 destinations in Europe for 2014 are
1. Greece
2. Ljubljana, Slovenia
3. Southwest England, UK
4. Italy
5. Viking Denmark
6. Seville, Spain
7. Outer Hebrides, Scotland
8. Plzeň, Czech Republic
9. Stavanger, Norway
10. Toulouse, France
Sneak preview of ‘East Devon’s Literature and Landscape’, & Book Launch event
SEE INSIDE pages at http://www.mtapublications.co.uk/dev.html
The date for your diary is Friday 12th December: Details here: Lit and Land Sid event
Who owns what?
“Build on those sites that have already felt the hand of man”
Martin Hesp, writing in the Western Morning News yesterday, gives a clear case for choosing brownfield sites. See http://www.facebook.com/eastdevonalliance
Another loophole to avoid “Section 106” payments
S 106 payments are payable by developers to offset the disadvantages of their developments. They pay for such things as play areas or new facilities for residents. Developers do not like them (though they like Community Infrastructure Levy even less as it is a fixed cost per square metre and harder to get out of, especially when they are trumpeting the size of their luxury houses).
But, fear not developers, one of your number has worked out how to avoid shelling out on some S 106 payments:
Might a betting company open the odds on which East Devon developer will be first to take advantage of this newly-created loophole? So many to choose from!
Developers offering farmers “no win, no fee” for planning applications
….. “Gladman Developments, which has a turnover of £200million a year, targets councils that cannot demonstrate a five-year housing supply.
It offers to pay all the costs of obtaining planning permission – including the fees for lawyers and experts in the event of any appeal – which can exceed £300,000.
If the attempt to win permission is unsuccessful, the farmer does not have to pay anything. The firm recently took out adverts in the farming press calling for sites of up to 50 acres on the edge of a towns or villages. Its adverts boast: ‘We aim to never lose and have won 90 per cent of our housing planning applications.
‘You pay nothing, win or lose. We only get our percentage after you have sold your land to the highest bidding housebuilder.’
The firm has an astonishing success rate, having secured planning permission for rural sites in 41 out of its last 43 cases, despite substantial local opposition. …
Leading academic says planning system letting the countryside down and may be being made ready for sell-off
” … Planning departments across the peninsula have been cut by up to half, and Prof Balch said the axe was likely to fall again. One planning officer told him she had a caseload of 91 applications, which had to be determined within eight weeks – more than two a day.
“How can you visit the site, prepare paperwork and do all the consultation?
“The changes may not be bad in principle, but you will see unintended consequences. You are probably going to see more legal challenges from a system which is running on three-quarters empty.”
Who are we doing planning for? Is it for the landowner and applicant, or is it for the community and society?”
Prof Balch said that there was some suspicion that the government was “teeing up” the planning system to be outsourced.
Prof Balch warned that decisions were likely to become more inconsistent because the government had introduced more ambiguity into the system.
“In Teignbridge virtually all the barn conversions go through on prior approval. In Wiltshire they have hardly approved any,” he said. …”
Read more: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Countryside-risk-planning-control-ditched-8216/story-24609710-detail/story.html#ixzz3JuPHdRgG
Follow us: @WMNNews on Twitter | westernmorningnews on Facebook
Reading between the lines: “Habitat Regulation Delivery Officer”
Anyone else think that this job description (EDDC Habitat Regulation Delivery Officer) may be the exact opposite of what it purports to be and may be, in fact, a way of helping developers to build even more houses in environmentally sensitive locations in East Devon – such as AONBs?
“Strategic in your thinking, you will be confident setting the direction – and budget – of various programmes to protect wildlife. Persuasive and credible, you are an exceptional communicator with good networking, negotiation and communication skills, and you are capable in sharing information with a wide variety of stakeholders.”
A tongue in cheek translation:
“Strategic in your thinking” – doing as you are told
“Confident in setting the direction and budget” – doing as you are told on the cheap
“Persuasive, credible, exceptional communicator” – doing as you are told whilst persuading others of the opposite
“A wide variety of stakeholders” – doing as you are told whilst keeping developers happy but also persuading the voters you are on their side!
Dying supermarkets: a plague on the landscape
Big supermarkets may be dying but they leave a plague on the landscape.
Sir Simon Jenkins has written another interesting, though controversial, article in The Guardian on planning. This time on the death of the supermarket, how the High Street may evolve in the face of on-line shopping and what role the planners should play.
Here are the highlights:
“Big supermarkets are dying. ….. Some may become warehouses for online distribution centres. Most will languish as cheap stores and homelessness shelters, like the high streets they ruined. Some will be replaced by bleak, ill-sited housing estates, part of the scarred, blotched landscape that is the coalition’s most visible legacy to the British environment.”
“Planning was certainly too rigid, but non-planning is far worse. The leads and lags of a free market in land impose huge “external costs” on the community. It was clearly wrong to allow an oversupply of out-of-town sites for competitive retailing, with no thought given to the impact on city centres or on local communities in general. The anti-green waste of energy, building material and infrastructure was never considered. The gods of the market triumphed.”
“There is no mystery here. If you want to kill a town centre, offer out-of-town sites to Tesco and Sainsbury’s – and build roads to help them. Thatcher, Blair and Cameron did just this. Shoppers had “market choice” for a year or two, then saw their towns “hollow out” and collapse. ……..This is not a free market, it is a stupid market.”
“Land is Britain’s most precious resource. The point of planning is to economise its usefulness. At present, smart planning ought to be thinking ahead of the boom in online shopping. What mistakes might there be in pandering to its gargantuan appetites? What are the implications of every street jammed with home delivery lorries? What of every suburb blighted with distribution centres, supplied by giant hangars littering every motorway?”
“Markets go in cycles.
The job of planning is to even them out, not to exaggerate boom and bust. The out-of-town supermarket era has been brief, barely a quarter century old, but it has done as much damage to the countryside as it has to Britain’s urban cohesion. Its inflexible floor plates and characterless exteriors make even the ghosts of the industrial revolution look picturesque. They will blight the landscape for decades.”
“I am sure many big supermarkets will survive. The convenience ones in town are booming. The Institute of Grocery Distribution predicts they will grow by a third in the next five years. The law of futurology applies to them as to all once-doomed relics of the past, such as books, newspapers, the church, live theatre and jazz. Booms burn out, but every fashion finds its level and something of it survives.”
“I believe town and village centres will find a new role in the post-digital economy of “live experience”. Convenience itself has a value. High streets supply such personal services as coffee bars, beauty salons, tattoo parlours and gyms. After them will come market stalls, foodie counters, pop-up shops and junk vendors, the live activities of the new “smart city”.”
“The high street has no right to eternity but it can supply the framework in which a “small society” flourishes, far below the metropolitan scanner of the coalition’s big society. The high street should embody the ideal of a regulated free market. They tried to kill it, but what a mess we have made of bringing it back.”
Full article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/20/big-supermarkets-dying-plague-landscape-retail
Affordable housing changes will be “catastrophic for the countryside” and “people don’t like living next to social tenants”
“Nick Chase from ACRE said: “This change would have a catastrophic effect on the numbers of affordable houses coming forward for local communities.
“It also flies in the face of allowing local communities to take responsibility for the numbers and types of houses that they want.” The organisation wants villages with a population of less than 3000 to be exempt.”
For the first time the heads of all ten National Parks in England have come together to personally sign a letter to the government. It says the measure “puts at risk” their affordable housing supply.
Ghost towns and villages
They believe that in rural areas, the open market is already failing to provide enough homes that people on average salaries can buy or rent.
According to Chief Executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, leaving housing purely to the open market will lead to “ghost towns and villages“.
A developer went on to say:
” …many people didn’t want to buy or rent a house next to a social tenant. To get permission to build eight homes on a site, his company recently had to make one an affordable home. “There’s an issue of saleability. Sales on either side of the social house were at a reduced price because of the stigma attached,” he explained.
Exmouth: yet another questionable “consultation”
It seems the word “consultation” has a different meaning in East Devon compared to other areas.
Yesterday, 18th November 2014, a ‘public consultation’ about a proposal to build 150 houses in land off Marley Road, took place in Brixington Community Church Exmouth.
We are told that anyone going there expecting to learn much about the proposals was likely to have been disappointed. The exhibition consisted of around six display boards and there were a number of representatves of Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners Ltd who had laid on the event.
Their event did not get off to a good start when it was learned that
an oak (?) tree situated at what is to be the site entrance had been felled very recently. None of the representatives present could offer any explanation, or say who was responsible. Local comment was to the effect that the tree, with a diameter of around seven feet, was in a healthy condition prior to felling. Many present felt that this showed contempt for local opinion and the local ecology.
Many residents raised the issue of flooding,and drainage. This is already a problem resulting in run off coming down from the area and across Dinan Way at times. We were told that this would be dealt with by the use of attenuation tanks, devices that collect water and then release it gradually. The suggestion was that EDDC would ensure that no flooding or drainage problems were generated. Comment was made that the same promises were made to the residents of Feniton but have proved pretty worthless.
It transpires that this site, and an adjacent one to the north, were put forward to EDDC a couple of years ago as land to be included in the Local Plan for housing. Neither made it to any form of the provisional local plan.
Many will be aware that because EDDC have failed so miserably to produce a local plan that the Inspector will approve, that this has left a gap in planning practice which has, and continues to be exploited by developers. Many at the exhibition were left in no doubt that this proposal sought to exploit the mess that local planning is in. It was suggested that one of the exhibition team admitted as much.
That another plot, north of the one subject to this plan, was seen as having development potential, leads one to suspect that if this is approved a further one may follow. This would mean that The Eagle development for 350 houses at Goodmore Farm might be followed by another 150 here, and then an unknown number above.
In answer to a question about the likely price of ‘affordable houses’, the agents could not give an answer.
The exhibition provided no information to take away and digest. The consultants have provided no website though comments can be submitted to marleyroad@nlpplanning.com
More development between Exeter and Cranbrook – when will it stop?
More development planned in the EDDC district:
The plans for 900 homes on fields north of Tithebarn Lane and west of Mosshayne Lane, have been submitted by land owners Mr and Mrs Gent and developers, Eagle One Homes Ltd.
The plans also include a primary school.
Building is already under way on a 450-home development, including shops, a primary school and a 250-space park-and-ride on fields at Old Park Farm, Pinn Hill, submitted by AE Stuart & Sons.
And in April, permission was granted for a 350-house development for phase two of Old Park Farm at Pinn Hill, submitted by AE Stuart & Sons.
Another 430-house development, including retail space of up to 240sqm and a 60-bed care home at Pinn Court Farm, Pinncourt Lane, submitted by Millwood Homes Devon Ltd, was also approved at the same meeting.
At the time, residents and councillors voiced concerns that the two developments were considered a few days before a Government inspector made his ruling on the Local Plan public.
But a spokesperson for the council previously explained that it “made sense” for the applications to be heard together.
He said that whereas before, the “limiting factor” on the sites has been the surrounding highway infrastructure, the applications have “overcome” that restraint and proposed alterations to the Pinhoe roundabouts “have freed up greater capacity on the highway network to accommodate additional dwellings”.
At the meeting Liberal Democrat East Devon district ward member for Broadclyst Councillor Derek Button said: “This land is the lungs of Exeter and should never be built on.”
“Country Life” magazine wades into the “sustainable” development in the countryside argument
“Growth” in “non-metropolitan areas”
aka “Development in rural areas”
Needless to say, the Local Government Asdociation has its own view of localism and devolution:
http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/6193395/How+the+Other+Half+Grows+(lo+res).pdf/b1556a61-b8c5-4676-8df7-e3ee3090eaef
‘Staying and improving’ : a Devon University shows the way of the future.
Could local authorities, such as EDDC, be inspired by what’s happening in Plymouth? See http://carbonvisuals.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f82d84d0259421d9d576de417&id=d97d6c0aca&e=a4b189be18
Areas without a landscape designation can escape development on landscape grounds
Interesting ruling in a planning case in Crewkerne just announced which could have implications for sites in East Devon. South Somerset (as one might expect) did not have a local plan or a 5 year land supply. The council dragged its heels about a decision so the planning application went straight to a Planning Inspector for decision. Had the council pulled its fingers out, one of the objections to the site would have been the impact on the landscape character and accessibility of the site. The planning application was for a site that had been considered for inclusion in the (draft) local plan but which had been rejected.
The site does not have a specific landscape designation but the Inspector states:
“The appeal site and the surrounding countryside have no established landscape designation. Nevertheless, that does not mean that the area is not a valued landscape which the Framework advocates should be protected and enhanced. It is a highly attractive undulating landscape in which the relatively small fields, said by the Council to be pre-17th century ancient enclosures, are largely defined by well established hedgerows a and intermittent mature trees. The site acts as an intimate scale buffer between the town’s built edge and the larger agricultural rolling fields of the surrounding landscape. The area has intrinsic character and beauty, which the Framework, in one of its core planning principles, advocates should be recognised. … there are some parts of the appeal site which have more moderate landscape sensitivity. …
…In conclusion, I am not persuaded by the appellant’s contention that the design of the proposed residential scheme fully respects the form, character and setting of the locality. The development would have a significant and adverse impact on the character and quality of the local landscape particularly when viewed from nearby publicly accessible vantage points, …
The Inspector goes on to say that lack of suitable public transport to the site is an issue and that he finds the associated travel plan weak. He also mentions that the developer says that the Local Plan underestimates how many new houses will be needed. However, the Inspector is not persuaded by this argument as the developer cannot say exactly how many houses ARE needed. He is also similarly not persuaded by the developers when they cite their “experience” and “opinion”.
He goes on to say:
“Boosting significantly the supply of housing will inevitably require housing to be built on some greenfield sites which will result in changes to local environments. Nevertheless, the substantial and specific harm to the natural environment that would arise from this development, and the shortcomings of the location in terms of its accessibility and sustainability would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the a acknowledged benefits of the proposal. Therefore, I conclude that the appeal must fail.
The full decision notice is here
Unitary authorities will come, Lord Heseltine tells CPRE Devon
EDA now regularly attends the excellent meetings organised by the Devon branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.This of course gives us the opportunity to see East Devon issues in the context of the whole county, and beyond.
The guest speaker at last Friday’s CPRE Devon meeting was Lord Michael Heseltine, who made it very clear that whatever national or local government decides, the people will say, “They don’t listen to us”! As a Cabinet Minister, he had, naturally, ploughed carefully through thousands of representations from objectors to controversial schemes!!
His legacy as a former Environment Minister has of course changed the landscape. Amongst other things, he introduced Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs); established English Heritage; and did much work on urban-fringe renewal (especially around Liverpool).
When questioned on broader political issues, he told last Friday’s audience that he is convinced that leaving the European Union would slow the British economy. And although his own report on reforming local government had not been immediately adopted, he is sure that unitary authorities will come.
We’ll see what happens in Devon, before very long…..
Footnote: Some very useful maps are on http://cpredevon.org.uk/
East Devon Watch 