Biodiversity net gain – are we ready?

Mandatory biodiversity net gain under the Environment Act is just round the corner with Government confirming at the end of September that all the regulations and guidance setting out the details of legal requirements will be out in November and BNG will start for major applications in January 2024, swiftly followed by small sites in April 2024 and NSIPs by November 2025.

PAS started its biodiversity net gain (BNG) project in March 2021 with the aim of helping local planning authorities (LPAs) to be ‘Day 1 ready’ for BNG when it became mandatory. So, two and half years on: Where are we?, How’s it going? and Are we ‘ready’?

What does ‘ready’ mean?

ready

/ˈrɛdi/

adjective

1. in a suitable state for an action or situation; fully prepared.

I ponder this question a lot and am often asked for my thoughts on LPA readiness for BNG. In the context of our project plan agreed with our Defra-led steering group, we said that we’d evaluate the project based on a target of 80% of a sample of LPAs being aware and agreeing that our resources help them do their jobs. We feel we’ve met this brief with 99% of local planning authorities in England having engaged in the project in some way (by coming to an event and/or joining our LPA officer network) and more than 90% of attendees of our events saying they were somewhat or very helpful in polls, plus lots of informal positive feedback coming our way.

We also know that more local authorities are working on BNG over time – at an event we hosted in October 2022, 76% of attendees said that their authority had started working on BNG, this was up to 83% at a similar event in April 2023 and I’m sure would be even higher now. Our practitioner network for local authority officers has grown from around 100 members a year ago to over 600 now.

Is anyone ready?

We are definitely more ready in the sense that we know a lot more about how mandatory BNG is going to work now than we did two and a half years ago. Aside from the Environment Act 2021 receiving Royal Assent in November 2021, we have had a BNG consultation and a response to that consultation from Government, plus Defra BNG guidance and blogs published. Then, at the end of September, the press release that set out a timetable for the implementation of mandatory BNG. Alongside all this information, our knowledge and understanding has grown as LPAs start implementing BNG and testing how the system will work, shown by the depth and number of FAQs we now have answers to and discussions on our practitioners’ network forum.

Local authorities are not alone in being more ready than they were, but maybe not totally ready yet. Developers need to understand the detail of legal requirements before they can have planning applications ready to submit and we will all have only two months to work this out for major applications, and luckily a few more months until April 2024 for small sites. PAS has been working closely with the Future Homes Hub to understand BNG readiness across the board and feed into Government’s plans.

A key thing to bear in mind is the shared positivity across the public and private sector around BNG as a mechanism to improve nature and people’s lives, the keenness to find solutions and recognition of the excellent opportunity BNG gives us to improve the status quo. We need to focus on this as we delve into the detail to stop us getting too bogged down in what might becoming frustrating about the process and the ‘don’t know’s.

Does this mean LPAs are or aren’t ready?

Local planning authorities are not a homogenous bunch and vary considerably in how they work, including in their preparations for BNG, so we can’t say that LPAs are ready or not as a cohort. How about we identify which councils aren’t ready for BNG? Well, that’s tricky too. We can’t base it on who’s engaged with our project, as I know at least two of the LPAs that haven’t engaged have been implementing BNG through Local Plan policies for a couple of years. We also can’t decide readiness according to whether the local authority has a BNG policy in their Local Plan, as that very much depends on the council’s local plan review cycle and where they are with that. Some LPAs are already implementing BNG based on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) requirement for development to ‘secure measurable net gains for biodiversity’ where appropriate and may have developer advice notes setting out their expectations to meet this, but no Local Plan policy. We have shared examples of these on our webpages.

A recent RTPI survey highlighted issues with preparation for BNG amongst local authority planners and a lack of confidence in practical requirements of BNG, but this wasn’t the case across the board for all those that responded. And it’s important to think about the difference between whether an individual planner is ‘ready’ and whether their local authority as a whole is ‘ready’. We have a hugely informed set of folk making up our LPA BNG practitioner network, ranging from planners to BNG officers to lawyers, with variation in understanding and knowledge of BNG shared across those groups.

Ready for mandatory BNG?

And what does ‘ready’ really mean? In the end, being ‘ready’ probably means prepared for when BNG becomes mandatory. For local authorities, they will have to be able to receive and determine planning applications with BNG, i.e. assessing whether they meet the mandatory BNG requirements, and ready to assess and approve BNG Plans prior to development commencement. Even the most advanced local authority probably wouldn’t say they are yet at that stage, as we look forward to the publication of the secondary legislation and associated guidance that will set out the detail in November, and will enable final preparations to be made in planning departments for applications arriving from January 2024.

Expectations of ‘readiness’ also differ across different audiences and some of the feedback from developers and others around a lack of local authority readiness may stem from higher expectations of what they should be doing beyond the legal requirements, for example, engaging in the off-site BNG market, providing mechanisms (S106) to secure habitat bank sites, etc. Many local authorities are doing some excellent work in this space, including Buckinghamshire Council, Plymouth City Council and Greater Manchester Combined Authority, but many others are not yet engaged in this level of detail or have decided not to take on this role. 

How ‘ready’ is ‘ready’?

The PAS BNG readiness checklist, based on existing experience amongst local authorities, pulls out what we think LPAs need to do to meet the mandatory requirements, but also identifies activities beyond those that will enable BNG to be a success locally. These include establishing a strategic approach to BNG locally and setting up monitoring, enforcement and reporting arrangements. A LPA’s role in the latter is nicely covered by this article for the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), which highlights the key solutions to LPA readiness – working together, innovating and sharing best practice – across the public and private sector.

PAS has a range of good practice Local Plan policies and SPDs, as well as S106 and planning conditions for BNG on our webpages that have been shared with us by local authorities. For example, Doncaster BNG Supplementary Planning Document sets out further information for applicants on applying the relevant local plan policy on BNG. GMCA Biodiversity Net Gain Guidance for Greater Manchester has been prepared to enable developers and potential offset providers to run biodiversity assessments in a consistent way across Greater Manchester. The document also enables the consistent verification of biodiversity assessments by local planning authorities. Buckinghamshire Council Strategic Significance and Spatial Risk Guidance sets out how the council will assess these two elements of the Biodiversity Metric to help support local nature recovery before the LNRS is in place. We have also shared case studies of early preparation for mandatory BNG by Cornwall Council, Bath and Northeast Somerset Council, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and the London Borough of Sutton.

For me, readiness is not a binary state, but signals readiness to start the journey and some of that will only come through skills and experience gained as we test out BNG in practice. So, as I blogged over two years ago (!) BNG won’t be perfect to start with, but we can give it a go and get better (and more ‘ready’) as we go. In the meantime, the key areas I would focus on if I was a local authority officer would be:

• Getting familiar with what we know already about how BNG works – look at the PAS BNG webpages and past events, including on the Biodiversity Metric, and join our practitioner network to help you get started.
• Reviewing how the Local Plan – vision, policies – and any SPDs fit with BNG, including how existing policy compares to the legislative BNG requirements, to be clear on what are policy requirements and what are legal requirements.
• Determining what skills and specialist resource, including ecology, the council is likely to need and how to procure it to make sure you can cover when specialist advice is needed on planning applications. See the PAS BNG resourcing guide for some ideas.
• Getting some dates in the diary in December/early January, once the BNG regulations and guidance are published, to train development management planners, validation officers and Planning Committee members on the detail of what they need to do. See our BNG essentials slide-pack as a starter for ten on this.
• Understanding and planning for how the council will update its local validation requirements to encompass BNG.
• Integrating BNG into the LPA’s internal consultation triage process, i.e. when planners consult ecologists and other specialists, and considering whether to put in place any other procedures to help manage specialist input, like BNG casework meetings or having a BNG specialist planner identified.

In the end, we just need to give it a go, be as prepared as we can be, use all the support and guidance out there and work together to make it work as well as we possibly can, learning as we go along. Despite all of the angst about how ready everyone is, one thing is absolutely clear which is that the purpose of BNG – planning to deliver a better outcome for nature – is 100% supported by planners and their stakeholders.

Working in local government – let’s reinvigorate the USP

The recent Local Government Workforce Survey published in January 2023 highlighted some of the recruitment issues being faced by local government. The study found more than half (58 per cent) of all county, district and unitary councils said they were experiencing difficulties recruiting planning officers. The hardest to recruit roles aren’t usually the graduate or junior planner spots, it’s the senior/principal/team leader type roles which makes up the biggest resource gap in local government.

The difficulty in recruiting experienced planners is certainly something that crops up in most conversations I have with councils; and it not just recruitment, it’s the ability to keep experienced staff from leaving local government too.

There are no quick fixes and getting new people into planning or keeping those already in it will require a collective effort from the industry.

How can more people be attracted to public service, planning particularly? If local government wants to draw people into Planning, there is a need to think about what are the drivers and motivations people have for leaving and what are the unique selling points (USPs) that can attract people back to local government, or into it for the first time.

So, I decided to find out. It all started with a relatively innocuous LinkedIn post saying I was interested in speaking to anyone who had left a local planning authority in the last two years to go into an agency, consultancy or private sector work. What were the drivers and motivations for leaving? And had the grass really been greener? I certainly wasn’t expecting the level of response I got! Within two hours, I had over thirty direct messages and forty comments from people wanting to explain why they had left local government. I’d initially thought I’d speak to only one or two people, but given the level of interest, I decided to get more scientific about it.

I then set off on a round of quantitative and qualitative research interviews with thirty planners and place-making professionals. There was a mix of those who had left for the private sector (developers/consultancies/housebuilders) and those who had taken up agency or interim work within the public sector. There was a reasonable mix of levels of seniority too. Not a very big sample size by academic standards I know, but it gave me some insights into reasons and potential solutions.

As someone passionate about local government, some of the conversations were hard to hear; however, all but two ended on a hopeful, even optimistic note that all we need to do is reinvigorate the local government USP to coax people back. 100% of respondents who had gone into the private sector stated they would return to local government in the future, if the reasons for leaving were redressed.

So why had people left? And how can local government reinvent its USP?

The first thing people I spoke to mentioned was salary difference; unsurprising really as a rule of thumb, private sector salaries are higher than local government. The recent Interim State of the Profession 2023 RTPI survey supports this and found that 68% of local authority planners saw competitive salaries as a key challenge for local authorities keeping staff. 13% of the people I spoke to had moved to a lower-level position without taking a cut in pay, less responsibility and workload for the same money. Heartbreakingly 6% of respondents said they had pleaded with managers to stay at their council if they could come close to matching the salary difference, around 5K per annum more.

The research also involved speaking to recruiters of agency staff for local government positions. They reported that salaries in the private sector and with hourly rates for agency roles hitting £65-£70 an hour. Increased pay motivates people to get on their books.

Let’s be practical local government is unlikely to match private sector pay, and the local government USP can only be partially monetary based. My research found that the increase in income from leaving local government was between £20-£35K, and for some, that meant a 25% pay increase. Figures, I’ll agree, would be hard to say no to.

The gulf between public and private pay scales is too wide; although increasing public sector wages would help narrow that gulf. There are things in the toolbox being used but not widespread. Local Government Workforce Survey shows that over 20% of councils found market supplements an effective tool for tackling retention. Still, it’s only used by 10% of respondents surveyed.

The second biggest (89%) reason given was a lack of career progression from mid roles such as ‘senior planner, principal, deputy team leader’ into the next step of more managerial & leadership roles. The phrase  ‘dead man’s shoes’ was a reoccurring joke within the interviews. Yet councils are good at career progression; the Local Government Workforce Survey found about half (49 per cent) of counties, districts and unitaries have career framework/grade systems for planning jobs. However, this data isn’t broken down by type of role but I bet it’s for graduates going up to planner roles rather than for more senior roles. Most planning teams have a triangular organisation structure with fewer opportunities to climb the tree upwards. One respondent stated, “Local authorities are bad at showing what the more senior career choices are”. If local government Planning is going to revamp the USP, we need to get creative around senior career progression.

We need to think about

• The potential for other organisational structures, expanding routes to senior roles and non-managerial career routes,
• More, and at a higher frequency, legacy & succession Planning for leadership roles,
• Expanding career graded roles to higher roles, an approach being taken by Lake District National Park Planning Team already,
• More opportunities for shadowing and mentoring by managers and senior leaders,
•  Opportunities for loaning people between councils to gain senior role experience,
• Genuine career development at all stages and seniority of roles,
• Expand the practice of shared job descriptions to move people sideways and upwards, keeping the talent inside.

Local government USP has been eroded; it used to be seen as the best work/life balance on offer with the benefits and flexible working, particularly attractive to parents for part-time opportunities and parental leave benefits. The pandemic has led to widespread homeworking and surprise; surprise productivity wasn’t affected. The myth that all homeworkers are slackers has been well and truly busted. The private sector has upped its game, and the gulf between those benefits has narrowed; however, local government still has the edge, which should be capitalised on. Councils have also been behind the curve in encouraging people back to workplaces, with some no longer having an office to work from. One respondent, who was in that situation, said: “Working at home all the time, it becomes a lonely place.”

The flexibility and work/life balance in the private sector was a mixed bag for those interviewed. Over 70% reported having less flexibility in choosing the frequency of going into the office than in their previous local government role. Many said they had core hours and there was the expectation that some events outside of working hours would be mandatory. Some respondents stated they had very flexible working arrangements; one person said, ‘I’m treated like an adult, as long as the work is done, and deadline met, I can do it at whatever time I want’. So a mixed bag and perhaps dependant on how flexible the employer is. Of those interviewed who had gone into an agency or interim work, a significant proportion, 75%, were doing work for local authorities and reported very little difference in the flexibility offered. Based on the limited dialogue I’ve had; local government still has the edge in providing work/life balance and flexible opportunities. Still, it’s been watered down, and we need to reset the dial. The Local Government Workforce Survey found that just over a quarter (27 per cent) of councils considered flexible working the most effective recruitment and retention tool. We need to get that up to 100%

Work/life balance will need to be part of the answer if we are to attract new talent into local government too. Recent involvement in the Pathways to Planning graduate programme has made me realise that flexible working is one of the first things graduates seek in their first planning job. So if ultimate work/life balance is the answer to reinvigorate the local government USP, how do we go about it?

Well, we could take a leaf out of  South Cambridgeshire District Council and Swale Borough Council, who have moved to a four-day week, and Swale has also introduced some additional annual leave days at Christmas time. When Swale asked its employees about the measures, it highlighted support for improving work-life balance, better productivity and being a more modern organisation.

Ultimate flexibility does need to be tempered with the fact only some people like to work at home as much as they like. My personal opinion is that Planning requires a degree of team discussion and learning-by-doing with more senior officers. So how do you balance being flexible and retaining the team’s camaraderie? It is about finding a balance and being clear about what that is. Recent job adverts (including a recent one for Sevenoaks District Council) were clear about how often attendance at the office is expected.

Establishing the balance of ‘being all together’ and WFH is critical to returning one of the most fundamental USPs of working in local government (in my humble opinion). In the words of Sister Sledge, ‘We are family; I got all my planners with me’. Working at a council really is like being part of a family and making connections for life. I still have contact with many people I’ve worked with over the years, and I’ve heard many a planner tell me they met their spouse at a council. Of the recent leavers I questioned, 93% said they missed the family feel that local government working gives, which made leaving such a hard decision. One respondent said, “It’s a sense of pride for the borough; the team was fiercely loyal to the borough and communities in a way that the private sector won’t understand”. Another stated, “Private work is not the same culturally; the family feel of a council is so unique”.

Getting the right balance of working flexibly will need to go hand in hand with a reinvigoration of the ‘nurturing’ element of getting the family vibe back. Of those who have left local government to go into agency/interim, 100% reported that their learning & development opportunities were significantly reduced in their new roles but also that a decline in personal development support had been a reason for leaving.

Respondents who left local government for the agency said – “I’ve had to make my own CPD, and that takes my own money and time”, and “I get no support for growing my skills.”

Over half of the respondents who had left for the private sector also mentioned a lack of learning and development had been behind their departure. On numerous engagements with planning officers, I’ve heard tales of budget cuts, no paid-for events or travel funding, and no time off for networking opportunities. One respondent said, “There were only two people in the team who were RTPI as they were the only two willing to pay their own subs every year.”

A vital element of the family vibe is the camaraderie and supportive environment local government gives an individual. Getting that back isn’t as simple as making everyone get back to the office full-time; things have changed, and working practices are better – plus, if local government is to boost its flexible working USP, then it should be heading that way. The nurturing needs to happen in the current working practices context, The nurturing won’t happen by osmosis anymore, and we need to get more structured about it. I can almost hear the naysayers now ‘I haven’t got time to do all this’ and ‘This is all well and good, but..’. My point is we need to make time to nurture people by

• Programming in more formal communication and setting diary appointments,
• Lining up mentors or shadowing opportunities,
• Recognising the importance of training and more informal CPD by allowing people to engage with others and learn via networking.

Getting the family vibe USP of working in local government is going to be key if we want to attract people into the sector. Growing your own in local government works but it requires dedication on behalf of the council to provide that nurturing environment that local government is famous for.

One thing I was surprised to unearth through my micro research project was the shift in risk appetite. I’m well aware that the job for life days are long gone, but working at a local authority was, until recently, viewed as a secure job environment. Local government positions are typically permanent and offer job security, and that isn’t necessarily seen, at least at the moment, as being the significant benefit, it once did. Respondents agreed with the statement, “The pandemic has made people have a higher risk appetite”. The recruiters involved in the research agreed that risk appetite for less secure positions is something they see anecdotally too.

70% of respondents said that before the pandemic, they were not considering a move to the private sector or agency, but as one respondent said,’ I thought if not now then when, what have I got to lose’. The risk appetite has increased, but perhaps it is due to the security provided, not from a permanent local government job but from the knowledge there’s a lot of work out there for those seeking it. 86% of agency & interim respondents stated they felt secure that there was available work from local councils to negate the loss of a permanent contract, a quote ‘ I’m never out of work’.  

But is the abundance of work available for agency & interim staff a symptom of there simply being too few planners in planning departments to do the workload, especially in development management caseloads. FYI – the highest I’ve come across this year was one officer who had 292 applications with their initials next to them.  After financial reasons the second highest (89%) motivator for leaving local government was the high workloads and linked to that ‘burn out’. There’s not much I can say about this, other than its gnarly out there and we all know it.

What is compounding the matter and leading to officers feeling harassed is the current working practises and how members of the public and councillors engage with officers. I heard terms like ‘bombardment’, ‘relentless’, ‘incessant’, ‘demanding’, and ‘harassment’. Has the next-day-delivery mindset embedded itself? One respondent commented, “People are moving for a break from the burnout”. For local government to reinvent its USP, we need to reset the expectations of all the stakeholders and the public on what Planning is and what it can and cannot achieve. This is a hard nut to crack, and a national rebranding of ‘Planning’ is needed? This blog isn’t going to be able to cover the multitude of issues causing the burnout and so it focussed instead on some practical things  councils could do and are doing. We need;

• Some clear comms on what Planning is. I enjoyed the recent example by Wandsworth and the South Warwickshire Development Plan Youtube channel.
• Reaffirming and maintaining trust between Councillors and officers. However, maintaining relationships and a structured approach to communication takes a lot of work.
• Setting clear expectations for the public around how to contact people and timescales for applications & enquiries

I recently lectured at Leeds Beckett University to a group of post-grad students. The students were enthusiastic and got stuck in to the workshop task I set of ‘If I could change the planning system, what would I do’. However, whilst they knew the council’s role in the planning system. Scarily they seemed unaware of the varied and exciting local government career options. Most were only considering private sector opportunities, apart from two students already at councils. All of us, including Planning schools, must do better in bringing practitioners’ voices into the classroom to estoile the virtues of local government careers.

So what are the USPs of working in local government that we need to provide for future planners and coax those who have left?

Family vibes – As mentioned, local government needs to find its family vibe again; that camaraderie and team support is still there we just need to make it happen a bit more structured and less organically than before. Even in desperate overworked times, we need to make the time for personal development and bringing back the nurturing of internal talent. Whilst the training budgets might not be available anytime soon, allowing people the time to undertake learning away from staring at a screen needs to make a comeback.

Variety – There is a considerable amount of variety in local government, and this isn’t shouted about enough. No days are ever the same. In development management, each case is different; there are different scales and types of stuff to get your teeth into. You can flip from being a transport planner to an urban designer to an environmental specialist, all within a single application. Plan making is immensely varied with the development of evidence base, strategies, and community engagement. You can flip in a single day from demographer to site assessor to facilitator and policy writer in an afternoon! Councils are really good at providing opportunities to get straight into the big and exciting stuff; there’s so much opportunity for learning and personal growth within local government. One respondent reflected, “It’s exciting working in a local authority; there are opportunities to be exposed to so much variety of work across the councils; it’s really interesting”. This is something that respondents in the research missed, “I’ve been put back into a box; just do the policies and nothing else”.

There are things only a local authority can do – It’s pretty unique in local government to have a private sector counterpart of the profession; however, the simple fact is that there are elements of the planning system and implementing a national policy that can only be done by councils. You can’t make a Local Plan unless you’re in a local authority, and it’s the only place with the agency to be the decision maker on development proposals.

For plan making, it’s the only place where the strategy gets developed, and that involves making some critical bits of evidence around the need and community demographics (I loved that) without any agenda; it’s all about finding solutions for community benefit and being the voice of the community within the council.

Working in local government is the only way to improve a scheme and champion the community’s needs. Respondents agreed, “It’s so exciting having the autonomy to be the decision maker at a council; now I’m private, there’s always the client’s angle to include.”

Talking to people – Councils are the first port of call to discuss an issue. Working in local government allows conversations and genuine engagement with residents and stakeholders; plus, it is the only forum in which that engagement can result in decisions being made. Councils are good at talking to their communities, but perhaps Planning departments lag behind their councils regarding reach, methods, and available engagement tools. Local government is the best place to do it if you want a meaningful discussion with communities.

Politics – If you have an interest in politics and democracy, then start working in local government. It is the only place you can interact and view democracy up close. Seeing how local elections & appointing members work, taking part in the cut and thrust of the Planning Committee, and seeing how members bring the communities perspective to the development of a local plan are all absolutely fascinating. 

Working in local government is so varied and fulfilling for hundreds of reasons, and this article won’t be able to capture them all. Getting the USP of working in local government will be vital to attracting people into the planning profession and luring those that left back into the family.

Collectively, councils and the industry need to sell that USP. Let’s get the local government mojo back.

Let’s get digital, digital – how the planning sector is taking baby steps towards a digitised dream destination

Let’s get digital, digital

I wanna get digital                                                                
Let’s get into digital
Let me hear your data talk, your data talk
Let me hear your data talk

Olivia Newton-John doing Lets get Physical but with my head on it!

It’s been a year of involvement in digital projects here at PAS and 2022 looks to be much more of the same with many of the more widely supported planning reform proposals for a digital revolution of the planning system having begun already. But what is actually meant by the word ‘Digitalisation’?? well to be frank it’s a non-word and is trying to capture various strands of change and innovation in the sector.  Some strands are related to modernising ways of working with increased transparency and some strands are about better use of data, new tools and automating processes. Within the wider planning world there is some criticism that the speed of change is coming too fast and that planners will all be replaced by AI robots. So, should we fear this digitisation steam-train coming down the track? Absolutely not, but we should be prepared to guide the digital agenda towards improvements in how we work for the better rather than change for the sake of change. Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of areas where improved data will be welcomed with open arms.

Before we take the initial step: right now, we do monitoring badly

The current state of affairs is we can even answer some basic questions such as ‘Do you decisions or policies work?’. Take, for example, the monitoring of housing; many planning teams still rely on counting net additions only once a year and using the yard stick of ‘is there a net curtain in the window’! For many other policies and decisions, we aren’t able to monitor the right indicators to know whether the plans we make are successful – we don’t even know what we don’t know. This is even more true for emerging issues, how on earth are we going to capture data on carbon impacts, water usage, health/wellbeing improvements????

Where is it all heading?: we need to keep our eyes on the destination

Everyone and by that, I mean everyone involved in the planning sector e.g. LPA officers, digital specialist, DLUHC need to start with the end goal of digitisation in mind. The journey to a digitised planning system is going to be a long one and there is a danger we will take our eyes off the end goal and simply look down at our feet, concentrating on the next step ahead and before we know it we have veered off the path & into the deep dark woods.

So, what is the end goal? what is the utopian dream of a digitised planning system? Well, if we look to other industries who have gone through their digital revolution such as retail, we start to get a few clues. For a start when tech is good it is invisible, you don’t even realise that AI and software platforms are involved everything just happens seamlessly and is integrated with other parts of your life, such as receiving a text that your order has been dispatched. Smart homes are another example of where the tools and technology are seamless at just making life easy.  Planning is definitely at the start of that journey towards an integrated and seamless utopia. We are starting to work on the small jigsaw puzzle pieces needed to make those initial first steps.

Over the last 18months I have had the privilege of having insight into a number of the digital projects and sprints being undertaken as part of exploring the possibilities for planning reform. Each of these bits of work have focussed on a particular part of the system or a process an LPA undertakes, for example some projects have looked at automating validation of planning applications, using A.I. to read and filter Local Plan reps, using GIS to create a fully geospatial local plan and creating data standards for how LPAs produce data on sites. What struct me during those projects was there is a clear need, while we create all these individual pieces of the jigsaw, to keep the one eye on that digitisation journey. Planning is not isolated from the rest of world and is not an abstract ‘thing’ in its own right – Planning is about the world so we need to make sure any progress we are making is all integrated. We must not lose sight of that.

While we’re on the road: don’t lose the planning magic

The more I learn about potential digital solutions or tech tools the more I realise these ‘bits of kit’ really are starting with the fundamentals of codes, formulas, data schemes, rules and shapes. But this isn’t where the ‘planning’ magic happens though! the most interesting bit of planning is the placemaking – that wibbly wobbly moulding of spaces and places that we actually got into the planning profession for. Data and rules-based assessment can help but there are some elements of place making and planning judgement that digitising the system will be unable to replace. The dream and the reality of what ‘digitisation’ of planning can achieve might be very different.

Each step should make life easier:  let’s not keep doing bad planning faster

So, with all these cautions, should we resist the coming tide of digitisation??? Well, I don’t think we can and, in any event, this is pushing at an open door. Most LPA planners I’ve spoken to in the last 18months say digitisation was the part of the ‘Planning for the Future’ proposals they were actually excited about. This is an area of planning reform which definitely has support across the public & private sector divide. Digitising the system will happen but only if makes the way we work easier, simpler and quite frankly more fun. When digital tools add burdens to workloads or don’t add tangible benefit, they tend not to be successful. A classic example is the brownfield register process, whilst it might be a shining example of collecting consistent information using set data standards in reality it hasn’t achieved its original aim of realising brownfield sites to the SME development market and many LPAs view it as yet another data collection they need to undertake with very little point. We need to ‘show the world’ through this journey to digitisation the extra value of placemaking and answer the question ‘what does the better use of data buy?’. The creation of tools to use, automating processes and creating digital versions of what once was a paper document is all well and good; but making things digital for sake of just being digital is not going to be good, it will just digital but bad.

Tools and tech to help processes such as assessing SHLAA sites or monitoring housing completions become easier and automated is great and I can see many time saving efficiencies. But tools are only as good as how we use them; let’s not keep doing bad planning but faster.

Who is up for the journey?: capacity building in planners

Whenever I hear industry commentators speak about the role digitisation in planning reform the issue of resources and skills in councils gets raised. There seems to be a lack of faith that a new digital way of working will be within the capacity of local authority planners. I respectfully disagree; there are plenty of amazing planners working in councils who have the digital/GIS skills and the ability to implement digitisation and would happily adopt new tools and tech into their work. The problem is they aren’t current given the headspace to innovate or the time to drive digital transformation. Digitisation simply isn’t in the core business of churning the apps and making a plan – the hamster wheel of a planning department! Most of the private sector involved in the digitisation of planning have extensive research and development programmes with new solutions being tried and tested, yet councils who have any time or resources for planning R&D are few and far between. This seems ridiculous as most of the solutions and innovations being created will have LPA planners are the ultimate primary user. Don’t get me wrong user research involving LPA planners is happening and is, of course, worthwhile. But what we gave LPAs themselves the creative headspace to come up with digital solutions that were actually tailored to the problems.

Over the next 5-10yrs the world, and how planning operates within that world, will be very different. A digitised planning system and using smarter data will have become a core part of how we make places. However, at this point in time, right now – LPAs are so busy doing the day job, it leaves the question where does the innovation come from?

Thanks to my friend Mary for the lovely photoshopped image of me as Olivia Newton-John having listened to me go on about digitisation all year @maryindevon (Mary Elkington – Figura Planning)

Biodiversity net gain – looking for perfection in an imperfect world?

I thought I’d write a blog to celebrate the 18th anniversary of when I started working in planning for the natural environment with English Nature in Kent. Looking back on my career, I feel we’re in a more positive place than we have ever been in terms of environmental planning, but we are also much more aware of the huge challenges we face – Monday’s IPCC report and its ‘code red for humanity’ bringing these into sharp focus. My feeling is we’ll only deal with these challenges if we take action now and learn as we go, not expecting any solution to be perfect, but taking small steps to move us forward all the time.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been running workshops for local authority officers and Councillors to inform our PAS project helping LPAs get ready for mandatory biodiversity net gain. These have generated a huge amount of useful information and input both for our project, but also to pass on to Defra and Natural England as they develop details of how the scheme will work. 

There is a lot of positivity out there about this new initiative, but also significant concern about how it’s going to work. How can overwhelmed planning departments with no ecological expertise make decisions on whether an application is compliant? How do we avoid developers gaming the system? How do we make sure this actually delivers gains? Won’t biodiversity net gain make schemes unviable?

In the meantime, there have been some articles in the press criticising biodiversity net gain, seeing it as a spreadsheet exercise or numbers game and implying that it will lead to more habitat loss and environmental destruction, plus that it is incompatible with ‘re-wilding’.

At the moment, we don’t have all the details of how mandatory biodiversity net gain will work, as the Environment Bill provisions will be accompanied by secondary legislation and guidance. However, we do know that a number of key safeguards mean it should be a significant improvement on what happens now. An important point is that biodiversity net gain does not replace any of the existing protections for sites, habitats and species in place now, nor does it replace the ‘mitigation hierarchy’ of avoid impacts first, then mitigate them and only compensate as a last resort. We also know that net gain provisions will not apply to certain irreplaceable habitats (as yet to be confirmed, but undoubtedly to include ancient woodland) and that councils will receive ‘new burdens’ funding to implement the new requirements.

Undeniably there are issues with biodiversity net gain and it won’t (and doesn’t yet) work perfectly, but we need to compare it to the currently very imperfect system where the majority of unprotected habitats (outside designated sites, like SSSIs) are lost through development and not replaced in any way, even to achieve no net loss. 

The Biodiversity Metric provides a way of calculating habitat losses and gains to enable us to try and achieve a net gain. Yes, it’s not perfect and it does simplify things, but the new Biodiversity Metric 3.0 is a huge improvement on the previous 2.0 version (despite recent media reports, which almost exclusively related to issues with the old v.2.0). 

We need a system that is workable and given the complexities of nature and ecosystems, that will always have to simplify and cannot possibly take everything into account. Also, the metric is not the be-all-and-end-all, the system around it really matters. We need strategic planning for nature and the right resources and expertise to make good policy and decisions (on biodiversity net gain, but also existing nature-related planning provisions). This Natural England blog and Tony Juniper’s introduction to the metric on YouTube (about 4 mins in) explain this eloquently. 

Thinking back to 2003 when even trying to protect an internationally designated site for nature was a battle, I no longer feel like I’m waving from the sidelines. Biodiversity net gain, along with a number of other tools and initiatives, offer us a huge opportunity to address the crises we face and create better places for people and nature. 

Yes, we need to be aware of the issues with new approaches and try to resolve them, but we also need to start giving this a go and try it out – in the end biodiversity net gain is going to be mandatory in a couple of years’ time and we’ll have no choice but to get on and do it. That way, we’ll also be able to test and improve as we go (as has happened with the metric). 

I don’t think we’ll ever have a perfect solution – nature doesn’t follow rules – but BNG is a lot better than what we have now, where the majority of development leads to outright biodiversity loss, not even no net loss. So that’s what I plan to do with this project – help LPAs get started and give biodiversity net gain a go, sharing existing good practice and showing how it can work and move us another (quite big) step forward.

Infrastructure Delivery Plans: What if they actually delivered?

Last week I tuned in to the RTPI’s #Plantalk session with Sara Dilmamode, Director of Citiesmode, on infrastructure delivery plans. In the title of her presentation Sara raised a fundamental question that I think on reflection will resonate with many, that is “Infrastructure delivery plans: What if they actually delivered?”.

Sara and I have worked together recently on the development of the PAS advice note “Start with the spend in mind”. This is aimed at helping local authority senior leadership teams to understand the role(s) of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and Section 106 Planning Obligations (S106). At the heart of this advice note is the push for the recognition that local authorities have a fundamental role in leading from the front the coordination and delivery of infrastructure to support their areas. This will of course become ever more important as we reflect and plan for the impacts of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in terms of how we continue to shape the places within which we live and work and what demands this places on existing, or the need for new, infrastructure.

Effective infrastructure planning, prioritisation and importantly the governance of spend are critical to supporting our communities and the delivery of sustainable development and growth. Like many things in the planning system infrastructure planning is continually evolving and it is imperative that this is reflected in an authority’s governance process. Developing Infrastructure delivery Plans (IDPs) as static evidence documents to support a local plan at a fixed point in time with no commitment to a periodic, and of course proportionate, update can render such documents in the longer term purposeless. IDPs often take the form of long wish lists that can become out of date very quickly and which fail to provide any form of prioritisation for bringing forward the infrastructure that is required to support the delivery of
the local plan.

Kept alive and up to date IDPs do have the ability to help an authority to prioritise and deliver the infrastructure that is required to support its area. But this needs to be a coordinated approach by an authority with strong leadership, clear processes, effective governance and a continual dialogue with infrastructure providers and users. There is immense value in getting people around a table and this is the number one lesson that I learned from my former boss, Graham King, when working on the redevelopment of Paddington Basin and the delivery of critical infrastructure back in the naughties.

There is other good practice out there, including Greater Norwich and Chichester District Council who are mentioned in the #Plantalk session and the PAS advice note. Their commitment to clear governance processes is enabling the delivery of infrastructure through the effective spend of developer contributions and other funding sources.

The requirement to produce an Infrastructure Funding Statement (IFS) by the end of this year should not be approached with trepidation. Whilst there will inevitably be for some authorities hard work to be undertaken to bring together the required information, an IFS offers the opportunity to showcase effective governance of developer contributions, infrastructure delivery and consensus for future priorities.

I would urge you and your leadership teams to watch the RTPI’s #Plantalk session with Sara and read our advice note “Start with the spend in mind”and raise the profile of this incredibly important area of work within your authority.

Neither big nor clever

Your Local Development Scheme. A pain? A millstone? An enigma wrapped inside a tissue of lies? It doesn’t have to be any of those things. All you have to do is get a page on your website which puts the formal stages up and, usefully, any forthcoming consultations. Then, set out when you’re planning to meet them and….that’s it. Yes, really!

If you have to change it, just alter it and show how it has changed. You could even try seasons for things in later stages.

So why is it that so many authorities keep republishing 10, 20 or 30 plus pages? They lovingly describe the heartbreaking lack of progress to date, the endless consult-a-go-rounds that have happened since 2010. They highlight that wonderful period from 2011 to 2015 when you were ‘going through the representations’ before returning to a ‘further additional extra this time I know it’s for real’ preferred options (with time allowed for further modifications). There are pages and pages about documents already adopted and usually lots of legal gumph about prescribed periods and out of date regulation numbers.

So, that’s the LDS. Make it a ‘one-page web-page next-bus-style announcement using seasons not months’.

But how do you know you’re getting close to getting that assessment of time right? What lies beneath? How will you make sure you meet those milestones so that when DCLG come calling you can tell them….that everything is on track, thank you for the interest.

At PAS, we have been looking at the main reasons where slippage has occurred. Whilst there is a chance that in some cases, it would have been almost impossible to avoid, it is almost always possible to see it coming.

So, to give you every chance of planning ahead, setting and agreeing a timetable that can withstand the forces of evil that seek to derail, we have come up with….a sort of a table and a chart and some words.

It isn’t big, just like your LDS shouldn’t be, and it isn’t particularly clever, just like the person who wrote it. It’s just something for you to be able to refer to, to take a breath and just scan the horizon. Take stock of what you have, assess what you need, and understand who to involve and when.

It’s available to all our subscribers, and open for comments from you to suggest improvements. Many thanks to the people who helped us to make it by contributing their thoughts and coming along to the event.

Putting your mouth where the money is

This blog is about a new initiative from the senior planning managers at Swindon Borough Council Called “Rising to the Challenge”.  They have rightly appreciated that to meet current challenges in local areas, it’s necessary that more than just the Planners and Economic Development officers understand the advantages of a managed, growing economy alongside all the other challenges of a healthy population and vibrant places.

Swindon Borough Council do have a strong wish to grow their economy.  They were the fastest growing area of the country in the 1970s and then had a bit of a decline in fortunes as the heavy industries that this blue collar town relied on moved away or died.  But now Swindon is back and hungry.

Swindon had an “Open for Business” peer challenge from PAS a couple of years ago.  They say that helped to make the step towards the planning service (officers and members) becoming more aligned to the needs of delivering investment growth through new developments and being responsive to the needs of businesses.  It also helped to foster an appreciation that success was going to be more assured if the development was high quality and aligned to a planned spatial strategy that set a framework for decision making.

The new initiative is to run a series of  seminars called “Rising to the challenge”.  The purpose of the Seminars is to help Swindon grapple with the big planning challenges ahead by getting in leading thinkers / practitioners to speak on the issues to help guide their approach.  Speakers are being brought in from a range of local and national organisations, other towns and other parts of the council.  The audience is as wide as they can manage from councillors, community voices , interest groups and people from a range of council services and public sector bodies and developers.  The seminars are hosted in Swindon’s great Steam Museum – a potent reminder of how heritage can be conserved and turned in the direction of the future – and a venue that made people feel good/valued at having been invited.

I went along to the seminar last week when the topic was  “Delivering Good Growth”.  Speakers included an inspirational talk from Peter Studdart about the Cambridge experience and a pithy talk about where Swindon is among the galaxy of similar (maybe competing) towns in terms of a range of indicators of economic health from Andrew Carter of the Centre for Cities. The afternoon sessions looked at working with the LEP and the work going forward in partnership with the HCA on a range of schemes especially delivering the necessary infrastructure for  essential town centre regeneration schemes and the housing urban extension at Wichelstowe (2 of several). The final speaker wrapped up the day with a great talk that pulled together all the threads of activity in their growth strategy, and set them in the context of the aligned local plan, business plan and economic development strategies.

The audience were clearly caught by the ideas judging by the animated discussion that followed.  I didn’t catch any whiff of NIMBYist “alright in principle, but…”.  There was plenty of talk about what was good design in terms of Swindon.

The seminar topics are

• Good Design (presentations here)
• Delivering Infrastructure to support growth  (presentations  here)
• Delivering Good Growth (presentations here)
• Planning for an ageing population ( seminar 15 December)
• Planning for a Healthy Swindon
• Citizen engagement in the Planning of Swindon

This was about a council really taking the time not just to do consultation with their community, but really pulling out the stops to change hearts and minds about attitudes to development – making the situation real, talking about consequences without shroud waving and showcasing the breadth of ambition across the whole local authority area… and it was being lead and coordinated by planners.

 

 

 

Planning: say yes!

My final act of eighteen months at PAS as the Comms Manager is to write a blog about what I’ve learned about planning. I knew next to nothing at the start – now I’m a little bit wiser… but not a lot.

Of course, it’s the large developments that get the headlines – and certainly get the public’s attention. It’s a tough old business. More houses are needed, but hardly anyone would welcome development in their area. But this you all know.

Being a local authority planner could be seen as rather like being a football referee – as long as the decisions go someone’s way they hardly notice the referee; but the moment it doesn’t…

Politics really does get in the way. In a perfect planning world politics would be taken out of planning and ‘vote for me cos I’ll block this’ would be outlawed. (As Adam Dodgshon has previously blogged about.) But this ain’t gonna happen. Sadly.

One of my favourite words is ‘however’. However, local authority planners can and do wear white hats. (However can be such an uplifting word!)

Local authority planners can be involved in some truly inspiring projects and can bring joy to hundreds or even thousands. I live in a new-build flat and I love it… so thanks developers and thanks local authority planners who helped make this happen. Areas can be literally redeveloped. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all those unused horrible looking brownfield or wasteland sites could be something colourful and beneficial to communities – you can make this happen!

Another of my favourite words is ‘yes’. Even better if it’s ‘Yes!’ From what I’ve picked up, it would be great if more often planners said:

– Yes! to pre-app engagement

– Yes! to embracing technology to keep customers informed (which saves time and money)

– Yes! to actively engaging communities on projects

– Yes! to forming regional groups to learn from each other and share best practice

– Yes! to writing more in the style of Hemingway (sparse prose, rather than wordy and rambly)

– Yes! to using the superb (and free) help on offer from PAS. (I couldn’t resist.)

In summary, it can be a frustrating business, for sure, but if you persevere you can help build something long-lasting. And not many folk can say that.

Housing crisis – There is about to be a new government – it will be fine…

Listening to Radio 4, women from Bexley were talking about when they were young – they got married, lived with their parents for a year to save a deposit for a house, and then bought one. They went on to say that now there was no way their children could do that.

Who’s fault is that? One said the government had to do something  and another said that the government couldn’t do anything, and it was all because we were too soft letting too many people into the country.

The impact of the ageing population still living in their houses, some people still having babies increasing the need for supply, years of undersupply and decreasing affordability, exacerbated in some areas by the domestic draw of economic prosperity; seems to be forgotten by the ‘immigration’ viewpoint put forward particularly in the press.

There is just not enough housing nor is there enough planning for housing. And there’s increasing resistance to housing in many areas – often where the need and demand is highest. Essentially, people don’t like change; people particularly don’t like change that in any way undermines their personal life experiences.

What makes people resistant to new housing development (I have been here before https://planningadvisor.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/what-we-want-is-economic-growth-but-not-house-building/) is lack of infrastructure and lack of the provision of affordable housing for those in their community. People will resist when they find that they can’t get their child/grandchild into the local school, when it is more difficult to get a doctor’s appointment etc.

People fail to connect that their view of not wanting new development next to them, in their town, on their countryside, to why their children are still living at home at 26 – and why the generation of 20+ now don’t contemplate ‘family’ life as they are still living in their mum and dad’s back bedroom.

So surely, the government, house builders, developers, land agents and all the others involved in the industry know this…? Well, yes, but effectively tackling the infrastructure issue appears too challenging and politically the issue of more housing at a local level is toxic in many areas. So, the main political parties appear to agree that there is a housing shortage but… they will need to translate national rhetoric to local policies in action – they will have to demonstrate leadership and bottle to deliver and meet the needs of the country and its population, particularly the young. To do this they will need to take on the vocal ‘middle-aged’ middle class and the self-interested landowners, developers, housebuilders etc..

At present some government policies have made it more difficult to achieve the provision of affordable housing and housing accompanied by infrastructure.

The CIL Regs which now prohibit pooling five or more s106 obligations (as a reason for granting planning permission), with only a third of local authorities having a CIL in place, will mean that many authorities have no mechanism to collect contributions towards the necessary infrastructure that communities crave. This lack of a mechanism may make it impossible to get contributions to even basic mitigation which may result in the refusal of development including market and affordable housing development that are so desperately needed.

In addition, both CIL and now S106 net off existing vacant floorspace – further reducing the LPA’s ability to seek contributions to infrastructure and affordable housing respectively.

I have before voiced concern about the issue of viability, land value and the role of the land owner (https://planningadvisor.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/do-the-landed-aristocracy-hold-the-key/) if this is appreciated as a crisis – harming lives and the country’s prosperity – the role and expectation of the landowner needs to come under scrutiny and be addressed by government.

All that said, an obvious difficulty is that the planning system keeps changing – local planning authorities (LPAs) keep getting knocked off course with their plan making and their CIL. Every time something changes they have to review their evidence, update their evidence, spend more money, get council approval and so on… An example of this is six changes to the CIL regulations in five years and changes by examiners to the interpretation of these regulations, most notably in relation to viability and affordable housing.

Changes to s106 and CIL knock on to plan-making and plan wide viability. And, finally, the challenges of objectively assessed need and duty to cooperate (with no regional plan), which need to be balanced, should not be underestimated as obstacles to the planning and delivery of housing.

But don’t worry – there is about to be a new government – it will be fine..

Community Infrastructure Levy hits Housebuilding – If only it were that simple!

Savills’ recent report, referred to by Planning and the FT – http://offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk/NewsAttachments/RLP/SpotlightCILIs_it_delivering.pdf – seem to suggest the correlation between introducing a CIL and an area not being attractive for house building is simple. I don’t think it is a clear correlation to say CIL makes the area less attractive for house building.

Firstly there are very few authorities with CIL – many of them have relatively recently adopted it – Savills’ evidence base is not huge (16 local authorities). Nearly all of those that have a CIL already had a plan in place. These may have already consented much of their growth and will have allocated sites that have been the subject of planning consents that are already being built out – in the best plan led fashion. That cannot be said for all the authorities in the country.

Also, as identified by Savills, there is a huge a spike in the numbers of planning applications being granted subject to s106 obligations at every authority pre the adoption of a CIL. Many of these schemes have been in negotiation for years and to start again with discussions in a CIL world would not be desirable –although the decision rests with the developer. It is also worth bearing in mind that a lot of applications will have been hanging around for some time pre CIL as developers want a planning ‘decision’ and by that they often mean the resolution to grant subject to a s106. They are not always in a hurry to complete the s106 as they are not intending to go straight on site and the resolution will be enough for them to work on. However an authority’s decision to adopt CIL gives a new imperative to get the s106 sorted.

To compare these limited CIL authorities with the rest of the country is very misleading- it should be noted that areas without CIL are also usually areas without a plan and probably, in a lot of cases, without a five year housing land supply. These areas are magnets for developers seeking consents on unallocated land under the NPPF- the rush has been on to get planning permission on these non-plan led sites – increasing the number of houses granted in some areas.

In terms of getting money in – that only happens in a CIL regime when the development starts and in the cases of authorities with an instalments policy later still. So it is not surprising that these 16 authorities, after only a year, have little to show so far considering: the post adoption lull of consents, then the normal lag to get development on site, the developer focus on areas which are targets for non-plan led housing, and that CIL money at most authorities will only ever be able to contribute a relatively small proportion of the overall infrastructure costs associated with the growth plan.

Savills do make a very good point that CIL does not get collected from the broad range of development originally envisaged and the amount the charging authority are able to collect has been reduced due to the neighbourhood proportion, the changes in exemptions including self-build. Most authorities with large strategic sites appear to be sticking to the use of s106 with zero or low CIL for broader strategic infrastructure – this aids the delivery of key infrastructure on these large sites. Where possible, and the CIL/s106 rules allow, CIL will be best used as match funding or part of a wider funding strategy bring in money from LEPS, City Deals, New homes bonus, business rate retention etc. for strategic or sub regional infrastructure; but all of this takes time to implement. Many charging authorities (District level) have not had the experience of pulling together funding, forward funding, and delivery of major infrastructure. This is a whole new area where they will need to develop the skills and mechanisms to deliver projects themselves or with others. Having available mechanisms for future funding infrastructure and available advice for these authorities will help the delivery of infrastructure projects in these areas.