Tristan Fitzgerald Associates

Localism Bill receives Royal Assent

Dan Angell — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:19:32 GMT

The Act was signed off by the Queen following eleven months of parliamentary scrutiny.

The Royal Town Planning Institute congratulated ministers on improving the Bill but said “the real test of the Localism Act would be its implementation and the resources made available to enable the planning system to deliver it”.

The institute has called for more work on arrangements for safeguarding existing local plans and arrangements and on a planned period during which local authorities, the public and the development industry can “learn to work with the new regime and implement it in the most effective way”.

And it said it would “continue the debate” on strategic planning and will support the development of effective practice even though the “duty to cooperate” has been strengthened.

RTPI president Richard Summers said: “Many issues still need to be clarified, some by legal challenge and others through guidance, but the key issue will be to reduce the continuing uncertainty, cost and delay for the planning system and the development industry.”

The Department for Communities and Local Government said that the Localism Act would “trigger the biggest transfer of power in a generation”.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles said: “Today marks the beginning of an historic shift of power from Whitehall to every community to take back control of their lives.

“The Localism Act pulls down the Whitehall barricades so it will no longer call the shots over communities – bug bears like housing targets and bin taxes are gone.

“For too long, local people were held back and ignored because Whitehall thought it knew best. That is changing for good.”

www.planningresource.co.uk

Cameron’s Victory in U.K. Referendum Weakens His Liberal Democrat Partners

Dan Angell — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:35:24 GMT

The U.K.’s governing coalition is set to enter a new phase of “businesslike” relations, ministers said, after voters rejected an overhaul of the voting system, a victory for Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron at the expense of his Liberal Democrat deputy, Nick Clegg.

Sixty-eight percent of voters in the May 5 referendum sided with Cameron against the new system that Clegg backed. That was after the Liberal Democrats suffered their worst local-election results since the party’s formation in 1988, while the Conservatives made gains. In Scotland, nationalists cemented their hold on power while the Liberal Democrat vote slumped.

After taking power a year ago, Clegg and Cameron joked with journalists in the garden of 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s London residence. Yesterday, senior Liberal Democrats said the relationship would grow more formal, reflecting tension after the Conservative-led “No” campaign in the referendum attacked Clegg personally. The parties remain committed to a plan to eliminate the bulk of the budget deficit by 2015.

The Conservatives “have emerged as ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal,” was how Business Secretary Vince Cable described his coalition partners in a BBC interview. “But that doesn’t mean to say we couldn’t work with them.”

Leader Resigns

The Liberal Democrats also lost seats in the Scottish Parliament, where First Minister Alex Salmond’s pro-independence Scottish National Party won the first overall majority since the 129-seat assembly was established in 1999. The result gives Salmond a second term and paves the way for a referendum on Scottish independence.

Tavish Scott, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland, resigned his position today, saying the decision to go into coalition last year had been responsible for the poor showing.

“I think our ability to demonstrate that we were still Liberal Democrats not just propping up a Tory government has not come across in the last year and that is ultimately why we paid a very, very heavy price” on May 5, Scott told the BBC.

The two coalition parties are “staying together for the sake of the children,” Steven Fielding, director of the Centre for British Politics at Nottingham University, said in a phone interview. “But there’s going to be tension: the Liberal Democrats need to show they’re doing Liberal Democrat things, and Conservatives are going to be asking why Cameron is letting them get away with it.”

Pre-Election Pledge

Even before the referendum result became clear, Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Chris Huhne attacked his Conservative Cabinet colleagues.

“There is enormous anger across the Liberal Democrats at the tactics which were employed by the ‘No’ campaign,” he told the BBC. “We know that the ‘No’ campaign was funded and run completely by the Conservative Party.”

The “No” campaign, aiming to keep the current first-past- the-post system of electing House of Commons lawmakers, focused its fire on Clegg, criticizing him for reversing a pre-election pledge to oppose any increase in student tuition fees. That decision was taken in coordination with the Conservatives as the two parties sought to slash government spending during their first year in power.

Huhne said the attacks on his party over the policy would make it more difficult to persuade Liberal Democrats to agree to compromises in future.

‘Outmaneuvered’

“We are going to deliver on our contract,” Huhne said, while adding that the relationship “is going to be much more transactional, much more businesslike.”

The Liberal Democrats will “start asking what they’re getting out of it,” according to Andrew Russell, the author of a history of the party, “Neither Left Nor Right?” “The coalition hasn’t been bad for the Conservatives. The thing that will annoy the Lib Dems most is the sense they’ve been outmaneuvered,” he said in a telephone interview.

Cameron will encounter resistance from his party if he tries to make many concessions to Clegg, Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative lawmaker, told Sky News. “There is very strong feeling among Conservatives, who are by far the largest party in parliament, that in some ways too many compromises have already been made,” he said. “But the big compromise was the referendum and now we’ve had the referendum, just because it went the wrong way, why should we re-open the coalition agreement?”

Electoral Test

In local elections in England, Clegg’s party lost 695 seats after results from almost all the 279 local councils contested were declared. Cameron’s Conservatives gained 81 seats. The main opposition Labour Party added 800 seats.

The votes were the first nationwide electoral test for the coalition, which was formed after Cameron failed to score an outright victory over Labour’s Gordon Brown in the May 2010 general election. Liberal Democrat support has plummeted since joining the administration, which is imposing the deepest budget cuts since World War II.

Clegg made a referendum on moving from the current electoral system to the “alternative vote” method a precondition of going into coalition with Cameron. The Liberal Democrats have always supported a change to the current way of voting, which hurts smaller parties such as themselves.

‘Repair Economy’

Clegg told the BBC it had been “a really disappointing day — this is a bitter blow for all those people like me who believe in the need for political reform. But the answer is clear and the wider job of the government, and the Liberal Democrats in government, will continue: to repair the economy, to restore a sense of prosperity and jobs and optimism to the country”

Cameron said the government would survive the split.

“It was always going to be a difficult moment for a coalition when you have two parties campaigning on different sides,” Cameron told the BBC. “Now Conservatives and Liberal Democrats can come together again and provide strong, decisive, long-term, good government.”

Cable said yesterday there was “very strong support” for Clegg within the party, dismissing suggestions that he might face a challenge to his leadership. “No one’s turning on Nick Clegg,” Cable told the BBC.

www.bloomberg.com

TFA London office moves to Westminster

Dan Angell — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:12:51 GMT

After a record 2011 – in which the company achieved a number of significant wins in both the residential housing and commercial sectors as well as adding value to long-term existing projects – TFA has moved the London office from Wandsworth to Westminster.

Vic Angell, the company’s managing director, said of the relocation: “The move will allow us to be closer to our London-based clients, to Members of Parliament that we meet on their behalf and provide more accessible facilities for those coming to meetings with us in the capital.”

The new office is at 50 Broadway, opposite the St James’s Park tube station and half a mile from the Houses of Parliament.

Amendment achieved as Localism Bill voted through

Dan Angell — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:00:00 GMT

The Liberal Democrat Party has secured a crucial amendment for the Localism Bill to force ministers to define ‘sustainable development’ as it was voted through the Commons.

MPs voted by 300 to 216 in favour of the Bill, which gives councils the power to end tenancies for life for new social tenants and more control over planning matters.

The Bill will now go before the House of Lords.

In a debate for the report stage of the bill in the Commons, decentralisation minister Greg Clark agreed to produce a definition of ‘sustainable development’ in planning policy through the new national planning policy framework.

The government intends to introduce a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ as set out in the Conservative Party’s 2010 Green Paper Open Source Planning which local authorities will have to adhere to when making planning decisions.

Mr Clark said: ‘At this stage all I would say on sustainable development is that the government have no issue or disagreement with the classic definitions of it. The Brundtland definition, that development undertaken by this generation should not compromise the ability of future generations to live their lives, has stood the test of time and is very clear.’

MP Annette Brooks, who put forward the amendment, said: ‘Wherever that definition falls, it has to be in such a form that it can be developed downwards and interpreted by local communities, but also, in a sense, developed upwards within the national planning policy framework.’

Mr Clark also promised to strengthen the duty to cooperate on planning issues so that it includes the Homes and Communities Agency, transport bodies, the Mayor of London and Natural England.

He also promised to raise the minimum number of people required to discuss local planning decisions in a neighbourhood forum from three to 21.

But Dr Hugh Ellis, chief planner from the Town and Country Planning Association, said: ‘Quite apart from the level of confusion which fast-moving changes to the planning system are creating, there is increasing concern that, taken as a whole, the new planning system will not be able to deliver the kind of highly-quality housing or low-carbon economy that the nation desperately needs.’

The Localism Bill was voted through in the Commons yesterday (Wednesday).

www.insidehousing.co.uk

Budget 2011: Planning regime to be relaxed to push growth

Dan Angell — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:00:00 GMT

New developers could avoid having to make major contributions to local roads or schools under planned relaxation of the planning regime.

Under a so-called Section 106 agreement, applicants behind large scale developments often have to promise investment in to the local infrastructure such as a new approach road or help fund a new school.

But the Government is urging councils to consider reducing such contributions if it helps make the development a reality.

It is part of a broad relaxation of the planning regime to boost economic growth, while retaining protection for the Green Belt.

Changes will include a presumption to approve any applications that promote sustainable development.

More than 900,000 words of unwieldy national planning policies will be cut down in to a shorter, more focused national planning policy.

Land auctions of sites already with planning permission will be piloted and rules will be relaxed to make it easier to convert commercial premises in to housing without lengthy “change of use” processes.

The planning process itself will be speeded up, including a 12 month guarantee for the processing of all planning applications, including any appeals.

And there will be a fast-track planning process for major infrastructure applications.

Surplus public land, such as MoD sites, will be freed up quicker to support the creation of new homes and jobs. It will include ‘build now, pay later’ schemes where house builders will be given surplus government land which they will only pay for once properties built on it are sold.

Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, said: “We are unblocking the complex, costly planning system, regenerating redundant sites and putting the brakes on the years of Whitehall micromanagement that has tied business up in red tape, slowing and stifling growth.

“The current planning system is bureaucratic, we will make it easier to navigate.”