Making modern England work needs tricky decisions to be made. Some of these are planning decisions – ensuring enough housing, employment space, schools, health and community facilities happen where they are needed.
Decisions need to be made at the right level – airports, railways and primary roads are national decisions; ensuring needed development respects the character of villages should be decided locally. District councils are the planning authorities for their areas.
But businesses and markets don’t stop at administrative boundaries and people’s shopping, education and leisure travel are not contained by council boundaries. Nor do historic administrative boundaries always reflect the real influence and draw of towns and cities. Many people live and work in different local authority areas.
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For some issues local planning authorities need to work together. Three of the four local authorities in the West of England (Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Bath and North East Somerset) have joined together for some duties as the West of England Combined Authority (Weca). North Somerset, though in the West of England and part of the old County of Avon, is not part of Weca but has sought to join, to share in the extra resources made available to Weca perhaps.
Weca has the right, and indeed has a legal duty, to prepare a strategic spatial plan for its area. This is to deal with strategic issues, matters that need to be addressed across boundaries, leaving individual district councils to plan for things that can be dealt with wholly within their areas.
Thinking strategically has become more vital than ever because of the urgency of tackling climate change. Enabling trips to be shorter, by public transport and safely and easily by bike or on foot, is one of the ways spatial planning can help by organising the best relationship between new housing, facilities and services.
A successful economy needs businesses to have confidence in the future of their area, confidence that infrastructure issues will be tackled and planned well ahead, and that there will be workplaces. They need to know that there will be people in the area to take jobs because they will be able to find housing and children will have schools to go to.
Critically nothing like enough houses are being built to meet the need for homes from a changing population. The price of houses is rising faster than for a very long time, with scarcity one reason. New families often cannot expect to find housing they can afford near relatives and friends in the same communities.
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A combination of the strategic plan and local plans should provide for enough houses to be built where they should be built, setting out policies after wide engagement. Without plans, the need for housing just means that planning inspectors will be obliged to grant permission for schemes promoted by landowners and developers on an entirely piecemeal basis. Applicants will focus on the areas where the profits will be greatest. In the south west, attractive commuter villages are high on the list.
In the West of England, with the cities of Bristol and Bath to manage, and the mix of urban and rural areas that should work together in everybody’s interest, the local authorities have the tools to do the job of proper planning, and to promote more sustainable development as the law requires them to do. They are failing to take this great opportunity and the consequences for the economy, for the environment and for everybody in the area will be there to see and feel for the long term.
The elected members of the various councils are reported to have just fallen out over the preparation of the Weca spatial strategy and the officers have stopped work. This after the previous attempt at a strategic plan by all four west of England authorities failed at its independent examination in 2020, something everybody told the authorities would happen because the plan was so bad, driven by factional interests rather than technical evidence.
Many councillors don’t like making the difficult decisions about the future that climate change and integrated spatial planning for the future of their areas require, preferring short termism and local popularity.
Opposition to building housing for others from people who already have houses is the main reason that councillors feel nervous for their seats and abdicate from leadership on planning, preferring perhaps to leave it to others even though the consequences may be dire.
It would be good if the importance and opportunity of proper spatial planning, including strategic planning where it's needed, were recognised and supported so that the job gets done positively. In the end it would be far better for the wellbeing of the area, for us all, and for future generations.
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