Category Archives: Planning

Housing Completions and Commitments

Vale is committed to building 22,760 new homes by Mar 2031. (Top row in photo.)

Adding together all completed new houses, plus commitments, plus those allocated in both parts of our Local Plan, plus expected other housing not yet known about or planned for, totals 26,359. (Bottom row in photo.)

We could eliminate all further Allocations proposed in LPP2 (3420) and still meet our commitment.

Why on earth do Vale planners and Tory administration propose further Allocations at all in LPP2, let alone in the Green Belt? We are asking that question.

Oddly, some of the developers agree. They say they can’t deliver them. It’s too much.

Licenses to harm badger setts and clans

I submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Natural England. I asked them to provide information about requests they’ve received from development sites in Vale for permission to damage, destroy, block or otherwise cause harm to or interfere with badger setts and clans.

Here is what I asked:

Dear Natural England,

Developers requesting planning permission are regularly told by our local planning authority that they need a license from Natural England to allow them damage, destroy, block or otherwise cause harm to or interfere with badger setts and clans.

Provide total number of such licenses in Vale of White Horse that were sought in the past 5 years.
Provide a total of licenses that were granted in that time.
Provide a list all such licenses that were refused in that time, and include enough information that we can understand the location and reasons for refusal.

If there are applications for such licenses that have another disposition other than refused or granted, please list them.

Regards,
Cllr Debby Hallett

Natural England replied to me. They informed me that no licenses have been refused in the past 5 years.

I think that perhaps this information calls for a reconsideration in how we use ‘harm to badgers’ as a reason to refuse in our objections to planning applications.

Earlier, I spoke with the environment officer at Vale, who explained to me that badgers are not endangered — there are lots of them. The act was put in place to prevent cruelty to badgers. That makes more understandable the frustration we experience when all development sites are granted license to damage or destroy setts or even clans. I don’t think it’s right, but now it is understandable.

For more information on the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, see the RSPCA site here: https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/wildlife/inthewild/badgers/law

NPPF consultation May 2018 – my response

Government asked us what we thought of the proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and I responded. Here’s what I told them:

NPPF Consultation May 2018
10 May 2018 D Hallett

I am Cllr Debby Hallett, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group, and Chairman of
Scrutiny for Vale of White Horse District Council.

I have four points to make regarding the proposed NPPF:
1. Affordability is the most important thing
2. Housing Delivery Test must ensure it promotes the right behaviours and targets the
right people
3. ‘Sustainability’ needs a robust policy definition
4. ‘Viability Loophole’ needs to be closed

The main thing, as I see it, is that planning policy’s basic assumption is that private
developers can solve our county’s housing crisis. That’s not reasonable. Developers are in
business to make a profit for themselves and their shareholders, not to provide enough
affordable housing for people who need it. It seems clear that the problem won’t be solved
in the way we’ve been going about trying to solve it.

But as long as we have the current systems in place we must put in place policies that are
well-designed and well-considered in terms of the behaviours they promote and how we
can mitigate against unintended consequences. For one example, the Government’s Right
to Buy scheme costs councils money (a loss with every house sold), while at the same time
Government is reducing funding to local government (so there is no money or incentive to
build more council houses). These no-win situations should be fixed, but since they are
unlikely to be, we need well designed policies to encourage development of more houses
that are truly affordable.

Affordability

So long as land values are rising faster than earnings, the problem of not having enough
housing that people can afford will continue. The NPPF says its goal is to increase house
building. I think that’s the wrong goal. The goal should be to increase the stock of decent
houses to rent or to buy, and ensure that the people who need them can afford them.
I recently asked for a report to come to my council’s Scrutiny Committee on the state of
housing affordability locally. It came in Feb 2018; it’s called ‘Houses that People Can Afford’.

The report is here:
http://democratic.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/documents/s43516/Housing%20that%20is%20truly%20affordable%20FINAL.pdf

Vale’s report confirms what’s previously been anecdotal evidence. Here are some main
points:

The affordability level as defined by Oxfordshire’s SHMA is higher than as defined by
Institute for Public Policy; SHMA uses gross income, IPP uses net income, so income is
considered after tax. Further, the planning framework instead considers affordability as a
percentage of market price. We need a consistent definition of ‘affordability’. Basically, a
useful heuristic might be this: housing is affordable if a household spends 35% or less of its
net income on housing. Affordability should not be based on a percentage of market price,
especially now that those prices are rising faster than household income.
There was no data available for Vale or Oxfordshire housing specifically (why not?), so we
used data from all of Western England, as the closest comparable area. Housing in Vale is
more expensive though, so the affordability is likely even lower than what’s quoted in the
report.
We looked at house prices, rents, and income in quartiles. In order to buy a lower quartile
property costing £255,000 in Vale, an income of £57,000 is needed, which is an upper
quartile income. So only the highest income levels can afford to buy the lowest priced
properties. House prices are rising higher than household income.
Only 18% of ownership options are comfortably affordable at all, and then only to the
highest incomes. (Ownership options are shared ownerships, first time buyers, help to buy,
starter homes etc.) So four out of five ownership options are basically unaffordable to
everyone. This needs to be turned around.
Help to Buy schemes make houses affordable only to top earners (over £56,000). That
wasn’t the intention of the scheme, as I understand it. Help to Buy is not working here in my
district.
Private rentals and any sort of ownership tenure are unaffordable to lower quartile
income households. Only social rent is affordable to them, and we don’t have enough social
housing. (Social rents are approximately 50% of market rents.)

And finally, our current policy requires 35% of major sites be affordable homes. But NPPF is
set to change that to 10%. What is the expected impact of that?

Housing Delivery Test

Implementation of this is likely to drop many councils right into the red, with terrible
consequences, even after years of local plan production and monitoring. I think Ministry
should consider what behaviour it is that this HDT is intended to promote. House building
rates are not under sole control of local planning authorities; developers can decide to sit on
land with planning permission to wait for land values to increase, for example. I think this
test is ill-conceived and does not promote the behaviour that’s intended. Instead, it
punishes local planning authorities for results out of their control. I don’t have a solution.
I’m sure there are clever systemic thinkers in the civil service who can define a metric that
does promote more house building, but the HDT as defined in the NPPF isn’t it.

Sustainability

In our council, I’ve seen the concept of sustainability be reduced to a consideration of
whether the proposed development site is within 400 metres of a bus stop. Officers and
committee members consider this is adequate. Even if that were an adequate definition, it’s
unrealistic to rely on it when councils are taking actions that directly reduce local bus service
(such as removing subsidies). Include in the new NPPF a rigorous definition of sustainable
development, so that it’s useful to decision-makers and encourages developers and officers
to consider all the aspects of what is intended by a ‘sustainable housing development’.

Viability Loophole

Developers are in business to make a profit. They know that if they submit a viability report
that shows their profitability will fall to an unacceptable level if they are required to be
policy compliant, the local planning authority will give them a break. In our district we see
developers regularly avoid our policy of a percentage of affordable houses. As it is right
now, the damage is theoretical, since by ‘affordable’ they mean 80% of market vale. As our
study has shown, prices at that reduced level are still unaffordable to all but the very
highest earners. But two things about that: 1) nationally, we must change the way
affordability is defined to consider household income against local housing prices, and 2)
national policies must be put in place to require developers to be policy compliant with
Local Plan policies (once they pass Inspection and are adopted). If that’s a problem, then the
systemic relationship between genuine affordability, project viability and development
policies should be explored.

Thames Water Reservoir – Vale’s position

Vale of White Horse District Council had sent an update to all councillors to tell us of the general position Vale will take in responding to the consultation.

I was happy and surprised to hear that this Tory administration agrees with the Vale Lib Dem position; not sufficient evidence of need or appropriateness of the solution. They go further than I have; I said we need public consultation, Vale says we need public enquiry.

North Of Abingdon: a Planning Committee Event

Last night (26 July 2017) at Vale planning committee meeting, those of us speaking up for residents came away mostly empty handed. Note please that it was the Lib Dem councillors and the Lib Dem MP who spoke up for residents’ concerns.

I think it was a bad decision not to insist on mitigation for the harm caused by this development.

– 950 homes plus 80 bed care home, when the Local Plan thought 800 would be appropriate.

– No requirement that the Lodge Hill slip roads be completed before houses are built or occupied (we wanted the former but would have settled for the latter)

– No 2 form school to save the money when inevitably the school must be expanded from 1.5 form.

– No CIL on this development, so parishes won’t get their 15% of CIL charges.

– Officers had nothing to say at all about the effect of a few more thousand cars on the already over-capacity A34. OCC basically said, ‘That’s not our job, and Highways England has not objected.’ If they haven’t objected, then WHO is responsible for fixing the appalling over-capacity problem in Vale on A34? We’ve heard for years that this is the main obstacle to employment challenges (companies won’t come here and recruiting is difficult with gridlock on the A34).

The mics didn’t work so we couldn’t hear a lot of what was being said. One resident went into a shouty meltdown and had to be evicted from the meeting. That’s always upsetting for everyone. One committee member was confused about the rules and stood down from the committee even though he didn’t speak for or against the application. One Tory councillor took his speaking opportunity to praise the previous MP. It would have been funny if it hadn’t affected a serious planning decision.

Small gains: a requirement for a well designed cycle link to Radley station; Radley Lakes may get a contribution – there was agreement to go back to the negotiating table for this; there’s a condition to monitor air quality at the most congested junctions (presumably those not already inside the AQMA).

Everyone, EVERYONE who spoke and voted FOR, had drunk the kool-ade and believed that this time, this THIRD time, the promise of funding for the south slips is true. OCC even committed to forward funding it. (I thought County had no money, so not so sure how that works.)

I’m disappointed that the officers promoted something against advice of our Env Protection team, and also contrary to our Local Plan.

So, we lost. Now on to the next thing: tonight’s Scrutiny meeting will look at Vale’s Corporate Plan, a Joint Housing Strategy, and a Temporary Accommodation Strategy (it’s the accommodation that’s temporary, not the strategy.)

I have a holiday coming in 31 days (according to the handy countdown timer on my iphone).

Wishing everyone well. Debby

My comments for 54 Hurst Rise Road

I’ve submitted my comments for 54 Hurst Rise Rd.

I called in this application to committee in January 2017. So now I’ve submitted the list of issues that I think need a satisfactory condition or mitigation or change to the plans. You can see the doc in my dropbox folder here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mtahf7n5499g7ie/54%20Hurst%20Rise%20Road%201%20July%202017%20Comments%20and%20ccancel%20call-in.pdf?dl=0

Planning applications currently under call-in

Last summer, Vale made some changes to the way planning applications are managed.

The problem being addressed was planning committee had too many meetings, which were too long (continuing WAY too late), and which had too many small and pretty straightforward applications that they were being asked to determine. Officer time to prepare a report for committee is expensive, and councillors looked at ways to trim costs without sacrificing democratic process and opportunity to object.

The changes were, essentially:

Put a 150 minute limit on planning committee meetings. They could be extended by 30 more minutes under some circumstances and via a vote by all members.
Major applications automatically go to committee if the parish or town council opinion differs from the planning officer’s recommendation.
Other applications must be called in to committee by the district councillors. In exceptional circumstances, one of the planning managers can call one in.

There’s a call-in deadline 28 days after an application is registered at Vale.

Here are the applications I have called in, and the call-in date, which have yet to come to Planning Committee.

54 Hurst Rise Rd. 8 Jan 2017
land adjacent to 16 Yarnells Rd. 23 Feb 2017
1 Maple Close. 10 Mar 2017
Red Copse Boars Hill (V0918). 1 May 2017
8 Elms Road. 15 Jun 2017

If you ever have questions about a planning application, be sure to contact me well before the 28 day deadline. After that, it’s difficult to do anything constructive.

A balanced approach

So in fairness (considering earlier today I criticised his Local Plan for failing to plan for solving our most serious problems — http://cllrdebbyhallett.com/2017/04/24/vale-local-plan-pt-2/) here’s a kind thank you.

Cllr Roger Cox, Cabinet member for Planning, was the one who approved £2500 for the cleanup of, and making secure, the vacant and derelict property 82 Westminster Way.

Thank you Cllr Cox. Botley is appreciative.

So do you think you might be able to help us get this house back in use?

Vale Local Plan Pt 2 – housing people can afford

I’m working on my review of Vale’s Local Plan Pt2. Consultation closes the 4th of May, but we’ll be away so I want to get my comments in early this week.

We’ve heard the Vale’s leading Tories repeatedly tell us lack of genuinely affordable housing and over-congested highways (esp A34) are the two main obstacles to growth in the Vale.

At a recent Scrutiny meeting, I asked the Cabinet member for planning, Cllr Roger Cox of Faringdon, a few questions.

The main thing I wanted to know was how his Local Plan will help ordinary working people on ordinary wages (UK average is about £27,000 per year) to have a decent home.

Cllr Cox is the Cabinet member responsible for the Local Plan. I had to repeat my question more than once: “What does your Local Plan do to provide more housing that ordinary people can afford?” Finally his shoulders dropped and he said, “Nothing.”

Well there we are.

Vote the Tories out.

Local Plan consultation thru 4 May

I’m proud of my work over the past few years with some of our local parish councils, residents and other groups. We sought to protect our open spaces in the northeast area of Vale.

We’ve taken our share of housing here, and we do all we can to support appropriate development.

Under Local Plan Part 1, we have about 1300 new houses to come in the Tilsley Park area, in land Vale removed from the Green Belt. There are other former Green Belt sites in Radley and Kennington. But we managed to save more than 20 sites that Vale Tories wanted to remove from the Green Belt, including many local playing fields.

Now the Vale’s Local Plan 2031 Part 2 defines the sites for the rest of our housing need, plus our share of Oxford’s housing need that they aren’t able to meet for themselves. Sites over 50 houses are included; smaller sites are not.

So there will be no further incursion into the Green Belt in the north east area through 2031. At least, that’s the proposal.

You can read the Local Plan 2031 Part 2, and comment via this link: http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/services-and-advice/planning-and-building/planning-policy/local-plan-2031-part-2