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Fresh in - not yet published on Welsh Gov Website - the minister finds a loophole to extend the Life of LDPS’s due to expire from early 2021 and tells us the two UDP’ in North Waled “remain extant”.
The letter is here.
So much for an uptodate Plan-led system in Wales..
Welsh Government has confirmed the Emergency legislation for PAC consultations will be extended after today whilst access to libraries and other public buildings remains patchy. The measures retain the online+hard copy if requested” approach until 08 January 2021.
It’s a welcome move that delivers another 3 and 1/2 months certainty enabling major projects to be kept on track for timely consultation, engagement and submission.
In what is a relatively minor proposed tweak, WG has set out another consultation, this time to add Fire and Rescue Authorities to the list of pre-application consultees for major developments and DNS.
https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/consultations/2020-07/fire-and-rescue-authorities-becoming-statutory-consultees-in-the-development-management-process-consultation-document.pdf
Its been long muted and we can confirm today that The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications and Site Visits) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 have been laid before the Senedd to be debated on 15 July.
By debate we mean approved obviously as 15 minutes have been allotted to this heady task.
Thus todays VAT cut and cheaper Monday night cheeky Nando‘s will be more than offset by the 20% rise in planning fees. God giveth on the one hand…
The new fees will be in force from 24 August 2020. There is still some time (albeit very limited) to press forward some schemes.
The draft regulations can be viewed here
Last year the Office for National Statistics issued its 2018 population projections. These original projections indicated the Welsh Population would decline from 2025 onwards. Revised projections recently issued (to address an error in the “processing of cross-border flows between Wales and England”) indicate the projections under-estimated Wales’ net population by 2028 of some 65,000 people.
The Welsh Government tells us having consulted with our expert group about the implications for our statistical products that are based on the 2018-based national population projections, we decided to withdraw the following outputs for Wales.
2018-based local authority population projections
2018-based local authority household projections
The seriousness of this on the NDF, SDP’s and LDP’s should not be underestimated where Planning Policy Wales tells us this data forms a fundamental part of the evidence base for development plans.
In simple terms the level of planned for housing growth in emerging LDPs and reviews may well be underestimated by some 30000 new dwelling net to 2028 (170dwgs/yr per authority across Wales.)
It seems likely low levels of growth ldp’s currently propose (and notably housing delivery trajectories showing growth reducing post 2025) are going to have to be reviewed.
Welsh Government expects new Local Authority level projections to be issued before the end of the month where localised impacts will become clearer.
In what will be generally seen as a welcome move, amendments to legislation governing the Pre-Application Consultation (PAC) process in Wales come into force at midnight on 19 May. The temporary changes are effective until 18 September, enabling clients to move forward on delivering applications for much needed development. The change will be a source of relief to those who have been holding back projects waiting for clarification .
Its disappointing that its taken Welsh Government nearly 2 months to resolve this. However, its progress and we look forward to being able to get back into the swing of things.
In a move sure to cause considerable frustration this morning will be the requirement for PACs which were underway properly and lawfully when lockdown commenced (or rather the closure of public buildings where documents could be read or accessed via public internet facilities), community consultation will now need to be carried out again as Welsh Government considers they cant meet the legislation in force at the time No doubt it will be fun when the phone starts ringing and we have to tell people its repeating what they saw before, because Welsh Government require it.
Intelligence by national planning consultants Barton Willmore has started a debate about how Covid-19 might affect delivery of housing as the UK emerges from the pandemic. The intelligence acknowledges that none of us really know the consequences, so uses a simplistic approach to see “how things might play out”.
We thought it might be fun (or at least interesting in comparison) to run the same for Wales using the benchmark of 2008-9 and apply subsequent UK percentage “fall and recovery pattern” to 2018-19 (the last year for which completions data is available).
There you go. Feast your eyes. Pleasant viewing it isn’t.
Were the pattern to repeat recent UK history, completions in Wales could fall to 3600 units in 2024-25 before any recovery (of sorts). Here’s hoping simplistic data analysis, past history, regional variations, the market, Council and Welsh Government interventions prove me wrong.
There are many ifs, buts, maybes and cautions in the data sets used of course to claim to be precise. Barton Willmore states it very clearly “Whilst quite simplistic, this analysis does present us with food for thought around the sheer scale of impact this situation could result in, while also bringing into sharp relief, the importance of both the industry’s and the Government’s response for exit”.
A Planning White Paper is due in England following the March Budget. What will Welsh Government do?
UPDATE 29/04
Forecasting can be fun and is interesting. However, reflecting last night on regional variations in housing delivery I thought, how might Wales perform if it followed Welsh rather than UK performance post 2008? Welsh Government does after all have different housing powers and policy tools at it disposal and it tells us it is more public/RSL sector interventionist in its approach to provision. We can see in the Wales scenario the performance curve (green column) is flatter, with less of a fall. Should housing delivery performance in Wales repeat its post 2008 recovery pattern, then relatively Wales may fare better than the UK overall.
Welsh Government Central Estimates of housing need indicate an average of 7000 dwellings is required per year until 2028-29. The last time more than 7000 dwellings were completed in Wales was 2008-9. The forecast suggests completions might not reach the average estimate of need at any point this decade. The shortfall against the Central Estimate of need could grow to 21700 units by 2028-29 were UK performance repeated or nearly 14000 if the Welsh pattern replicates itself. To give some kind of context to a looming delivery crisis, RSLs and Local Authorities have completed some 1200-1300 dwellings/year since 2015-16. They barely touch the sides of need.
We can all play around with data to move the numbers up and down. This post is purposely food for thought. The burning question it leads me to is will Welsh Government through public sector intervention and RSL’s have the appetite to afford to build the kind of recovery that might be needed and; will the Welsh public let it.
TAN 1 and Joint Housing Land Availability Studies are dead. Long live housing delivery.
You need look deep into the Welsh Government website to read its obituary. Announced without fanfare, press release or even Ministerial Twitter chirp. The world has other pressing issues momentarily. I suspect the strategy was purposefully to change it nice and quietly, under the radar.
Dismantling began in July 2018 and breathed its last on 26 March 2020. It spawned a couple of revised pages of PPW and 227 pages of new guidance in the Development Plan Manual, including a new approach of monitoring housing delivery against the LDP housing trajectory. The “stick” where housing isn’t delivered as per the housing trajectory? Two yeas of monitoring and then the LPA chooses if its to review the LDP early.
Ill state controversially here - some readers will no doubt think you work for “them” so you would, that TAN 1 and the PPW 5 year housing land supply requirement broadly worked, especially where a Development Plan was uptodate and robust with viable, deliverable sites. Too many current Local Development Plans don’t do that. The perception was that TAN 1 meant sites that communities didn't envisage being developed were released. I would argue, partly at least, that once TAN 1 was applied, some Development Plans began to fall apart at the seams.
Local Development Plans list of failings is/was broad, from poor early communication of vision and lack of genuine community buy-in, woeful consultation, constrained and/or unviable sites in the wrong places (in some cases “least worst” additional sites had to be allocated very late to make numbers up to get through Examination), overly prescriptive targets, other policies and legislative requirements that make delivering even allocated sites difficult. Not to mention unattainable windfall assumptions that increase pressure on the edges of settlements.
It further worked against Councils without a Development Plan and thus no planned housing land supply. Here the presumption in favour of sustainable development in accordance with the development plan and other material considerations indicated permission should be granted. The is of course an answer to that - get a Development Plan. Those communities in Councils without an LDP find themselves in no different a position today than they did when TAN 1 was in force.
Few would disagree with the Ministers ideal that by the time a planning application is submitted, communities should know with some certainty where, how much and when housing (and other) development will take place. An uptodate Development Plan is the linchpin of the updated guidance to achieve this. Only time will tell if the new tranche of LDPs deliver this idealistic view of a Plan-Led system or whether LPA’s have the skills, resources and appetite to constantly monitor and review. I already foresee monitoring reports for 2019-2020 and 2020-21 writing under delivery for these year off under “Covid-19”. However, by late 2021, 2 years of under-delivery will start to bite and the new system envisages LDP’s being reviewed.
The timing of the change in PPW is ever more remarkable for that. As I write, house builders sites remain mostly closed with some expected to re-start with socially distanced working in the next couple of weeks, staff in housebuilding and supporting services are furloughed, estate agents are shut and the housing market has all but stopped. Signs are, at best, of a very gradual move out of the lockdown perhaps by summer, perhaps later. Its almost certain many months of un and under-delivered housing will follow. Calls are already being made for Welsh Government to put measures in place to support an early economic recovery and to ensure much-needed housing can be delivered in the short term and in advance of the latent delay of adopting new and reviewing LDPs.
When and how the economy begins to recover - housebuilding being a key component of economic activity for planning purposes - and the possible effects of a recession on housebuilding and achieving the social and economic benefits of delivering homes is a different matter.
We have all become more familiar with the joys (and in some cases pitfalls) of virtual meetings through software such as Zoom. MS teams and Skype over the last few weeks. In most cases even technophobes appear to have got to grips with things. Conference calls are now commonly used, with success - especially on time demands - and we hope the success of these, can lead to refinement and more efficient working methods in future. It’s certainly enabled this practice to keep projects on track and moving.
Following cancellation of planning committee meetings across North Wales and with little obvious prospect of them returning soon, its great news that Welsh Government introduced measures effective from yesterday “for participation at meetings of a local authority held before 1 May2021 on the basis of full or partial remote attendance so long as persons who are not in the same place are able to speak to, and be heard by, other participants” with sundry other changes to legislation regarding the provision of notices and summons to such meetings and the like.
In other words - remote/virtual council meetings.
We welcome this move which gives Planning Services the powers needed to continue to move planning applications forward and secure much needed decisions. We look forward to participating.
Hapus Yurt is is yet another example of the highest quality holiday accommodation emerging throughout north Wales. The owner artist Jack found himself struggling with planning issues associated with some elements of his dream and so approached us to help him out. Its took us and many of the people who had stayed at Hapus Yurt who supported the application at bit of time to get there. Its with great pleasure that i could tell Jack that planning was sorted and approved last week.
Can i add my family, who stayed there last summer, to the list of hugely impressed guests and Jacks truly special place.