Oral evidence - Built Environment

Members present

Baroness O’Cathain (Chairman)

Baroness Andrews

Lord Clement-Jones

Lord Freeman

Lord Inglewood

Earl of Lytton

Baroness Rawlings

Baroness Young of Old Scone

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Mr Michael Cassidy, CBE, Chairman, Ebbsfleet Development Corporation

Q241 The Chairman: Welcome, Mr Cassidy, to this evidence session of the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment. You have in front of you a list of the interests that have been declared by members of the Committee. A transcript of the meeting will be taken and published on the Committee website. You will have the opportunity, of course, to make corrections where necessary. I begin by asking you to briefly introduce yourself to the Committee, Mr Cassidy, for the record.

Michael Cassidy: I am Michael Cassidy. I am Chairman of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation.

The Chairman: And a lot else besides! Thank you very much indeed.

Q242 Lord Freeman: Good morning. I declare a very modest conflict of interest in the sense that, as Minister of Transport in the early 1990s, I went to Ebbsfleet on the instructions of the Deputy Prime Minister, as he then became, to look at precisely what the opportunities were. What progress has been made at Ebbsfleet since the establishment of the Development Corporation? Let us not go any earlier than that.

Michael Cassidy: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I was appointed as the Chairman-Designate in August last year, although our powers did not begin until April of this year. I spent the first six months pretty much solo, meeting all the relevant parties, seeing the site and liaising with the local authorities, who are a big part of our organisation. In the early part of this year I set about selecting and appointing a Board, which is now fully in place, and the key executives. I had quite a large team seconded from the Department for Communities and Local Government in the early stages to help me; that has now been replaced by our own team, who are based near Ebbsfleet, actually occupying Gravesend Police Station—not the best location, but that was available as a short-term let.

During the course of implementing this delivery period, we have set about instructing master planners to help us set out the site opportunities. We have appointed a global firm called AECOM, and it has already started its work programme. We have a set of consultation sessions next Tuesday, which is when the public will first hear from AECOM what its process will be. Obviously, on the business side, we have been putting together a business plan for the Department, which has been received and understood. Last week there was a very significant event for us: the Spending Review, which of course we all concentrated on very heavily. I am pleased to say that the Chancellor set aside £310 million for us—exactly the figure we asked for—so we enjoy good political support following a period when it clearly stalled. As part of the Spending Review Statement we also have Enterprise Zone status for part of our site, which will give obvious tax benefits. That is essentially the work programme to date.

The Chairman: Are you very optimistic about the future of Ebbsfleet—that it will all come right and there will not be any problems; will it be another example of what happened to housing and built environment in this country with the London Olympics?

Michael Cassidy: I suppose I have to be optimistic; otherwise, I should not be in the job. We certainly now have the resource to carry this programme forward.

The Chairman: You have no problems at all?

Michael Cassidy: Well, I will now list the obstacles, as that is clearly part of what you would like to hear about. The topography of this former quarry site is extremely demanding. It is 1,000 acres of very uneven ground, with level changes of 20 metres or more. When I first went round it, somebody said to me, “You know, Michael, all you have to do is push that hill into that lake and flatten it out,” but you are talking about a huge investment to do that. Although I am very grateful for the £300 million, I believe it will cost more over time. We must prove that we can deliver very quickly, but obviously with quality in mind, and I will probably go back to the Government to ask for more. I am prepared to put that on the table right now: £300 million is great, but probably not enough.

Amongst the other challenges—and perhaps one of the main reasons why this has stalled since the great station was finished, with huge ambition, about eight years ago—is that, given the context at that time, which was pre-recession, the planning permissions were loaded with very significant Section 106 obligations. The two main landowners, Land Securities, our biggest quoted property company, and Lafarge Tarmac, a very big aggregates group, chose for commercial reasons not to set about large-scale housebuilding because at certain points it triggered these Section 106 payments. In themselves, those are not an obstacle in most developments, but if the size of the obligation is too much, developers just wait until house prices justify it. For example, £50 million was set aside for three schools, two junior and one secondary, and £50 million was set aside for highway improvements. And so it went on and, frankly, it was not economical for them to build. In the period since 2007-08, only 360 houses have been built. Obviously, that is a huge disappointment, which we are there to reverse.

Then, there is the design element. You will all be aware that garden city principles embrace the idea of town living in a country context, but the planning regime in this country is not terribly helpful in driving quality in the end product. It can drive volume by giving generous consents, but there is very little in planning law that enables anybody to say, “Those are just not good enough for this garden city; do better.” You cannot prevail on that, so you have to do it by encouragement and by assisting with the resources available.

Lord Clement-Jones: How are you overcoming those Section 106 problems now—with new planning consents?

Michael Cassidy: One of the benefits of being a development corporation is that we have become the planning authority for the area. Another is that we have compulsory purchase powers. Those are the two legs of our purpose in life. It is my belief that we can reopen all those Section 106 agreements but we are not going to do it without a quid pro quo; therefore, in the next weeks and months we are going to have to sit down with the owners and negotiate a change in the conditions. Let me give you an example: in return for us picking up the burden of one of the schools or highway improvements, they will agree to build faster and to greater quality, so a trade-off has to go on with each of their sites.

Lord Clement-Jones: Who do you mean by the owners?

Michael Cassidy: The original developers, Land Securities or LaFarge. Redrow Homes own one small patch, so it is technically a landowner as well, but they will each have to address where taxpayers’ money can be productively employed to achieve the Government’s aims.

Lord Clement-Jones: So you are quite optimistic that, with your additional money, bargaining counters and powers, you are going to be able to make far better progress?

Michael Cassidy: Yes. Without speeding up very considerably, we are simply not going to share the costs with the owners, and that would be a very poor outcome. An idea emerging now is that we need to encourage mortgage providers to give a longer commitment period. At the moment, they only give six months when they offer a mortgage, and therefore—guess what?—the housebuilders only build to a six-month programme. If we can persuade mortgage providers to double that to 12 months, the supply chain for the next period will open up.

The Chairman: What is the downside on that move from six to 12 months?

Michael Cassidy: The downside is only for the banks, et cetera, providing the loan. For us it is all a win, because the housebuilders will then open more marketing sites, so where that might mean two per chunk at the moment, it could become three or four, which is terrific in terms of driving volume. I do not know how successful that initiative will be but we will certainly have an attempt at it, because I do not believe it has been tried anywhere else before. It is a different approach to the problem, rather than just bashing them over the head and saying, “Build more”, to which they can say “No.”

Lord Clement-Jones: One final question: what are the challenges in the other forms of infrastructure—transport and so on—and can you meet them?

Michel Cassidy: There are very considerable challenges: for example, the Bluewater shopping centre is next door and, particularly in the run-up to Christmas, the road system is completely clogged. This is also complicated by the Dartford bridge, which, as you probably know, is not an easy obstacle to overcome. It is great to have it, but it does get chock-a-block. The A2, a magnificent highway going through north Kent, simply does not have the capacity at the Bean and Ebbsfleet junctions to take our traffic alongside that going to Bluewater. That is without even talking about the proposed Paramount theme park, which I can give you more detail on. That will put huge pressure on the highway system. Although the Highways Agency has committed to spending money in 2019-20, that may not be soon enough as the traffic builds up.

Q243 Baroness Andrews: It has been a very long and protracted development and a lot of things have changed while it is being thought through. What else in the planning system has changed since Ebbsfleet was first designed that has made it either easier or more difficult? The key factor, of course, is having your own planning powers as a development corporation, but are there external NPPF issues which bear down on that? Secondly, it is such a big and complicated site that the challenges of master planning must be enormous. How confident are you that you can sustain the balance of interests, for example, as we just heard, on the demography, building an environment which is friendly for an ageing population and not simply being driven by starter-home requirements?

Michael Cassidy: I suppose the major change in planning is the alteration in the approach to Strategic Plans. It has often been said that garden cities would get some boost from being included in policies as part of the strategic planning, which traditionally has not happened. That has changed to some extent, and co-operation is now called for between adjoining boroughs or areas.

Baroness Andrews: With whom do you co-operate?

Michael Cassidy: We start with a phenomenally useful relationship with Dartford and Gravesham, and the upper-tier authority is Kent, obviously. They are early supporters of the work of the Corporation and they sit on our Board, so I am quite confident that we will be able to develop that relationship. My main conclusion is that I do not feel the planning system is an obstacle at this point. At the present time there is 10 million square feet of unimplemented planning consents, so it is not as though there is a shortage of planning capability to deliver this.

In terms of the other difficulties and complexities, I agree this is an extremely challenging context, not only because of the topography but because of the marketplace and having to make these attractive homes for all-comers. I think that obstacle is melting away over time because of the strength of house prices in south-east England. It would be strange indeed if we were not able to sell houses on this plot, and the list for the current phase is fully accounted for, so I am not worried about demand. A basic house might cost £275,000; in London terms, that is modest, therefore Ebbsfleet is going to be very attractive for people wishing to move a short distance out because they find London too expensive. Ebbsfleet station is only 17 minutes from St Pancras, so for those who have to travel to work, it is an attractive location. I might mention fares in a minute because they are too expensive, but that is a side issue. I am confident that the basic demand for houses in Ebbsfleet is there, and that the layout and facilities will be sufficient to attract all types of occupiers. It is our purpose to make sure there is a considerable risk of missing that market—in other words, this may not go on for ever, so let us try and build the appeal of the site for the short term.

Baroness Andrews: How much control will you have over the quality and design of what is built—for example, in relation to people over 60 who want to downsize out of central London and move to Ebbsfleet?

Michael Cassidy: Dartford is the plan-making authority. We do not have plan-making powers, but we are content that under the Dartford Plan, it has design guidelines that developers have to meet under their planning consents. We are trying to build on that with our own set of design objectives, but we have to negotiate those into the arrangements. We are already doing that with, for example, Persimmon, the builders of the next phase; it is very happy to be talking to us, although it wants to be convinced that our changes make sense. My objective is that we should have a good mixed set of dwellings here so that there is appeal right across the market—not just starter homes, although the Government have a considerable priority for starter homes under their present policies. I would also like to encourage the private rental sector at Ebbsfleet, because in that 12 million square feet of consents there is nothing for private rented accommodation. To me, that is part of the modern marketplace—that people moving to a starter home in this sort of location might want to rent for a while.

Q244 Earl of Lytton: You answered the question I originally wanted to ask about the take-up rate of the new build, but I am particularly interested in this concept of where the Ebbsfleet model sits in the construct of the new towns of the past and the Poundburys of the future. How do you settle how you are going to deal with that? We have had information about the criteria for a garden city, but how do you see that durable USP that is going to form the societal as well as the economic glue of Ebbsfleet?

Michael Cassidy: Let me first draw one important distinction. One of the advantages that the New Towns Act provided is that it put land ownership as well as planning in the corporation’s hands. It makes a phenomenal difference if you can drive it with planning permissions but also through covenants or other ways of enforcing community-style commitments. We do not have the land ownership and it is not proposed that we should obtain it. The Board at Ebbsfleet considered options during our early period that included obtaining the land ownership, but we put those to one side because of the cost and because it is our belief that the present Government would not favour spending hundreds of millions on the land as their first choice. So, we are going to adopt a partnership approach, as I described, whereby we have an agreement with the land owners as to how this will proceed.

That is a big contrast with all the early garden cities, because there is a so-called legacy of land ownership, which then helps to resource future growth because you hope to capture some of the land value increase as a result of having built a city there. We cannot do that, so we are going to have to deploy our resource within the constraints of being a planning authority, but I believe we can still achieve what is necessary based on that. I expect this location to meet all the yardsticks of a recognised garden city. There will obviously be generous open spaces; up to a third of the land will be set aside for open space, play areas, allotments and so on. It certainly meets the test of connectability because of the railway; it has its own fast-track bus service, which will enlarge further. So when it is finished, 10 or 15 years hence—that may be optimistic—it will be recognisably a garden city and not just another housing estate.

Baroness Rawlings: You mentioned earlier about the roads being absolutely blocked. I was looking on the map to see exactly where that was. The train service is very good—17 minutes from London—but is anything being done about access from the north, the other side of the river? With the A2, you have to go along and then back up.

Michael Cassidy: Indeed. It has been recognised for some time that the Dartford bridge has been a victim of its own success and is regularly hugely congested. The Government have proposed a third river crossing, and they have offered three alternative sites. This has been out for consultation for a year and a half. It is said they will make an announcement in the next year. It has also been reported that there is a preference for the easternmost site, which would cross from Thurrock to Gravesend, who are not too happy about it. Otherwise, you would have to put it bang next to the existing Dartford bridge, which has obvious problems, or there is the middle option, going straight through our site, which I think has been abandoned now. So yes, there are plans and it has serious Government support.

The Chairman: No tunnels underneath?

Michael Cassidy: There is no sign of a tunnel proposal. Maybe that is cost-related. During the time I have been involved in this, there has been absolutely no discussion of that, so I assume it is off the agenda.

Q245 Lord Inglewood: Significantly, in your response to Lord Lytton you touched on a number of the things I was interested in. If we stand back form the Ebbsfleet site-specific project and think about development corporations as a more general phenomenon—which seem to me to be a form of benevolent dictatorship—what application do you think they have in more general terms? What are the particular pluses and minuses when looking at the question of the built environment overall?

Michael Cassidy: The biggest advantage is that development corporations operate across boundaries, so you can put them in place where there is more than one local authority involved, and they can prevail because planning powers pass to the corporation. Clearly, it is very satisfactory if there is wholehearted agreement on the part of the other authorities involved. It becomes hellish if one or more of them are against what you propose.

Lord Inglewood: The component local authorities sit on your Board.

Michael Cassidy: Three are ex officio members of the Board and they make a full contribution. There are some areas where there will have to be discussion and agreement; in other words, it is not always unanimous—I have just mentioned the case of the river crossing, where it clearly is not—but for the most part we are working together. The three involved see it as being consistent with their own objectives anyway, but if I were to be asked how I would apply that in other parts of the country, I would have to express a reservation. Each garden city needs to be considered in its own context and I am certainly not advocating that this is necessarily a solution for all possible cases. It has to be carefully chosen, holistic, and, as we are, one complete site rather than fragmented, and it has to be in co-operation with existing authorities. You will know that the Thames Gateway initiatives have not been at all successful over the past couple of decades.

Lord Clement-Jones: Was there adequate co-operation at the outset of Ebbsfleet?

Michael Cassidy: That is the story that I received. When Eric Pickles was Secretary of State, he was extremely keen under his localism agenda to have local authority support, so when I came in, that had already been achieved.

Lord Inglewood: Are there any disadvantages with development corporations—any particular problems that you would not have if they did not exist?

Michael Cassidy: I do not believe so. It is about competence and delivery. An individual development corporation can lose its way if it is wrongly led or if it simply has the wrong priorities.

The Chairman: It is back to leadership, is it not?

Michael Cassidy: Yes. There is nothing in the model that has deterred me from taking on this job. I see it as fitting with other situations I have been involved with in the City of London, where we have been able to make considerable change through the planning system and it has resulted in spectacular growth. I will try to apply those ways of thinking to this in a different context, but building on ideas I have developed over the years about partnership working across boundaries.

Lord Clement-Jones: You are touching on a question I wanted to ask at the end, about lessons for the future development of large sites, which, as we have heard during the course of this inquiry, prevent major problems. You obviously say you have to treat each site on its own merits and ensure you have co-operation with local authorities, and so on. Do you have any broad lessons in mind in terms of how you would proceed in future? In some respects, you would not have started from here with Ebbsfleet, but now you are moving forward because you are doing things differently from the way they started.

Michael Cassidy: If you kindly ask me back in two years, I will tell you.

The Chairman: Our inquiry closes in March.

Michael Cassidy: It would be premature for me to draw those sorts of conclusions. I am already aware of certain challenges in the delivery area but I am not overly depressed about that. One works within the context of government and co-operation across borders, as I described. That may or may not work but at the moment, given the Chancellor’s announcement, I start with a positive stance and I believe we now have the resource to deliver on it.

The Chairman: That is very encouraging, and it does work, of course. We went on a site visit to Birmingham, around New Street, looking at what they are doing for HS2. The way in which people with enthusiasm and very bright leadership skills are getting on with it is very impressive.

Michael Cassidy: It can be done. Manchester has done it too. It takes political will and expert leadership. I am very confident in the quality of the Board I have been able to appoint. They represent very different sectors, but they are extremely relevant to what we are doing here. All of that is working well. I just need to make sure I can develop the delivery team in an extremely achievement-focused way.

Q246 Baroness Andrews: Are you concerned, Mr Cassidy, about other issues of capacity—for example, lack of aggregates, lack of construction skills, lack of project management skills, and lack of good planners in your local authorities? We have seen a loss of planning capacity.

Michael Cassidy: That is an extremely good point, and the next priority for me within the organisation is to recruit skilled project managers. This will be, first, a construction project—quite a complex one—and, secondly, a big master planning exercise. We have AECOM, as I said, but we do not yet have the project management skills we will need to deliver on this. The market is tight because construction is very strong at the moment and there is a skills shortage, which everyone is now very aware of. I am hoping to address that by having some of the housing units provided by more industrial means.

Baroness Andrews: Prefabricated?

Michael Cassidy: In other words, dealing off-site with construction and then delivering to site, perhaps even from far-flung factory locations, in order to speed up the house building. We do not have that at the moment; it is all being built with traditional house building, on-site work. There is no prefabrication.

Lord Inglewood: Are you having project management involvement from the development corporation’s perspective because of the partnerships? In the ordinary way, you would probably find that the planners would plan and the developers would develop, but that is obviously not quite how you are going to do it.

Michael Cassidy: No, because we have to show that we can deploy our £300 million with value for money in mind and not be wasteful with it. Therefore, the project management skill is in organising the contracts, tendering—

Lord Inglewood: My point is that you are taking a step beyond what many conventional planning authorities would do because of the nature of what you are doing and why and how you are doing it.

Michael Cassidy: Yes, that is totally right. That is the main distinction. Planning authorities can only facilitate; they cannot actually drive and deliver. Therefore, the purpose of our constitution is to change that from being a permissive authority to an authority that is driving towards a given outcome.

Lord Inglewood: You are a kind of Joe Chamberlain figure in Ebbsfleet!

Michael Cassidy: I leave you to judge that.

Lord Clement-Jones: You will tell us in two years’ time whether that is a good model.

Michael Cassidy: Yes.

Baroness Rawlings: Is that a formula that could be followed elsewhere?

Michael Cassidy: I would certainly hope so, but I am not accepting invitations to speak advocating this until I know that it works.

The Chairman: Wise man.

Q247 Baroness Young of Old Scone: In the context of leadership, you talked about design standards and the fact that the local authorities had design plans, and you were developing your own but they would need negotiation with developers. How ambitious will you be? For example, will you be insisting on zero-carbon homes?

Michael Cassidy: As I said earlier, there are limitations on the prescriptive powers, not only of planning authorities but of development corporations. Therefore, I am approaching this as a negotiation, not as something we can deploy our statutory powers to achieve and insist on. That is the way the legislation was framed, and it is quite deliberate. We approach it with the confidence that with £300 million, we can obtain favourable results. For the next year, that trade-off is what we will primarily be engaged in, and it has to be subtle, commercial and consensual. It is up to you to decide whether you think that is enough, but that is all I am given and that is what I start with.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: There is not a risk of a race to the bottom?

Michael Cassidy: We have already taken steps in discussion to make sure that does not happen. There has been some expression of disappointment locally about the quality of the first phase being inadequate. That is now recognised; even the landowners understand that criticism. There is quite a lot of moral pressure, and a convincing case is being built for the quality to improve.

Lord Clement-Jones: What is interesting is you had a figure for the resource devoted to the Corporation but then you decided you needed more, and you got your £300 million. What gives you the confidence to proceed now you have £300 million, and what is the difference between that and the original £200 million?

Michael Cassidy: The Chancellor’s original statement was made without actually knowing what it might be spent on. He said £200 million in his Budget the previous year, and we made a case to push that to £310 million over the last few months. There are various things that we have an ambition to achieve with the difference. The site has very poor basic services: there is no foul water drainage; it is all cesspit drainage, which is completely unsatisfactory. There are difficulties to do with the highway approach, as I described earlier; we can address some of that. There are the site difficulties of being a former quarry; there is a very large landfill hill, which is right opposite the station exit and therefore very much in the way. We seriously looked at moving that landfill. We had estimates ranging from £150 million to £500 million to do that, so we have unfortunately had to put that to one side. That landfill hill will be a green open space where you can fly your kite, but probably not much else. There is really basic provision that we think we can usefully deploy that difference to achieve, where the developer will not do it.

Q248 Baroness Andrews: I think you have answered my question, which was going to be about garden cities and principles, but I would like to ask one short question about community building. The fear with new developments is that one does not actually build in the character of the likely community—the community dimension. How are you addressing that?

Michael Cassidy: There are two thoughts that come to mind. One is that we have to recognise that there are existing communities just outside our boundary which need to be brought into our ambition; otherwise, resentment will build up. We will have a programme of community involvement across those borders, so that it is a community development which builds on existing communities: Swanscombe, Northfleet, Southfleet.

Baroness Andrews: They are separate communities, are they not?

Michael Cassidy: They are, and they are quite distinct, and there may be some areas of difference that become obstacles, but we are allowed to use some of our resource outside our boundary if it builds our consequence, and we will do that. We have already launched a community scheme between now and next March whereby local existing groups can bid for resource from us. We will probably do that on a matching basis, so that if they achieve some funding, we will match it. In that way we will have summer fairs, external retail opportunities—I do not want car boot sales, but something which the community wants which helps to build that. The second way we will address this is by drawing on one of the successes of other garden cities: establishing a trust process whereby the community owns the ongoing trust, so that even beyond the period of our development corporation, there will be an entity which keeps faith with the principles.

Baroness Andrews: How interesting.

Michael Cassidy: That is where Letchworth works extremely well.

Baroness Andrews: Such a trust would not have planning powers?

Michael Cassidy: No.

Baroness Andrews: So how would they maintain those principles?

Michael Cassidy: That would have to be discussed as we come to the end of our phase, say 15 years hence, but there is a possibility of resource coming out of the residue of whatever we have built up. Secondly, there will have to be a service charge levied that will provide the wherewithal for ongoing community ventures. That is essential to keep the character.

Baroness Andrews: What about community buildings? Do you prioritise in your master plan the building of places where people can get together from an early stage of the community house building programme?

Michael Cassidy: Yes. Fortunately, there is one already there, which is one of the products of this quiet period since 2007. That is where we have our board meetings. It is a community centre at Springhead. It has quite strong church backing, being a community church as well as being available for other activities. I have noticed a lot of the things you would expect to see in a village hall going on there alongside our board meetings, and I am encouraged by that. There are proposals to extend that type of facility throughout the area—the sort of things you would expect: an ambulance station, a police post, allotments. In the finished masterplan there will be a review of that type of provision because we believe it is essential to the garden city concept.

The Chairman: And a playground where elderly people can watch children play?

Michael Cassidy: That is already in place with the first phase. You will see, I think, a series of village greens—that is the best way I can describe it—each of which is their own cluster, but there will be a complete community feel alongside all that.

The Chairman: It sounds fine. I was thinking of the read-across from the various witnesses. In Birmingham the Corporation have an estate with social housing and rental housing. Also, they are selling houses and using the profits from that to plough back into other parts in that area. Have you thought about that?

Michael Cassidy: In the context that I referred to, where there is a split between the ownership and the planning, it is difficult to achieve that, because you cannot impose conditions that relate to ownership in a planning permission. It is part of our consensual approach to try to achieve that through other means. On affordable housing, which is very important in our planning, 30% of the housing has already been set aside, which is the Dartford experience, and we have happily adopted that. There is a 10% social provision, which is being put out to tender. Circle Housing is one of the interested parties. It is peppered throughout the landscape in the villages; in other words, it will not be ghetto-ised. I have seen that at Kings Hill, near Maidstone, which is a very good example of how you can mix the two without actually noticing the difference. I believe we can achieve that.

Q249 Lord Inglewood: One of the characteristics of the way the planning system in general works in this country now is that there is a great deal of public participation, not from elected councillors but from the wider public. Clearly, if you are building a new town it is slightly different, in that the people are not living there, although there will be some. Have you run into criticism for not having enough public participation? I know you consult. Are you finding there is no difficulty?

Michael Cassidy: We firmly intend to achieve that. We have full public access to our Board and our Planning Committee. We carefully choose the timing and the notice to ensure a very good public turnout. We regularly have up to 20 people at our board meetings.

Lord Inglewood: That is members of the public?

Michael Cassidy: Press and so on. I do not think there will be an issue with how we are organised because that is just good local government procedure. Where I think there is discussion and where we are trying to improve our contribution is the degree to which we actually ask the public questions and invite them with a serious intention to meet and influence a lot of them. That starts next Tuesday with an all-day set of sessions––some of them drop-in opportunities, some presentations—some which are deliberately directed at local authority and community groups. We fully intend to enlarge that area of activity, which, for example, will include a comprehensive mailing of 300,000 leaflets. We believe there will be a lively interest in helping us frame the policies. That is what we are there to do. Incidentally, there was an occasion in this quiet period when a proposal for a white horse was put forward for a hill alongside the A2; a competition was run at Bluewater shopping centre for the preferences of the public, and 75,000 people voted.

The Chairman: Yes or no?

Michael Cassidy: They chose from three or four options. I have reservations in taking on that project at the moment because the price is £20 million and I do not think I can justify that, but if somebody would like to come forward with a smaller horse—

Lord Clement-Jones: Or a public donation.

Michael Cassidy: On the model that was approved, the nose of the horse was as high as Nelson’s Column, so the scale is like the Angel of the North—a great thing—but I am pausing on that at the moment.

The Chairman: Perhaps you could put that on top of your hill.

Michael Cassidy: Yes, it would be nice to have a noticeable feature for all that traffic coming from the Tunnel. I would love to have that but not at that cost.

The Chairman: Perhaps Sir Antony Gormley will do it for nothing, just for the publicity!

Michael Cassidy: At the moment, coverage and understanding has improved. We have had a lot of interest from the press. There will be a detailed piece in the press in the near future. Radio 4’s “Today” programme were very generous to us last month.

Lord Clement-Jones: That is what prompted us.

Michael Cassidy: Thank you. You probably did not listen from 6.30 but they gave us four slots through their morning programme. That was quite well received and I have had good responses since that.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Going back to your 30% affordable, 5% social housing figures, we have heard from a number of other planning authorities where the viability test is ruled in and they drop dramatically to less than 15% affordable from quite high levels. How confident are you that you are going to be able to maintain those levels?

Michael Cassidy: It depends on the demand for that particular provision. The experience in Dartford is that they can fulfil 30% affordable; there is a sufficient waiting list to require that. We are learning from their pattern; we are not trying to re-invent that. I believe in order to develop a balanced community, it is important to keep in mind those targets and not to try to defeat them. In other words, we do not have a rigid vision that this will all be free market, owner-occupied semis or detached homes. We have to broaden our scope here and appeal to the entire marketplace.

Q250 The Chairman: Thank you. Finally, does there need to be a clearer expression of garden city principles in the national planning policy, and what should the Government’s role be in taking forward garden cities in other locations?

Michael Cassidy: I have thought about this in the run-up to today, and I have firmly come to the view that it would be wrong to have something too prescriptive in national legislation to apply across the board to all garden cities. Our situation is unique in its own context. I have seen proposals elsewhere in the country which do not directly resemble us and, personally speaking, I am more than happy to work within the existing framework and not suggest reforms or adjustments, certainly not in the early days of our existence. However, I am very keen that a design code approach should be encouraged wherever possible. That is quite hard with the present legislation, but if it is to be in any area, it would be that of garden cities—let me not prescribe this across the board—which would certainly benefit from additional powers to require design quality.

The Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Cassidy. It has been a riveting session. Thank you for coming here, and I hope you have got something from it.

Michael Cassidy: It has been a real pleasure. Thank you for being so patient and attentive. You will probably be aware that we are more than happy to arrange a site visit.

The Chairman: That would be lovely. Thank you very much indeed.