Written evidence submitted by South Oxfordshire District Council [NPP 186]
NPPF paragraph | Comment |
| Planning for housing |
12 , 17, 49, 158 | A core principle of the NPPF is that planning should be genuinely plan-led, this enables local communities the opportunity to help shape their local area and provides predictable and efficient decision making.
There is inconsistency and incompatibility between the various paragraphs relating to the need for sustainable development and the importance of having a plan-led approach to planning. The plan-led approach is not being given any particular weight or emphasis in interpretation and decisions. Further uncertainty about the true value of a plan-led system has been created through the various changes to the General Permitted Development Order. Allowing more changes through permitted rights is reducing the impact of policy and creating further uncertainty as parts of recently adopted plan documents become weakened and the true direction of future growth vaguer.
At present an undue balance of weight is being given to whether a plan is up-to-date and is resulting in decisions being made outside the plan-led approach even where authorities have a recently adopted Local Plan.
In preparing evidence for a new local plan, the new evidence will inevitably make the Local Plan out of date, for example a new Strategic housing Market Assessment will identify new housing needs for an area. Where this evidence is prepared jointly with neighbouring authorities as recommended by the framework one authority is likely to publish and use the evidence before others, depending on their plan preparation timetable. It would be iniquitous if cooperation with a neighbour means that an authority’s Local Plan is out of date and decisions are made outside a plan-led approach.
The Framework and guidance should be clear that evidence prepared to update a Local Plan is just that ‘evidence for a Local Plan ‘. It should also be clear evidence for plan making does not become evidence on which to base planning decisions until it is included in an adopted Local Plan, as long as the Local Plan is prepared within a reasonable period of time.
The NPPG does not fully support this approach and further adds to the confusion and uncertainty on this matter. It indicates; … ‘Considerable weight should be given to the housing requirement figures in adopted Local Plans, which have successfully passed through the examination process, unless significant new evidence comes to light. It should be borne in mind that evidence which dates back several years, such as that drawn from revoked regional strategies, may not adequately reflect current needs.’ It further adds in relation to new housing needs assessments; ‘the weight given to these assessments should take account of the fact they have not been tested or moderated against relevant constraints’.
Appeal ref; APP/F2415/A/12/2183653 demonstrates that the Secretary of State has given no weight to the NPPG or the plan-led system in paragraph 17 of the NPPF. Paragraph 12 of the appeal statement indicates that the Secretary of State …..’agrees with the view expressed in the appellants representation that the need figure of 440 dwellings per annum in the 2013 Harborough Housing Requirements Study represents the most up-to-date evidence available and renders the regional strategy-based housing requirements in the Core Strategy out-of-date.’ This decision not only renders the Council’s Core Strategy out-of-date but also the Broughton Astley Neighbourhood Plan which is based on the Core Strategy out-of-date. |
47 | The housing buffer is 20% where there has been under-delivery to encourage a greater opportunities for delivery. This mechanism is open to abuse by landowners and developers. South Oxfordshire has a number of sites where landowners appear to be banking sites and not bringing them forward. The council and community is penalised by this buffer requirement as there is more pressure to release further sites. |
48 | This paragraphs specifies that windfalls do not include additional housing in gardens. This appears to be an anomaly. It is appreciated that there should not be a presumption that all gardens are appropriate for further development however there are some gardens where additional homes can be built without being unneighbourly or resulting in harm to the appearance of the area. Paragraph 53 covers this issue. Where this is the case the additional homes should be counted as windfalls, to do otherwise leads to unnecessary arguments about windfall rates and numbers. |
| Duty to Cooperate |
178 - 181 | It is early days in understanding how the Duty to Cooperate is working in practice. However the trend appears to be that it is causing considerable delay to the plan preparation process and therefore to the delivery of new homes.
One of the main issues is a lack of clarity about what effective cooperation is and what evidence Inspector’s wish to see to demonstrate that effective cooperation has taken place.
In addition the NPPF and decision evidence lacks any acknowledgement of the burdens this requirement imposes. The burdens on neighbouring authorities include for example:
Oxfordshire authorities are working together to investigate how to meet the unmet needs of Oxford City and have set out in a Memorandum of Understanding their commitment and the process to be followed. Nevertheless the process is likely to involve extensive debate about how best to meet the housing needs of the City. This process will have very significant resource requirements and will result in delay in reaching an appropriate solution and in the delivery of new homes.
It is important to note that the duty is to cooperate and not necessarily to agree. There should be greater clarity in guidance to acceptable timescales and the logical conclusion of cross border work and that the duty does not and should not mean that one authority has to simply respond to neighbouring authorities. There is a risk associated with discussions about meeting others’ unmet housing need (in particular) that these result purely in a “first past the post” system with a race for those with unmet need to find another authority willing to take it. Also, an authority with an adopted development plan risks having their policies undermined by the threat of their neighbours need overriding their plan. Neither of these situations is conducive to ‘maximising the effectiveness’ of strategic plan making.
This situation results in considerable discontent with and undermines the credibility of the NPPF and planning. The NPPF needs to consider how these issues can be dealt with fairly in the plan making process and provide a clearly understood approach for authorities to follow.
Where housing numbers are increasing significantly there is considerable concern among communities about the provision of timely and appropriate infrastructure. At present not all infrastructure providers are in tune with this process and this inhibits the success of authorities in preparing comprehensive plans. The Duty to Cooperate needs to apply to utility and infrastructure providers. |
| Planning for town centres |
23 | The NPPF section on town centres (paras 23- 27) is outdated. Shopping has changed. Many retailers are now ‘multi-channel’ retailing, selling both through their physical shops and on-line. This flexibility means that they can still reach a large proportion of shoppers with far fewer stores. The message nationally is that a lot of town centres may need to shrink and/ or change, containing fewer shops. This leaves space for town centres to diversify and fulfil more of a leisure, workplace and housing role. The desirability and demand for additional retailing has gone down. The old ‘predict and provide’ approach to retail planning in the NPPF should be replaced.
Specifically, the para 23 bullet point 6 statement ‘It is important that needs for retail, leisure, office and other main town uses are met in full and are not compromised by limited sites availability. Local planning authorities should therefore undertake an assessment of the need to expand town centres to ensure a sufficient supply of suitable sites’ is no longer relevant and should be deleted.
Instead the NPPF should maintain a town centre first approach, but allow for managed change and shrinkage of retailing. Local planning authorities should develop a tailored prescription of each centre to enhance its local distinctiveness and allow its evolution to a vibrant and attractive mixed use space. This approach, however, would be hampered by changes to the GPDO where the vitality and vibrancy of town centres is being threatened by changes to C3 dwellings from A1 shops and B1 offices that do not require sufficient qualification before the loss occurs and the footfall is lost. |