Planning

This is a good old-fashioned RANT in rambling essay style. I live in a valley with a history of pioneers versus authority.
It has enough good points to copy into here, but not enough to warrant me finding the patience to remodel it...


"Planning decisions based on permanence are a fundamental obstacle to the adoption of sustainable ways of living, which suggest human affairs should have a more lightweight effect upon their surroundings.

For instance it has encouraged caution and standardisation and discouraged innovation, by emphasising cultural continuity.
This has restricted available sites and the organic growth of housing stock to match demand. The resultant shortage has fuelled price escalation which has itself resulted in property being perceived as the most consistent core investment that determines a citizen’s wealth and welfare.
To have a physical possession as the key focus in our lives is itself damaging, as it encourages a preoccupation with material acquisitions, often justified as an addition to value of our property.
The cost of housing reflects also as high rents, which has impact particularly on young people and when and how they make key life choices.
It has also encouraged stereotypical housing styles, which favour industrially processed, distant rather than locally sourced materials, increasing the embodied energy and toxicity of our buildings.

I can think of no other species on this planet where it takes the prime life span attention of both its sexes to gain and maintain their breeding nest and shelter.

As so much hangs on the Planning system, both as a licence to make fortunes and as part of the property market, which itself supports credit spending, and thus the mood and well-being of the entire economy, reform of it would be very sensitive.
However it is worth investigating whether there are existing exceptions or loopholes that can accommodate projects that do not have permanence as their principle objective.

HOUSING

The interest in low-cost ‘eco’housing is a case in point of an interest and need unable to find a niche in a planning territory where it has to compete for ground against permanent investment property.
There seems to be a fixed cultural bias in Development Planning that regards non-urban ventures in living as damaging (this was condemned as ‘development in the open countryside’; a particularly meaningless mantra, until quite recently).
New human habitation, for the most part, is to be restricted to being within the nucleation of existing towns and villages.
The historical reason, that led to the growth of a particular settlement is usually obscure, though fascinating, and even more unlikely to be relevant to its current function.
Focusing new habitation there, just because it’s there already, is glaring example of a Planning logic based on Permanence for its own sake.

The kind of people drawn to the idea of living in an eco-house often have a wider dream that encompasses living more in harmony with the natural world generally, and growing their own food, so have no wish to live inside existing towns and villages.
Anyway, being ring-fenced into a town or village’s boundary itself could restrict design to the point where we would be more likely to gain an expensive ‘green suburb’ version of what we have already than anything truly innovative .

I see & suggest a niche in our planning regulations in the status and working existence of ‘trailer parks’. These I understand as permanent static caravans, some with residential permission, and others restricted to holiday lease-let. Whatever their individual status, they have become accepted to exist permanently within often sensitive rural often coastal landscapes.

The caravans are not freehold, permanent structures; the sites are leased with rights of tenure under the Rent Act and on the basis of compliance with the Park’s particular conditions about upkeep etc.
There is potential here to transform parts or all of one of these parks into an ‘eco-park’, where residential eco-housing was permitted to replace aluminium static caravans.

There is also scope to allow the creation of new lease-site ecoparks on other land: I would suggest for instance the Forestry Commission as a land-bank/landlord of potentially good sites.
There would be a logical scale to each development, suggested by waste & power supply, access, schools etc., & the development of a community dynamic.
Self-build projects would be encouraged, and reined within parameters such as ground area, energy-efficiency, local-material sourcing etc. This way, local solutions which could become a new vernacular could evolve.

Such projects could have impact far outweighing their actual subscription:
Design innovation and principles could influence more mainstream projects.
The existence of a valid alternative to freehold permanent property would shrink the social gap between the homeowner and not, & also reduce house price escalation.

OTHER NOTES

The principle of licensing or leasing is far more in keeping with a world of low imprint human activities and structures than that of permanent planning permissions. The glorification of our accumulations of ‘being’ into permanent freeholds perpetuates damaging, selfish actions, whereas the allowance of ‘doing’ within the context of a greater community encourages more concern for resources and the greater good.

The default material of the construction industry (concrete) is permanent rather than biodegradable, even in a culture where infrastructure is perpetually being torn down and replaced: Let’s remove the assumption of perpetuity. Foundations themselves could require an elaborate and expensive planning permission, which encouraged them to suit a range of subsequent buildings, whereas structures on lightweight pads etc. could be facilitated.


Technological solutions to local non-fossil energy production, such as domestic wind-turbines, might yet make a key difference to energy use in the short term, but will inevitably be superseded and become redundant, yet we at present have an elaborate, cautious, and expensive due planning process to go through that bequeaths them a superfluous permanence.

Perhaps there is scope to license a dwelling or group of dwellings to produce their own green energy within a set of broad visual, and output parameters.

Alternative and low-impact projects are prone to raise misgivings among neighbouring householders anyway, and the function of Planning Policy to protect key cultural values and features can too easily become a platform for prejudice, creating a climate of objection, and generate policies sometimes wilfully interpreted by local planning officers in a subjective crusade against any development that they perceive as threatening their favoured social tableau.

Another distortion of Planning’s goal is if it allows consideration of appearances generally to override that of the function of applications.
I notice a difference between simpler more peasant townscapes, where everything is as it looks, and our culture of frontages, where squalor and disregard are hidden round the back, and it is not a difference to be proud of.

There is little encouragement for innovation or spontaneity in Planning Policy: it presents a world where things are devised and approved and have to happen, whatever unknowns or opportunities or inspirations occur along the way, according to Plan.
There is no allowance for sudden changes in human behaviour or beliefs : the religious fervour in the 18th Century that spawned chapels in every village along with a new sense of Welsh nationhood would be impossible today.

Every avenue of human enterprise is controlled: this county has 135 separate Planning Policies, each with numerous subsections, that need constant review and updating.

Change has become regarded as opportunistic rather than natural, and more likely to harm than benefit the common good.
Planning applications have become increasingly expensive, and judged unilaterally by ,overworked, ill-informed planning officers.

It is seen plainly not to work in its present form: everyone it seems has a local example of a perverse planning decision.

We either need to find flexibility within the planning procedure or give up on trying to accommodate the kind of rapid readjustment of lifestyles we need to go through within the law at all."