English Regional Planning 2000-2010

Lessons for the Future

Corinne Swain, Tim Marshall, Tony Baden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136290992
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Stadtplanung & Landschaftsgestaltung

English Regional Planning 2000-2010 chronicles a vital feature of recent UK planning activity, during the period of the Blair and Brown Labour governments up to 2010. It deals particularly with the regional scale of planning during these years, whereby large steps forward were made, but where policy making often proved very controversial. One purpose of the book is to learn from the many areas of policy development, method and skills which evolved during the decade up to 2010. This will mean that a future return to strategic planning should not have to reinvent the wheel. This book also helps to inform such planning in the rest of the developed world where higher-level planning is more prevalent.

The book has eight chapters written by experts active in English regional planning during these years, alongside two chapters by the editors introducing and concluding on the experience as a whole. Thematic topics covered include the way in which housing and employment development was tackled in the varying English regional contexts, and the growing influence of transport and environmental factors on the spatial strategy. Process elements covered include how policy was made through public consultation and working with numerous stakeholders (economic, social, environmental), how the public examination of issues was organised, followed by final consideration by central government, and how monitoring informed the next policy review.

The authors do not gloss over the difficulties encountered in the highly contested world of English local and regional politics, or the ways in which central government management of the regional planning process made life on the ground difficult for those engaged in the process. Nevertheless the account as a whole shows how a wealth of innovative and forward looking practices were developed. This multi-faceted study contributes to the understanding of how strategic planning can provide the framework for guiding spatial change and allocating resources, looking to a long-term sustainable future.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

CORINNE SWAIN, TIM MARSHALL, AND TONY BADEN

AIMS OF THIS BOOK

This book reflects on the practice of regional planning in England since the late 1990s and in particular the statutory system of Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs) introduced by the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act of 2004. It draws out the lessons to be learnt while they are still fresh in the minds of practitioners, prior to the impending abolition of regional strategies under the localism agenda. In so doing it seeks to leave a legacy for future planners if and when formal systems of strategic planning are reconsidered.

Each of the following essays comments on a different aspect of regional planning, covering:

• the main thematic content of strategies, in particular housing and economic growth, transport, and environmental issues;
• the process of plan preparation, including stakeholder engagement, independent testing, and monitoring;
• the government’s expectations of, and role in, the system; and
• a comparison with contemporary strategic planning in Europe and in the other countries of the UK.

The essays highlight the challenges faced by practitioners throughout the different English regions. Each of the contributors comments openly on the main strengths and weaknesses of regional planning practice in respect of their main area of interest. In the conclusions we give an overall assessment of the workings of English regional planning over the period 1998–2010 within the system that it operated. Amongst the challenges inherent in this system were limitations on the democratic legitimacy and funding independence of the regional bodies, but there were also key weaknesses in how the government managed the regional planning process, and difficulties caused by frequent changes in policy and procedure. Throughout the book, but particularly in the second half of the Conclusions, we draw out lessons to assist any reincarnation of a formal strategic planning system in the longer term.

This book is not intended to contribute directly to academic discussion of regional planning, although we hope that it will provide much raw material for reflection and to be mined by future students. There have been several book-length treatments in the last decade on UK regional planning and, by consulting these, readers can find out more about the background and challenges we are examining here, and many case studies and accounts of particular episodes. The books range in approach from those seeking to cover the whole field in textbook style¹, to looking at particular themes such as regional planning and sustainable development², territorial policy making and governance in the UK³, strategic planning compared across the whole of the UK and Ireland⁴, and a collection covering a wide range of topics and regional studies⁵. Numerous articles and reports are of course referenced in these books.

The rest of this introduction provides a brief outline of how regional planning has evolved, the scope of regional spatial planning, and the continuing challenges that make strategic planning important.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ENGLISH REGIONAL PLANNING

Regional planning in England has a long history dating in terms of plans to the mid-1940s, and, in terms of concerns about regional planning problems, even earlier. For much of its history there has been a dichotomy between two sets of policy concerns. On the one hand there has been a regional economic policy concern to address regional economic imbalance and decline, going back to at least the Special Areas Act of 1934. On the other hand there have been land use planning concerns to address the regional and sub-regional problems created by rapid urbanisation, household growth, and pressures on scarce environmental resources, dating back to measures such as the Restriction of Ribbon Development Act 1935. At times these two sets of policy concerns have been tackled together, although at others they have been subject to separate and sometimes uncoordinated arrangements.

At the risk of over-simplification, the swing of the central government pendulum in favour of or against regional planning has in part been due to two factors. The first has been the nature of central government’s understanding of the causes and consequences of these underlying economic, environmental, and demographic changes. The second has been the attitude taken by government to strategic intervention through the planning system to redress market failure: in terms of its ideological acceptance, its perceived effectiveness in responding quickly enough to changing circumstances, and the attendant costs of a regional bureaucracy.

Although there were earlier milestones in regional plan making, such as the Greater London Plan of 1944, the first comprehensive regional planning system was not established in England until the 1960s when the Labour government divided England into eight planning regions and set up the Regional Economic Planning Councils (REPCs). During this decade regional associations or ‘conferences’ of local planning authorities (LPAs) were also set up on a voluntary basis in some regions. By the mid-1970s seven regional strategies had been prepared: some by REPCs, some by the regional planning associations, and some on a tripartite basis with central government. These strategies, in many cases, represented a fusion between the economic and land use policy concerns referred to above.

However, in 1979 a Conservative government was elected that was determined to reduce state intervention and what it saw as the wasteful apparatus of regional policy. The REPCs were abolished and any form of regional planning had little or no support from the new government. Regional planning was kept alive only by the regional planning conferences, which continued to argue that strategic planning at a regional and sub-regional level was necessary in order to address the cross-boundary planning challenges. While central government emphasised the need for LPAs to respond to local housing pressures and saw little need for regional planning, the regional planning conferences argued there were significant regional planning issues that needed addressing, such as the intra-regional economic imbalance between the west and east of London.

By 1990 regional planning had swung back into fashion with central government, partly thanks to a recognition by the Conservative government that a local authorities-only approach to addressing the growing housing pressures, particularly in the South East, was insufficient. A national system was introduced under which Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) was prepared and issued by the Secretary of State (SofS) with the regional planning conference advising on what it thought RPG should contain.

At the start of the period of interest for this book (1998–1999), more regionally accountable RPG was introduced with the Regional Planning Body (RPB) preparing the draft RPG and submitting it through the Government Office for the region (GO) to the SofS for examination by an independent panel and subsequent revision and issue by the SofS. By the end of 2000 the RPBs in most regions were the Regional Chambers (‘Regional Assemblies’ as they became known), which replaced the regional planning conferences. Although these were mainly local authority bodies, they had a minority of nonlocal government members. The government’s long-term objective was that RPG should develop into a comprehensive spatial strategy for the region, as discussed further below. These arrangements were made statutory in 2004 and RSSs replaced RPGs.

New legislation in 2009 provided for single Regional Strategies to replace both the RSSs and the Regional Economic Strategies prepared by the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). This new type of strategy was to be jointly prepared by a local authorities-only body, the Leaders’ Board for the region, and the RDA. These new arrangements were never fully implemented as in another swing of the pendulum, partly because of the political opposition discussed below, the newly elected coalition government introduced a Localism Bill 2010, which included provisions to repeal the relevant regional planning legislation and to enable the revocation of existing regional strategies (enacted in November 2011). Further details of the arrangements during the 1998–2010 period are set out at Appendix A, and the regional boundaries operative during this period are shown in Figure 1.1.

An important focus by central government during the 2000s was on housing provision in the greater South East, given the scale of demand, the economic implications and environmental constraints, and the political sensitivity of the issues raised. It was such a concern that at times the operation of the regional planning system by the government was arguably based on an overly South East-centric growth model. In turn, growing local political opposition to the level of

Figure 1.1 Regional boundaries during the 2000s.

housing provision imposed through that system in the greater South East was a major factor in helping to form both the wider localism agenda and the coalition government’s decision to dismantle the regional planning system. Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 7 all touch on this central issue.

THE SCOPE OF REGIONAL SPATIAL PLANNING

The concept of a comprehensive spatial strategy was potentially a fundamental change in the nature of regional planning. The 2000 Planning Policy Guidance note 11 (PPG11)⁶ was the first government publication to coin the term ‘regional spatial planning’. From this point onwards regional strategies were not just restricted to the conventional topics of housing provision, priorities for the environment, transport, infrastructure, economic development, agriculture, mineral extraction, and waste treatment and disposal. PPG11 referred to the importance of other considerations in developing a spatial strategy, including responding to the challenge of climate change, promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency, and joining up with health improvement programmes. It also made clear that the resulting spatial strategy should not only provide a framework for local development and transport plans, but also inform other strategies and programmes relevant to regional strategy delivery.

Further refinement was made in the 2004 Planning Policy Statement 11 (PPS11)⁷, which stated that spatial planning should “bring together and integrate policies for the development and use of land with other policies and programmes which influence the nature of places and how they function” (paragraph 1.6). At a regional level this would, amongst other things, provide a spatial framework for the investment and operational plans of relevant infrastructure and service providers.

Among the factors that made the realisation of spatial planning at the regional level problematic were:

• the variable extent to which there was sufficient engagement and ownership of the strategy by local politicians willing to take a broad spatial view;
• the advisory, rather than decision making, role of the RPBs in relation to resource allocation and infrastructure investment; and
• the dependence of the RPBs on working with stakeholders, including many central government departments and their agencies, which had a variable appreciation of the benefits of spatial planning but whose ‘buy-in’ was critical, particularly where they had the needed resources.

This separation between plan making and the means of delivery, especially infrastructure investment, was to remain a fundamental constraint on the effectiveness of the regional planning system. This was despite the progressive development of Regional Funding Allocations between 2005 and 2009. Chapter 4 comments on the difficulties of squaring the regional strategy process with the centralised control over funding for major transport infrastructure and discusses the interface between the RFA and RSS processes.

A further complication in achieving a comprehensive spatial strategy for each region was the separation in 1998 between regional economic planning, which was the responsibility of the RDAs, and other aspects of regional spatial planning, which were the responsibility of the RPBs and expressed in RPG. PPG11 fudged this tension. It stated that “there should be a two-way relationship between RPGs and the RDA economic strategies” (paragraph 4.07). How far this was two-way was called into question by an earlier statement in PPG11 that “RPG should complement and assist the implementation of the RDAs’ economic strategies” (paragraph 4.02). This reflected the strength of the regional economic development agenda of the Deputy Prime Minister and other ministers in the government department then containing the planning remit, that is, a predecessor to the current Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG; see Abbreviations for progression of departmental name changes). This agenda sought to drive forward regional measures to improve competitiveness, to promote regeneration and investment, and to tackle structural weaknesses...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Coalescing views around a strategy
• 3 Spatial strategies for housing and the economy
• 4 Transport and the spatial strategy
• 5 Longer-term environmental challenges
• 6 Value of independent testing
• 7 Government expectations of Regional Spatial Strategies
• 8 Monitoring and feedback to inform strategy and implementation
• 9 Regional planning beyond England
• 10 Conclusions
• Appendix A: regional planning procedural and funding arrangements 1998–2010
• Appendix B: availability of regional monitoring and intelligence
• Index