Dear Minister
Congratulations on your promotion as Minister of State for Housing and Planning at the Department of Communities and Local Government.
We haven’t met, but our paths literally crossed the other week when you gave evidence to the Communities and Local Government Committee on the remuneration of Local Government Chief Officers. I came in the session immediately after you to give evidence on the operation of the National Planning Policy Framework, a document that you’re about to become very familiar with.
No doubt a lot of people will be telling you about the importance of the NPPF for delivering the homes the country needs. I’d like to remind you that the NPPF is about far more than getting homes built or providing land for businesses, important though those are. Planning is about shaping great places that people want to live and work in, and that means not only protecting our valued wildlife sites for people to enjoy, but creating new habitats and restoring degraded ones.
This is what our 1.1 million members are interested in – saving special places and making new ones.
The NPPF has some very positive policies for biodiversity, although, as I told the committee, the experience of local authorities in implementing them is patchy, and that’s probably down to the lack of available ecological advice in local authorities. I quoted a good example that’s not too far from your constituency – the Joint Core Strategy for Broadland, Norwich and South Norfolk, a growth area where the plan maps biodiversity enhancement areas to buffer, extend and link fragmented habitats.
There are other good examples of where the RSPB and Natural England have successfully worked with local authorities and developers to achieve positive outcomes for housing and the natural environment, such as the Thames Basin Heaths Delivery Plan and the Breckland Core Strategy.
I have to mention one case where cooperation is not so positive. There’s an outline planning application for 5,000 homes on an old MoD site at Lodge Hill in Kent, currently under consideration by Medway Council. It’s also one of the country’s top sites for nightingales, and has been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Most of the SSSI would be destroyed by the development, which is a test case for NPPF policies protecting SSSIs.
If there’s one thing I’d like you to do as planning minister, it’s to set up a proper monitoring and research framework so that we know what impact the NPPF is having over the longer term. This should include a range of economic, social and of course environmental issues, including biodiversity.
If there’s one thing I’d like you NOT to do, it’s to avoid making any radical changes to development plans and the NPPF, to allow time for recent reforms to bed in – but I do think you’ll need to return to the issue of how best to carry out strategic, spatial planning. The duty to cooperate is a poor substitute.
In fact there are two things I’d like you to do – the other one is to come and visit one of our 215 amazing reserves and see our work at first hand.
I look forward to meeting you soon.
Simon Marsh
Head of Planning Policy