Consult and respond – or risk losing out

No surprises: there’s a lot of uncertainty about the implications of the three key themes around localism. The law of unintended consequences is likely to loom large.

Can local people be bothered to draft neighbourhood plans? Our guess is that those with busy lives won’t be engaged - it’ll be educated middle class retirees with time on their hands who’ll set the parameters for development. And how representative will they be? In areas of social stress residents’ plans may never develop.

Is the Bill a NIMBY’s charter? A You Gov poll found that while 81 per cent of people think Britain needs more housing only 50 per cent would want it built near them.

With the scrapping of RSS, the neighbourhood plan may have no strategic planning context if the local authority doesn’t have a strategy in place. Terrifyingly, the neighbourhood plans could come first.

But it’s the third strand, that of compulsory community engagement, which really presents the challenge for developers.

For big schemes there’s a lot at risk. The bill seeks a 15 per cent reduction in appeals and enquiries but in the early stages, compulsory consultation could make the planning process much more expensive and it’ll take much longer. Community involvement could mean any contentious planning application is sent into a community cul-de-sac for months on end.

There’s also the danger that consultation actually inspires opposition, bringing it out of the woodwork, and that the vocal minority, fuelled by their new found rights to influence decisions, use it as a platform for mobilising the opposition, even where the majority may well be in favour.

So the issue is not about the need to consult, it’s about needing to consult in a much more sophisticated way – and managing the process to empower the silent majority and ensure balance and fairness. That’s where Paver Smith come in.