Muddling towards zero carbon

Given the consensus that there needs to be significant progress towards (net) zero emissions from housing and transport if the transition is to be negotiated without severe social disruption the disarray in Government is both puzzling and concerning.  Having committed to a Planning Bill and revisions to the NPPF it is too much to hope that the current hiatus will last, but none of the suggested changes to the current legal and policy framework would make the transition any faster or more certain. Quite the opposite.  If, for instance, the Government confirm 2025 as the date for zero carbon housing, a million more houses will be built that would require retrofitting to add to the 20million+ that are waiting to be upgraded.  Meanwhile the industry might be coming to its senses and responding to consumer demand for houses that can be heated with lower energy bills.

In Abingdon we have one volume builder installing air source heat pumps and solar PV on houses with limited construction carbon, and EV charge points - all before being required to do so.  A neighbouring developer will find it difficult to build to a lesser standard.  Another developer (building to a carbon negative standard in construction and operational carbon) has come to an arrangement with Gridserve to provide EVs for the car club for its residents, setting and example that other developers might find hard to resist, even it wanted to. Hiyacar (https://www.hiyacar.co.uk/), can make it really simple to make car sharing a step towards decarbonising transport. Fortunately these market pressures (and even corporate responsibility?) can raise standards even where adopted policies, building regulations and conditions on outline permissions are out of date and behind the zero carbon curve.

Also in Abingdon we have examples of road schemes inherited from another era - one where carbon reductions were not the paramount objective.  The combination of 'working-from-home', active travel, 15 minute neighbourhoods, electrification (and automation?) of road transport, avoidance of construction carbon, busing-back-better and car sharing/clubs, means that all road schemes need to be re-evaluated.  There are councils hoisted on the petard of 'infrastructure first' who should be redirecting their energy to 'accessibility first' in ways that will not depend on new construction and that will be life enhancing. There are likely to be cases where road capacity both within and between urban areas is reduced and not increased.

And in Plymouth Persimmon Homes have found it possible to build with air source heat pumps and PV that has influenced the orientation of the houses.

The resounding message from COP26 was that Government(s) are incapable to lead the way to zero carbon. It will be down to businesses and consumers to drive down carbon emissions through their choices. This will not be sufficient without Government interventions but where voters lead politicians will follow.

Is the planning system safe in the hands of Michael Gove MP?

 

The AGM of the Wildlife and Countryside Link held on 6 December was an opportunity for Secretary of State Michael Gove to reveal his current thinking on reforms to the planning system. These can be summarised as:

 

The 5 year housing land supply rule has caused his inspectors to pass bad plans.  This implies that the way in which the national Planning Policy Framework NPPF (ie the presumption in favour of sustainable development) needs to be applied in a different way together with the methodology for calculating housing needs. The 300,000 houses a year national target should not be relied on, and local plans should not be driven by targets but by social justice and quality of life.   Mr Gove also said there is a need to fully recognise the nature and climate emergencies in the operation of the planning system.

 

He expressed support for ‘gently dense’ development, sites that is a nod towards the Yimbys, 15 min neighbourhoods and would be consistent with custom-splitting.  The reorientation of Homes England’s mission might include embracing ‘retrofit first’ and reduce the incidence of (un)sustainable urban extensions.

 

The extraordinary defeat of the Tories at the 2021 Chesham and Amersham bi-election has forced a re-think of the planning reforms set out in the Planning for the Future White Paper, which was based on the work of Policy Exchange, the think tank that Michael Gove had founded in 2002.  The irony that PE came so close to causing fatal harm to the Tory Government should not obscure the fact that the reforms likely to upset the ‘blue wall’ are on hold while some purpose is found for ‘levelling –up to appease Tory voters in the ‘red wall’. There is a reasonable prospect of the planning system as is being operated in a more sensitive and environmentally friendly way.  It might be too much to hope for the Secretary of State to find that reforms to neither planning law nor policy are strictly necessary were he to use his existing powers through national policy statements, oral and written ministerial statements, local plan examinations and planning appeal decisions. All those involved in the planning system; public, professionals, developers, politicians (and enlightened think tanks?) could then concentrate on the re-fashioning of urban and rural areas to enable the transition to a carbon neutral/negative economy.

 

This discussion is the clearest possible reminder that “planning is politics”, and that all those with constructive ideas about how to negotiate the transition to a carbon neutral or energy positive and more biodiverse economy should engage vigorously at local and national levels.

 

 

 

 

The performance gap

 In the real world controls over the use of land and buildings (ie planning) and formulating low/zero carbon transport policies count for nothing unless the gap between good intentions and lousy outcomes is bridged. I am not referring to deliberate cheating that was exemplified by VW emission tests, but the sloppy way in which the elements of the various systems are linked leaving scope for leakage and slippage at every 'join'.

Writing at a time when the Government seem to have been energised by having the COP spotlight turned on its chairing role there might be an opportunity to introduce some meaningful policies that could cut through the blah, blah, blah.

As an aside, the Ministers claiming that the PM/Government could not intervene in the Cumbria coal mine proposal that is being considered at appeal were in denial or ignorance of how the planning system works.  Followers of this blog will know that planning decisions are taken under the stricture of s38(6) of the PCPA 2004, "...in accordance with the development plan  unless material considerations indicate otherwise."  I don't know what the local plan for the area of the coal mining application has to say on the matter, but I do know that what Government Ministers say in a formal capacity count as material and must be taken into account.  The principle of 'sub judice' does not apply to a planning case where at the time of making a decision all material considerations must be taken into account. The Business Secretary, the Minister for Leveling up, or the PM could issue a statement written on departmental letterhead or spoken in Parlaiment and recorded in Hansard, that the appeal inspector would have to take into account (no compulsion to follow, but very surprising if adequate and intelligible reasons could be found not to). 

So working on the assumption that the dust will be blown off existing policies relating to sustainability and regeneration and where necessary will be replaced with even stronger ones, there is still the significant risk that implementation will fall short of what is necessary to reduce carbon emissions.  The draft SPD posted on 17 April 2020 [Climate and ecological emergency SPD]is still relevant and can be proposed to local councils without the resources to update development plan policies in the timescale required.  But what is needed is a stiffening of the links between words and action.  

All development plans and SPDs should include requirements to appoint independent experts, before, during and after the development is carried out:

-  to ensure compliance with the conditions that relate to building standards (building inspectors will not be checking the quality and quantity of the insulation on every house),

- the same or different expert to help the residents understand how to operate the low/zero  carbon living for which the building is designed, 

- an assistant to organise the low carbon and active travel (setting up the car clubs and related IT systems), 

- an assistant to support low water use including composting systems and toilets, and biodiversity improvements across the site and its boundaries (ie https://drive.google.com/file/d/1axaIWMl1n4vKWAjFYRaHMfFI6DEbYURD/view

How these independent experts are to be sourced will be up to the developers who (with few exceptions) have been found not to be trusted or relied on in these respects.  These helpers should have excellent communication skills but also be armed with some concrete means of persuasion such as rewards for low energy use, possibly paid out of a fund collected by those responsible for higher levels of emissions? Remember contraction and convergence anyone?

This role could be described as facilitating One Planet Living and could be filled by one or more people or one consultancy. The setting up of neighbourhood assemblies could and should also be part of the job.

What emergency?

 I have just watched ministers from MHCLG (about to be amended to include leveling up) and BEIS answering questions put by the MHCLG select committee. According to the ministers everything is going swimmingly (apart from the hiccup of the Green Homes Grant) and we are 'gliding' to net zero carbon.  There is no problem with new housing being the responsibility of MHCLG and retrofitting existing under the care of BEIS.  Nor is it a problem for local councils to fund their response to the climate emergency because there isn't one ie all will be sorted by 2050.  Building to net zero (as was intended by 2016 under a previous administration) must not be allowed to interfere with building new houses designed to a good standard; not net zero and without any post occupancy evaluation. No understanding that upgrading of any meaningful kind would be harder and more costly than when in the build. The planning system is being changed but the minister was not briefed that any council that had interpreted the NPPF presumption in favour of 'sustainable development' to mean that the development had to be sustainable, as he claimed,  was simply overruled due to an assumed shortage of available housing land. leading to the building of houses that will now need upgrading.

The members of the select committee asked all the right questions (the Chair Clive Betts interjected "...that won't save the planet"!)  but the format squeezes ministers and their civil servants into their box of self-justification rather than into a collaborative discussion of how to get out of this mess.

The new Secretary of State for leveling up (and housing but not, perhaps, local government?) is Michael Gove. The main message is that the transition to a low/zero/negative carbon economy could and should be the same as one that levels the country socially and economically.  Most if not all the ways in which inequalities are expressed would be severely limited when there carbon footprint comes into play.  The housing resource will have to be more evenly distributed by subdividing existing houses so that the space and fabric being heated and insulated is being occupied and meeting genuine housing needs. This will reduce the need for new building and the carbon emissions emitted from the building materials and operations and associated services and infrastructure. The increase in population density would support lifetime or 20min neighbourhoods. The works could be carried out by custom-builders turned custom-splitters. Biodiversity would not be lost to new building in the countryside or back gardens.  Mr Gove should be delighted that sub-divisions at scale would reduce the 300,000 new dwellings per annum target that was a factor in losing an election in the 'blue wall'.  Sharing of EVs, more walking and cycling, less flying, more repairing, reduced obsolescence, fewer new clothes, enhanced local green space are necessary components of a zero carbon economy but all are more generally affordable.  That leaves energy for heating, cooking and lighting which will require a better fit between the size of households and housing.

Michael Gove was the original chairman of Policy Exchange, the think tank responsible for the planning white paper.  His shuffle to LUPMHCLG is to repair the electoral damage that the white paper has inflicted! It is just a pity that he is unlikely to see carbon budgets that have a sense of reality (ie to zero by 2030) as key to leveling-up that is a political slogan.

Reviewing the Bacon Review

The review of custom and self-building (CSB) carried out for the PM by Richard Bacon MP has just been published.   After 100 pages it recommends Homes England be given a greater role, more publicity including CSB show parks,  support for community-led housing, realizing potential of MMC, getting  support from the new planning framework and Act and ironing out creases with the tax regime.  Not much to object to but why does it take 5 years to expose the abject failure to implement the 2016 Housing and Planning Act? 

 Unfortunately Richard Bacon blames a conspiracy between the volume builders and the planners instead of the real culprit being the Government and the Secretary of State who cannot face the fact that the planning system could and still can get this show on the road.  The slagging off of the existing planning system and the support for Planning for the Future (by Mr Bacon, a Tory MP) fails to identify the main reason why the planners are such an easy target; the contradictory and/or inadequate advice provided by governments (eg Secs of State) who fail to or are ideologically opposed to understanding the potential of relying More on regulations.

If LPAs had been properly equipped with strong and consistent advice on CSB since 2016 the last 5 years and counting would not have been wasted, nor would this report or speculative recommendations be needed.  Even now, a clearly worded Written Ministerial Statement from Mr Jenrick (now Mr Gove) could have immediate benefits. 

 A minority of the public say that they would choose a new home but, I am afraid to say, about 80% of those that do, claim that they are happy with their choice.

The economic consultants to the report  concede that the energy efficiency standards of new building will improve so that the differential between the volume builder and the self/custom builder will narrow. In fact the gap must close to a net zero standard of construction and operational carbon if carbon reduction budgets are to be met. It seems unlikely that the recommendations will result in CSB becoming  any less  focused on detached houses and enabled to promote terraced houses and apartments that will required for new housing to meet carbon reduction budgets.   There is no mention of the imperative to "retrofit first". The Department of Leveling -up, Housing and Communities decline to say whether the new Help to Build Fund will be available to those wanting to sub-divide existing properties?

The need for residential sub-divisions, so that the insulation and heating of about 50% of our residential space and fabric is not wasted, is not mentioned. It would have been really interesting to see an economic analysis (inc social welfare) of custom-splitting.

It is hard not to see Richard Bacon as part of the failure to deliver on the 2016 Act and his criticism of the planning system suggest a significant lack of understanding of how it could and should be enabled to deal with this and other aspects of meeting housing needs.  My advice is to take some of the data from the report to persuade your LPA that it should be supporting CSB, but in the form of residential sub-divisions and custom-splitting. Given the climate emergency I am not inclined to be supporting hundreds of thousands of new builds however delivered.

Planning can address the climate emergency

Big claim for what might seem to be a small gain but this extract from a planning appeal file:///Users/danielscharf/Downloads/Appeal%20decision%203269526.pdf "Para 72.The S106 would ensure the implementation of a travel plan that would seek to encourage sustainable transport modes via initiatives such as residential information packs (including vouchers towards cycling and bus/rail travel) and car sharing. The S106 would also make provision for an electric car club to operate from within the site. 73.Based on the above measures, the development would satisfactorily promote a range of sustainable transport modes. This would help to address concerns regarding air pollution and the climate emergency. Therefore, it would accord with LP Policies CN9 and EM1... ". This is very significant.

In granting the permission the offer of an 'electric car club' is said by the inspector to carry limited weight as it comprised one parking space for the 110 dwellings. However,  the inclusion of the obligation to provide the EV car club would probably have been deleted as unnecessary were the inspector to have given it no weight.   Local planners should get a grip of the electrification of the road transport system.  Developers should be required to provide more cars and spaces to attract greater weight in decision-taking.

The real significance of the decision is the reference to the 'climate emergency'  - the first time I have seen this referenced in an appeal decision. As a material consideration this is an invitation for the public to provide evidence to decision-takers, both; LPAs and inspectors/Secretary of State, that accords with the emergency situation eg net zero long before 2050 and Cornwall are looking at 2030 https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/ytsowko1/climate-emergency-dpd.pdf. This should not be limited to electric car clubs but to the carbon emitted in the building and operation of the houses.

If the climate (and ecological) emergency  is a material consideration, then it is unlawful not to take it into account for all developments implying carbon emissions (and biodiversity loss).  It might also be unlawful to make inadequate provisions for addressing the emergency.

Abject failure to deliver on self-building

 

The Right to Build Taskforce www.righttobuild.org.uk is trying to draw attention to hopeless state of self and custom building in the UK.   The New Self-Build Data Release І4 August 2021 issued by the MHCLG reveals the failure of Government to achieve anything close to what it has said it would like this sector to contribute to new housing supply and shows that a large proportion of councils are in breach of their legal obligations in terms of permissions for serviced plots available for self/custom builders on the statutory registers, and a fraction of the opportunities that NaCSBA say is the real demand.

 

The Task Force has assessed a large number of “general support” policies in local plans and find that they are of limited use in decision-making.  “Allocations, exceptions, percent policies and criteria based support for community-led and collective infill and exceptions are the most robust policies for providing an responsive land supply for self-build.” Any qualified planner working in development control/management would have known that this would be the case.

 

Richard Bacon MP should take credit for the current state of the law (ie the duty to permit serviced plots commensurate to the demand on registers), but has now become complicit in the failure to deliver in accordance with the legal duties.  Neither he nor NaCSBA (or the Right to Build Task Force) have ever been prepared to support custom-splitting as a way of increasing supply of opportunities for people to create their own homes, equivalent to a serviced plot but generally within existing built-up areas with existing facilities. New dwellings would be created with minimal levels of 'construction carbon'.  This would be a means of enabling the space and fabric of existing houses being heated and insulated to meet housing needs.  It will be interesting to see whether the Bacon Review to be published in the next few weeks has anything new to say on what is a sorry state of affairs.