The Use of Local Development Orders to Enable Self Procurement
We need more housing, of better quality, that matches more accurately the expectations of those who are going to live there. Little new there then… yet with the ink barely dry on the Housing Green paper, the latest figures show that even last year’s relatively modest increases in the number of new housing starts is already on the wane. The raft of recent policy initiatives in housing and planning seem to tinker with existing arrangements rather than offer convincing solutions to deep rooted problems of the current system, so ESP’s aim of re-engineering the procurement process is a timely one. But a big question will be how ESP develops the new procurement process in a way that avoids it being dragged down by the inertia of the regulatory planning system.
The key attributes of the current planning system are that, for all the talk of proactive ‘spatial’ planning, the system is regulatory and reactive. While considerable time and resource is allocated to the regulatory control process, comparatively little effort is dedicated to the more important job of providing a structured framework for development – for example planning delivery of public infrastructure or planning how houses, plots and streets should relate to each other. Instead of providing a means for early and coordinated decision making, as Ian Abley points out, the different regulatory processes form a barrier to the effective sequencing of design development and approvals. The upshot is a system inimical to ESP’s aim of plot based development allied to innovative whole building solutions – where pre-approved pattern book housing can be procured for a serviced plot sold complete with a planning permission.
So where there is a desire for bringing forward a site for development, and local democratic agreement to do so, how can provision be made for better upfront agreement as to how the different parties to a development should proceed? To satisfy PPS 3 and Environmental Impact Regulations, are there means for agreeing on a few key parameters on the urban dimensions of a place? And can these agreed parameters be translated into a set of technical specifications that can be formalised – or adopted – so they provide clear instructions for all those who wish to build as to what they must do to meet with approval of the regulatory systems?
The answer might be found in Local Development Orders (LDO’s), a little known (and as yet untested) amendment to the Town and Country Planning (General Development) Order 1995. An amendment Order of 2006 makes provision for all Local Planning Authorities to prepare Local Development Orders which will them to specify the type of development which can be granted planning permission across a local area – effectively allowing a democratic response to local circumstances that amounts to extending permitted development rights on a localised basis. LDO’s must meet with a number of strict conditions – for example they can only implement policies already embedded within a Development Plan. Also, adopting an LDO requires it to go through some of the same elongated consultation processes required to adopt any form of policy today. The difference is that once the LDO is approved, all development that meets with the provisions of the Local Order becomes permitted development – and consequently need not go through a formal planning application process. For those that want to build outside the terms of the order, the option remains of going through the normal process to secure permission.
Before an LDO can be consulted on and subsequently adopted, it must contain a description of the development which the order would permit, and a plan identifying the extent of the area to which it applies. This effectively requires the preparation of a design code – a technical specification at an urban scale that instructs on the different components of place, and how they should be assembled. It is here that the greatest area of uncertainty lies in the new procurement process ESP is developing. Although some local authorities have declared an interest in using LDO’s, as yet this has still to happen. Consequently there has not yet been any work to ascertain the level of detail in the urban specification that will be required to allow adoption of the LDO. So for ESP, in parallel with developing the procurement process software and working through how whole building systems can be type approved, answering questions as to the shape of the LDO process should be a priority.
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