Rotten Boroughs - 2nd October 2013

Ever heard of waste in local government? How about Ryedale – an authority with only 30 members? Why did they need to spend £50K on a push button voting system? Were there really so many of us that our hands could not be counted?

And how confusing! A few weeks ago a local  councillor proposed refusal of a highly controversial planning application, and then voted in favour of it. He claimed he had made a mistake – pressed the wrong button!

Why is it that district planning authorities are able to put themselves above the law?

If a councillor was to use his influence to get a council to give planning permission contrary to planning policies for a supermarket on land which he owns, so as to make a killing of £5M or more, he would be accused of corruption and disciplined for acting in his own interest. So why is it  that, if the same Council were to grant planning permission against national planning policy for a superstore on land which it owns with the deliberate intention of making a killing of £5M, this is not regarded as corrupt? Yet this is exactly what Ryedale District Council did when they granted planning permission for a superstore at Wentworth Street Car Park in Malton last year.

In doing so, the Council acted against the wishes of the residents of  Malton and of Norton, the neighbouring town, as stated in their Neighbourhood Plan, after full public consultation.

One might have thought that Mr. Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities, would have wanted to put a stop to this kind of going on. The decision had to be referred to him and he had the opportunity to call a public enquiry. He failed to do so, and failed to explain his reasons for not calling the matter in. So, is Mr. Pickles deliberately encouraging councils to use their statutory powers for their own corporate self-interest instead of the public interest, or does he just not care?

In this case, another way was found of bringing the matter before a government inspector, and the Council was ordered to pay costs of £148,000. So there can be no doubt that the Council were acting contrary to national policy, or that Mr. Pickles should have called the matter in. However this did not stop Ryedale from acting in its own corporate self-interest.

The Government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is an admirable attempt to simplify complex national planning policies. Taken at its face value, this document embodies most of the concerns of environmental, business and other groups. However, if a Council has its own district plan, the plan overrides the NPPF. So, in preparing their district plan, Ryedale included Wentworth Street Car Park in a “Northern Arc” suitable for commercial redevelopment. They used the same evidence to justify this as the evidence which had been already discredited at the full public enquiry which had resulted in the costs order.

 The plan was then referred to a local plans inspector. There was a hearing at which no cross-examination is allowed. The inspector concluded that, although there was “little evidence” to justify the “northern arc”, nevertheless it should stay in the plan “as a steer” for future development.

Ryedale is the second most sparsely populated district in England – 550 square miles with a population of less than 54,000. It is a pretty district with part of a national park and an AONB, but otherwise there is nothing so exceptional or spectacular that its character cannot be successfully conserved, as in the past, by carefully controlling development within town and village boundaries.

Unfortunately, houses have been sold to outsiders and holiday homes businesses, who believe any more development in their back yard will not be good for business or the value of their houses, and this has heavily influenced the local plan. This now prescribes that 90% of all new houses should be built in Ryedale’s five market towns – including fifty per cent of the overall total in Malton and Norton. Further, 80% of all new employment land is to be allocated in Malton/Norton.

This outrageously unfair plan is justified by the flawed evidence of wheelbarrow loads of expensive consultants’ reports. The assessments contained in their reports are not as objective as they purport to be. It is a case of “who pays the piper calls the tune”. For example, the consultants who prepared reports on the supermarket issue were required to explain why the conclusions in their latest reports flatly contradict their own conclusions set out in reports dated 2007 and September 2008 – issued before the Council had decided to sell the car park.(3)    

Malton/Norton is a single community of about 5,500 dwellings divided by a river with two bridges and a railway line with a single level crossing. Malton’s unique character is partly due to its historic highways system – narrow streets with no direct access from the centre to the A64 bypass. In the rush hour it can take more than half an hour to travel the mile or so between one side of the towns and another.

Nevertheless a Strategic Transport Assessment was prepared by consultants which states that with a a few minor alterations to the network, 1,500 new homes can be accommodated without unacceptable harm. Objectors asked the retired highways engineer, Alan Martin, who had been responsible for development control of the area for over thirty years for his opinion. He reported that the Strategic Transport Assessment could not possibly be right, and that the council’s proposals would produce 28,750 new vehicular movements daily. The Council denied this and said that there would only be 4,027 new vehicular trips in the morning rush hour.  Mr. Martin replied that it was reasonable to assume that 12% of traffic movements are generated in the rush hour, and so on the basis of the Council’s own figures, there would be over 33,000 daily new vehicular trips in Malton/Norton.

The local plans inspector was not at all interested in the flaws in the reports. No forensic cross-examination was allowed at the hearing into the plan. So it was impossible for objectors to put it to the test. The inspector was only interested in the bottom line conclusions of the consultants, and not in testing their reasoning. He would not insist on any changes to the plan which the Council would not agree to. He ruled that Mr. Martin’s evidence was based on a methodology which was out of date, when in fact it was corroborated by the Council’s own daily rush hour projection of 4,027 new trips.

In taking this line, the inspector may have been following the government’s instructions. Nick Bowles MP, the Planning Minister in Mr. Pickles’ department recently wrote an article in the Yorkshire Post. This was in a different context, where a green belt is under threat from a Council which wants to allocate 20,000 houses there. One would have thought that this was unthinkable. Not so. Nick Bowles makes it clear in the article, that the policies in the NPPF are not mandatory, but that councils can pick and mix, like children choose sweets, which NPPF policies they want to apply. So, for example, the green belt is no longer sacrosanct – it is optional.  Nick Bowles’ view is that localism should prevail. Localism for him is what the Council thinks best – not what residents think best. That is why Malton and Norton’s Neighbourhood Plan was ignored by the inspector. In other words localism has become an excuse for central government abdicating its role in planning. The government is no longer interested in ensuring compliance with national policies.

This leaves the planning process wide open for exploitation by big business – the superstores and the big developers, who have unlimited resources. This is, perhaps, the first step in a deliberate and devious process of dismantling the planning system. Public confidence will be eroded by the anomalies which will inevitably arise, and perhaps that is the intention: use the “localism” argument to produce anomalies which discredit the entire system, and then continue to dismantle it bit by bit until there is nothing left.