Ruralise

Well, I have to declare an interest: I’m not a ‘normal person’ either! I’m an architect with a good working knowledge of the planning system and sustainable design, so my reference to planners in the last post was a bit cheeky;  they have a difficult job to do, balancing the economic imperative for housing growth against the protection of our countryside on the one hand and the principles of ‘Sustainable Development’ on the other. Sustainable Development is the over-arching principle that shaped planning policy throughout the life of the last Government, initially in the form of ‘Towards an Urban Renaissance’, architect Lord (Richard) Rogers report on sustainable development to the new Labour administration in 1997 and then through Planning Policy Statement 1.

Under PPS 1, current planning policy is set firmly in favour of condensed, large-scale development, even in rural areas. The theory is that in all local services – schools, shops, healthcare, pubs post-offices – have a ‘threshold population’, a minimum number of people to make them viable. Unless the population can live within walking distance of these services, they will probably resort to using their cars to reach them. And the private car – responsible for about one sixth of total UK carbon emissions – is regarded as a BAD THING by sustainability experts.

The big problem therefore, for dispersed rural development – i.e., villages – is that they are almost inevitably car-dependant. A few village shops survive and a few more village schools, but in general country-dwellers use their cars to shop, visit the doctor, and get to work.  Hard-core ‘green’ developers share PPS1’s antipathy towards the car, and having been partially indoctrinated in the ways of sustainable design myself I can see the logic of the argument. But on more than one occasion I have had to caution potential clients considering projects in Norfolk that ‘real’ people know that the car is pretty fundamental to rural life. If you don’t accept that, it’s hard to see how the Community Right to Build makes sense.

So why is the Community Right to Build a good idea, at least in principle?

Well, generally speaking the only way to add development to villages under the present planning system is under a Rural Exception Policy, a clause in the prevailing Local Plan that will allow the building of homes outside a settlement’s Development Boundary only if they are affordable homes – defined by the relevant clauses of the Local Plan or other local Housing Policy. Under CRTB other uses would also be permitted – business space, community facilities, even open-market housing – which must surely, if the scheme takes off, bring forward more sites than would currently be put forward as Rural Exceptions, increasing the supply of affordable homes where they are needed by local people.

Secondly, as seems obvious to most ‘normal’ people (i.e. not those responsible hitherto for devising national and local planning guidelines), ‘spreading out’ new development across an area’s smaller settlements will not only reduce the need for ugly and disruptive new ‘urban extensions’ adjacent to larger market towns, it will benefit the smaller settlements by allowing existing residents to stay in a village and even bringing ‘new blood’ to sustain its social infrastructure and services. And thirdly, the process of conceiving, envisioning and getting the necessary local support for a CRTB development will empower local communities and increase a village’s sense of civic pride.

It’s a no brainer, surely…?