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Our Christmas charity this year is Lend with care.   

Lend with care is a charity to help people in low income countries to work their way out of poverty with dignity.

Lendwithcare brings together entrepreneurs in developing countries with people with the power to help them – people like us. Run by one of the world’s leading aid and development organisations, Lendwithcare is a revolutionary way for us to help people in the developing world to transform their lives. Thorncliffe lends money to a small business and once the money is repaid can choose to recycle the loan to support another entrepreneur.

Announcing the White Paper is the easy bit. Developers should not count their chickens on this reform just yet, as there may be a significant backlash from Conservative councillors.

Reforming the planning and housing system in England is never easy. The proposals in this week’s White Paper could quite possibly go the same way as plans formulated by Labour officials and politicians in the 1970s to sell council homes to tenants – squashed by the complaints of elected party members who didn’t want to lose one of the major items under their control.

For all the claims about giving people a greater say, Conservative councillors in suburban and rural areas – used to selling themselves at election time as people to “save you from unwanted development”, will see that ability largely stripped off them. They won’t be able simply to designate the entire district as ‘protected’ as the Planning Inspectorate will have to make sure the plan is sustainable.

The danger for the government is that Conservative opposition will make common cause with opposition parties and lobby groups, making it too difficult for them to implement such a fundamental change. The White Paper needs to become law, and this means parliamentary approval. Passing through Parliament may not be straightforward: it was not mentioned in the Conservative manifesto which gives the Lords the opportunity to pick it apart, and even an 80 seat majority only needs 40 rebels to force compromise.

It’s entirely possible to imagine that 40 Conservative MPs will take fear in what their councillors are saying and demand a greater voice for local government. Many MPs will privately tell you that councillors are a nuisance. But they are a nuisance who deliver leaflets, attend fund-raisers and help them get re-elected – and they are not easily crossed.

Labour reaction to the proposals have, so far, concentrated on the potential changes to the means by which affordable housing may be delivered, especially the intention to consider discounts to first-time-buyers as a legitimate affordable product. Camden leader Georgia Gould has said that “government is showing contempt for our communities and attacking council’s ability to build council homes. They’re trying to sneak through changes that allow developers to completely ignore communities. We must call this out & demand these plans are stopped” whilst the Deputy Mayor for Housing in London, Tom Copley, has referred to the White Paper as a “confused mass of appalling proposals”.

Pressure groups have reacted in a similar way. The Head of Policy at the Town and Country Planning Association have said that “This kind of disruptive reform doesn’t suit anybody, neither landowners nor developers.” RIBA have called the proposals “damaging”, charity Shelter says that social housing “could face extinction” and the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said that the proposals will be responsible for “speeding up nature’s decline”.

One of the architects of the plans, Nicholas Boys Smith, believes the main reason why we don’t built enough homes in England is because our system is not rules-based, it operates on a “uniquely discretionary case by case basis”.  This, he argues, has created more planning risk, pushed up the price for permissioned land, and acted as a barrier to entry for small developers and other innovators.  He highlights the importance of the SME sector in delivering sufficient new homes, and dismisses concerns that this will reduce democratic buy-in from locals – insisting local people’s views will get a boost.

The plans are certainly ambitious.  Jenrick says he wants the SME sector to build “a substantial chunk” of the 300,000 homes that must be built each year, and points to 30 years ago when SMEs delivered 40% of the homes.

One senior Tory councillor, Matthew Green from Westminster City Council, gives conditional support to the plans, stating that if new rules support high quality housing for residents and key workers and more affordable homes, then he welcomes them.

There’s no guarantee that a lack of a planning committee will lead to approval for controversial schemes. Council officers will still need to approve the reserved matters. Will an ambitious officer, aware that his/her councillors are opposed to a major project, always be able to give an objective decision, or will they feel that the surest route to promotion is to follow the wishes of the councillors who may be the ones deciding on their promotion?

This could lead to a situation where decisions are still made, in effect, by politicians, but in private rather than at committee. Having to refund application fees won’t bother councillors.

If the white paper is implemented, councils will have to engage with communities to write new local plans which will be “visual and map-based”, designating the areas for growth, renewal or protection. Once the plan is in place, involvement of elected officials with individual development will be over. Schemes will be assessed purely on technical compliance, though there will still be the opportunity for neighbours to object.

Local communities will have an ability, through the council, to write a design code for their area. A national model is promised for the Autumn, but it’s clear that it will be far less detailed than current local plans are. It is however possibly bad news for anyone thinking about an architecturally bold approach in a traditionalist-minded area.

Johnson may also have given himself an inadvertent short term problem with housing delivery. If you happen to be a developer who has a difficult site you think would probably be designated as ‘growth’, what would you do? Draw up plans under the existing council plan, go through all the processes to hopefully get a small scale permission the council is happy with? Or hold on to it for four years until the new system kicks in, so you can develop it at maximum density without the council being able to stop you?

As ever with major changes, the questions are easy, the answers less so

Thorncliffe | Your Shout are pleased to announce approval for their own code of conduct from the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists (ORCL), an independent statutory office holder that receives funding via a sponsor government department.  From 1 July, only companies with an ORCL-approved code, either an individual code or one through a membership body, will be able to declare their code with ORCL.

Managing Director, Richard Patient, said “We thank the Registrar for approving our individual code on 14 April this year, and we are pleased to be leading our professional industry in ethical standards. Together with our Investors in People Gold award that we received earlier this year, we are proud of the work we do, the best practice we have and the very high standards that we achieve.”

To receive this approval, Thorncliffe adheres to an externally-enforced Code of Conduct, which protects and strengthens public confidence in what we do.  Our code has been freely available on our website since April. 

Key points within our code are:

1. Conduct within the code is overseen by an Independent Adjudicator, who is a member of the Bar Council or Law Society.

• Thorncliffe’s Code of Conduct is part of all colleague’s employment contracts and has been operating since 2005, albeit continually being revised.
• We have our own register to monitor our communications with national politicians and the UK Government
• Our triple-lock means colleagues have to adhere to the law, their council code (if they are also councillors) and the company code.

Thorncliffe | Your Shout are a leader in the UK political and community consultation industry.

The Social Values of the company reflect our belief that the development industry can make a difference to the world:

By tackling the housing emergency

We know young people, in particular want homes at a price they can afford.  By being at the forefront of the debate to tackle the barriers to building more homes, we can assist this. 

By championing Democracy and Public Service

We employ and interact with councillors and those who are active in their local community.  We can help by being a good employer to those who seek to do public service and helping elected representatives serve their communities better.

By opening up participation in communities

We are particularly keen to get YIMBYs involved in decision making about development, not just those who have a vested interest in seeking to curtail progressive development.  We can help by championing best practice participative community engagement and values assessments amongst private, public and third sector organisations.

Thorncliffe, 16 June 2020

Do you have a right to lobby councillors sitting on a planning committee? It happens all the time, but is it a legal right and something which the authorities cannot stop?  The answer from today is yes.

That question has not previously come up as a legal issue, but it did so last week in a Planning Court judgment over Holborn Studios in Hackney. The council has twice granted permission for residential redevelopment only to have the High Court quash it over procedural problems. 

One of three grounds challenged was an element of Hackney’s Planning Code of Practice which said councillors who get sent lobbying material “should forward it to the Committee Clerks unread”. If a Hackney councillor didn’t observe the dictates of the code, they would be held to have breached the Member’s Code of Conduct and could be publicly sanctioned. Hackney also publicly tells the public not to contact planning committee members. 

When the Holborn Studios leaseholder emailed committee councillors criticising the officer report, the chair and one other member told them in reply that their email had not been read but passed on to the officers. In challenging the permission, the leaseholders argued this was unlawful under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which safeguards the right of free expression without interference by a public authority. 

Mr Justice Dove came to a judicious conclusion about this argument. While not upholding it, because everything in the email was conveyed in a speech at the committee meeting, and because there was no actual ability to prevent councillors from reading anything sent to them, he had some clear words about the right to lobby councillors: 

“Receiving communications from objectors to an application for planning permission is an important feature of freedom of expression in connection with democratic decision-taking … the preclusion or prevention of members reading such material could not be justified as proportionate” 

The Judge went on to say that preventing objectors lobbying would be unfair as it would leave members relying on information from the applicant as reported by officers in the committee report. The planning permission was overturned because the report wrongly did not include the viability report as a background paper. 

It seems that as a judgement at first instance, the Holborn Studios does not set a formal precedent, but planning law is a specialist field and Mr Justice Dove is one of the most senior specialists operating in it. It would be a brave council who tried to shield its members from lobbying, after this judgement. And planning councillors should brace themselves for objectors citing the Holborn Studios case as substantiating their right to dispute unwelcome officer reports. 

Here is a link to the judgement: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2020/1509.pdf

“I broke the rules and went for a pee”.

We have been speaking with councillors about virtual committees. Here are five takeaways:

“The first vote counts”.
At old fashioned analogue committees, eyes of members frequently fall on one or two influential councillors when it’s time to vote. Many other members follow their example. That’s harder now. “I feel sorry for the councillors whose names begin with A – they have become the example to follow”.

“It’s great – I washed up and approved applications at the same time”.
Most virtual committees concentrate on the slides of the officer presentation. It appears as though the more IT-confident members are minimising this window and doing other things. This makes what the reporting says even more important, and therefore its vital that they know their stuff. We suspect the team need to be thinking about this more.

“There’s no gallery to play to”.
No longer will councillors get rounds of applause for the speeches they make at committee. We wait for imaginative ways of influencing members in the virtual world – increased text messages during meetings, perhaps.

“I broke the rules and went for a pee”.
The rules say that councillors have to be present for the whole discussion in order to allow them to vote. There’s no way of telling if that’s the case, with one councillor idly wondering if applications could be challenged on rules relating to old fashioned meetings. “How do you know we listened to all the presentation?”.

“We’re going to sort out the pre-meet”.
It’s not uncommon for decisions to get sorted before the meeting starts, as we all know. It looks as though this tradition will get revived online, along with simultaneous WhatsApp discussions between political colleagues.

For more on any specific committees, please get in touch.