Uncategorized

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.

Steve Reed is the new Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary in Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet, and shows that Starmer intends to take local government seriously. Reed was leader of Lambeth borough council for six years and sorted out the infamously poorly run council administration, leading a thoroughly pro-development authority. 

Reed is from St Albans and studied English at Sheffield University before working in academic publishing. Living in Streatham Hill, he was elected to Lambeth borough council from a Brixton ward in 1998, and was quickly promoted to be deputy leader with executive responsibility for public safety and then for education. When Labour unexpectedly lost control of the council, Reed was elected group leader and leader of the opposition. 

Despite Labour’s increasing unpopularity at national level, Reed managed to win control of the council in 2006 – the only council Labour won in that year. The Audit Commission had rated Lambeth poorly and Reed concentrated on organising it properly, succeeding in bringing its rating up. He worked with Wandsworth to support regeneration of Vauxhall-Nine Elms-Battersea, and encouraged tenants on council estates to take on local management. 

In 2010 Reed responded to the difficulties after the economic crash by proposing to reorganise public services in line with principles of mutualism, which started a nationwide move towards Co-operative Councils. Labour were then re-elected in Lambeth with an increased majority – the first council administration to win re-election in 20 years. 

It was under Reed that Lambeth began its programme of estate regeneration; his eventual successor Lib Peck was put in charge of it. The programme was controversial from the start, especially over Cressingham Gardens estate, but Reed stood firm – at a cost of his own personal popularity with the left of the Labour Party. 

Having narrowly been beaten by Chuka Umunna to the Parliamentary selection for Streatham in 2008, Reed was chosen to stand in a byelection in Croydon North when sitting MP Malcolm Wicks died in 2012. He won easily and stood down from the council, but his Parliamentary career reflected many of the issues which had come up, and he was a shadow local government minister from 2015 to 2016.  

Although a prominent member of the Blairite group ‘Progress’, Reed returned to Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow ministerial team with responsibility for civil society. He piloted a private member’s bill on to the statute book which required mental health units to account for any use of force (after a constituent was killed through excessive force). Reed has also pursued the issue of fire safety and dangerous cladding. He backed Keir Starmer in the leadership election. 

Labour has a separate Shadow team for housing, and that will now be headed by Thangam Debbonaire. She studied for a degree in mathematics but also worked as a professional concert cellist for Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. A resident of Bristol since 1991 she mostly worked for domestic violence charities before becoming MP for Bristol West in 2015. Debbonaire has no close previous involvement with housing issues, save for the fact that her constituency includes student areas, so she has taken up issues with private renting. 

The landslide victory for the Conservatives was underpinned by winning many deprived towns across the country, which has placed high street regeneration high on the political agenda.

Housing Secretary Jenrick yesterday put some meat on the bones confirming the government is keen on a housing-led regeneration of our high-streets.

From Redcar to Bridgend the Conservatives now represent many parts of the country that observers say have been ‘left behind’ and ‘deprived’. So, where next for town centres and high street regeneration? What opportunities and challenges will there be for developers working in this space over the next few years?

One example of forward-thinking change comes from Stevenage. The Labour run council’s development partner recently submitted its proposals to transform the town centre. The application is a mix of 1800 new homes, 3500 sqm of new retail and commercial space, a new public square and park, as well as a new public services hub and a new primary school. With retail struggling, Stevenage is repositioning its town centre, adapting it to the changing market conditions.

Councillors realise matters of planning can be the difference between votes won or lost at local elections and high streets are a very emotive topic. Their constituents often make their displeasure known about derelict buildings because there is a perception that they attract anti-social behaviour.

Whilst some councillors of an older vintage may hark back to the view of town centres being primarily A1 retail led, not the café culture of today, there is across all political parties a drive to modernize and improve town centres for the future.  But councillors like to hear a good business or social case presented to accept change at planning committee, particularly as their policy is still trying to play catch-up. 

One example is in Bolton. The £1.5bn regeneration plan includes outlying towns like Farnworth, Horwich and Westhoughton as well as Bolton town centre itself. The masterplan was drawn up under a Labour run council, but since May 2019 the council has been run by a Conservative-led administration who have continued the project. The Conservatives only criticism of the Labour plan was that it wasn’t started sooner.

Lib Dem run Kingston Council have also recognized the need for change. The leader Cllr Liz Green, commenting on their plans to develop a future vision for Kingston town centre has said; “Town centres across the country are needing to adapt to a change in the retail landscape with the growth in online shopping. In addition, there is a need for more homes as the population in London continues to rise”.

Planning rules that came in last year show the trajectory in government thinking on this, permitted development rights were widened to allow the conversion of some tertiary shops and hot food takeaways to residential. However, local people often instinctively want to keep retail, lobbying their councillors to vote against plans to change the use. Councillors may then bow to public pressure on unpopular planning applications that lose retail units to housing, even though they are aware of the economic arguments against keeping shops.

Alternative uses for the high street, like hotels, offices, restaurants and gyms are being considered by councils across the country, but updates to local plans are slow. The London Plan includes a policy on increasing the amount of hotel rooms in the capital. With tourism a growth industry, there are opportunities for developers here, particularly given the amount of department stores like Debenhams and House of Fraser becoming vacant.

Whilst the Conservatives at a national level might be driving forward policy changes around permitted development, putting money into the Future High Streets Fund and cutting business rates for shops, cinemas, restaurants and hotels, councils represented by all the main parties are slowly accepting and embracing change.

Many local plans though still reflect a view of the high street as A1 retail led, and developers looking to convert a Debenhams or BHS in a town centre location may still run up against policy.

To achieve planning permission, developers should look to use community support for regeneration as well as convince councillors of the business case, both economic and social for any changes. Thorncliffe have plenty of experience in this area. If you have a site on the high street you are regenerating, do not hesitate to contact us.

The Secretary of State for Housing and Planning has, this morning, made a major statement in the House of Commons. 

Redeveloping a vacant building with new residential developments may become a permitted development right, according to proposals from Secretary of State Robert Jenrick this morning. He stated that the right would apply to vacant commercial, industrial and residential blocks, and the new development must be well designed and meet natural light standards. A permitted development right to extend upwards by two storeys is promised by the summer.

Jenrick’s statement confirmed the government’s policy aim is to support younger people to own homes, and that housing delivery is seen as the most crucial part. He announced a review of the formula saying how many new homes each council must plan for, with a steer that it will increase numbers in urban areas; there was talk of a national map of brownfield sites to allow developers to find them. The focus on transport hubs has produced a call for proposals above and around railway stations.

Councils have been told to have their local plans in place by December 2023, with a warning that the government will intervene if they don’t. The government is going to expand use of zoning and local development orders. Planning fees are to be linked to council performance; councils will hope that allows an increase; fees will be refunded if developers are successful at appeal. The government is also promising to move to a digital planning system.

Jenrick also confirmed recommendations from the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission will be brought in (he talked of tree-lined streets becoming the norm, and updating the NPPF to add good design and placemaking). Although the Conservative manifesto said development would require infrastructure in place before, the statement saw that infrastructure as coming from central government funds rather than linking it to planning permissions.

There may be up to four new Development Corporations in an ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc, possibly around StNeots/Sandy, Bedford, Cambourne and Cambridge.

Further details on the government’s ideas to simplify and speed up the planning system are expected “in the spring” Planning white paper.