New ‘stewardship’ planning model urged to support communities
NEW YORK: A new multigenerational ‘stewardship’ planning model is being advocated as a superior methodology for supporting communities.
Local government should become part of a ‘stewardship model’ of planning, which encourages encourages landowners and developers to “maintain an active interest throughout
the development process”, the think tank Localis has said.
A report from the think tank published today, Building Communities: Planning for a Clean and Good Growth Future, says communities should be at the heart of the government’s proposed planning reforms to “build new developments that are more affordable, more beautiful, greener and more likely to endure for generations”.
It argues that community engagement through better neighbourhood plans, new design codes, and improved digital communication between councils and residents would help to achieve house building targets by encouraging development.
It adds that a stewardship model for new communities should be used to “ensure the continued provision of both physical and social infrastructure for future generations”.
Under this, the community infrastructure levy would be paid when work starts on a site and include a ringfenced proportion for affordable housing provision.
A health impact assessment would become a requirement in the National Planning Policy Framework, which would also be given provisions to define and protect social infrastructure.
Local government would also produce community value charters to provide what Localis called “a transparent picture of how procurement around development is benefiting the local area’. And neighbourhood plans would include local design codes and set out the protection of cultural assets and assets of community value.
Localis also said a regional approach to new building was needed, for example encouraging garden cities in the south east but greater vertical development in major cities.
This would be achieved through new boards for regional spatial planning. This model has been used in the past, such as with the former South East Regional Planning Conference (Serplan), which existed from 1965 to 2001. Serplan was wound up when the Labour government introduced regional assemblies, which have in turn since been abolished.
The report also calls for two new nationally administered funds to be created, to provide greater capacity for neighbourhood planning and to pay for carbon offsetting to deliver green homes.
Localis chief executive Jonathan Werran said: “Whatever appears in the final planning bill, we have to increase trust and generate genuinely popular consent for local housing growth.
“This is to ensure that the abundant build out of affordable new homes of mixed tenure, and with it the creation of lasting new communities, remains a sustainable, place-sensitive and commercially viable process.”
Andrew Taylor, group planning director of housebuilder Countryside, which supported the report’s production, said: “With community-based participation at its centre, an effective placemaking process can capitalise on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential. This results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness, and well-being.”