News from Nowhere

This is one of those boring posts - in this case about local planning issues - that I write because I want a record of something. I don't expect anyone else to be interested.

( The story so far )

( Now read on: )

Don't think I've been brooding over this post for the whole of the last week; part of the last week, yes, but it's also been a long time in the writing because D. has been visiting us, and we've been going out and having fun. So the next post will be more entertaining - or at least better illustrated!

Yesterday we learned the Planning Inspector's decision on the County Hospital appeal: she has found for the developer, who were appealing against the Council's refusal of planning consent. Now they can go ahead with their plan to build student accommodation on the site. If you arrive in Durham by train, and walk down the hill to the North Road, where now you see on your right a rather neglected area of garden and trees partly screening a nineteenth century hospital surrounded by newer buildings, you will be able to glimpse the old hospital between two monolithic blocks, a sort of Great Wall of students. That'll be better, won't it?

I'm immensely disappointed, but not surprised. Thr Council's performance at the appeal hearing was pathetic: they were represented by a consultant who didn't seem familiar with the case, a planning officer who was familiar with it, but appeared to be under instructions to say nothing unless asked directly. Fortunately the local residents were there to make the Council's case for it. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Council didn't actually want to win.

But that couldn't be the case, could it? Of course, when the application was first considered by the Planning Committee the officers recommended acceptance and the elected members overruled them, but surely it's our democratically elected Councillors who have the final say? Once they have decided, the officers carry out their policy, don't they?

The full story on the City of Durham Trust's website (and specifically, their press release on the decision).

durham_rambler is at a meeting: the sixth in three days, and, I hope, the last of the week. Right now he is chairing a consultation exercise, at which the Neighbourhood Planning Forum asks the people of Durham City for their views, from which the NPF will then construct a planning policy for Durham (if you want to know more, it's on the NPF website). I am excused attendance, because I was at the previous meeting last week; tonight's meeting is a repeat, for the benefit of the overflow of people who could not be fitted in to the Town Hall last time round. Now I need to pull together my thoughts, and answer the NPF's questionnaire.

There are three questions: What is good about the Durham City centre area? What is bad about the Durham City centre area? What needs to change? My plan is to draft my answers here, and then I'll have a record...

( The Good )

( The Bad )

( What is to be done? )

I could go on, but perhaps I'd better not. I know that as soon as I've pressed 'submit' on the questionnaire, I'll think of something essential I've missed out, but it's time to take that chance...

On Tuesday I attended a meeting of the Council's Planning Committee, which discussed two applications to build blocks of student accommodation: it refused one application (the one which is more or less on my doorstep) and approved the other. Here's the report in the local paper, which quotes Councillor Mike Dixon, who argued for approval of both schemes, as dismissing the "200" objections to the County Hospital development received (it was 300, actually, but who's counting?) as meaning that the county’s other 499,800 residents did not oppose the scheme. I don't think that Cllr Dixon is representative of the Planning Committee as a whole, but I don't think he's an isolated voice, either: he was in the majority in voting to approve the Claypath scheme. So although I've been keeping well clear of the Twitter storm that followed the meeting, I'm going to try to unpick one particular thread of it.

Cllr Dixon argues in favour of approving development because it creates work in the building industry, work which is much needed in the ward he represents (Newton Aycliffe, I think). He followed the statement quoted by the press, that the vocal protestors are outweighed by the much larger numbers who had not commented, by saying that "we haven't heard from the builders and unemployed young people..."

Obviously building work does create employment, at least for the duration of the building, and we can hope that some of that employment goes to Cllr Dixon's constituents. That's true whether what is being constructed is a PBSA (Purpose Built Student Accommodation) or not. Looking at the plans for PBSAs, I suspect that they mostly involve throwing something together as fast as possible, before the bubble bursts, and that smaller, more individual developments might employ more local builders over a longer period. It would be interesting to know whether recent schemes, of both kinds, have created jobs in the County, and whether those jobs either still exist, or provided training which enabled people to find permanent jobs elsewhere.

Looking only at employment, which is a very narrow view to take, the University brings many jobs into the City, and that's very welcome. But the domination of the City by a student population which is absent for much of the year also has economic drawbacks: for example, shops find it difficult to survive. Buy-to-let has driven up house prices, and removed from the market the small terraced houses which would once have gone to first-time buyers as family homes. To rebalance its economy, Durham needs affordable housing, not speculative PBSAs.

The County Durham Plan set a target of 73% employment. The latest figure in the nomis official labour market statistics is 67.9% for the year October 2013-September 2014, gradually clawing their way back up from the depths of the recession (64.6%, April 2009-March2010).

But if you separate out male and female employment, the picture is a little different. Male employment fell to 67.7% in the year April 2009-March 2010 (7.6% below the national average) but on the latest figures is back to 74.4% (2.7% below the national average). Women's employment took longer to reach its lowest point, but in the year July 2011-June 2012 was at 59.9%. and has only recovered to 61.8%. The post-industrial north east has long suffered higher than average unemployment, but where the figures for men show a narrowing gap between local and national figures, women's employment remains at more than 5% above the national average. Austerity has meant a disproportionate loss of jobs in public service, so it's no surprise that women have been harder hit.

The Council has been playing its part in this pattern, however reluctantly. Government restraints force them to cut back, and when they do, women lose their jobs. A paper submitted to Councillors last month explains how successfully the Council's financial plan is being implemented, and says "Information recorded for staff leaving the council during the third quarter through compulsory redundancy shows 93% were female..." In addition, of those taking voluntary redundancy or early retirement, 60% were female ("which is more in keeping with the overall workforce profile") - and 8% had disclosed a disability. But there's no need to worry: "Equality impact assessments (EIA) form a key part of the ongoing MTFP process."

So when Cllr Dixon tweets " I have spent 6 months listening to the strident voices of the comfortable middle classes of Dhm City...", he is probably just expressing weariness with the democratic consultations of the Examination in Public of the County Durham Plan. None of us need take it personally. The word 'strident' refers to a sound which is loud, harsh or grating - not the 'dulcet tones' with which the middle classes are traditionally reproached. There is nothing in the dictionary definition to say that the voice described is female. Dictionary.com offers two illustrative examples, only one of which is the phrase "strident feminism". I ran a Google search on the most strident male speaker I could think of, Arthur Scargill, plus the word 'strident', and found 186,000 results. Substitute the name Margaret Thatcher, and that rises to 751.000. She, famously, had voice coaching to make her less strident and more electable, but I can't say that I liked her any better after it.

In December I exercised the right to sit in on the Council's planning committee for the first time in my life; yesterday I did it again for what I hope will be the last time. The proposal this time was to build housing - both domestic and student - on the Mount Oswald Golf Course: a larger development that the one I wrote about last time, and one in which I have a less personal interest. There's been a lot of opposition locally, and I'm generally against building on green land unless there's a really good reason; the area wasn't scheduled for housing in the current local plan. a previous scheme by this developer was less than impressive - and as the planning officer presented the application, it became obvious that the intention was to build over almost all the available land.

What I wanted to think about, though, is less the scheme itself than the way the planning process works. On the one hand, there is a great show of public consultation and democratic control. Direct neighbours are asked to comment, the public can put in objections (or indeed support), the final decision is taken by a committee of elected councillors. On the other hand, the council has a department of professional planning officers who assess applications, make recommendations and then present their case to the committee. It's up to the committee members to make the decision - but in practice they rarely contradict the officers' recommendations. And why would they? What's the point of paying a bunch of expensive professionals if you're not going to listen to their opinions?

I don't have statistics for officer recommendations to grant or refuse planning consent, but the way it looks from street level is that the officers tend towards consent. As I understand it, they work with applicants to make this happen. If you are a householder who wants to build a conservatory, it's a very good idea that you should be able to consult someone at the council who will tell you what is likely to be permitted and what isn't (I'd look a great deal more favourably on this if you left off the twelve foot long fibreglass shark...). If you are planning a multi-million pound development, and you get to negociate about building density and parking space and vehicle access... Well, then by the time the thing reaches committee the planning officer has invested so much time and thought in the project, he (all the ones I've encountered are he) must feel like part of the team.

At yesterday's meeting, the scheme was outlined for the committee by a planning officer who was treated as if he were neutral, but who had already recommended acceptance. Councillors on the committee were careful to make it clear that they were not parti pris, that they were listening to the debate before making up their minds. But the planning officer who had already recommended acceptance had the job of presenting the application with no limit on how long he spoke, and was then permitted to speak again after the objectors had made their case, not to clarify but to counter their arguments. It would have been possible for the planners to remain neutral, to say that this was a controversial scheme and on the one hand, on the other hand... But no, they were openly partisan, yet the system treated them as disinterested professionals.

There were only two speakers in favour, the developer himself, and a representative of the University who are supporting the proposal for student accommodation. They were allowed to speak without time limits, at which there was some unrest - and all credit to the committee Chair who stopped to explain why this was only fair, given how many speakers against we had heard. I'm not entirely convinced of the logic of this - but as I said last time, I don't think it would have made any difference.

I was slightly shocked to learn that the obligation to include a certain proportion of affordable housing can be met by promising to build it - but somewhere else, in some other scheme, place and time unspecified.