Prop-arazzi

On Friday The London Assembly’s planning and spatial development committee published a report on the use of Section 106 Agreements …. so we thought we would take a look at it for you.

Key points:

- The planning system is designed to balance development with the economic, social and environmental effects on the wider community. Section 106 (S106) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 ensures local authorities can acquire contributions from developers to both secure the infrastructure needed to support their new development(s) and also to mitigate the impact of the development. These contributions can be both financial contributions and also benefits in kind.

- Direct financial payments to London boroughs could exceed £1 billion in the next ten years with hundreds of millions more in terms of ‘in kind’ benefits such as new affordable homes, improvements to the public transport network and new open spaces provided directly by developers themselves.
 
- The LA review has found that developers generally support having to contribute to ‘mitigate’ the effects of their proposals. But, they also need to be clear what is likely to be expected of them at an early stage of the process – and even before they apply for planning permission – to calculate whether their development can be viable.

- The skills and resources of the local authorities and their staff involved in negotiating S106 are hugely important, yet one third of boroughs do not think they have enough staff devoted to S106. This problem is compounded by high staff turnover, which is increasing, and means that experience is lost to the organisation: Boroughs need to have not only staff with adequate skills to negotiate S106 – they need to have enough of them devoted to this particular aspect of the planning process.
 
- The LA recommend that boroughs and universities set up some form of formal post qualification and training specifically aimed at improving S106 skills.
 
- The LA also recommend the boroughs and Mayor think about pulling together those local authority planners, valuers and lawyers who already have the widest range of experience of the most complex planning agreements and making their skills available to the rest of London when they are needed.
 
- The LA feels there would be merit in ring fencing some of the S106 monies to direct towards training for planning officers in negotiation skills: Ultimately this could be self-financing if better skilled staff were able to lever in more S106 funds as a result of better training and skills.
 
- Outside the professionals there is an important role for the local councillor and the communities that they represent. They are the ones who should be aware of potential applications that may have negative impacts for their local area. They should also be involved in developing priorities for any money that S106 may generate and making sure that agreements are upheld and the money is spent.

- Government guidance quite clearly states that councillors and communities should be more involved in devising policies for managing planning obligations through Statements of Community Involvement.

- Boroughs must do more to ensure that councillors and the community have sufficient knowledge of the S106 process and the available information about what is going on. There must be a policy that is in place and clearly communicated to the community that makes the process transparent and accessible for those who want to be involved.

- Boroughs should prioritise the monitoring of S106 agreements. They should also make available, in a simple and accessible format, all details of signed S106 agreements along with the regular monitoring reports of how those agreements are being implemented.

- From now on it is not just the boroughs in London that will decide planning applications and negotiate S106 agreements. The GLA Act 2007 gives the Mayor new planning powers that will allow him to take over and determine small numbers of applications that have potential strategic importance for London. Details of these planning powers are still being finalised but it is expected that they will come into effect in April 2008.

- While there has been no formal statement from the Mayor about exactly how he will exercise his new planning powers, including his policy and priorities for S106 negotiations, the Committee expects the Mayor to act in a way that reflects our calls for boroughs to increase transparency and accountability throughout the process.

World-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind last week brought a message of hope and optimism to Belfast when he visited the city to deliver a keynote address at the launch of the University of Ulster’s Real Estate Initiative. The event was attended by 4 Weber Shandwick, Northern Ireland staff.

The award-winning New York based-architect said: ‘I was here some years ago, and I want to tell you I’m so impressed by the amazing change and transformation in this part of Ireland, and what peace has brought - the spirit of development, the spirit of optimism’.

Over 1700 people packed Belfast’s Waterfront Hall last night to hear Mr Libeskind, the architect of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and master planner for the Ground Zero site in Manhattan give a compelling and inspirational presentation of his landmark international buildings.

The University of Ulster Real Estate Initiative brings together key players in the real estate sector – industry leaders, major property developers, contractors and financial service providers from all over Ireland - to support a £2.5m research programme targeted at enhancing the quality and practice of urban development, construction and urban design.
The University of Ulster Real Estate Initiative is the first of its kind in Ireland, and is based on a successful model developed by Harvard University. Its objectives are to:

• promote leading-edge areas of research in real estate investment, urban development and design with direct benefits for professional practice, policy formulation and educational programmes;

• encourage engagement by academic, business and public policy decision-makers, in order to foster academic-private-public partnership;

• provide a discussion forum for developers, planners and other stakeholders in order to inform policy formulation;

• facilitate learning through workshops and executive education programmes for the real estate investment and urban development sector;

• establish a multi-disciplinary research programme in the University of Ulster on issues relevant to the sector.

For further information please contact Chris Brown at chbrown@webershandwick.com

In a widely trailed speech to the Fabian society this week, new Housing Minister, Caroline Flint, has shown that she will not be scared to think radically or provoke controversy. 

In her speech the Minister told her audience that “housing in Britain does not need moderate reform. It needs urgent attention and swift action”.  Mrs Flint wants to return to a situation where a council house was “something to prize” and not just a safety net in sink areas - an objective we can all support.

More controversially, Mrs Flint has linked housing and employment with the threat that those who fail to seek employment will not be given access to council housing. At the same time she called for better and more broad ranging support for tenants to ensure that they get broad ranging help and social care to break the link between council housing and unemployment.

With two important Bills to push through Parliament, we may see the order shaken up more than we think.

Yesterday the Department of Health launched Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives, a strategy to tackle the burgeoning obesity problem in the UK.  The report includes plans to promote walking and cycling around towns, using the built environment to galvanise the whole community into a healthier community.

The initiative will be backed up by targeted funds and a raft of new NICE recommendations which call for new developments to prioritise the need to be physically active.  In addition planners will be given training on promoting physical activity and local authorities will be encouraged to support the vision of a more active society.

The question is will it really change the way we build?

London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, is counting down the days until his new planning powers in London come into force on 4th April 2008.  The changes are expected to have a major effect on the planning process in the capital and will demand extensive and early engagement between developers, Boroughs and the Mayor’s office. Under the GLA Act 2007, the long serving Mayor will have the ability to become the planning authority for strategic projects in the London Boroughs – a power significantly over and above his existing ability to direct the Boroughs to refuse planning permission.  The Mayor has cautioned that he plans to use the new powers “with extreme prejudice” in an effort to impose his vision for London on recalcitrant developers and London Boroughs.  The Mayor will be continuing the fight to increase these powers by seeking to change the definition of a strategic planning application from over 1,000 new homes to just 150 homes of which over 50% will be expected to be “affordable”. His unashamedly interventionalist agenda on climate change and affordable housing will be the central plank of his re-election battle with Boris Johnson (Ken has reported a 21 point lead this week) in the 2008 Mayoral election.  He will be pushing for “Merton plus” on climate change.
 
Meanwhile Ken’s policy officers admit that the Mayor’s office does not yet have the capacity to deal withthe potential influx of new applications – developers and boroughs should beware! 

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper MP has announced a package of measures and extra investment aimed at making social housing fairer and more effective. According to the Department of Communities and Local Government, the plans will re-focus social housing around the needs of tenants such as young families needing to move to larger homes, increase opportunities for elderly people to relocate closer to their families and grandchildren, and help tenants back into work.

The Government says that this will crackdown on cramped housing aimed at helping those living in the worst overcrowded households.

A new national Overcrowding Action Plan sets out proposals for increasing the number of larger homes nationally, with £15m funds over the next three years to help councils do more in the areas most under pressure. The funding will be targeted at 38 of the most overcrowded areas in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester, Liverpool and Manchester.

As another Ford hits the scrap heap - Martin Ford, Chairman of the Aberdeenshire Council’s infrastructure services committee that is - ‘The Donald’s’ plans for his 556 hectare pitch and putt in Scots-land-shire looks like it is still on.

With the Aberdeenshire Council making a dramatic U-turn after an embarrassing bit of, whats seems to be,  ill advised planning PR last week, the ‘application’ has now been ‘called in’ by the Scottish Executive for ‘another look’. Doesn’t look like Trump and his helicopter accompanied ‘Trumpites’ paid too much attention to his community relations and public affairs with the local Councillors and local residents. Lesson to be learned here is - regardless of the amount of money you have to build, or how much investment you will bring to the local area, decisions (yes even this one) are made by real people and real elected people with local mandates and you have to convince them that a vision is achievable and sustainable for local people and local businesses. Sometimes the cut and trust of deal breaking on the 73rd floor in a building overlooking Central Park just ain’t the way some things are done.

One burning question that everyone wants to know the answer to Donald and I think the debate should start here- who does your hair laddie?

The 13.12.07 marks a new land mark in the history of Northern Ireland, no not ANOTHER peace accord, no not ANOTHER nobel peace prize winner unveiled, but the opening of the first EVER IKEA store on the island of Ireland. The crowds expected will be so large that some of the PSNI crowd control officers have had to go to Spain to brush up on their riot control skills - which is rather bizarre as they are from a city that has kinda made a name for itself in that department.

Here at Weber Shandwick we carried out the planning and public affairs work prior to the granting of planning permission by the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Hain MP. Our office in Dublin is currently working for the Swedish gaint ahead of the second store in Dublin due to open in 2008 and we wish them every success.

On Thursday NI might flip up on its side as the weight of many thousands focus on the new east Belfast store beside George Best City Airport. The above the line advertising for IKEA has been massive, everywhere you turn in Belfast, there is a billboard filled with the yellow and blue corporate colours, every NI webpage has an online advert and every NI paper has double page spreads of sofas, cups and the kitchen sink. Recently 600, 000 IKEA catalogues have been delivered to the salivating public - the region has been blitzed.

Belfast has never seen the likes of this of late. IKEA frenzy has gripped us all firmly by the swedish meatballs - yes, also available in store by the way. 

Some people’s idea of hell is standing in the atrium of a large shopping mall at this time of year as people push past you to get to the increasingly glitter strewn shelves lulled into a trance via shakin’ steven christmas classics and xmas instrumentals blurring out over the instore entertainment systems. Well, last night we escaped the christmas crush and executed a fantastic community exhibition on behalf of a major retailer just outside Belfast on the proposals for a large development and extention of one of the best loved shopping centres in NI.

One thing that struck us as we watched person after person visit the exhibiton was the importance of involving the local communities in plannned proposals and developments. Gaining support from the people that will be directly or indirectly affected by planning proposals is of the utmost importance and something that should not be taken lightly by property developers and companies.

What community exhibitions do is allow the local community to be part of the planning process and ensure that their voices are heard and answers given there and then to inform how they think about certain plans and to clarify any uncertainity they may have. You’ll find, as we have this morning going through the comments and feedback forms that if you bring the community on board you will be surprised at how much positive support people are willing to give in the name of development. This is only one strand of the overall communications programme we are currently undertaking but possibly the most important. So involve the community, let them know whats going on and who knows what property santa might bring…planning permission!