There are two main ways to inject resources into an ailing countryside such as Britains. One is to pour in subsidies, a process which most of us have reservations about, unless the subsidies happen to be coming our way. The other is to extend planning opportunities. The constraints upon rural development are so great that planning permission has become an exceedingly valuable commodity. The £200,000 or more windfall that can be earned through acquiring permission for dwellings on an acre of wheat field would take more than a millennium to accrue through arable area payments on the same field.
This disparity between the value of agricultural land and of development land has had profound effects upon the rural economy. It lies at the heart of Jules Lubbocks critique of all planning (see my specific response in the debate). The distortions it causes are at the root of the severe shortage of affordable housing in the countryside and the decline in services associated with the high proportion of commuters. The collateral for the loans that have enabled farmers to pursue a spiral of expansion and mechanization has in part been provided by the potential value of their buildings for non-agricultural use, rather than by the strength of the farming operation itself not a very sound basis for investment.
The real world of diversification
Over the last few years, there have been a number of moves, which can be classified under the euphemistic heading diversification, to relax some planning restrictions so as to direct more investment into the rural economy. The 1996 Rural White Paper published by the Conservative government proposed creating a Rural Business Use Class, a new planning category that would open the way for rural enterprises; but this met with resistance from environmental bodies concerned about traffic impacts and the risk of expansion, and the proposal was ditched by the incoming 1997 Labour government.
A 1999 Cabinet Office report, Rural Economies, went further, by proposing that farm buildings should be categorized under the B1 Use Class, which covers offices and light industrial buildings. Had this proposal been introduced, a farmer would have been able to convert his hay barn into a lawnmower assembly plant or a computer consultancy without applying for planning permission but would still have had to apply for permission to put pigs in it.
Instead, planning guidance has been quietly tweaked to make it easier for farmers to convert their farmyards into televillages or light industrial units, though mercifully they still have to apply for planning permission to do so. In March this year, with little consultation, and with even less fanfare, a paragraph in Planning Policy Guidance 7 on the Countryside (PPG7), outlining suitable activities for farm diversification, was deleted. The activities specified food processing, farm shops, woodland management, sports facilities, holiday accommodation etc were all linked to land management. The replacement paragraph specifies only diversification into non-agricultural activities and businesses that are consistent in their scale with their rural location.
This advice is worrying, because it allows farmers to convert their buildings to activities that many might view as inappropriate for the open countryside, without making any provision for the land that these buildings served. New entrants into farming and small farmers wishing to expand are unlikely to be able to compete for these buildings with information technology companies looking for a leafy rural setting, or light industries priced out of urban sites by the engineered demand for sustainable brownfield housing. And new entrants there will undoubtedly be ready to meet the growing demand from the public for high quality, locally-sourced foods. If land with farm buildings is too expensive, many are likely to buy bare land holdings, and put in applications for new (and probably hideous) buildings. If this happens, farm diversification will be proven to be a cover for greenfield development by the back door.
The need for open consultation
If we are going to allow a greater measure of rural development, then how much better it would be to introduce it openly, clearly, and with full public consultation. The Conservatives Rural Business Use Class was on the right track, but the emphasis on business was unnecessary and set alarm bells ringing. In the field of planning where I work, a number of us have been looking at the potential for a Sustainable Rural Use Class but that adjective also carries a lot of baggage. What is wrong with a simple Rural Use Class namely a special planning category for those limited forms of development that are agreed by a convincing majority to be appropriate for the open countryside? There is considerable consensus amongst members of the public about what they want to see in the countryside, even if there is dispute about how to secure this. This is the approach we need more democratic planning, not, as Lubbock would have it, no planning at all in the name of democracy.
This category of Rural Use would require a set of criteria against which any proposed development would be judged. In line with current planning policy procedures, the broad basis of these criteria would be outlined in Government Guidance and in Structure Plans, while the detail would be filled in at the local plan level to reflect differing circumstances and aspirations. The development plan system is cumbersome and vulnerable to powerful interests, but it does at least offer the public some opportunity to decide the future of their local environment.
Criteria for rural use
What sort of criteria for future development should there be? These are some principles to be observed:
- Land management which is both productive and environmentally sound with regard to wildlife, soil structure, and water retention;
- Economic and social benefits for the local community;
- Measures to prevent excessive car use and to promote public transport;
- Use of local building materials, both to ensure that modern buildings extend the vernacular tradition and to support local industries;
- Constraints on the scale, siting and intrusiveness of development;
- Preference for projects that rely on renewable energy and autonomous services (easier to provide in the country than in towns);
- Preference for projects which provide affordable housing, particularly where linked to employment;
- Securing these benefits over time through a dedicated managing body, a legal undertaking, or other mechanism.
The criteria listed above are exemplary, rather than definitive and, naturally, they reflect my own preferences. Some will consider them too restrictive while others will view them as a Trojan horse for undesirable developments: debates along these lines are par for the course in the drafting of any planning policy. But whether they be stringent or lax is a secondary matter; the primary effect of introducing criteria-based policies applicable anywhere as against lines on maps policies restricting development to a village envelope lies in their ability to bypass the land price problem.
Policies that restrict land supply and create competition for land have the obvious effect of forcing up prices, and open the way for speculative scams a point Lubbock himself makes. Under these conditions, the private sector cannot deliver affordable housing, while the quality of development can be forced downwards in order to meet costs engendered by competition. That is not to say that the lines drawn around village development zones should be abolished far from it. But the undesirable effects of restricting land supply can be mitigated by allowing certain restricted kinds of rural development anywhere in the open land around these enclaves.
Policies that govern performance in an otherwise open land market barely nudge land prices, but create a stimulus for high quality proposals. The private sectors ability to perform to high specifications is already proven. The stronger the criteria, the better quality the development one may expect, and the happier the public will feel about releasing land for such projects. In this respect, firm criteria are to be preferred to lax ones, at least initially. Over time, the criteria can be calibrated to achieve an accepted level and standard of response.
A community-wide planning gain
The above criteria would allow, for example, for the subdivision of a 300 acre farm (with or without its farmhouse) into a number of low impact dwellings, linked to small-scale farming opportunities and craft or light industrial workshops, centred round a farm shop and a visitor centre; the proposal might involve the planting of a wood and an orchard, the restitution of wetlands and the operation of a car share and delivery system, all of which might be presented by the developer as forms of planning gain providing benefit to the community. The land and permission for, say, ten new dwellings and jobs would thus become available for no more than the price of a one-family farm, and the number of workers deriving a living from the holding would rise back to the level it was in about 1920. This opportunity would be open to anyone who could afford it: a commercial venture, a housing association or trust, the existing owner, or a group of settlers seeking the good life.
To anyone familiar with Britains planning system, which has been set in its ways since 1947, advocating a criteria-based approach might seem quixotic, and a development such as that described above, fairyland. Yet Scotland already has a planning policy supporting crofting, which involves the subdivision of larger, uneconomic farms into more manageable units. And a number of English planning authorities are inserting criteria-based policies in their emerging development plans. The most ambitious of these is policy H11 of the Milton Keynes district draft plan, which allows for low impact dwellings in the open countryside, linked to agricultural, forestry or similar land-based activities. The policys ten criteria, not dissimilar from those listed above, are acknowledged to be stringent, and the plan states that the number of proposals that meet the criteria are expected to be very limited. Quite right, too.
So far, any suggestions that the planning system might experiment in this direction have been met with stony silence at Government level. Previous development policies along these lines, notably one in the Gloucestershire Structure Plan, have been thrown out by the government at regional level because they do not conform with national guidance. Lines on maps have ruled English planning policy for the last fifty years, and the planning bureaucrats are programmed to assume that they will continue to do so. In the light of the present malaise afflicting our countryside, partly attributable to our planning system, it is surely time to question this assumption.
