How long can WAG remain committed to costly building regulations, which developers say stifle not only development but economic growth? Helen Hamilton reports
Wales has some of the lowest levels of development in the UK and industry experts say the Welsh Assembly government’s “relentlessly green” planning agenda is to blame.
While the National Planning Policy Framework has shifted the planning emphasis onto encouraging economic development in England, WAG has been slow to amend its planning system to stimulate growth and remains committed to costly building regulations that developers say make their projects unviable (see panel).
“The key driver in planning in Wales has been sustainability and it is taking time for those policies to change,” says Gareth Hooper of planning consultancy DPP.
The problems developers face getting planning consent in Wales are compounded by the fact that several councils have development plans that are years out of date, among them Cardiff, which now has strategic land available to meet only around two years’ supply of housing (see box).
Wales had fewer than half the number of residential planning applications last year compared with Scotland and construction starts are at the lowest level since 2008/2009 (see next page)
Industry experts say lack of leadership from WAG is at the root of the problem. Where, like it or loathe it, England got the sweeping NPPF last year, imposing a development-supportive climate and requiring councils to update their local plans within 12 months or have them deemed obsolete, Wales has merely tweaked its own planning legislation.
“There is still a culture of control in Wales, of managing development rather than encouraging growth. What’s missing is direction from the Welsh government,” says Paul Williams of Savills.
WAG revised its planning policy last autumn, introducing “a presumption in favour of sustainable development” in echo of the NPPF. Unlike the NPPF, it placed no time pressure on councils to update local plans. It is now preparing a white paper for a new planning bill, which may prove as all embracing as the NPPF, but it will not make it onto the statute books before 2015.
In the meantime, only seven out of 25 councils have LDPs in place and 10 councils never even completed their unitary development plans, leaving much of the principality with development plans dating back to the 1990s and developers in limbo.
“The record of Welsh authorities adopting local plans is appalling. It means developers are trying to develop in a vacuum, with decisions left at the door of officers and ultimately members,” says Hooper.
As a result, developers are increasingly resorting to the planning inspectorate to get consents. Stuart Rowlands of Redrow Homes says the Wales-based residential developer has undergone four planning appeals in the past five years in Wales, and won all of them and there are many other appeals in the system.
WAG denies it puts sustainability above economic considerations. A spokesman says: “It is a legal duty to have in place a scheme setting out how it will promote sustainable development and this includes social, economic and environmental aspects. Against this context, we recently updated our planning policy to help ensure economic considerations are more appropriately factored into the planning process.”
Vale of Glamorgan
The south-east Wales council of Vale of Glamorgan scrapped its draft local development plan late last year after a heated local election campaign in which the LDP took centre stage.
A Labour/Independent coalition took control from the Conservatives after the election and promptly discarded the plan it labelled “unsustainable”, pledging to review all of the sites allocated for development.
WAG had raised concerns that the draft LDP, which had taken six years to produce, failed to address the need for new infrastructure. The council expects to have its local plan in place by 2017 and unlike Cardiff, does have an adopted UDP, which took it through to 2011.
As the council covers the M4 corridor to the east of Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan is one of Wales’ development hotspots and is expected to take a large share of housing development. The scrapped LDP had allowed for just under 11,000 homes.
Cardiff
After years of work developing its framework local development plan, Cardiff abandoned the whole thing in 2010, deciding it would rather start again than accept changes called for by Welsh Assembly government inspectors.
Inspectors had criticised Cardiff’s LDP framework for relying on brownfield sites to meet future housing needs, insisting Cardiff would have to accede to the use of greenfield land for family homes.
In the absence of an up-to-date plan, Cardiff is regulated by a document approved in 1996, forcing developers to gamble by applying for planning consent on sites that have no development status.
They appear to have the sympathy of the planning inspectorate: last year, Persimmon Homes won a planning appeal granting it consent to build 79 homes on a greenfield site.
The inspector justified her decision by pointing out that Cardiff had failed to ensure sufficient land was available to meet housing needs. WAG guidance requires councils make land available for five years’ housing development, but Cardiff provided for as little as 1.9 years.
Persimmon’s appeal was seen as a test case for developers in Cardiff. The planning inspectorate is piling the pressure on the Welsh capital: an inspector wrote to the council in February to say he was “minded to consent” a development of 150 homes on another greenfield site at Llanederyn.
When the latest development plan was debated in October, Labour councillor Paul Mitchell warned that Cardiff risked “development by appeal” if it could not accept the need to build on greenfield land. The council has now agreed a draft that would provide for 45,000 homes over the 14-year lifetime of the LDP, with 18,000 of these on greenfield sites. But the proposals to build on greenfield land were fiercely opposed in the council chamber.
Building regulations
Control of building regulations was devolved to the Welsh government last year, and as with planning, the principality is imposing tougher environmental standards on developments than English councils.
Welsh regulations seek Code Level 3+1 sustainable building standards for new houses and the assembly has passed legislation requiring anti-fire sprinkler systems in all new homes, costing an estimated £4,000 per house. The measure has been widely derided, with the assembly’s own advisers saying that the cost of installing the systems would amount to £6.7m per life saved.
Redrow’s Rowlands estimates that the cost of sprinklers and additional carbon reduction measures would add more than £10,000 to the cost of building a single home by 2015.
“We all agree it is a good thing to make houses as energy efficient as possible, but Welsh councils are enforcing something that is more expensive to build and if you see more bang for your buck across the border, that’s where you are going to go. We are seeing the flow of investment go across to England,” says Rowlands.
House prices are lower in Wales than the UK – according to the Land Registry the average house price in Wales in February was £120,410, compared with £162,606 for England and Wales combined – giving housebuilders no incentive to bear these additional costs.
Residential development in Wales is taking place along the M4 corridor and the major conurbations, because “these are the areas that can sustain the higher build costs”, says Rowlands.
WAG says it recognises the effect its rules on sprinklers and low carbon-homes will have on low-cost areas. Having passed the sprinklers legislation, it is now consulting on whether to implement it.
