TrustNews Sep 20
Letter: Development of quality housing depends on planning controls
The Financial Times, July 24, 2020
It is not only planning officers, or even the Royal Institute of British Architects and Campaign to Protect Rural England, who are worried about the UK government's determination to extend permitted development rights (Report, July 22).
On the same day that minister Robert Jenrick made his announcement, another government-commissioned report from his own department, "Quality standard of homes delivered through change of use permitted development rights", revealed that under a quarter of homes delivered in this way (ie, generally thorough office-to-housing conversion, with no input from the local planning authority) met national space standards, with some studio flats as small as 16 square metres. Some had no windows at all.
People are already being housed in instant slums. Cutting out "unnecessary bureaucracy to give small business owners the freedom they need to adapt and evolve", as Mr Jenrick puts it, will only ensure more.
The Royal Town Planning Institute, the Town and Country Planning Association, and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, as well as countless civic societies and other groups, have all expressed dismay at the worsening of already poor control. I imagine the engineers are also concerned about the structural implications of adding a further two storeys to a building in the absence of planning controls.
In addition, it's a mere six months since the government-initiated Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission produced its report on how, by improving design, resistance to development could be overcome. The report was launched by the same Robert Jenrick, who said in January that well-designed, high-quality homes and tree-lined streets should be the norm, not the exception.
Perhaps the minister has been discombobulated by the Westferry affair in the meantime.
Judith Martin
[This letter by Trust Council member Judith Martin was first published in the Financial Times of 24 July (reproduced by kind permission of the FT). An abridged version subsequently appeared in The Week.]