The NPPF ... like a dog's dinner
Two political developments happened just before Christmas that will have consequences for everyone, even us folk here in Herefordshire.
It was Large against Small, Centralised against De-centralised, House builders against Community, Government against Back Benchers, and, at the moment, … the Small are winning.
The first was the Court Case won by Friends of the Earth and the Solar Industry against the sudden stop of the Feed in Tariffs (FITs) on solar energy, the second concerned the proposed re-writing of Planning Law.
To an ordinary member of the public, i.e. me, both these changes represented Government shoving through bad legislation under the influence of lobbyist. Anyone, except it seems the Government, could see they wouldn’t work, but a lot of people have had to put in a lot of work to stop them.
The Government woke up to the fact that FITs, paid for by the Utilities, were eating into their profits and, more seriously, were so successful they were by default, setting the energy policy. They had to act fast and stop it. They do know we have to have an energy policy, but, err, … we haven’t actually got one yet. Government has intimated but not said that their policy is to centralise, maybe nuclear, maybe ‘cleaner’ fossil fuel, with just a bit of renewables. BUT, how do we do clean fossil fuel, or safe Nuclear and where the money is coming from and who is paying for it, and who also, will pay for the big upgrade of the grid which loses so much precious energy at the moment? We haven’t been told any of this. Meanwhile, other countries and a whole lot of Britons have been doing it for themselves. They have been generating their own electricity, putting in solar panels at a fast rate. They feel more secure with it above their heads, on their roofs, and it was/is a good investment in an age when you can’t invest money anywhere.
Government realised (surprise, surprise) it was popular; solar panels were popping up everywhere. You can imagine them, reeling around, it’s too popular, it’s costing the Utilities too much, it’s ‘Out of Control’. They acted fast and stopped it.
Meanwhile Friends of the Earth and the Solar Industry won their court case. On the 21st December a Judge ruled in the High Court that the Government action of cutting the amount of cash-back – i.e. feed-in tariffs – for solar projects installed after 12th December, 11 days before the official consultation on the plans closed was illegal.
There was more. The Government’s own Environment Audit Committee agreed with FoE and the solar industry. While everyone agrees, the FITs should come down as the cost of installing solar has gone down, but, as Tim Yeo, Chair of Committee said
“… subsidy levels could have been reduced in a more orderly way without delivering such a shock to the industry, …The consequence of the rushed, eleventh-hour consultation will be uncertainty among investors …This is an extremely unfortunate outcome, because right now we need unprecedented levels of investment to replace ageing power stations and reduce emissions.”
Mr Yeo also criticized plans to only give the subsidy to more energy efficient homes as it will exclude the poorer households and people with older houses.
And so to the second development … on the same day, December 21st, that other great threat, the changes to Planning Law, known as the National Planning Policy Framework or NPPF, came under attack from the Government’s own back benchers.
Clive Betts, Chair of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, which consists of five Cons, five Labs and one Lib Dem, said the Committee after considering the NPPF thought Government has got the balance wrong. They called for more time to get the balance right, and specifically want a definition of ‘sustainable development’ and a removal of the default decision of ‘yes’ to planning in favour of development.
It’s a start. Anyone who has read it knows that the NPPF is a dog’s dinner. A bit of this a bit of that, some stuff from the planning guidance retained, some altered, some chucked out and throughout it all an underlying tone of desperation. Help, build to get us out of this economic mess, the house builders told us this would work, after all, it did in the 1930s (or did it?). You can just imagine the group of young ‘special advisors’, told by a Minister (which one?), take this stuff (wham 1,500 pages) reduce it to 50 and make it better for developers. I doubt any of them have ever been to a Council Planning Meeting or they would know that the 50 pages they have produced will alter England faster and more dramatically than anything has in the last 100 years.
Planning exists to balance the needs and greeds of the individual against those of the community and environment. Upset the balance and just watch how fast the planning applications come tumbling in, everyone with a bit of a field or garden with a good view will be bunging in an application, to see them through their old age.
At the moment the official government line by Gregg Clarke, the Housing Minister, is that he welcomes the select committee report.
Meanwhile here in Herefordshire, It’s Our County congratulates the back benchers and law and parliamentary systems that has given us the chance to re-think both the FITs and the NPPF. The first is needed for local energy production helping to make us self-reliant, and the second to preserve and promote our best asset, our land and landscape.