26 PLANNING


Warren Bennett, commercial director, James’ Places


If I’d have said Angela Rayner would have been my most popular politician last year, I would have laughed at myself, but actually I like what she’s doing.


Whether it’ll make any difference or not is a different thing, because saying something doesn’t make it happen. But the intention is there.


To try and do today what we’ve done historically, developing and repurposing historic buildings, with interest rates, delays in planning and the time it takes to do things, we would really struggle.


Holmes Mill, our £10m development in Clitheroe, has supported that town tremendously. Would we do that if it came up tomorrow? I doubt it.


We are two years into the project to turn Wennington Hall near Lancaster, a Grade II Listed former school, into a wedding venue. We would be very reluctant to take on that kind of conversion with some of the challenges we’ve found there, particularly around change of building regulations.


Speed and clarity are the biggest challenges to anybody making a planning application. You’ve no idea when you’re going to get it.


The government has said there will be more planning officers but when you see the numbers they are talking it is nothing compared to the need.


The fastest way to grow the economy is housebuilding and the undercapacity in planning departments is just enormous.


Jess Barrow, heritage director, Woohoo heritage and sustainability consultancy


When it comes to planning departments, it is the positive mindset that is missing and a lack of trust that is evident.


Planning departments used to be service facing. You used to be able to walk into a local authority with a proposed scheme, go up to the planning counter and ask, ‘what do you think?’ Members of the public could ask about developments near to them and an officer would show them.


Everything goes back to communication. It’s alright having design guides and spatial supplementary planning documents and the like, but unless there’s a two-way conversation, we’re going to continue to be up against it.


There’s a need to think about the economy and how much each time delay costs. You want to see things happen at speed but sometimes the staff are strangled by the system they’re sitting in.


We’ve ended up with this huge checklist and we’re in a position where you’re submitting things that are entirely irrelevant. I submitted an elevation of a car park the other day for some electric vehicle chargers.


My elevation was a flat car park with the chargers. They already had the drawings of the chargers. Why have we then paid someone to do that, a before and after elevation of some imaginary cars?


I want to see support and incentives delivered to help people to want to invest in historic buildings and to retain them in some capacity.


Richard Wooldridge, architect and director, HPA


I was until very recently chair of the Royal Institute of British Architects in the North West, and I’m currently on their planning special advisory expert advisory group.


There’s a group of us who lobby the government about planning. We met with the ministers in London in March to lobby about new build and to talk about stripping away red tape, decluttering the planning system, taking it back to what it was 15 years ago.


We’re talking about planning officers. There’s a national shortage. The government has said it will create 300. The Home Builders Federation has said 2,200 are needed.


So we’re lobbying, we’re trying to persuade them to declutter. Validation for instance, I did a quick check and Lancaster’s validation list is in the 40s when it come to things you have to consider. That’s 40 items, 40 reports or drawings or documents. There is another authority outside Lancashire that has a list of 60 requirements you have to consider.


Planning’s got so much more complicated and it needs decluttering. We need a reboot that’s what the White Paper has suggested. Whether it actually happens, remains to be seen. Next week we’re meeting an MP to show them a housing scheme to try and explain to them the barriers that the contractors have to go through to get this far.


Samuel Knott, director, Site Surveying Services


We’ve got 40 site staff and deal with everything from heritage projects through to green belt land. We’re primarily a sub-contractor.


The problem we face is speculative dates that are set. It puts real pressure on sub-contractors.


If someone comes to us and says, ‘I want this survey doing in the next two weeks because I’ve got planning by the end of the month’ that might be achievable but sometimes we get phone calls in the same week.


There is no consideration for the smaller sub- contractor. For example, we did a measured building survey of a particular unit. Behind the scenes there are 50-man days of drawing that up because there are floor plans, there are elevations, internal elevations. There are ceiling plans, service plans.


We’ve got to all do that across our team of 40 which is fine but that puts a massive constraint on everything else we’re trying to do as well. We’re not just working for one person.


Skills is a national issue. We’ve had to take it upon ourselves to bring four trainees a year into the industry. If we’re struggling and we’re niche then where are the councils getting their next crop from?


The shortage is throughout the system: planning consultants, heritage consultants, construction managers. It’s everywhere.


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