Improving the post-decision planning process to deliver better places in the West of England.

• The policy bar on design quality is considered high, both nationally and locally, but is not always easy to achieve in decision making. A scheme’s design might be perceived ‘good enough’ or even just ‘not harmful’ when balanced against other potential benefits of a development, particularly its contribution to housing supply and employment.
• Despite some perceived improvements in the design quality of more recent schemes, the overall narrative was of a ‘mixed picture’ with several 'disappointing’ outcomes.
• Securing planning permission through an outline planning application with reserved matters is considered problematic, and the majority of interviewees perceived full applications to afford much greater control over design quality.
• Discharge of conditions can be very time consuming, and if not properly worded or resourced, they do not provide the quality safeguard that is intended by their use.
• Non-material and minor-material amendments are being increasingly used by developers to ‘chip’ away at the original design intent of schemes. Managing the cumulative impact of multiple NMA’s can be challenging.
• Local authorities have scant resource to monitor individual consents, despite the strong appetite and perceived utility of doing so as a way of ensuring quality at delivery.
• Enforcement action is largely complaint driven, and judged by ‘harm’ rather than the enhancement and aspiration of design policy. On large sites the absence of on-site neighbours means there are less complaints and there is a perception that major housebuilders can ‘routinely’ leave out key elements in anticipation that these will go un-noticed.
• Neither CIL nor planning obligations were seen as significant mechanisms for ensuring high quality design post-consent. However, it was recognised that there was opportunity through the new CIL requirement on commencement notification to provide and resource more effective monitoring, and that planning obligations such as design certifier / retention of architect clauses could be explored. 

• To a greater or lesser degree, all four case studies have seen post-consent design changes, but not all changes were planned, with some occurring as a result of construction error, including failure to build-out to the correct plans.
• Developer’s saw the need for change post-consent as an inevitable part of the development process suggesting that refinement of design would always occur in the transition towards construction. This was true for all scales of development.
• The lack of a five-year housing land supply was perceived as rendering the local authorities less able to negotiate on important aspects of design. The preparedness of the local authorities to accept or reject change varied across the case studies, with some design changes accepted as relatively inconsequential even where they resulted in a significant departure from the original design intent.
• All case officers reported a lack of local authority resource for the effective management of change post-consent, the outcome of which was – in some cases – perceived as a more pragmatic rather than optimal approach to handling design amendments.
• All case studies highlighted the challenge of governing good design, where some design elements are perceived as subjective. Reflective of this was that stakeholders had very different views on the impact of design changes. Residents, for example, tend not to have viewed changes as having tangible negative impacts. Professional stakeholders, on the other hand, particularly those involved earlier on in the design process, tended to view changes more negatively, lamenting shifts from the original design intent.
• The use of design codes can assist in the effective management of design post-consent, but their results are highly context dependent. In one case, flexible design codes allowed learning from one phase to enable design improvements in another, whereas in another, design quality was not seen as high in the second phase, despite the use of codes.
• There was a consistent view across the case studies that continuity – both from the local authority and developer teams pre and post consent – was an important way of handling change. However, whilst continuity of personnel was seen as ideal, other ways of supporting continuity from documentation management to senior oversight were highlighted, accepting the challenges of maintaining key personnel over long periods.
• Residents are the ‘eyes and ears’, and processes to enable their effective engagement post-consent – particular for schemes involving multiple phases – can support better project implementation.
• The importance of trust – and the need for improved trust between key players to support developments through post consent - was common to all the case studies, but no easy answers were given as to the best way of engendering greater trust, although the engagement of a compliance officer in one case study clearly had a significant positive effect.

Stronger understanding of the ‘weak’ points in the post-consent process that result in diluted quality of design in new housing developments.

Better understanding across the authorities of the importance and role of specific processes in planning in ensuring quality development.

Enhance the role of the UAs in ensuring high quality development through post-consent delivery.

Explore opportunity for more consistent practice across the UAs.

Understanding of the impact of post-consent processes and their contribution (both individually and cumulatively) on the overall quality of the delivered scheme.

Dissemination of learning has been integrated in to the project delivery, through regular steering group meetings and a workshop to discuss emerging findings.

The final project report will provide a springboard for further dissemination within and beyond the West of England authorities.

The project’s final report includes recommendations under five priority headings. This will provide a template for authorities to consider further potential actions that are most relevant to their local context, and highlight opportunities for creating more consistency across the region’s authorities.

Officers from across a range of disciplines including planning policy, development management, planning enforcement, transport planning, urban design, conservation, and ecology.

Case studies included interviews with developers and case officers.

Officers from across a range of disciplines including planning policy, development management, planning enforcement, transport planning, urban design.

Officers involved in service delivery to consider potential for implementation which responds to local context and resource constraints.

Five inter-connected areas for action turning in clockwise fashion, described in order as below:

Improve knowledge > re-frame post content > Agree principles to support development post-consent > Make specific improvements to post-consent processes > Widen the conversation

The next steps are to publish the final research report and support the dissemination of learning. Potential activities to support this include:

• The development of a CPD tool based on the findings and recommendations.
• A workshop with each of the four authorities to present the findings and facilitate a discussion of the recommendations and support prioritisation and agreement of an action plan.
• Explore opportunity for a national workshop (potentially with LGA) to present the findings and explore commonality of experience across a wider geographical area. 

There have been two key challenges the project. One was responding to COVID-19 and adapting the research approach to enable delivery through the national lockdown.

The second was responding to the publication of the Planning White Paper in August 2020. Although significant uncertainty remains about the final nature of the reforms, they do set an important direction of travel. Of particular relevance are the White Paper proposals for automatic grant of outline planning permission in growth areas, which would mark a substantial shift in the point at which decisions occur in the planning process, and the questions the White Paper poses about design and the aesthetic quality of development and the reforms needed to improve this. The project responded by highlighting in the recommendations:

• those findings that directly reflect the direction of travel proposed in the White paper;
• those findings that would need further reflection in a re-configured system; and
• those findings that are relevant, whatever form the planning system takes.