Last autumn's floods were some of the worst in living memory. Environment Agency staff won near universal praise for their efforts. The bouquets were deserved.
However the green policeman has been on the receiving end of brickbats from some professionals and commentators following publication of new flood plain maps for the whole of England.
One critical voice is professor David Lock, former government planning adviser. Lock, who is also a planning consultant (and vice-chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association) who is concerned that the agency will have more say than it should in the planning process thanks to the government's new policy guidance on development and flood risk.
Lock is also very underwhelmed by the aforementioned maps. "It looks as though the agency has inflated historic flood plains by a generous percentage to cover itself. Where this bites is when a planning authority copies the new enlarged flood plain maps into its emerging local plan. The consequence is that homes are now placed in flood plains for the first time. Home insurance becomes more expensive or is declined" he complains.
There is another gripe. "The new Environment Agency evidently does not take account of flood attenuation works that have taken place in particular localities. The result may not only be the removal of development potential from land which, on other criteria, might be very sustainable".
Concludes Lock: "Local planning authorities should press instead for more carefully justified and precise maps before embedding them in their statutory local plans. The flooding tail is wagging the planning dog".
Lock is adamant that building on functional flood plains is not something to be ended. "All that is required is compensating flood alleviation measures. While not always possible the measures may require the creation of equivalent capacity in the flood plain nearby, and typically, additional flood water storage capacity within the development so that surplus water can be released slowly after a catastrophic downpour."
Lock insists: "The end result can be more than maintenance of pre-existing flood risk - it can typically mean an improvement on pre-existing conditions."
Del Boys debated
Just before the last parliamentary session ended MPs had a chance to air their views about planning and developers in a Commons adjournment debate about the green belt.
Not surprisingly there were plenty of cliches. You know the sort of thing: "We need to re-think ploughing on with a course of action that will inevitably mean that huge swathes of the South East disappear under concrete."
That was from someone who should have known better: a Tory MP, one James Clappison. In a previous existence he was a junior environment minister whose brief included planning.
My favourite exchange came from a Midlands Labour backbencher, Bruce George. "I am not some starry-eyed, paid-up member of the environmental protest movement, eschewing all pragmatism or compromise, but I genuinely hope that the site [in the West Midlands green belt between Birmingham and Walsall] will remain off bounds to developers such as Bovis. Half the site was bought by a Del Boy-type character a decade ago. He bought the land cheaply on borrowed money, obtained planning permissions, sold it off, then hoped to retire on his ill-gotten gains. He was a worthless character. I fear that other Del Boys are waiting in the wings - although not Bovis, which I should not want to castigate in that way." Priceless.
Green light for delay
Ministers and some commentators have chosen to view the Law Lords landmark ruling over the compatibility or otherwise of the planning system with Human Rights legislation as meaning no change in the status quo. Well, yes and no.
Certainly the system has not been undermined. But, points out Paul Brennan, a partner with solicitor Martineau & Johnson, the ruling may yet prove a green light for more legal challenges.
At present there are very few cases each year when a judicial review of a decision by a secretary of state is pursued by those unhappy with planning decisions. That might not be the case in the future.
Says Brennan: "The explicit recognition of the judicial review procedure as a key mechanism for securing the right to a fair hearing may well result in courts being more liberal in the exercise of their powers of judicial review."
In other words more business for m'learned friends and the prospect of more legal wrangling; and delay. So it goes.
Source
Building Homes
