SERPLAN inquiry revives new towns

Planning experts have welcomed the report of the public inquiry into SERPLAN for highlighting how regional planning conferences have to satisfy household growth with strategic initiatives such as new towns rather than leave it to an estate-by-estate piecemeal conclusion.

Professor Stephen Crow's report of the public inquiry into SERPLAN has now been sent to DETR ahead of its finalising Regional Planning Guidance. Crow's inquiry made headlines on 9 October 1999 for recommending that the 25-year allocation for new homes built within the planning boundaries of SERPLAN's 138 regional local authorities be raised from SERPLAN's estimate of 668 000 to 1.1 million.

The report dismisses much of SERPLAN's own findings and advises the DETR to adopt areas of plan-led expansion at strategic growth points with good transport links, effectively creating four major conurbations around Milton Keynes, Ashford, Crawley/Gatwick and Stansted. It recommends "using new town legislation" to achieve a balance between public and private sector ownership.

The Town and Country Planning Association hailed the report as a "masterpiece" and welcomed the concentration of housing developments in new or expanded settlements. TCPA director Graeme Bell backed it on three counts: "First, rather than spray the homes around the countryside like foam filling a cavity wall, this concentrates them in a way that gives developers a fair bit to go at and that in turn will allow the local authorities to screw a fair bit of affordable housing out of them - and developers do have the brass. Second, if you've got a bigger settlement, the chances are you also get a fair number of services jobs being created out of it, which makes it more sustainable, not least by cutting commuting. Finally, the alternative is pepperpotting housing estates in every corner of the countryside. That way you'd have planning led not by a plan-led system so much as by development control as local authorities align with communities just to be seen to be resisting development."

Bell said the Crow report complemented Lord Rogers report which looked at how to revitalise urbanism as well as the TCPA's own report into reforming the planning system published this month.

Bell concluded that all three reports point to the need for a strong strategic lead from Regional Planning Conferences, backed up by more democracy at local level. "Subsidiarity is about taking decisions at the most appropriate level. Those at the top have not been prepared to grasp the nettle.