Business News and Operating Hours

2020 has been an unusual year, It started off terribly in house and it continues to be a difficult year for all.

Here at the office, work schedules have been high through Lockdown I. We have of course been locally Locked-down here in Conwy for a couple of weeks and we expect a winter of “circuit breakers” quite probably starting this week.

Despite that, work programmes remain very high- such is the demand for our brand of planning consultancy - with forward work stretching well into 2021. We have quoted on 5 major projects in the last 10 days alone. Expected LDP Examination in Flintshire and Replacement LDP’s for both Denbighshire and Conwy LPA’s will be new work streams too. Despite the uncertain economic times ahead, there is not a shred of doubt that planning will be absolutely essential to recovery. The Practice has also signed up the Wales Placemaking Charter as we look to ensure we steer clients proposals along the path to success and n the direction of Future Wales 2040 - the National Plan expected late winter 2021.

This October sees four projects shifting from preparation and pre-planning phases into planning applications. It is always good to see babies “fly the nest”. That also causes a moment of reflection - in common with most people since March.

New ways of working have freed up time - especially with travel, an overlooked inevitability of the geography of North Wales. Time on the road has reduced by approximately 8-10 hours a week. Rarely chargeable and often “dead” time to clients or the business. Rather than fill that time with work - which we could easily do- the business is shifting to a 4 day week.

The benefits of 4 day working are well researched and documented. In truth it’s suspected you wont especially notice on a practical level. Pete may be more cheerful than ever :).

We were going to start it from November, but in the spirit of the approach, the office will be closed every Friday starting 23 October 2020. It will be trialled until Christmas. In the way of all things planning we will monitor the effect and review then.

Thanks as ever for your support

Waxed and Polished. Breach of Condition Notice Withdrawn

We posted in May 2019 of success securing a new permission and Sunday/bank holiday working for a hand car wash facility at a site with a lot of history. We wrote at the time “nothing like a challenge”.

Well, a month or so after issuing that planning permission the Council sent out a new decision notice with a changed condition saying Sunday or Bank Holiday working wasn’t allowed now and a letter saying the first decision was issued in error. It also asked we send the “wrong’ un” back. Yep, really… it did that.

We responded to the Council setting out long establish legal principles and case law that it has no powers to issue a second decision notice and thus the original decision notice stood (it had in fact already been implemented by the applicant) and that the car wash would be operating Sundays and Bank Holidays.

Thankfully, all went quiet for about 12 months.

In late August this year the Client sent us a copy of Breach of Condition Notice saying that by working on Sunday and Bank Holidays he was breaching the terms of the permission. The Notice required he cease working on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

Yet again we wrote (and engaged the further help of Planning Solicitors) reminding the Council of the correct legal position, setting out that no condition on the original planning permission had been breached. The Council has now confirmed it is withdrawing the Notice.

Another success and example of the knowledge, breadth and thoroughness working for clients.

Future Wales: The National Development Framework

One of the key strands of the Planning (Wales) Act 2015 is moving forward.

The National Development Framework (now titled Future Wales: The National Plan 2040) has taken a further step toward publication this week. when the document was laid before the Senedd for its 60 days scrutiny period. It is expected that the Minister intends to ensure FW2040 will be in place in February 2021 prior to (and assuming) the Senedd election takes place next May.

A future post will cover the main National level issues emerging from the Plan (and particularly how these relate to North Wales) including:

• Confirmed Strategic Development Plan requirement

• Confirmation of a requirement for a new Green Belt in the Deeside (Flintshire) and Wrexham Corridor (something that it seems is rather slipping under the radar but has very important important strategic implications for cross border issues and the National Growth Area.

• Wylfa.

Welsh Government Extends the Life of LDP's (and UDP's)

Fresh in - not yet published on Welsh Gov Website - the minister finds a loophole to extend the Life of LDPS’s due to expire from early 2021 and tells us the two UDP’ in North Waled “remain extant”.

The letter is here.

So much for an uptodate Plan-led system in Wales..

PAC Emergency Measures Extended

Welsh Government has confirmed the Emergency legislation for PAC consultations will be extended after today whilst access to libraries and other public buildings remains patchy. The measures retain the online+hard copy if requested” approach until 08 January 2021.

It’s a welcome move that delivers another 3 and 1/2 months certainty enabling major projects to be kept on track for timely consultation, engagement and submission.

More pre-application consultation

In what is a relatively minor proposed tweak, WG has set out another consultation, this time to add Fire and Rescue Authorities to the list of pre-application consultees for major developments and DNS.

https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/consultations/2020-07/fire-and-rescue-authorities-becoming-statutory-consultees-in-the-development-management-process-consultation-document.pdf

Planning Fees Wales

Its been long muted and we can confirm today that The Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications and Site Visits) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 have been laid before the Senedd to be debated on 15 July. 

By debate we mean approved obviously as 15 minutes have been allotted to this heady task.

Thus todays VAT cut and cheaper Monday night cheeky Nando‘s will be more than offset by the 20% rise in planning fees. God giveth on the one hand…

The new fees will be in force from 24 August 2020. There is still some time (albeit very limited) to press forward some schemes.

The draft regulations can be viewed here

Will we need more housing?

Last year the Office for National Statistics issued its 2018 population projections. These original projections indicated the Welsh Population would decline from 2025 onwards. Revised projections recently issued (to address an error in the “processing of cross-border flows between Wales and England”) indicate the projections under-estimated Wales’ net population by 2028 of some 65,000 people.

The Welsh Government tells us having consulted with our expert group about the implications for our statistical products that are based on the 2018-based national population projections, we decided to withdraw the following outputs for Wales.

• 2018-based local authority population projections

• 2018-based local authority household projections

The seriousness of this on the NDF, SDP’s and LDP’s should not be underestimated where Planning Policy Wales tells us this data forms a fundamental part of the evidence base for development plans.

In simple terms the level of planned for housing growth in emerging LDPs and reviews may well be underestimated by some 30000 new dwelling net to 2028 (170dwgs/yr per authority across Wales.)

It seems likely low levels of growth ldp’s currently propose (and notably housing delivery trajectories showing growth reducing post 2025) are going to have to be reviewed.

Welsh Government expects new Local Authority level projections to be issued before the end of the month where localised impacts will become clearer.

The Planning Applications (Temporary Modifications and Disapplication) (Wales) (Coronavirus) Order 2020

In what will be generally seen as a welcome move, amendments to legislation governing the Pre-Application Consultation (PAC) process in Wales come into force at midnight on 19 May. The temporary changes are effective until 18 September, enabling clients to move forward on delivering applications for much needed development. The change will be a source of relief to those who have been holding back projects waiting for clarification .

Its disappointing that its taken Welsh Government nearly 2 months to resolve this. However, its progress and we look forward to being able to get back into the swing of things.

In a move sure to cause considerable frustration this morning will be the requirement for PACs which were underway properly and lawfully when lockdown commenced (or rather the closure of public buildings where documents could be read or accessed via public internet facilities), community consultation will now need to be carried out again as Welsh Government considers they cant meet the legislation in force at the time No doubt it will be fun when the phone starts ringing and we have to tell people its repeating what they saw before, because Welsh Government require it.

2008 and beyond. If history repeats itself.

Intelligence by national planning consultants Barton Willmore has started a debate about how Covid-19 might affect delivery of housing as the UK emerges from the pandemic. The intelligence acknowledges that none of us really know the consequences, so uses a simplistic approach to see “how things might play out”.

We thought it might be fun (or at least interesting in comparison) to run the same for Wales using the benchmark of 2008-9 and apply subsequent UK percentage “fall and recovery pattern” to 2018-19 (the last year for which completions data is available).

There you go. Feast your eyes. Pleasant viewing it isn’t.

Were the pattern to repeat recent UK history, completions in Wales could fall to 3600 units in 2024-25 before any recovery (of sorts). Here’s hoping simplistic data analysis, past history, regional variations, the market, Council and Welsh Government interventions prove me wrong.

There are many ifs, buts, maybes and cautions in the data sets used of course to claim to be precise. Barton Willmore states it very clearly “Whilst quite simplistic, this analysis does present us with food for thought around the sheer scale of impact this situation could result in, while also bringing into sharp relief, the importance of both the industry’s and the Government’s response for exit”.

A Planning White Paper is due in England following the March Budget. What will Welsh Government do?

UPDATE 29/04

Forecasting can be fun and is interesting. However, reflecting last night on regional variations in housing delivery I thought, how might Wales perform if it followed Welsh rather than UK performance post 2008? Welsh Government does after all have different housing powers and policy tools at it disposal and it tells us it is more public/RSL sector interventionist in its approach to provision. We can see in the Wales scenario the performance curve (green column) is flatter, with less of a fall. Should housing delivery performance in Wales repeat its post 2008 recovery pattern, then relatively Wales may fare better than the UK overall.

Welsh Government Central Estimates of housing need indicate an average of 7000 dwellings is required per year until 2028-29. The last time more than 7000 dwellings were completed in Wales was 2008-9. The forecast suggests completions might not reach the average estimate of need at any point this decade. The shortfall against the Central Estimate of need could grow to 21700 units by 2028-29 were UK performance repeated or nearly 14000 if the Welsh pattern replicates itself. To give some kind of context to a looming delivery crisis, RSLs and Local Authorities have completed some 1200-1300 dwellings/year since 2015-16. They barely touch the sides of need.

We can all play around with data to move the numbers up and down. This post is purposely food for thought. The burning question it leads me to is will Welsh Government through public sector intervention and RSL’s have the appetite to afford to build the kind of recovery that might be needed and; will the Welsh public let it.