Power to the People

In recent months I have spent quite a few evenings in Village Halls (principally Great Waldingfield Village Hall), listening to representatives from development and other companies intent on selling their ‘visions of the future’ to bemused ranks of local residents. I felt that in the interest of balance and open mindedness I should spend some time with a representative of the Suffolk Preservation Society.

This body, the County branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, was founded in 1929, and ‘works to protect and enhance the countryside, towns and villages of Suffolk’. This seems a laudable aim and I was anxious to discover its views on planning and environmental matters in the Babergh area.

The Society’s Director, Richard Ward, clearly feels that in the area of planning generally quality of design and execution is being sacrificed in the name of target setting and speed. These views are in accord with the recent report from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which stated that one in three homes built in recent years should not have received planning permission! Recently the Society ran a ‘Worst of the East’ competition in which it asked the public to vote to name the ugliest recently developed building in the area. Many of the buildings on the short list were the result of over hasty and ill considered planning decisions. (Those of you who missed the well publicised results can find them on the Society’s web site.).

Richard also condemned the top down ‘one size fits all’ approach of the present government whose focus remains unremittingly urban. This comment brought to mind the development at the Piggeries in Great Waldingfield. What was once an application for 40 dwellings in the village suddenly mushroomed into an application for 93, a number dictated by centrally imposed density targets for larger developments, regardless of their location. Another example is Central Government’s enthusiasm for imposing centrally planned schemes, such as wind farm developments, on open countryside as a panacea for the problems of global warming. Perhaps a more complex, but ultimately more rewarding, approach would be to give local communities the responsibility for developing environmentally friendly solutions appropriate for their own areas; local composting schemes, or small scale power generation for example.

At public meetings about knotty planning issues I often hear the comment ‘Of course there’s nothing we can do…it’s a done deal.’ People feel excluded from the decision making process and distrust the motivation and ability of those who are making decisions over their heads. The Society’s view is that power should be returned to the people, that they should be involved from the very earliest stages of the planning process on the basis that the people best placed to plan the homes and workplaces, essential to meet the needs of the future, are the people who live in the local community.

The preliminary remarks of the Quality of Life Policy Group (Built Environment section), and independent body set up by David Cameron to advise on policy related to the environment accept the premiss that the balance of power has shifted to the centre. They write:

'For much of the last generation, the design of place and space has been built on the principle of uniformity and prescribed and restricted by a centralised planning system which has taken the decision-making power over planning and development away from local people in the direction of Whitehall.'

Is the tide about to turn? The SPS clearly thinks that it should.