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From the Newsletter- October 2004 |
INSTITUTIONAL ARROGANCE
From 13 May this year a new Act of Parliament the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 -- came into force. This requires Local Authorities to change the way in which they produce planning policy and control development.
The intention is still to have an approved local plan and to control development according to that plan but to make two major changes. First the community is to be given much more of a real and direct say in the content of the plan and second the quality of the results on the ground is to count for more than long reports. On the 21 September 2004 the Bristol City Council Cabinet decided to put these changes into effect without delay.
So that's all right then. We can expect less words and more action, less pretend "public consultation" and more effective community involvement in making the plan, less dictating from developers and more emphasis on making the environment in which we live more people friendly and sustainable. œ350m of Government money is being set aside to pay for Local Authorities to change the system.
But why has the planning system got into such a state? Why is the relationship between Local Planning Authorities and the public so poor that is necessary to make such a change and spend so much public money? Why do Local Authorities find it so difficult to convince us that planning is on the side of the public and that a mountain of policies and documents written in an obscure language will make a real difference to the quality of people's lives?
Some of the answers might lie in how the people who work in Local Authorities see themselves and the nature of the strange world that they inhabit.
Monopoly power
Local Authorities are an unusual kind of consumer business. If we do not like the services offered or feel that they are not value for money we cannot do as we would normally do, take our custom to the next rival business down the road. Worse than this, instead of having to attract us to spend our money on their services they can even "demand" payment through the community charge, on penalty of calling in the bailiffs or even prison for non-payment.
Professional power
Managing the physical, economic and social services of a city is an extremely complex task. Certainly it requires professionally qualified people. But the expert in any field, whether medical consultant, planning officer or sustainability department, can easily feel that no one else knows better. Professional commitment can easily turn into exclusive ownership. Job adverts in planning often sell cities and neighbourhoods, and by implication the people who live in them, as places and people that are given to the successful applicant to exercise their career. It is as though on the first day of the job someone says "there you are, you are the expert, you decide how to change the world"
We have a plan, now we can go home So what are the planning experts most interested in doing? Like their Westminster civil service cousins there is an intellectual preoccupation with strategy, policy and tomorrow rather than with implementation, action and today. The honourable exception are officers in development control who have to deal face to face with the hard realities of individual developers and tight deadlines while carrying the enormous weight of paper policies on their back.
Control and performance
But hold on, the professional officers don't run the Councils! Councillors are the consumer champions directly elected by us to the "Board" of the company to make sure that the business delivers what we pay for. You cannot be serious! Can they really do that? In the complex world of running a city can conscientious hard work really make up for lack of expertise, often no career knowledge of other similar businesses and part-time working? Can they really champion community choices when elected on barely 30% of the vote? Can they really act to keep up the performance of the business and the performance of professional officers when they are dependent upon the same officers themselves reporting lack of performance?
Another world
So, what a strange world! A monopoly business; the concentration of the power of expertise and time in the hands of professional employees who have their own foreign language, professional institute measures of success and self assessment; control and performance in the hands of councillors with comparatively little expertise, time or training.
Little wonder then that Planning Authorities find it difficult to include, let alone involve, their customers in the running of the business. Little wonder that community opinion is often treated with disdain. Little wonder that the business, despite the best efforts of individual officers and Councillors, appears to many among the public to suffer from an endemic institutional arrogance.
What is to be done?
One recent initiative of city Councillors brings welcome hope. On 3rd September 2004 the City Council formed a Select Committee on Westminster parliamentary lines, with the power to examine how far and in what ways the involvement of the community in the preparation of local plans can be made more effective.
If the Committee can be free to call witnesses from outside as well as inside the Council, can obtain its own independent expert advice, can see beyond the good intentions and can see the job through to the real effects on the ground, then the community involvement bit of the new system has a good chance. It might be a big if.
As someone who visited another world once nearly said that would be one small step for the Council, but one giant leap for the community.
P.S. Before we get too excited, that only leaves the second major question. How to make sure that the plans in which the community might now at last have a real say are actually implemented? If only the annual demand for payment was matched by an annual demand for results with penalties.
DAVID FARNSWORTH
1600 860 748
email: davidfarnsworth@beeb.net
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