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News Release from: Chartered Institute of Building [CIOB] | Subject: Sustainable Communities policy
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 23 December 2004
Questions over Sustainable Communities
policy
East of England Assembly protest raises questions over Sustainable Communities policy.
East of England Assembly protest raises questions over ?Sustainable Communities policy 22 December 2004 As Kate Barker said in her report on Housing Supply, control over the amount of land available for house building in England lies with regional planning bodies which should have power to determine building targets Their job as she saw it was to co-ordinate links between infrastructure providers, developers and the national regeneration agency English Partnerships, and indeed this is beginning to happen
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 12 Mar 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Since then the Regional Spatial Strategy drafted by the East of England Regional Assembly has been sent to the office of the United Kingdoms Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
After a period of public consultation, followed by examination of the strategy by an independent panel appointed by the Secretary of State, the RSS as it is known will provide the statutory planning framework for every one of the 54 local authorities in this huge region of the United Kingdom.
East of England is one of a group of North West European regions which border the North Sea.
To the south lies Greater London, to the west the South East and East Midlands Regions.
And of course to the East lies Brussels where the East of England European Partnership of government agencies keeps in touch with European institutions through its Brussels Office.
This facility played an important role in winning the so-called ?Objective 2 status which brings the East of England Regional Partnership a useful income of around £300 million a year through the European structural funding programmes.
The Objective 2 rating is of great assistance to many towns and villages in the East of England Region, especially those on the North Sea coast; it is the second highest level of funding available from the European Union.
Now it seems that the whole of the East of England Region is facing economic and social difficulties over its infrastructure but not getting much structural support from the United Kingdom Government.
The region is deeply involved in Mr Prescotts plans for creating sustainable communities, and has made his policies the cornerstone of its approach to the Regional Spatial Strategy.
But only 10 days after submitting its RSS to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the governing assembly voted to suspend its endorsement of the East of England plan due to lack of Government funding for essential infrastructure.
Infrastructure funding ?grossly inadequate From its base in the 1,000 year old Suffolk town of Bury St.
Edmunds, the assemblys statement deplored the Governments ?grossly inadequate funding of the transport infrastructure costs associated with the additional 478,000 houses planned for this region between 2001-2021.
It said: "Bearing in mind that the Assemblys acceptance of this massive growth was conditional on adequate government provision of the necessary infrastructure; and mindful of Lord Rookers [ODPM Minister of State] repeated written assurances that growth will not be imposed without the associated infrastructure: "This assembly wishes to make it clear that it now regards its endorsement of the draft East of England Plan as suspended, pending a re-examination of the Governments willingness to support its own aspirations adequately in financial terms".
From this statement, it would appear that the ODPM sought to impose this huge housing target on the East of England without regard to the infrastructure implications, a demand not at all in harmony with Kate Barkers view of regional planning executives deciding what is required after careful study of needs and capacities.
The requisite assessment is indeed incorporated in the spatial strategy document, but the absence of Government funding for the infrastructure makes it impossible to proceed on any realistic basis.
Indeed, the attempt of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to force an additional 18,000 houses into the regions 20-year plan above the 468,000 already incorporated in response to the Sustainable Communities policy would have brought the total up to nearly half a million.
That would require an average completion rate of about 24,000 houses a year.
However, the regional assemblys planning panel rejected the idea of additional house-building along the London-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough corridor which is a heavily-trafficked combination of the M11 motorway and A-class trunk roads.
"Feedback from a number of independent environmental and economic studies commissioned by the regional assembly has suggested that the case has not yet been made out for those additional houses.
The planning panel also warned against unsuitable development and [again] called for the Government to fund essential infrastructure improvement".
Construction industry capacity questioned As the regional strategy document explained, there are some real challenges in securing these levels of housing supply: in nearly all areas there is an issue about infrastructure provision ? physical infrastructure such as road capacity needs and social infrastructure such as education and health facilities.
in several areas, the over-expansion of market towns is a difficulty where town centre expansion is limited or the market viability of development is weak positive economic interventions will be needed in some areas, notably Norfolk, Peterborough and Suffolk, to achieve increased output the ability of the construction industry to deliver increased development rates in the light of its recruitment and skills problems The RSS points out that the delivery of housing at this rate ? around 24,000 dwellings a year on average ? is dependent on the timely delivery of infrastructure and job growth throughout the RSS plan period.
It says further that if transport infrastructure and the level of transport services are to enable the regional economy to flourish, they must be planned to support the future development of the region.
The East of England Regional Assembly, with its massive housing target set at a level far beyond the recent performance of the house-building industry in the United Kingdom, faces a huge task of economic transformation in an atmosphere of uncertainty about the support it can expect from the U.K.
Government.
In her final report on Housing Supply Kate Barker pointed out that: "Demand for housing is increasing over time, driven primarily by demographic trends and rising incomes.
Yet in 2001 the construction of new houses in the United Kingdom fell to its lowest level since the second world war.
Over the ten years to 2002, output of new houses was 12½ per cent lower than for the previous ten years".
The protest from the East of England Regional Assembly comes as a warning that there is much more to sustainable communities than volume of house-building.
Without the financial resources to get the job done, the vision of Creating Sustainable Communities will remain little more than an attractive concept dreamed up by the planners in Whitehall.
Not only are there the usual problems of congested roads and inadequate rail links.
To quote from the RSS background statement: "Sea level rise in the region may be between 22 and 82 cm above the current level by 2080.
This has significant implications for coastal and low-lying areas".
Climate change is yet another issue which has major implications for the drive towards sustainable communities.
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