Date: 8 February 2002 Item 3 Report by: The Hampshire County Planning Officer, Portsmouth City Planning
Officer and Southampton Head of Planning Policy Written by: Stuart Roberts, tel 01962 846782 Purpose and Summary: This report summarises the work being undertaken to implement, monitor and enhance the information available to the public about the adopted Hampshire County Structure Plan 1996-2011. It reports progress on the roll forward/review of that Plan and of the Minerals and Waste Local Plan. It also explains the implications for strategic planning of the recently published Planning Green Paper and the proposal for two new National Parks. RECOMMENDATION: That: 1) the work on implementing, monitoring, enhancing information about, and reviewing the adopted Hampshire County Structure Plan be noted; 2) the proposals set out in the Planning Green Paper and the Countryside Agency's proposed arrangements for the setting up of the New Forest and South Downs National Parks be noted, and the three strategic planning authorities for Hampshire be encouraged to respond to the consultation on them; and 3) the work on reviewing the minerals part of the Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton Minerals and Waste Local Plan be noted, and the three strategic authorities consider the Issues Paper and approve its publication for consultation.
1. Implementation of the Adopted Structure Plan 1.1 Implementation of the Structure Plan's policies is primarily a task for the local planning authorities in preparing local plans and undertaking development control. The strategic planning authorities assist this by producing Supplementary Planning Guidance such as that relating to the implementation of Policy H4 (the reserve housing sites) and informal advice, for example the Guidelines for Urban Capacity Studies. Legislation also gives each strategic planning authority a statutory role in certifying a draft local plan as being in general conformity or not with the Structure Plan. During 2001 Hampshire County Council assessed the conformity of the draft Eastleigh, East Hampshire, New Forest and Winchester local plans. It deemed that the draft Eastleigh Borough Local Plan was not in conformity with the adopted Structure Plan, and that the other three were in broad conformity. In 2002 it is expected that seven draft local plans will be dealt with: Basingstoke and Deane, Eastleigh (second deposit), Gosport, Havant (second deposit), New Forest (second deposit), Test Valley, and Winchester (second deposit). 1.2 Three other specific initiatives are underway which will assist the implementation of the Structure Plan. The first is the preparation of advice on the cost of new County Council infrastructure and services necessary for planned development, to be used in negotiating developer contributions. Originally to cover only the Major Development Areas designated in the Structure Plan, its scope has been expanded to embrace all sites. 1.3 The second initiative is the compilation of a database of examples of high quality, high density housing development within Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton. The purpose of the database - which will be accessible via the web - will be to show developers what can be achieved and demonstrate that higher density does not need to compromise design quality. 1.4 The third specific initiative is an affordable housing study. This will estimate the number of households now and in the future requiring affordable housing, assess the supply of new affordable homes, and identify the measures needed to increase the supply. The study will help justify local plan policies and targets for the provision of affordable housing, and feed into the review of the Structure Plan (see paragraph 4.4 below). 2. Monitoring 2.1 A substantial resource is devoted to the collection and analysis each year of information on housing land supply, and industrial, business, retail and leisure floorspace supply. This information is published in three separate annual monitoring reports. In 1997 and again in 2000 a survey was undertaken of the quality of town centres in Hampshire. A survey of the occupiers of newly-built properties has been undertaken every few years, since the late 1980s, to obtain valuable information on the types of households which occupy newly-built homes, where they moved from, and so on. A fresh survey is now underway which will also, for the first time, cover new occupiers of existing dwellings. 2.2 Less well-established is the monitoring of the implementation of the Plan. That will be addressed by the publication this year of the first Annual Structure Plan Monitoring Report, which will assess the extent to which key targets and indicators - either explicitly stated within or implied by the Structure Plan policies - are being achieved. It is intended to present the first edition of this monitoring report to the next meeting. At that meeting Members will also be asked to consider the separate, but related, monitoring paper on Policy H4 (the reserve housing sites). This will assess the adequacy of housing land supply, including potential sites identified in urban capacity studies, and whether any of the reserve housing sites need to be released. 2.3 Those monitoring documents will show that the 4,416 dwellings built in the year 2000/01 was a record low; this reflects the national situation and is well below the 6,030 per annum set by Regional Planning Guidance (RPG). A total of 65% of the dwellings were built on brownfield sites; this exceeds the Government's national 60% target, although the percentage masks the fact that the number built on brownfield land in the Hampshire Structure Plan area fell over the last four years. Unemployment in the Structure Plan area is generally very low: in 10 out of 13 districts less than 2% of the workforce are claiming unemployment benefit (in Hart district the figure is as low as 0.5%). A range of other economic, development and environmental information will also be included in the Structure Plan Monitoring Report. 3. Information 3.1 During the preparation of the now adopted Structure Plan, interested individuals and organisations were kept informed through a periodic newsletter. The first edition of a fresh newsletter will be published soon after this meeting. Its main focus will be on the review of the Structure Plan, but it will also summarise the initiatives (described above) to implement and monitor the current Plan. 3.2 The Government has set targets for local authorities to expand the amount of information they provide on the internet. The current electronic information about the Structure Plan - hosted on Hantsweb - is limited to the adopted Structure Plan policies (not the whole published document) and some other out-of-date text. Over the coming months this will be replaced with a re-structured family of Structure Plan web pages which will provide comprehensive information about the current Plan and the Review. 4. Review of the Structure Plan 4.1 Work is progressing on the Review in line with the process agreed at the last meeting in July. The South Hampshire Study (see item elsewhere on the agenda) will provide an important contribution to the Review, as will the Blackwater Valley Study on which work is now underway. 4.2 The conclusions of these two sub-regional studies will need to be set in a Structure Plan area-wide context. To shape the latter, task teams have been established to identify issues, opportunities and options in respect of seven topics which have a bearing on spatial strategy: (i) housing; (ii) industry and business; (iii) transport and information/communication technological change; (iv) land and natural resources; (v) flood risk and climate change; (vi) urban areas and regeneration; and (vii) market towns and rural Hampshire.
4.3 To involve key stakeholders from the outset and build `ownership' of the new/revised policies, each task team comprises a mix of county, city and district officers, together with key external organisations. The task teams (and the South Hampshire Study) are due to report their final conclusions in early summer, enabling this Panel to then decide on the scope of the Review (an Alteration or Replacement Plan), the time-horizon and the timetable for the ensuing stages of work. 4.4 To assist the formulation of soundly-based new economic policies, a survey is underway of the future expansion/relocation requirements of businesses in Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton. The survey will also provide a platform for consultation with the business community at later stages of the Review. The affordable housing study referred to in paragraph 1.4 above will also provide an input to the Structure Plan Review. 5. Review of the Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton Minerals and Waste Local Plan 1998 5.1 On 27 April 1999 this Panel agreed that the Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton Minerals and Waste Local Plan would be reviewed in stages, beginning with a review of the minerals section of the Plan. Work on the Minerals Review is progressing, with consultants having been retained to manage and facilitate a stakeholder dialogue process. Since September 2001 there have been four stakeholder meetings, with the next one to be held in February 2002. This process will be completed in summer 2002. A wide range of stakeholders have had an opportunity to discuss various issues and topics regarding minerals in Hampshire, and their input has made a valuable contribution to the Review process. 5.2 As part of the statutory consultation process an issues paper is proposed for publication in April 2002. The paper will incorporate the key issues highlighted during the stakeholder dialogue meetings. Its publication will be the first opportunity for wider public comment on the key issues of the Review. The responses to the issues paper, together with the final outcomes of the stakeholder dialogue process, will feed into the production of a First Deposit Draft Plan. This First Deposit Draft Plan will be presented to the Panel in the autumn for endorsement, with a recommendation for referral to the Authorities for approval for publication. 6. The Planning Green Paper 6.1 On 12 December 2001 the Government published a Green Paper `Planning - Delivering a Fundamental Change' which sets out proposals for a radical overhaul of the town and country planning system. Comments have been invited on the Green Paper by 18 March 2002. 6.2 To address perceived shortcomings with the current system, the Green Paper proposes to replace the existing development plan system of structure and local plans (or unitary plans in unitary authorities) by a single level of plan, the Local Development Framework (LDF). These LDFs will normally be prepared by the relevant district, unitary or National Park authority, although the production of joint Frameworks will not be precluded. 6.3 The Green Paper proposes to abolish Structure Plans because Government considers that the county is no longer the appropriate level at which to consider many key strategic planning issues, which are increasingly being dealt with at either regional or sub-regional level. 6.4 The Green Paper proposes to replace RPG with statutory Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS). The responsibility for preparing the RSS will rest with the relevant regional planning body (in the south-east that body is at present the South East England Regional Assembly). 6.5 Although the proposed two-tier approach of RSS and LDFs is expected to be the norm, the Green Paper suggests that most regions will also require the preparation of sub-regional planning strategies to deal with the distribution of housing, for example between districts, which will be incorporated into the RSS. 6.6 The abolition of Structure Plans will remove the role of Hampshire County Council, Portsmouth City Council and Southampton City Council in strategic planning. Each district and city council would separately prepare a LDF within the framework set by the RSS and any sub-regional strategy. To fill the vacuum left by the abolition of Structure Plans, the RSS will need to be more detailed than current RPG so as to provide, for example, a housing policy figure for each district/city area. Decisions on such matters would thus be made by the regional assembly rather than by this Panel. 6.7 The Green Paper states that "until the necessary legislation is introduced, counties should continue to fulfil their statutory obligations and carry out reviews of structure plans on issues that matter". This has been emphasised by Lord Falconer, Minister for Housing, Planning and Regeneration, in a letter to the Local Government Association. He states that local authorities remain under a statutory duty to produce plans, and with the new arrangements unlikely to come into effect until 2004 at the earliest, authorities should not put plan-making on the back-burner. 6.8 Since the Green Paper is a consultation document, the final outcome of changes to the planning system remains uncertain. Whatever the outcome, work undertaken on the Hampshire Structure Plan Review will be valuable in informing and influencing any new arrangements, including the proposed RSS and the LDFs, particularly if it can be progressed as far as publication of a deposit draft new/revised Structure Plan. 7. Proposed National Parks 7.1 The Countryside Agency has responsibility for designating National Parks. It is currently consulting on the administrative arrangements and draft boundary for a South Downs National Park and is about to publish a Designation Order for the proposed New Forest National Park. 7.2 The Countryside Agency will place the Designation Order on deposit on Thursday 21 February 2002 for comments by Monday 25 March. This will formally propose the designation of the National Park and will set out the proposed Park boundary. Separately, the Agency will make recommendations to the Government on the administrative arrangements for the Park. These will include a recommendation that a single Structure Plan for the National Park and the area of the Hampshire Structure Plan should be prepared jointly by the National Park Authority and the three existing Hampshire strategic planning authorities. This would include the small parts of Wiltshire and Dorset which will be in the National Park. 7.3 Broadly based on the existing Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AsONB), the proposed South Downs National Park covers a linear area running from Eastbourne in East Sussex westwards through to Winchester. Within Hampshire, its proposed boundary runs as far south as Rowlands Castle, Clanfield, Wickham, Bishops Waltham and Colden Common (although not including these settlements) and up to Itchen Abbas, New Alresford, Alton and Bordon to the North. 7.4 The Countryside Agency has put forward a number of options for both the type of park authority and the role it should have in planning and land management, and seeks comments on them. In respect of strategic planning, the Agency's preference is for the new National Park Authority to prepare, jointly with the existing strategic planning authorities, a Structure Plan for each county area (its proposals pre-date publication of the Planning Green Paper). This is a similar arrangement to the Agency's proposals for the New Forest National Park, and would mean both National Park Authorities being represented at this Panel. 7.5 Both AsONB and National Parks are designated because of their landscape importance. In planning policy terms there is no difference between the two types of designation on how development should be treated. The key difference is the purpose of promoting opportunities for public understanding and enjoyment of their special qualities, which applies specifically to National Parks. Of primary importance in the South Downs for the long term conservation of the area is land management, which for the most part is outside planning control. The real test of the proposed designation is "does it add value to what is already being achieved and could be achieved by existing agencies?" The answer to this question depends on the extent to which additional resources are made available for the conservation and management of the area. In the absence of any guarantees about future resources for a proposed South Downs National Park, there is no certainty about "added value". In considering administration arrangements it is important that the South Downs is not seen as an `island' and is integrated with surrounding communities and authorities. 7.6 The consultation period on the South Downs National Park proposals runs until 28 February 2002. Local Authorities will be formally consulted again later this year prior to the submission of a National Park Designation Order to Government. The Secretary of State is likely to decide by the end of 2002 whether the order is to be confirmed or whether a public inquiry is to be held (probably in 2003). | 
