Not with a Bang - Not Yet

The news that the inquiry into the decision about whether to build a new nuclear station at Hinkley Point in Somerset was complete in less than a year slid out into the public domain almost unnoticed. In spite of the horrors of Fukushima - still unresolved - in spite of the decisions by a number of other countries to abandon their nuclear programmes, the UK government is still ploughing ahead with this dangerous and out-dated technology. Local people demonstrated but were barely covered by national media. Where was the lengthy and dramatic public inquiry, akin to the three-year process that preceded the permission for a new station at Sizewell in 1987?

Such things are now vestiges of a lost democracy, swept away in the brave new world of the Infrastructure Planning Commission, now 'seamlessly transferred' into the Planning Inspectorate. Without any apparent irony the government website informs us that: 'The main change introduced by the Localism Act will be that the relevant Secretary of State will be the decision maker on all national infrastructure applications for development consent. The Secretary of State will have three months to make a decision, following a recommendation from the Planning Inspectorate'. The main consequence of Pickles's commitment to localism is that he will now make all controversial decisions in his department in London.

Being somewhat surprised about the speed with which the Hinkley decision was made I enquired of the National Infrastructure Directorate of the Planning Inspectorate about how the members of the Hinkley panel were chosen and what was their relevant experience. I was told that when the IPC was an independent body the Commissioners were public office-holders whose biographies and personal information was available on the IPC's website. When it was subsumed into the Planning Inspectorate they became civil servants and so it was no longer appropriate to publish their personal details.

Chair of the panel Andrew Philipson appears to set the tone for the approach to people's concerns in the face of the planning juggernaut. According to a press release from Stop Hinkley: 'When local resident and single mother Nikki Clarke asked who would look at the dangers of nuclear power to the health of local children if the IPC were not prepared to do so, Sir Andrew's response was to tell her that her point was irrelevant; when she tried to continue he had her microphone switched off and adjourned the meeting, asking her to leave.'

This is what the Ministry of Localism means: the ministry of centralised decision-making in favour of the elites, within a government committed to communication by doublespeak.

Tweet

Open Source Planning

In a comment on an earlier post to this blog, a reader asked where George Orwell is when we need him. I believe I may have found the answer: he has been employed as a Discourse Adjustment Analyst in the Department for Communities and Local Government, where doublethink is thriving. How else could we have a planning document that draws its title from the free software movement and yet is deliberately designed to commodify nature and sell it to the richest developer? His work can also be seen in the title of PPS4, called Planning for Sustainable Economic Growth, published under the Labour administration. It is rumoured that he will shortly be setting us his own consultancy, Oxymoron Inc.

During a training session organised by two members of the Planning Officers Society earlier this week I was told that my definition of Localism was entirely wrong. In spite of any lingering hopes about the Localism Bill, the trainers made it clear that it is hierarchy dressed up as subsidiarity: ‘The localism agenda is there to promote growth’ was the message. The National Planning Policy Framework has a presumption in favour of development where no core strategy exists, as in Stroud, and now that the Regional Spatial Strategies have been swept away this leaves us extremely vulnerable.

Unsurprisingly, the voice of the developer, the British Property Federation, has welcomed the new Framework. The changes are all, apparently, about efficiency and the removal of red tape: 'The planning system has become unwieldy and needs to be pared back'.

While regional planning has been all but swept away, there is a new level altogether: that of the neighbourhood. This is as yet undefined for urban areas, but in rural areas must be defined by parish boundaries. Neighbourhoods will be able to organise themselves to develop their own plans and, so long as they stick to the council's plan, the council must provide them with expertise and fund a referendum on the plan. If the neighbourhood votes in favour the plan must be followed.

This is not quite as exciting as it sounds, since the system is still hierarchical so that the neighbourhood can only make minor changes. For example, if it has been decided by the higher-tier authority that nuclear waste will be desposited in your neighbourhood, you are only at liberty to decide its precise siting. As the recent decision by Eric Pickles to permit the dumping of radioactive waste in a community near Peterborough that had clearly voted against this course indicates that the real motivation is profit and the real power still the national government.
. Tweet