Neighbourhood Development Plan for East Dulwich?

[wpl]

Hi all

I've searched through old threads and can't find anything on the forum, but does anyone know of any Neighbourhood Development plans or community groups set up to influence planning applications?

http://planninghelp.cpre.org.uk/planning-explained/neighbourhood-planning

Growing more concerned that some planning applications have been approved recently for buildings not in keeping with neighbouring houses

[Earl Aelfheah]

It's a good question. I am not aware of one, but agree that more co-ordination and oversight would be helpful.

[Jeremy]

What exactly does "in keeping with neighbouring houses" mean, though? Does it mean that new developments should be in a mock-Victorian style? Can you show us some examples of good planning, where new developments have been sympathetic to existing period housing?

[wpl]

Absolutely not advocating twee Poundbury-style reproductions of existing Victorian/Edwardian housing stock. More concerned that we have the opportunity as a community to establish guidelines for new developments. aim would be to avoid situations as in other parts of London, for example in Norton Folgate, where development is about to begin on six story buildings where average height of existing buildings is 3 or 4 stories.

[clockworkorange]

To create a neighbourhood plan you must first get a neighbourhood area designated and a neighbourhood forum set up. The plan will need to be in accordance with southwark core strategy and new local plan. Then you need to get it agreed with the council. In turn it needs to be approved by planning inspectorate and then it needs to be approved by referendum. The plan must be positive and not seek to prevent otherwise appropriate development. In short, if your agenda is to prevent much needed housing in an urban and sustainable location, you're wasting your time and money. If you want to use the plan to identify locations for development needed by the community, ie housing, schools, community infrastructure, it's worth pursuing.

[cathy p j]

It is possible to influence the style of new residential developments in Southwark without having a Neighbourhood Development Plan. This has been achieved at least twice to my knowledge with new housing on Ivydale Road, Nunhead. In both cases the original plans were for blocks of flats that were totally out of keeping with the neighbouring Victorian / Edwardian houses. Local residents responded to the planning consultation to object to the design, and the plans were changed, with the new properties built very much in line with the properties in the surrounding streets.

I'm not saying this could be achieved every time, but it is certainly possible.

Cathy

[abeattie]

-wpl

Objecting to planning applications of the likes of Railway Rise which wants to demolish two of the Victorian railway cottages and replace it with a nondescript box of flats totally out of keeping with the area is a good place to start.

[James Barber]

Hi wpl,

The Dulwich Society look at larger schemes and do include East Dulwich in their work. So I would suggest you do join the Dulwich Soceity and seek to join their Planning and Architecture sub committee -

http://www.dulwichsociety.com/planning-and-architecture

I'm sure they'd welcome more volunteers to increase the breadth of work they undertake.

A neighbourhood plan would be great for the area as any future planning gain via Section 106 funds would have a much higher proportion spent in the area - 25% rather than 10% from memory. I have suggested to the Dulwich Scoeity that a neighbourhood Plan led by them would be a great start.

[wpl]

The Dulwich society sounds like a good first port of call. Thanks everyone

[rch]

Let me know if you make any progress as I would be happy to help out (I have planning committee experience from when I was a cllr).

I kicked the idea around with the Dulwich Society a while ago after the legislation came out and they were positive, but it's a huge amount of work so would need organisation and manpower.

I personally think that it would be great to look at becoming a Parish Council down here as the one-size-fits-all mentality from 5 miles away in Tooley Street isn't serving the interests of Dulwich area residents very well at all.

But a Neighbourhood Development Plan would be a good start...

[MarkT]

RCH,

Currently 4 of our 9 Dulwich Councillors are members of Borough Planning Committees who Determine Applications. All Councillors determine Planning Policy. And they all meet in Tooley Street.

You are therefore describing the entire Dulwich Community Council:

"the one-size-fits-all mentality from 5 miles away in Tooley Street isn't serving the interests of Dulwich area residents very well at all.?

How does your Parish Council proposal work? Is it an independent Local Planning Authority or is it within Southwark Council, reduced to submitting objections to Southwark's planning procedures? Do we elect 2 sets of Councillors? How do you think it will better serve the interests of Dulwich Area Residents?

I have an alternative suggestion:

- Those Councillors who serve on Planning Committees should follow their legal and constitutional duties and determine planning applications in accordance with existing Southwark and London planning policies.

- All Councillors should take part in the current review of Southwark's planning policies and ensure that the New Southwark Plan accords with the London Plan and addresses the varying needs across the Borough.

MarkT

[nxjen]

The Parish Council idea is interesting but raises many questions.

1. Do you envisage this will cover just one parish or will it be formed from a group of parishes i.e. St Barnabas in the Village, St John's in East Dulwich, All Saints in West Dulwich.

2. Will parish councillors be elected? If so, I wonder how many would be put off voting (a) because we vote for enough levels of government already and (b) because of associations with the parish church. I suspect those who are not church-goers, myself included, would not feel any affinity with a parish council and would look on it as an oddity or an irrelevance.

3. Would such a body have any legal standing? My initial thoughts, and I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is that it would have no legal standing whatever and as such could be no more than a pressure group. We already have the Dulwich Society which I believe responds on planning issues.

The idea of a parish council in an urban setting in the 21st century sounds very cosy but I agree with MarkT that more could be done to ensure that planning issues are dealt with in accordance with the existing legal framework.

[edhistory]

Where is the northern boundary of St John the Evangelist, East Dulwich, parish?

John K

[Penguin68]

Technically I believe Parish Councils actually have to map on to parishes - which makes sense in a rural community where a parish geography pretty well defines a rural community of interest but which makes no sense in London, where parishes and communities of interest do not map together. The 'interests' of the local community who participate in this forum do not map on to either a local ward (East Dulwich, but also parts of surrounding wards) or to a post code (SE22, but also just outside SE22). So defining - further than something very lose like the Dulwich Society - who should be playing into a local planning group who would properly represent the interests of this community (given that the councilors of wards which go to make up this group apparently don't serve) would seem impossible - particularly if you wanted any form of real democracy (rather than self selecting self interest) to inform the actions of such a group.

I do think we are being faced with some extreme impositions from apparatchiks with agendas to follow which do not match (all of) ours (anti-car, pro driving further revenues from car owners, pro-bicycle without concern for knock-on to public transport etc. etc.) - but that is the penalty we pay for democracy.

Even were Dulwich (East, West and 'Central') to bind together, invent its own political party and sweep the local polls, other Southwark voters would make this irrelevant.

[nxjen]

" ... particularly if you wanted any form of real democracy (rather than self selecting self interest) to inform the actions of such a group."

Exactly.

[rch]

Apologies for the delay in replying...

This has the potential of being a REALLY LONG discussion which I don't have time to type out, so I'll try the short version. Also, I had quite a lot of briefings in this when the legislation changed, but I'm not an expert so this is broad brush strokes.

Basically the legislation changed in 2011 under the Localism Act 2011, which allowed for a much more flexible approach to local government. This allows a variety of formulas ranging from Parish Councils to Neighbourhood Forums, which can in turn trigger a devolution of various powers and devolved funding.

The term "parish" isn't a reference to church parishes, but is a term for a local government unit. The boundary that it covers is determined by the residents and subject to rigid consultation. For instance, we could form the Peoples Republic of Dulwich (PROD) consisting of East Dulwich and Village wards, or a portion of each determined by neighbourhood lines, or maybe even dip into College ward or bits of Peckham Rye. The boundaries of the current wards are more determined by population numbers than neighbourhoods.

The advantage of a parish council is that funds for this area could then be directly devolved to the control of the area via elected councillors and an independent Chief Executive that then works as a unit in tandem with the London Borough of Southwark on borough-wide matters. For instance, I can see that a lot of the campaigns that we're fighting now are a result of lack of funding... i.e., the Townley Junction scheme would be easier to resolve if PROD had a fair slice of TFL's LIP funding that the parish council had direct control of instead of begging for breadcrumbs to be thrown down here from Tooley St.

A simpler version is the Neighbourhood Forum, which isn't a completely independent unit... this concept is what is being worked on in the north of the borough.

The Dulwich Society is a great community asset, but it's only a constituted body, which is considered a "stakeholder" in consultations, it doesn't actually have any power. It also only mostly focuses in Village ward and part of College ward, not yet ED ward, mostly because of manpower and funding issues.

Planning is another complex issue. It's quasi-judicial and supposedly a politically neutral process, but cllrs are assigned to the committees on the basis of political majority, so one party is always going to have the majority vote.

The Main Planning Committee only has one Dulwich cllr sitting on it, with two Dulwich reserve cllrs available to stand in (one Con and one Lib Dem). The Main planning committee handles major applications, such as the development of the Dulwich Hospital site, which will have a huge impact on this area. The sub-committees handle much smaller applications, sometimes without much joined-up thinking in my opinion.

Here's a quick Wiki link to start with, scroll down to the section about the Localism Act:-

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parish_councils_in_England

Lastly, bear in mind that local ward councillors don't actually have any POWER... all they can do is to represent and monitor. It's a part-time "voluntary" position with a small financial allowance (less than ?11K pa) to supplement expenses, there isn't even much administrative and secretarial support (which is why it sometimes takes cllrs ages to reply to emails, I used to get between 60-100 emails a day).

A lot of residents think of cllrs as mini-MPs, making a small fortune, but this simply isn't the case.

The power is held by the majority party that forms a Cabinet that is based in Tooley Street... local cllrs at the DCC can make representations to the Cabinet Member, but the Cab Mem can overrule local cllrs based on Constitutional policies (which the majority group can change). Bear in mind that the DCC might not even exist past next year if the elected members feel that the funding could be used better elsewhere...

Hope this makes sense... and don't shoot the messenger!

[MarkT]

Robin,

Councillor James Barber is proposing that the power to determine local planning applications is returned to Community Councils. That power was taken from C.Cs through a change in the Council's Constitution.

The Council's Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) specifies C.Cs as Decision makers for planning applications. It also states that all planning policy documents are approved by all 63 Councillors through Council Assembly.

The SCI states in its opening paragraph:

"This is a legal (statutory) document that must be complied with by all planning processes including the process of agreeing planning documents and making decisions on planning applications." "...under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and other planning legislation."

By Law, the preparation of the SCI (it states) required extensive public consultation and independent examination by HM Inspector.

Why does the Council's Constitution contradict the SCI?

MarkT

[rch]

Hi MarkT... welcome to the vagaries of local government!

If you look carefully, the SCI is dated 2008, which was during a previous administration. The changes were made by the following administration and the Constitutional amendments voted through in Council Assembly by the party with the majority vote. In the past I have personally objected to the description that all 63 councillors have approved decisions in Council Ass as this description is misleading... it means that a decision was approved by Council Assembly even if not all 63 councillors actually voted in favour.

I used to hate Council Assembly because the way it was structured was nothing more than a rubber-stamping exercise, in my opinion. I strongly feel that the whole Local Government model needs to be reviewed on several levels, but this is obviously low down on national govt's list of priorities.

Anyway... you will also note that the number of Community Councils has been reduced from 8 to 5 and the number of annual meetings has also been reduced (which makes it difficult to get through an agenda these days as there is so much to address due to the meetings taking place less frequently).

From memory, pretty much all of the councillors in the three Dulwich wards, cross party, weren't happy with the decision to redirect local planning decisions to Tooley St and there has been an ongoing campaign to return them to the Community Councils (although the larger ones would need to remain with Main Planning due to various legal parameters).

The reason we were given for the moving of local planning decisions to Tooley St was that it was a cost-cutting exercise driven by the government cuts to the borough... the local planning meetings involved the payment and transportation of a clerk, a planning advisor, and a legal advisor in addition to the venue hire approx 6 times a year across 8 (reduced to 5) community councils. I can't remember the exact amount that was said to be saved, the paperwork is buried now.

I'm pretty sure that the constitutional changes to the current SCI will comply with minimum legal regulations as the Tooley St legal team are fairly astute, but I haven't checked.

FYI, the way that the Community Councils were reduced from 8 to 5 was by folding neighbouring CCs together where possible, which created much greater boundaries that lost the specific neighbourhood issues. Dulwich got saved from this because of our geographical complications, which is also the main reason why I favour the creation of a Neighbourhood Forum or Parish Council as our priorities and parameters are significantly different to the rest of the borough...

I'm not trying to have a go at any one political party here... the current ruling administration was fairly voted in by a significant majority. I just feel that Dulwich is being backed into a corner by the way that local government is set up... this is one of the reasons why I became a councillor years ago - but then I realised just how obstructive politics can be in local government, so now I'm a non-political community activist!

p.s. All this is from memory, am happy to be corrected if I've mis-remembered anything!

[MarkT]

Robin,

Yes, the SCI is dated 2008. No, the SCI has not been changed.

The Council website states: ?We will be reviewing the SCI in 2010?

The Council?s Annual Monitoring Report 2010-11 (the most recent published on the Council website) states that it intends to review the SCI.

The timescale for creation or review of any Local Development Plan Document is years; the creation of the SCI took 5 years. A review could no doubt be speeded up, but if they had started it since 2011, it would still be in progress, and I am sure I would be aware of it. In the meantime, as it states on the Council website, the existing SCI must be complied with.

The Requirements for the creation or review of LPDs, including the SCI, are set out in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Southwark?s SCI has set a minimum public consultation period, in all cases, of 3 months. Everything must go through public examination by an independent Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State.

HM Government clearly does not share your confidence that a Council always meets its legal obligations. Section 27 of the 2004 Act ?Secretary of State?s Default Power? covers the possibility that it may fail to do so.

The local scheme of delegation set out in the Council?s Constitution contradicts the Statutory SCI.

With a view to increasing local influence on planning matters, I suggest that asking the Council to comply with its SCI might be simpler, and more productive, than creating an entire new Parish Council, or Neighbourhood Development Plan.

MarkT

[edhistory]

Where is this East Dulwich?

John K