Wind Energy Planning

“Power to the People” is the new Conservative catchphrase.   The catchphrase forms the basis of a new Conservative green paper on devolution and decentralisation “giving power back to local communities”.  The paper outlines proposals for local government spending, planning and housing, local regulatory regimes and local referendums.

You’d be forgiven for thinking, given the latest expenses scandal, that the Tories would be treading carefully when it comes to the accountability of elected representatives.  However the new Conservative green paper proposes abolishing the Standards Board who currently monitor the behaviour of local councillors.  The Standards Board introduced  a Code of Conduct in the early part of this century which local councillors are required to adhere to when carrying out their duties.  Under Conservative proposals however, Councillors will have free reign again – as they did prior to the 1980’s when brown paper envelopes being accepted for supermarket planning consents were reportedly a regular occurence.

The first question that springs to my mind is who are “the people” David Cameron is referring to as set to benefit from these new powers.  Cameron believes that if you give the power to “local people” all of the UK’s housing and infrastructure needs will be delivered.  All of a sudden because local councils get to keep a bit more of their Council tax revenue everyone is going to support new housing.  What appears to be ignored is the fact that people who are are on local planning committees are currently SPENDING local Council tax money on fighting housing appeals.  This is clearly money that could have been spent on local needs but Councillors have decided it is much more important to spend council tax payers money on keeping new development away (after all planning committee members and the people who lobby them usually already own a nice house).

A further feature of the new policy is ‘giving local authorities a new discretionary power to levy business rate discounts, allowing them to help local shops and services’.  Who are the people benefiting from this – Councillor X’s mate who he drinks down the pub with?  According to the Conservatives ‘unlimited budgets’ should be allowed to be passed on to Ward Councillors.

Finally when it comes to renewable energy, there is no proposed arena for joined up thinking.  Currently regional spatial strategies are plans where targets for delivering the UK’s climate change committments are set out.   Without these where are the guiding incentives for local authorities to grant renewable energy consents?  Nobody likes the idea of targets and yes they do often create perverse effects.  However if there is a need to provide a national level of new housebuilding or new renewable energy, every district in the country needs to do its bit and the numbers have to be dished out fairly in a country where space is valued highly.  Comparisons made with devolved powers in Germany are irrelevant given the scale of the country, available land for house building and demand/ supply issues.  There is a real risk that renewable energy projects will struggle further in the UK under Conservative proposals as NIMBYs lobby their local councillors to refuse local applications in the absence of higher level objectives.  It is vitally important to have checks in place to ensure that we live in a country which is not riddled with accusations of corruption and bribery.