Locating Group Homes and the Planning Law Process

Small group homes, ¹ whether established and run by bodies such as mental health charities, housing trusts or health authorities, have made a crucial contribution to the residential component of community care policy in many countries. ² When established in ordinary houses they signify an alteration in the locus of care for the mentally ill and people with learning difficulties from hospital-based to community-based provision. ³ By promoting a higher degree of autonomy through independent living, deinstitutionalisation may have a profound and positive effect upon an individual’s identity. ⁴ As a prominent policy aspiration of successive UK Governments, care in the community has undoubtedly provoked a great deal of political comment, ⁵ and media controversy. ⁶ Many would argue that the delivery of community care has been hindered, not least by chronic under-funding and a want of effective collaboration between agencies charged with co-ordinating health, support and housing in the community. ⁷ Policy problems apart, there is often a further powerful inhibitor to mainstream housing being used to provide a group home in the form of local resistance from those who live nearby. ⁸ Their NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) anxieties may be clothed by arguments and concerns relating to the impact the proposed group home is expected to have in terms of noise levels, parking, property values, anti-social behaviour and violence. ⁹ All too often such fears may lack substance, ¹⁰ and therefore represent blatant discrimination. ¹¹ This chapter explores differing ways neighbourhood opposition may find expression within the town and country planning process. It is argued that there is an absence of clarity in the scope and operation of a specific exemption from planning control that purports to assist the creation of small group homes in dwelling-houses. The chapter also considers how NIMBYism may come into play either when an application for planning permission, or when the content of local plans on the availability of land for group homes, is determined.