ABSTRACT
Inevitably, any framework for addressing second home concerns in the UK will have a planning component. The planning system has widened its field of vision in recent times. Twenty years ago, Circular 15/84 Land for Housing (DoE, 1984) stated that the key objective of planning in relation to new housing development was simply to ensure sufficient supply of land to meet both household demands and the needs of the construction industry. By the time that a second version of Planning Policy Guidance Note 3 (Housing) appeared in 1992, it was accepted that planning’s role was certainly wider than that set out in Circular 15/84. Indeed, it was stated that local authorities should concern themselves with the quality of new housing, its design and sustainability, and access to homes for households unable to compete in the open market. These messages were re-affirmed in Circular 6/98 Planning for Affordable Housing (DETR, 1998) and the most recent version of PPG3 (DETR, 2000). That planning should deliver sustainable, balanced communities is a central theme of the current government’s Sustainable Communities Plan (ODPM, 2003a) and its consultation draft of Planning Policy Statement 1 (ODPM, 2004). Planning should, therefore, focus not only on the control of land use, but should seek to achieve wider social goals. This chapter, like the last, examines some of the options for dealing with
housing pressures in rural areas with a view to distinguishing what should be done through planning from what could be done. However, the focus in this chapter is on direct controls over second home demand and use, not on supplying affordable housing through the planning system. The latter subject was addressed briefly in Chapter 7 with the key rural delivery mechanisms summarised in Figure 7.1. A more comprehensive account of how the planning mechanisms in the UK can be used to procure affordable housing can be found in Gallent (2000), Crook et al (2002), Adams and Watkins (2002) and Carmona et al (2003). The debate surrounding planning for housing (and for affordable housing)
in recent years has been characterised by a widening acceptance that planning does indeed have a social dimension. In policy rhetoric at least, the clearest message is that local planning authorities should use the system to promote greater ‘sustainability’: this means economic sustainability, connecting housing supply to the needs of the labour market and recognising the wider economic consequences of planning decisions (Barker, 2004); it also means environmental sustainability, ensuring that planning acts to lighten the ecological footprint of development; and it also means social sustainability, combating
exclusion, promoting opportunity and creating balanced communities. A move away from the inflexibility of ‘land use planning’ to ‘spatial planning’ with its broader array of social, economic, environmental and spatial concerns should be good news for communities where social imbalances are a fact of everyday life. Arguably, many rural areas with high concentrations of second homes fit into this category. In the 1990s, there was a concern in many rural areas that planning was
simply not working in the interests of local people or local economies. In Wales, in particular, the apparently narrow focus of the planning system was a cause of bitterness amongst some rural authorities and language campaigners (see also Chapter 7, this volume). There was a view that whilst planning ‘talked the talk’ with regards to local community interests, attempts to prioritise these interests were constantly thwarted by central government. Hence, overt policies to prioritise local needs (see the cases of Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, Chapter 7) in sometimes spurious ways brought local and national state into conflict (House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, 1993; Tewdwr-Jones, 1995; Cloke, 1996). Also in Wales, the frustration of many authorities centred on the problems of ensuring access to housing for local people in those areas with a high proportion of Welsh speakers, and where the dual pressures of migration and economic failure had been identified. Today, these concerns continue despite planning’s apparently broadened remit generally, and the devolution of power to the Welsh Assembly Government. In both England and Wales (and elsewhere in the UK), concerns centre on the following issues:
. The inadequacy of planning mechanisms to deliver a sufficient number of affordable homes within rural communities given the weight of demand pressure, increasing competition in the land market, and planning constraint (see Crook et al, 2002);
. Migration pressures, second home purchasing, retirement, house price inflation and the pressure on local services and schools;
. The inability of current mechanisms to ‘manage demand’ without simply opening up land to development or pushing local people into social housing.
