Land Use Change in Protected Landscapes (Aonbs and National Parks): a Guide to the Tabulations

A Report Prepared For Defra Land Use Change in Protected Landscapes (AONBs and National Parks): A Guide to the Tabulations (LAND USE CHANGE INDICATORS FOR PROTECTED AREAS) February 2014 Department of Town and Regional Planning University of Sheffield Land Use Change in Protected Landscapes (AONBs and National Parks): A Guide to the Tabulations 1 Introduction 1.1 This document stands alongside a series of tabulations (University of Sheffield, 2013) that are designed to capture aspects of physical development in protected landscapes in the period since 1985. The present document provides a commentary on those Tabulations, exploring the relationships between the outcomes which they summarise and the operation of the planning system. Some supplementary tables are included to assist in this, which are styled Table S1, S2 etc to distinguish them from those in the principal document (Table 1, Table 2 which are also referred to here) 1.2 The tabulations themselves rest on two principal sources. The first is Ordnance Survey's Land Use Change Statistics (LUCS), which provides a very fine-grained view of land use changes observed in the course of updating the national survey base. The second is Royal Mail's Post Code address file (PAF) which is used to provide supplementary information about the changing numbers of properties. Together they provide a highly detailed picture of the changing pattern of built development in England's protected landscapes and elsewhere so we can track both the areal extent of change, and the density of development. 1.3 To appreciate both the strengths and limitations of the tabulations, it is important to understand the nature of the Land Use Change Statistics. They have been collected by OS since 1985 as an adjunct to updating basic scale maps (usually 1:1250, though sometimes 1:2500 or 1:10,000 in mountain and moorland areas). In this process, topographic changes are made (that is changes to the linework or annotation of maps at the largest possible scale). Where there is a corresponding land-use change a LUCS record is set up. These indicate location of change (10 metre reference) estimate of the area affected estimated year of change previous use and final use (24 categories) 1.4 Post Code Address File (PAF) data are assembled by Royal Mail to assist in the delivery of mail. It is used here to the stock of dwellings- residential property to which mail is delivered -for very small and irregular areas. In the tabulations in this document, dwelling stock change is measured by comparing estimated stocks from PAF at the time of the 2001 and 2011 Censuses. PAF is continuously updated and when combined with the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Postcode directory provides among other things: a structured address (including name or number of each sub-building, building, thoroughfare, locality and postcode) an occupier name in the case of non-residential property grid reference (100 metres) ward and other indicators, assessment of the number of dwellings at each full postcode 1.5 Together LUCS and PAF provide indicators of the changing pattern of built development which can be helpful in understanding both market outcomes and the operation of the planning system. Moreover, as they refer to individual properties and land use change events they involve no issues of confidentiality. Thus it is always possible to move back from the tabulations and identify the underlying individual sites. Together these two sources are particularly useful in monitoring the incidence of residential development. Their value in tracking non-residential development and changes between extensive uses between agriculture and woodland is more limited (see Section 4). 1.6 As the tabulations are intended to aid appreciation of the influence of the statutory planning system, it may seem surprising that statistics generated by the planning system are not included. Although the detailed information at property or land parcel used here to provide information about development outcomes might be ideally be combined with similarly fine- grained information about the passage of proposals through the planning system, this is not possible in practical terms. Setting aside the difficulties of extracting information for AONBs which are not in themselves local planning authorities (LPAs), the monitoring of development on particular sites is extremely costly and may be complex. Thus although LPAs hold detailed information on the individual applications which they receive and on decisions made, they rarely have detailed and comprehensive information about actual subsequent development. 1.7 Several considerations militate against the monitoring of planning consents and against the exploitation of monitoring information that is produced. Many sites may have multiple outstanding permissions, and as many consents granted are never implemented, monitoring requires repeated site inspections, or at least telephone calls to developers. The portfolio of sites to be monitored is vast, and as nine out of ten residential planning consents allow the construction of less than ten units (1), where detailed tracking is undertaken, it tends to be focused on larger sites. LPAs might use a cut off of 10 or five dwellings. Further difficulties arise, moreover, in assembling materials for use in a document such as this from a partial patchwork using different cut-offs and definitions. Glenigan, a private sector organization, maintains a database tracking development on more substantial residential planning sites which forms the foundation for monitoring reports for organizations including the Home Builders Federation (2012) and the Local Government Association (2012,2013). Only 7% of consents within its scope, however, refer to sites with less than 10 units (LGA 2012). Crucially – as discussed in Section 2 (Table S2a), sites with 10 or more units are rarely found in protected landscapes. 2 Interpreting the Tabulations: The Residential Development Pipeline 2.1 To understand the patterns of land-use change represented by the tables, it is helpful to focus on the flow of residential development and the contribution made by protected landscapes to its accommodation. This is often likened to a 'pipeline' through which development schemes move from conception to completion (See Figure 1). The schemes in question constitute the portfolio of projects which are so varied and so difficult to monitor. The notion of a 'pipeline' is important to volume housebuilders. Their business strategies typically involve securing a degree of control over housing land supply through the maintenance of land banks including what are termed 'oven-ready' sites ready for immediate development. (See e.g. Barker 2003). For such developers, it is the larger sites that are of concern and HBF Pipeline reports based on Glenigan's database are valuable from their perspective. 2.2 Figure 1 may be understood working from right to left starting with the number of dwellings that are completed, say at the end of a particular year. The tabulations focus on the volume of development emerging from the pipeline and some aspects of its character, while the discussion that follows attempts to explain how statutory planning procedures over the preceding period, stretching leftwards across Figure 1, have influenced and tend to influence that flow. Maintenance of the flow of completions depends upon having sufficient land available with full planning permission ready for construction work to start. Construction typically takes 18 months but this period varies as builders respond to economic conditions. Although terms are not used consistently, the stock of land with outstanding planning permission is usually taken to be that on which development has not started. It increases as new permissions are secured, but also increases when there is little desire to build and the number of starts contracts. 2.3 As the LPA seeks to control the pattern of new development, the flow through the pipeline depends in part on the allocation of sites in development plans. Consistent with Figure 1, plan preparation activity more than five years ago (and often much earlier) would influence the current rate of completions. Preparation of development plans takes place over an attenuated period with extensive public consultation opportunities including examination in public, in which landowners and development interests tend to engage. Other groups may find it difficult to mobilise in response to vague possibilities at these early stages. Only very rarely will there be proposals to allocate major sites in protected landscapes, though this happened at Hawkinge airfield (Kent Downs) as discussed below. 2.4 Although the pipeline metaphor is helpful and much used, it will become clear that some care is required in its application. At the scale of an LPA, or an AONB, the „flow‟ may be far from smooth, and the sudden release of land for residential development through site allocation or following a planning appeal may lead to a jerkiness which becomes more significant the smaller the area considered. Statistical indicators of development for areas such as LPAs or AONBs are thus often considered „volatile‟. Figure 1: The Residential Development Pipeline Source: Bibby and Shepherd 1993 2.5 The quantum of prime concern is the number of new dwellings built within each protected landscape over a period. Column 1 of Table 1 uses LUCS to estimate this for the period 2001 to 2011, with the corresponding measure for the entire period 1985 to 2011 appearing in Column 1 of Table 6a. By considering these long-term measures it is easier to abstract from issues of volatility and observe more enduring place-to-place differences. All the figures provided are aggregations of the individual land parcel estimates made during map revision and so fit the protected landscapes almost exactly. Because of the lags that occur between construction of new property and survey, this total is an under-estimate. No attempt has been made to adjust the value, but as explained in the notes to the Table, the corresponding building rate shown in column (3) has been adjusted.

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