News Archive 2003
November 2003
Secondary Shopping research project
The initial findings of Secondary Shopping research project were presented to the BCSC Annual Conference in Birmingham on November 6th by Jonathan Baldock of CBRE. The presentation sparked a lot of interest and was followed by a workshop session headed by Andrew Smith of Aberdeen Investors. The project is due for completion in March 2004, the presentation can be viewed online here.
New web resource helps planners find the right data - Now Online
Retail planners and developers now have access to a comprehensive online catalogue of relevant data. The NRPF, working with the Society of Property Researchers (SPR) (http://www.sprweb.co.uk), strategic data consultancy Geofutures (http://www.geofutures.com) and site designers Estates Today (http://www.estatestoday.co.uk), now offer an online resource listing the vast and varied digital datasets currently available.
The metadata - information about the data, its format, provenance and location - will be available in a clear web format, offering users straightforward search facilities to help them locate the dataset they need. Both private sector retail location planners and their public sector counterparts are expected to find the new tool a valuable resource.
The web catalogue, which offers NRPF members keyword links to data specially relevant to them, can be accessed here.
The Planning System: Change and the Retail Sector
Revolutions in the planning system used to come once in a generation: the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, laid the foundations of the system and established Development Plans; the 1968 Act created Structure Plans to be more strategic; and the 1991 Act magnified the importance of the plans by introducing the plan-based presumption. Slow progress with plan preparation and a new impatience in styles of government has quickened the pace: only ten years were required to bring forward the latest revolution.
The retail sector now has the chance, if it has the will, to influence the planning agenda more constructively than in the past. This note argues that the key level is regional. It reports some early engagement with regional planning bodies in preparing what will be the basis of new regional strategies. Among other things, that experience underlines the importance, for local government, the retail sector, customers and citizens of accessibility; and hence of integrating transport issues into planning from its earliest stage.
The Green Paper of December 2001 with the inventive Lord Falconer as its presiding genius started from a damaging critique of the existing planning system and its working: complex, slow, inconsistent, costly in resources of people and money; and failing to engage communities or provide good service.
The remedy proposed was to replace the existing Unitary, Structure and Local Plans with Local Development Frameworks (LDF) supported by detailed action plans which might be thematic or spatial. Non-statutory Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) would be replaced by statutory Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS). Fundamental change was promised in development control; all national planning policies were to be reviewed, with PPG6 on Town Centres and Retail Development picked out for early attention; and a range of other supporting proposals set out. Public participation in the planning process was to be improved at all stages and plan-making and decisions to be speeded up. All this was to be achieved to a tight timetable, backed up with a commitment and some resources and other encouragement for local authorities to ensure delivery of the targets.
A striking feature of the Green Paper was the number of references to "business" and its requirements and the need for a response from the planning system, a point picked up by the House of Commons Select Committee. The Government response vigorously disputed any inference to be drawn from this, asserting that the "planning system should not be subservient to the interests of any single interest group". However, a key proposal was, and remains, that RSS must be prepared by regional planning bodies not composed solely of local authority members but "representative of key regional interests", subject to safeguard against conflict of interest.
However the Government have demonstrated their confidence, and the importance they attach to the proposals, by pressing forward in the current Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill with the main features of the scheme, even making this the first example of carrying a Bill forward from one session of Parliament to another. There is every reason to think that the proposals continue to be well supported at the highest levels of Government.
Much comment has accepted the broad thrust of criticism of the existing system and its working; but major themes of concern have been that the proposals increased the distance between local people and the planning process; and that the proposals for increasing resources committed to the system (in quantity, range of skills and quality) are unconvincing.
The government are no doubt right in asserting that what is demanded is a change in culture if planning is to be brought back to the core of local government's agenda; if the skills and morale of the planning profession is to be restored; and if communities are to be better engaged in the aims and delivery of the system. These are large tasks:the survey conducted for the LGA found 80% of local authorities hampered in their planning functions by staff shortages; 87% by problems of recruitment and retention. Almost 70% required additional training and support for officers, and almost 80% for members. These figures are unlikely to surprise people concerned with retail planning, and for retail and other specialisms the picture would no doubt be worse. The bare figures certainly demonstrate the scale of the task of lifting importance while at the same time carrying through the revolution required by the new raft of proposals. Local authorities will need all the help they can get.
What are the opportunities for the retail sector to play its part in taking forward reforms to the planning system? The obvious starting point, as before, will be PPG6. Consultation on the revision of PPG is promised for late 2003; but the "clarification" of existing guidance issued in April strongly indicates that scope for change is likely to be limited. On that front, therefore, the struggle will be within familiar boundaries; though it will be important to build on recent ministerial emphasis on the positive rather than restrictive intentions which they claim for town centre policy. But it will still be the case that by no means all the planning issues of concern to the retail sector and its customers are dealt with by PPG6. The fact that retail sales outside out of towns is approaching 50% of the whole, and continuing to grow, illustrates that. A further specific proposal of special concern will be the review of section 106 agreements.
Less predictable but in the long run probably more fundamental for the retail as for other sectors will be the working through of the Regional Spatial Strategies and the Local Development Frameworks. It is the regional level that may offer the greatest scope for policies reflecting the economic and social importance of retailing. Experience to date of RPG and of the Regional Economic Strategies (RES) of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in tackling retail issues has been frankly dismal. In spite of the economic importance of retailing in every region - overall one in ten of the workforce is employed in retailing - not a single RES has anything to say about retail. Almost the same has been true of RSG over the years: what appears there is typically either a repetition of central government guidance or so bland as to be of no help. So it is no comfort for the retail sector to be assured that the two sets of strategic documents will in future be better integrated: the latest guidance says that "the RSS should provide the longer term planning framework for RDA strategies." The first task is simply to ensure that retailing gets the attention it deserves in both sets of documents.
But what should the strategies say? The economic strategies will no doubt go beyond physical planning into issues of education, training, recruitment, cross-sectoral links and so on. The first challenge for RSS will be to overcome the most serious faults of RSG in the past: blandness, compromise, failure to face hard choices, or even to acknowledge that there is a hard choice to be made. This goes back to the composition of the planning bodies, made up of committees of local planning authorities with different, often competing interests. It will be hard but not impossibly for the new planning bodies, even augmented by interests beyond local government, to avoid this disease. But the opportunity is there to respond to the Minister's encouragement, in a speech at the Retail Week Property Forum to the retail sector to participate in "developing the vision, strategy and key policies in the new plans".
The importance of dealing in policies, not just vision and strategy, was underlined in a collaborative exercise which the National Retail Planning Forum (NRPF) undertook this year in collaboration with the East of England Local Government Conference in the course of working up revised Regional Planning Guidance, looking forward to the move to RSS much in mind. An important contribution was made by a retailer member of NRPF (Tesco in this case) drawing on the intelligence available to a major retailer to assist in the definition and analysis of the retail planning issues of the region; linking these with transport and employment considerations. This exercise is being followed up in the course of the autumn through a national Conference organized jointly by NRPF with the LGA, with retail as one of its key themes, about how the new regional planning system should work for retail, the economy and housing. NRPF are engaged also in the formative stages of preparing a strategy for the South Eastern region.
The experience in the East of England demonstrated a practical way, and a way that was welcomed by local government colleagues, of raising the profile of retail in the process of preparation of the regional strategy. One of the reasons offered in the past for retail interests failure to engage with the planning process effectively has been the difficulty of collaboration between firms with opposing competitive interests in particular places. Inevitably, these will continue to inhibit collaboration between firms when it comes to the Local Development Frameworks (and still more local plans) where issues will often be site-specific.
Even at the level of particular project proposals, however, the new systems are likely to require attention to be paid to the context of proposals - the catchment-area - going beyond a single local authority's boundary and interests. This of course is why accessibility is so fundamental and why regional transport strategies are vital to Regional Spatial Strategies: and why the retail sector needs to engage in creative discussion at all levels of decision-making, starting with the Department for Transport, not ending with regional planning bodies - and not confining itself to (perfectly legitimate) complaints about car-parking standards.
One possibility for influencing the agenda and the process would be for retail interests to seek representation on the new regional planning bodies, and on the Boards of RDAs. But there are obvious practical limits to that and it could not be an answer in itself - though continued pressure at regional level to ensure that retail is taken as seriously by RDAs and regional planning bodies is fully justified.
More promising is to establish ways of contributing to analysis and policy development at regional level: the intelligence which firms have has much to say about how links between land-use and strategies for transport and the economy; about policies needed for the large proportion of retailing that is not in town centres and for which the model of a shopping hierarchy is out-dated and misleading; and about the definition of sub-regions and catchment areas that require individual consideration - especially where (for shopping and other purposes) they cross regional boundaries. But success in this, as in other aspects of retailing, will depend on active engagement by retail interests. No doubt the going will be easier and collaboration more fruitful in some regions than others.
Finally, two welcome initiatives: first, the establishment this year by the DTI of the Retail Strategy Group, with one of its Subgroups devoted to Planning and related property issues; and with representation from ODPM, the LGA and NRPF in addition to major retail interests. The Group's report due early in 2004 can hardly be the last word on the subject; but must signal retail moving up the planning agenda, and ways of taking it forward in the new planning regime. Also welcome and relevant is the revival of the National Planning Forum representative of central and local government and a range of outside interests, including retail and charged with producing a Charter for all concerned with the system.
Paul McQuail
September 2003
New web resource helps planners find the right data
Retail planners and developers will soon have access to a comprehensive online catalogue of relevant data. The NRPF is working with the Society of Property Researchers (SPR) and strategic data consultancy Geofutures Ltd to offer an online resource listing the vast and varied digital datasets currently available.
The metadata - information about the data, its format, provenance and location - will be available in a clear web format, offering users straightforward search facilities to help them locate the dataset they need. Both private sector retail location planners and their public sector counterparts are expected to find the new tool a valuable resource.
The web catalogue, which will offer NRPF members keyword links to data specially relevant to them, is being user tested prior to an official launch. Members interested in viewing the test site can access it at http://www.estatestoday.co.uk/spr.
May 2003
Wanted Researchers Looking for Projects in Retail Planning
The current priorities of the NRPF research programme do not allow a start to be made on the follow-up to the Sequential Testing research. We are keen to find university departments or consultants who could take on this particular part of the programme. The research paper 'A Sequential Approach to Retail Development: Follow up Research' (143k) will help out with ideas.
Part of the brief would be to raise the necessary funding. For more details please contact; Geoff Steeley, Chairman of the NRPF Research Group.
Secondary Shopping Research Project
The secondary Shopping Research project is now underway. The project is being undertaken by Jonathan Baldock CB Hillier Parker. Publication and launch of the research is set for November this year. Funding has come from BCSC Education Trust, ODPM and M&S.
Now available
"Trading Places" a joint publication by NRPF and TCPA was published on May 1st. It is a collection of articles by Professor Cliff Guy with a foreward by Russell Schiller and costs £5.00 it is available from the publications page.
March 2003
The latest Newsletter (issue 7) is now online in Adobe Acrobat format as well as an udated version of the Planners Bookshelf.
Coming Soon
Will shortly be publishing shortly a pamphlet titled "Trading Places". A joint publication with TCPA it contains 16 Articles that have appeared over the
past 4 years on retail trends and planning for retail by Professor Cliff Guy
of Cardiff University. It has a foreword by Dr Russell Schiller. More details will be announced on this page soon.
February 2003
Going to Town- improving town centre access by Llewelyn Davies, part of ongoing work by NRPF on accessibility issues is now available in Acrobat format from our Publication Page.
The revised Bibliography and Commentary 2002 is also now available from our Bibliography Page.
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