Does the Environment have any meaning to Politicians - No! - Да ли има било какво значење животне средине политичарима - Не!

The Government and it's spineless co-voters of all parties are playing a game that is humiliating us all, they are laughing at us. one example. HS2 Environmental Statement 50,000 pages, 8 weeks to read, digest, understand and comment. Compared with the much needed in depth consultation for tractor speed limits at a weighty 24 pages in two documents which has 12 weeks consultation. I have tried to resist being course, but actually this Government and it;'s co-voters don't give a toss what you think and even less than that when it comes to the environment, landscape and society. So long as over-paid executives can have an extra 40 mins to finish Sudoku Extreme over a cafe and cinnamon swirl to hell with any other consideration. Enough for now, but there is more yet!

Austerity - The Osbourne Way

George Osbourne today announcing £11.5 billion of cuts mainly focused on your local Government while also forcing through parliament
a Bill which authorises preparatory expenditure on a railway (HS2 - London's Train or the Private Sectors 1st Class Charter) without specifying further detail of the route and a limit on expenditure.

How austere is that?

Your local services are being cut to pay for a vanity project for London.


For the detail: http://www.dodsmonitoring.com/downloads/Bills2013/High_Speed_Rail_(Preparations)_Bill.pdf


STOP PRESS a day after writing this the predicted expenditure on HS2 jumped by £10 billion (again!). Good austerity measures! Strange that it is almost how much your local government are losing....

Myth Busting on Housing Supply - Мит пући због стамбене понуде

Yet another bit of fun and games from the development sector, oh it's so difficult for them in the times of global recession.

The UK Government has been very keen to inform us how inefficient local authorities are and how their planning bureaucracy has made life oh so difficult for developers.

In the press this week we learnt that actually local authorities have been progressing planning applications for housing, but the developers have then not developed the land!!

Behind this is quite a naughty game developers are playing with our greenbelts.

We are constantly told by political parties who are lobbied by the developers that there is a shortage of housing supply so we MUST build more. Government have as a consequence of this mis-information deregulated the planning process to the point of a rubber stamp exercise as the presumption to develop now holds sway. Thus more applications are expected from the development sector and some are developed, the rest are 'land banked' as assets, because the local authority rubber stamp places a real financial premium on that land. While the land is banked it is locked from other (perhaps better uses) and becomes under-utilised, neglected and unmanaged. Nevertheless the development companies still have a piece of land to develop or sell on with inflated prices. Land becomes an over-inflated asset for the company shareholders to speculate on. This artificially high value is also viewed as an asset by accountants thereby enabling developers to look in better business shape than they are. Land values in the accounting systems should be valued on their present state (ie underused/derelict) rather than on the speculative value of land holding development hope-value.

The land remains locked, feeding the myth that land supply is too low for the alleged housing needs of the country, the more scarce land becomes the higher value it has and this in turn perpetuates the myth that there is not enough land to build on. This then leads developers to say land supply is short and it's all the local authorities fault while they sit on hectares of land creating a future enhanced value for their shareholders.

Ludicrous. All housing applications should be put on immediate hold while Government assesses the extent of land banking by development companies.

 

Highly technical MS Visio flow chart of what the rascals are up to.

How will you feel when the developer comes to a green belt like yours and says it is our moral duty (see previous blogs) to allow housing to ruin our green inheritance? How much will it annoy you that when they will rail road through their planning application with scant regard for local choice and democracy that they then sit on the land for 10 years as a grossly inflated asset, blighting the land but speculating on its falsified hope-value?

Not so good I suspect.

By the way, in my blog Localism and the Developer (below) the council voted through the proposals that were so vehemently opposed by local people. The local paper even held a vote and 82% voted against the proposals, yet the council approved the proposal, even having the impertinence and arrogance to say that they saw the papers poll as unrepresentative! They probably saw the march as unrepresentative too and all those objection letters. Councillors failed their duty to serve the people who voted them in to power. Developers continue to own local democracy, not you or I. It is most vexatious!

Have we sold our souls? Consevation (dis)credits. Да ли смо продали наше душе? Цонсеватион (не) кредита

Apologies for the lack of posts. Moved house again and consequently busy, and before you ask I didn't buy one on a desecrated greenfield site, I bought a recycled shop that's a 150 years old that used to be a cobblers and corsitiers. We are recycling in the housing market. Builders are renovating some parts of the house, so in mid recession we support local business and the local economy.

Since the 21st April I have been keen to blog, for there is sinister news afoot from the world of 'development'.

On that Sunday the Times published a story entitled 'Developers can pay to rip up nature'. For many years the environment sector has striven with tenacity and intellect to demonstrate to Government and others that nature has an economic value whether that be an inferred value or a direct functional value. In the past we have used this argument to justify funding for the delivery of environmental work. The Newlands Project strongly demonstrated that non-environmentalists can see that the green environment can assist in development and economics. The North West Regional Development Agency would not have spent £50 million with the Forestry Commission and Community Forests without a realisation that the environment had a role to play in inward investment and image of a region.

It now seems we danced with the devil.

The devil, in the guise of the UK Government, is now heading for an interpretation of these values as an environmental offset for development. The direction now seems to be that any development could happen so long as a developer puts money aside for 'conservation credit' - a thorough juxtaposition if ever there was one! The proposals for the biodiversity off-setting suggests habitats can be disemboweled from locations and established on farm land elsewhere. I am sure the farmers who lose production as a consequence will be falling over themselves to give land away from food production to conservation....

Furthermore there seems to have been zero consideration to domestic food security and land supply under this proposal.

Some conservation groups are now desperately back tracking by saying it is difficult to put meaningful values on conservation assets, yet we have used this to fund environment work in the past! The problem lies in the fact that we have waltzed with Beelzebub and now we pay. It is however just another ruse for Government and Developers to avoid planning and sustainable development issues. As said before little boxes for us to live in must be built at all costs, apparently.

So how will this con-trick work, well Government reckon they can assign generic values to meadows, woodlands and the like so, according to the Times, a meadow maybe worth £10,000/ha and a woodland £40,000ha and a developer will have to quantify how much of these habitats they will destroy and make a payment to the laughably named Environment Bank as the leading broker in this scam. I am looking forward to seeing how these valuations take place. A scrub woodland on the edge of London must have a different value from and Ancient Woodland Site on the HS2 route of destruction. Who will assess this, who will agree, will the developers negotiate it downwards to a low value in any case?

Indeed the rows have started already, I dare anyone to logically put a value to Nightingale habitat who works in the development sector or indeed the environment sector. The Kent Wildlife Trust have one heck of a job on their hands in attempting to credit the conservation value of Lodge Hill (see http://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/what-we-do/planning/lodge-hill). More here too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/29/nightingales-lodge-hill-mod-site. The ignorance of non-environmentalists knows no bounds, the council says it can move Nightingales to any new woodland created out of the Conservation Con Credits, however that new woodland will be too young to provide the correct habitat and how do you tell a small brained avian that it needs to redirect the post!

Sadly I think we have lost, the Environment sector did engage the devil and this is our payback. Fools we have been, conned by Con' Credits.

It's so sad, but I hope this at least leaves you smiling and warm (unusually - thanks to the Daily Mail, it's not often you'll read me write those words!):

'That was wonderful, darling. Did the earth move for you too?'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332433/Mac--The-Governments-housing-policy.html#ixzz2WBzvQcte

Also reference: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331847/Houses-better-green-fields-Ministers-explosive-claim-unveils-new-plans-concrete-countryside.html

STOP PRESS

It seems DEFRA will consult on these proposals from 18th July. I also hear that the drive will be about making the planning process quicker (ie to favour developers) and that developers will only have to mitigate for loss associated directly with their development, the inference being there will be loss of habitat from historical misuse of natural resources, therefore one can assume a previously damaged ancient woodland will not be treated as such even though it may still be a wood....one to think about - will developers target damaged conservation assets for new build? The scheme is also likely to be national, ie it assumes loss of woodland in Aberdeen may be compensated for by habitat work in Penzance!

As I have seen Marc Naura write Conservation Credits are morally wrong, in that it suggests damaging ecology and habitats is fine as long as you do something (anything) good elsewhere! As Marc rightly says this will lead developers to show scant if any regard for ecology.

Also I wonder what percentage brokers will take from this scam.

I bet developers won't be bothered to find mitigation sites and the money sits in the interest accounts of the brokers and Government.

It is not good, not good at all.

Felling the Oak and Insincerity - Сечење храст и искреност

I am not anti conservative, I am not anti labour. I view myself as a free thinker, not politically aligned, but if you want to put me in a red/yellow/blue box then that is your choice, not mine. I don't like insincerity and double-speak from any party. The party presently in power said in their manifesto:

We will protect the environment for future generations, make our economy more environmentally sustainable, and improve our quality of life and well-being. There is no contradiction between going green and supporting the economy – we can and will do both.
http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Environment.aspx

I wholly support the concept that the environment and economy go together. As a society that aspires to be civilised this is exactly the right approach (three pillars of sustainability being Environment, Economy and Society).

Conservatives in their budget said:

An extra £15bn for new road, rail and construction projects by 2020, starting with £3bn in 2015-16(BBC Website)

While at the same time failing to recognise our roads and infrastructure are falling apart. Why are they falling apart? Because the maintenance budget is already unsustainably high and every local authority in the country has no money left, or staff left. or both.

The Government worsened this situation by capping public sector pay rises to 1% = the brain drain in local authorities continue and the cap means a 1.5% cut in pay for the employee in real terms. You pay peanuts and you'll get monkeys; mind you the more monkeys the Conservatives get in to Local Authorities the more they can turn their myth of the public sector as useless in to fact. Furthermore why do all parties say you can't cap or tax the high flyer's in business because we will lose those great people to other countries, yet it is acceptable to not allow the high achievers in the public sector to flourish or be rewarded. The Local Authority brain drain accelerates with this budget.

So we're going to spend £15billion on roads and construction but have absolutely zero idea where the maintenance cash will come from.

I also read:

Pottery industry in Midlands to be exempt from climate change levy................

So the Government believes in climate change clearly as they have a climate change levy, strange that, Mr Gove wants to remove it from our children's education at school (see: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/why-its-a-mistake-to-trim-climate-change-from-the-curriculum-8540423.html). So let's get this right, Government taxes business and individuals for the affects they have on the climate (unless you live in Stoke) and have a Department of Energy and Climate Change, but they don't want your children educated in climate change. I wonder why. This will keep future generations in the dark for sure.

And the oil slick on top of the cake is the a tax INCENTIVE for fracking;
Tax allowances for investment in shale gas (BBC website). I am no expert on fracking, but concerns have been raised and it's a desperate way to retrieve energy if it is true that the energy spent extracting shale gas is greater than what will be extracted. In other words wasting energy to get energy.

If this was a true green Government they should tax greenfield development to the value equivalent or more than brownfield development and/or regeneration and further tax incentivise wood fuel, solar and tidal energies. I think its time they felled the tree on their logo and replaced it with a logo consisting of an empty shopping mall and an unmaintained road leading to it.

PS, According to a BBC the Government also provided nil incentives in the budget for the self employed, small businesses and enterprises...and they wonder why Town High Streets are failing...?!

Localism and the Developer (alias David and Goliath) - Локализам и програмера (алиас Давид и Голијат)

A really good protest march in my home town against the proposed development of a modern shopping centre in a traditional market town. The market town I live in isn't particularly pretty, planners have already a made a dogs dinner of it in the past with Costa Coffee occupying a Germanic style building, while next door is the glass fronted modern architecture of a Bank and across the town square from there some kind of neo-classical town hall with Tuscan columns supporting a portico. So overall pretty well architecturally confused, without theme, reason or rhyme. Planners and developers want the residents to accept similar mistakes all over again with new proposals.

Planners do not seem to be aware of the internet. We shop on the internet. It is a powerful tool that decimates our high street shops. We shop in shopping malls (appalling though they truly are). Cities and Malls have the big brands and the smaller towns can not retain them any longer. My home town needs to do some serious looking in to the future, fill the small shops with local businesses and bespoke shops. Identify a theme and brand and stick with it.

They will of course fail because central Government keeps telling them different. That is the Government who are fat on the molasses of half truths from big development/building companies, preaching localism but ignoring the outputs of localism.

I hope the proposal to develop my market town gets kicked out, but for the time being here are some photos from local people performing localism, though it has to be said it was good to see an MP on a bench with a megaphone talking about only allowing brownfield development - time will tell if he can stick to his words.

 The Passive Mob of Concern

Fill these empty shops before building more

Local Small Retail Shops Supported the March (While one of the national brand shops was closing down - Early Learning Centre)

Planners and Councillors should be dealing with this....

...and this....

 ...and definitely this which has been empty for 10 years at least and a major detractor for inward investment.

David Rutley MP doing what MP's should do more of.

But David, the locals expect.

Is the message clear? Oh and by the way, where was the leader of the Council?

Hiding the Housing Reality Bomb - Скривање стамбене Реалити бомбу

I was reading in the Guardian business web pages that two very lovely UK building companies (Persimmon and Bovis) increased profits last year from 52% (€260.3m) and 69% (€62.5m)  respectively (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2013/feb/25/persimmon-bovis-homes-prices-rise).

Hoorah economic recovery must be on the way then as the UK Government keep telling me that recovery all depends on house and infrastructure building (and if it is on green field sites the margins are better than for derelict and neglected land - that can stay, well, derelict - so go on lads, build on the green!)

This is all great short term economic output, but what is the long term effect and is it economic in the long term. Well here's a thing I will try to explain, sustainability is not about houses with extra insulation (that's cost-saving) sustainability is about ensuring the three pillars of society, economics and the environment are not degraded for future generations.

Let us understand the time bomb, look at it's wiring and fuse before we fiddle too much. I have done a flow diagram below so that even developers can follow the story.

The green parts of the diagram are the good bits. I believe it was The Mersey Forest Project who used the phrase 'a great place to work and live'. This is the driver behind why I do the work I do, I want great environments for all to use be that an individual or a business. Great landscapes and green facilities attract top companies.

Building cheap boxes on greenfield land lowers quality and depletes places to go. When this begins to happen society enters the yellow zone as more and more of the aesthetic and natural capital is lost. On the whole the need for Government to get rid of planning controls, because the guidance was too long, means less quality in design and build. The need to meet alleged housing demand means that too many houses will be crammed in to green field spaces.

You can be assured the senior people at these 'development' companies won't be living in any of these 'sustainable communities'. No, they will be living far far away where there is green space and peace to count their % increase in profit. But oddly enough that's because they value a great place to live; they do actually understand that while there is no monetary value in the aesthetic, there is a value in buying aesthetic places. It is their paradox for which the negative part falls on those who are labelled NIMBY's.

So, in my yellow zone above land and buildings become increasingly threadbare and tatty over time largely through bad design and planning due to a lack of engagement with others and polarised debate. Need examples? I am sure we can all recall developments we see now from the 70's and 80's that are in decline.

Furthermore add to this the disinvestment in the public sector less and less things are being maintained, especially in austerity and the usual public sector bashing from the private sector and (again) polarised media. This further wearing out of the land and infrastructure result in people who can move away emigrating from the area and whether we like it or not the first to move will be the higher earners, leaving more lower earners in the area, this applies to businesses too. High flying businesses do not want to be associated with low value environments. So the downward slope continues to the red zone.

The red zone results in low employment, low staff retention, low investment, low quality housing, low health standards, high social cost, high crime and high unemployment, all for the sake of saving money by building on green space and leaving derelict land derelict. The net result over time is increased dereliction and all the socio-economic costs that go with that.

Somewhere out there an economist could extrapolate the costs of this, where y= the benefit and profit from a green field site turned over to little boxes crammed tightly in, and z is the saving they have made by not building on a derelict site or renovating empty properties.

y+z = a (Opportunity cost of building on greenfield and resultant profit)

I am sure this would be a pretty figure.

Now let us consider the future costs of

a = low employment

b = low staff retention

c = low investment

d = loss in housing value

e = costs of increasingly poor health

f = costs of a dysfunctional community/society

g = costs of crime

the list could go on so collectively we will call this 'n' as a whole for neglect or negligence or even nonperformance.

giving an equation of

a-n = j (real cost of squandering green space over time)

I am sure that figure would not be so pretty - but the economists nor the developers will ever tell you that 'j' even exists, let alone calculate the size of the bomb. Business confidentiality will always ensure you never know the real costs in any case.

So when the diggers start to rip up your fields, think of the company directors and others enjoying their aesthetics where they live, soaking up the visual and aural splendour of a rural retreat from the places where they work. From their iPad on the veranda they will be instructing others to remind us that it is our moral duty to accept housing.

Recently built shop (chippy) showing signs of disinvestment

 Disinvested housing and perhaps a clear demonstration of why we should not be building more houses on greenbelt

New build with no maintenance, new disinvestment

A succinct list of further reading?

Dwyer, J.F., McPherson, G.E., Schroeder, H.W., Rowntree, R.A. 1992. Assessing the Benefits and Costs of the Urban Forest. Journal of Arboriculture 18(5): 227-233

Kuo, F.E., Sullivan, W.C. 1993. Aggression and Violence in the Inner City - Effects of Environment via Mental Fatigue. Environment and Behaviour 33(4): 543-571

Kaplan, R. The Role of Nature in the Workplace. 1993. Landscape and Urban Planning 26: 193-201

Peasants Democracy and Developers

An interesting week in the counter intuitive world of planning, localism and democracy.

I had the pleasure of going to a public ‘consultation’ on a proposal to plant 3,500 little boxes on a piece of green belt land. I am not opposed to new housing; I am opposed to development on green land. We have nearly run out of green land and it’s time to ponder when it should slow down or stop all together.

The developers and planners want to locate these new soulless boxes, probably on roads called The Oaks, Willow Grove, street names that are more like epitaphs, on an area already prone to ground water saturation and by a by-pass already choked at rush hour that can’t wait to be burdened by another 7,000 vehicles. A bypass funded by retailers that was a design disaster from the outset where the roundabouts should be sponsored by insurance companies and personal accident claim sharks.

Am I alone in recognising this folly and crass stupidity, apparently not, as well over 100 residents filled a youth centre to bend the councillors ear.

As the hall filled with residents who care I overheard a gentleman complaining ‘…we’ll all get frustrated, start shouting and let them off the hook’. A sad resignation that peoples frustrations were becoming fatigued already.

The councillor arrived, Dickensian in appearance, not an ounce of warmth in his gait and manner, Master of the House. He settled in to his seat ten minutes late, messing with his mobile phone two minutes in to the meeting, ill-fitting suit and an expression of disdain from his raised position above the uneducated peasants who should know better.  First impressions counted enormously here.

During the opening moments of the meeting the councillor came up with a rather startling approach to the challenge of local democracy working against the presumption to develop. The councillor seemed to threaten the audience with a wheeze along the lines of;

1.       Although elected by residents he said there was no point fending off development because they would win on appeal in any case. Sadly defeatist and powerless.

2.        If the residents fought against the proposal all that would happen is that more ‘aggressive’ developers would come and develop and residents would end up with more development.

Essentially those who care about their standard of living, their environment, their sense of place and community are burned at the stake for being witches or not!

So let’s get this right, a democratic elected representative, supposedly representing residents’ wishes and rights has no power. Developers, private companies, have more democratic rights than people, do you think that is right?

The councillor then went on to say something similar to what Michael Gove MP has said (the MP believes it is our moral duty to accept more housing!) Apparently our children (bless their innocence and naïvety of developers) won’t thank us for not allowing further housing supply to desecrate their green spaces. The green spaces they probably play and value already. Unfortunately I know my children won’t thank me for wrecking the environment and for allowing our elected representatives to shrink in the face of ‘development’!

Moral duty!! Think about that…. It always worries me when politicians talk about moral duty. The unfortunate souls of Germany were asked by politicians to have a moral duty in 1933.

The other interesting aspect from the platform was that apparently there isn’t enough housing to provide for future demand. Is that so? Where has that opinion come from? Where is the data? Who made the data? I wonder.  Well it seems this particular council has a rolling figure of around 2500 redundant houses at any one time. This figure is not for a particularly urban council area. Imagine what the figure would be for urban councils, imagine how much unnecessary building that would negate if the councils took more responsibility for empty buildings. Perhaps they could compulsory purchase them, rent them and use the funds to pay for other council services.

Furthermore the number of redundant retail outlets and even offices that could be converted to housing is ever increasing.

This brings me to a final point. The UK needs to wake up to the fact that small town high street retailing is dying a drawn out death. Alternative uses of town centres needs to be creative, imaginative, community owned and forward looking. Building new large retail outlets in towns is not the answer for community life in towns, although it is a great idea for developers to build speculative retail outlets as, in case one should forget, developers own democracy not you or I. Are we going to allow this to continue?

In summary, question where has your democracy gone? Fight against the word NIMBY, it is used by those who want to steal your green spaces for greed and mythical ‘progress’. Those who fear losing their local environment and qualities of life, are labelled NIMBYs in an attempt to discredit their equally valid concerns and distort it as a selfish and narrow minded response which damages the alleged greater good of 'development'.