For
those of us
hoping for a
well-paid planning job
next year,
Chancellor George
Osbourne's '
comprehensive spending review'
doesn't bode well.
The department for Communities and Local Government (CLG, (the body that funds my studies) is set to see its budget cut by a third over the next four years,
including a 27 percent
cut in
funding to local
governments.
Housing and
regeneration programmes have
taken an
even bigger hit,
with cuts of over 50 percent. Capital
spending will reduce by 74
per cent
(sic)With so many people set
to loose their jobs (500,000 in
the public
sector, and
knock on
private sector jobs), and
remain on
housing waiting lists,
we students and future job
seekers have
little to complain about -
at least not yet.
Perhaps we will end up being the lucky ones.
People working for local
authorities or
quangos like CABE (
the government advisor on
urban space whose funding has just been cut)
will be feeling the carnage
first hand, and I
know from experience (
having watched it happen at my previous employer
The Associated Press)
that it can be soul sapping even for
those who suvive the cull.
We will also be spared the massive
uncertainty about
how the radical
reforms to the planning structure
will work (hopefully the government will have worked it out by then).
Many of those coping with the changes at the moment
say their
suddeness (
with little or no transition) and
the lack of long
term perspective
is making it impossible
to work. As
humans we hate uncertainty, but the business plans of
all sorts
of companies are
being binned as
the assumptions on
which they were based evaporate (
how do
you plan for future
water demand if
you don't know where houses will be built?).
There were a
few clues today that at least the government is thinking about
this.
Charities will be one of the groups
around which local groups
may gather as
power trickles down to community level.
To make sure
they are
still around when the Big Society initiatives are
announced next year, £470 million
was set
aside for
voluntary groups
including a £100 million "transition"
fund to help them adjust to the tough times ahead.
But
many questions
remain.
Who will take responsibility for
tough decisions?
What happens when a vital
new facility is needed but
NIMBYs say no?
How to link national
needs with what is going on
at the local and
community level, and
how do
communities make sense of this?
In a
letter to local
authority leaders,
CLG minister Eric Pickles
confirmed that Regional Development Agencies (
who prepared strategic economic plans for
their region and
also distribute European funding) are
being replaced by local
enterprise partnerships (
staffed 50.50
by business and local
authorities).
The RDA,
which some government ministers apparently fought to keep, are
among the loosers in a
bonfire of the quangos that saw 192 bodies culled.
The LEPs may get some of their funding through Whitehall contracts, but it is still unclear how they will work. Whatever their makeup,
the question
is whether they will have the right skills and resources to do the job.
As for
housing,
the New Homes Bonus
is supposed to gives incentives rather than grants to communities that build houses which the government hopes will encourage building.
The planned Localism Bill (
first reading due
next month)
according to Pickles, "
will go
even further in
giving councils control over the issues
which matter to local
people,
including providing councils with the general power of competence they have long
called for." But
liberating councils from the requirement to build houses is said to be killing off 1,300 planned new homes a dayIt seems that despite the crashing headline cuts,
there is some wiggle room.
Councils, Pickles
said, "
raise revenue
from other sources" and "
there is a
clear expectation that councils will use
this new autonomy to protect key frontline services." But
they shouldn't raise council tax.
Those that freeze council tax will get government funding equivalent to a 2.5 percent
increase in
council tax. And £1 billion
will be snaffled from the NHS budget
to "break
down the barriers between health and social
care."
Pickles
is,
according to those who know him,
relishing his role as public services
slasher. And he's not alone. According to the Financial Times, "Britain’s biggest fiscal squeeze since the second world war was greeted with cries of “more” from ecstatic government MPs as George Osborne, chancellor, set out plans for £81bn of spending cuts."
While it's true that Britain's deficit at around 13 percent is the largest in Europe, it surprises me how many people (including some teaching economics at masters level) mix debt and deficit. Britain's debt level at 56 percent is much lower than Italy's (at around 100 percent), smaller than France's (at 60 percent) and only marginally bigger than Germany's (54 percent). Budget gaps in the U.S (65 percent) and Japan are larger than ours. Debt is more important than deficit, which covers only one year, as it is this which we pay interest on. But it wouldn't help the government win support for rolling back the state if people thought we were in better shape than our competitors.
The mayor of London appears to have
been a
big winner from the changes,
picking up the responsibilities such as
those of the Olympic Park Legacy Company but
keeping his planning
authority as
the regions loose theirs.
Crossrail,
London's new east-west rail line, will proceed as
planned.
Still,
many details affecting planning have
still to be thrashed out and
fought over.
The Localism Bill
will de
debated in
the Commons in
December, and
could go
to committee in
January and
the Lords in
March,
with earliest adoption in
July (
although many see this as
highly optimistic given the number of measures).
The government is also working on a national planning
framework.
Some of it could be good news.
Planners, I have
discovered are
disliked possibily as
much as
journalists, and if
this is managed well it could help rebuild trust in
the planning
process.
Consultation will have
to become real,
not just a box
to be ticked as
communities insist on a planning
system that is responsive to their needs (
whether they actually want to run it is another story).
Before they have
even started planning,
planners will have
to go and
speak to the local
community to guage what they want and
need,
which means my skills may come in
handy.