Localism and the end of RSS targets
July 2010
Taking controlNow that Regional Spatial Strategies have been revoked, local planning authorities that have no housing and employment targets will have to create their own, and authorities that do have targets may choose to revisit them. The task is urgent, because authorities that do not have soundly based Local Development Framework targets are defenceless against bad planning applications. It is also challenging, because the demise of regional strategies leaves a huge gap. LDFs, both emerging and adopted, are heavily reliant on regional targets. Without the RSS numbers, much of the Core Strategy simply unravels.
Before RSSs, local planning was given strategic direction by Structure Plans. After RSSs, the new national spatial framework might draw a broad-brush geography of future change that guides local planning. In the meantime, with no saved strategic policies and no technical guidance, individual authorities are left on their own to decide on the scale of their future economies and communities. Very few authorities, and indeed very few local planners, will have attempted this task before. New approaches are needed, and fast.
In setting new numbers, authorities have an opportunity to repair some bad old ones. One big issue that the former RSSs often failed to crack is the two-way relationship of housing and population to jobs. In real life, population and jobs impact on each other: businesses want to locate in places where there are workers and consumers, and people want to live in places where there are jobs. If they are to deliver sustainable economic growth, development plans must get this chicken-and-egg relationship right. 
On the economic side, many authorities will want to scale down growth targets that look over-ambitious in the current climate. Too-high employment numbers, based on aspiration alone, are counter-productive. They leave plans open to challenge, force up housing requirements, sterilise sites that could be used for other things, put pressure on greenfield land, waste infrastructure, and encourage counter-productive competition between neighbouring authorities. To avoid these pitfalls, economic and employment targets should steer clear of wishful thinking.
The Local Choices Toolkit, developed by Roger Tym & Partners and Oxford Economics, provides a target-setting method that understands the housing-to-jobs relationship and the difference between reality and aspiration. The Toolkit links demographic and economic models to produce housing and employment scenarios that combine analytical evidence and policy vision.
Cristina Howick, Partner, Roger Tym & Partners
For more information about the Toolkit, click here.
Further information
