PPS21 – Sustainable Development in the Countryside

IT has been a long and very strange process, but finally we now have an adopted rural planning policy. PPS21 was published on June 1 with a fanfare, but for anyone who has followed the saga, the final document will seem like a bit of an anticlimax.

Back in 2005 the planning system was overloaded with applications for dwellings in the countryside; it seemed that there was a proposal in nearly every corner of every field and the value of sites was soaring. The system was totally out-of-control; but the response by Lord Rooker shocked everyone in its severity - suddenly in March 2006 rural development was effectively stopped by PPS14.

After this the Assembly took control and decided to put PPS14 in the bin, but it took a long time to agree a new policy. It was November 2008 before ‘draft PPS21’ was launched.

The policy allowed some more development opportunities, but many people remained unhappy because it seemed that rural people were being forced out of the countryside by planning policies that were too tough. The economics were also changing: by the end of 2007 the price of a site was beginning to fall.

Since that time there have been some major behind-the-scenes debates about how relaxed the policy should be. On one hand politicians did not want to allow the destruction of the countryside by allowing an open-door policy, on the other hand it is vitality important to sustain rural communities.

The Planning Service has also been watching for any loop-holes or contradictions in the draft version of the policy. This final version of PPS21 is a watered down version that tries to strike the right balance. At first sight there does seem to be much change, but there will definitely be winners and losers.

On the whole, PPS21 is very similar to the 2008 draft. Farmers still have the chance for a site every 10 years; however there is a helpful tweak to the policy that says in some circumstances a farmer can now make the case that the dwelling should be away from a particularly busy farmyard. PPS21 also provides more guidance on the definition of farming and the impact of dividing up a farm holding.

The replacements policy remains quite relaxed. Over the last few years different offices have applied the policy differently, but we hope that there will be more consistency now that the policy is finally settled. Many of the other policies remain much the same, for example policy on farm diversification and personal domestic circumstances have not been altered.

The big winners are land owners with gap sites or places were there are small groups of existing dwellings. A new policy – CTY2a – has been shoehorned in to allow new dwellings and commercial uses in these locations; it will certainly provide welcome opportunities for many people.

I am concerned that there are different ways that the policy is imprecise, so there is going to be a lot of debate about what is acceptable under the new policy.

After a long wait, it is excellent to finally have a completed, adopted policy document to work with. Planning Service has to clear a backlog of a couple of thousand applications, but I fear that many will be refused.

The big message in the policy announced today is that the days of single sites in the open countryside are gone; the emphasis is clearly on consolidating existing clusters and allowing farms houses close to the farm. The likelihood is that we will be working with this new set of rules for the next ten years plus, so people with rural interests would be advised to find out more about the constraints and opportunities that now exist.

Les Ross is the principal of Ross Planning, a specialist town planning consultancy with offices in Cookstown and Belfast. Ross Planning deals with the whole range of planning related issues, from straight-forward planning applications to complex appeals and legal issues. www.rossplanning.co.uk