Blog - Contour Town Planning

First time Japan: A planner’s reflections

Angus Dodds / January 18, 2024

With 2023 already receding into view, the New Year seems like a good time for Angus Dodds to dust down his holiday snaps from a recent trip to Japan, and offer his thoughts on those glimpses of life from the land of the rising sun that have changed his views of life in more familiar surroundings…

As a first-time traveller around Japan last Autumn, it has taken the writing of this blog to get me to try to articulate what really marks Japan out as the most extraordinary place I’ve ever been. And trust me it was. Among many contenders however, I think the biggest revelation was simply experiencing urban Japan for myself. On a human level this meant discovering how the huge population of urban Japan rolls in practice. Quite unexpectedly, my experience was that I never felt rushed, crowded, or stressed by the humanity around me, nor did I feel that I was the irksome spoke in this most gigantic of human wheels. A remarkable discovery indeed.

So what relevance, you may ask, do my positive holiday tales of riding the Tokyo subway and traversing the Shibuyu crossing have on the noble art of planning? Well, if the Scottish Parliament has decided through the Planning Act that the purpose of planning is to “manage the development and use of land in the long-term public interest”, anyone involved in the built environment might be interested in how all sorts of things work, at all sorts of scales, in all sorts of different ways, in a country that has taken urbanisation into completely new territory. When considering what might be the ‘long-term public interest’, especially when it comes to urban planning, there is definite value in reflecting on the Japanese experience.

While absent from the western-centric histories of planning, Japan too has an urban legacy that is both rich and long. Indeed, in the 1740’s when Edinburgh’s New Town visionary James Craig was still a small child, and Edinburgh’s 50,000 or so residents were closing the city’s gates to the Jacobites, the population of Tokyo (then known as Edo) had just crossed the 1 million mark. By the time the 19^th Century rolled around, the population of the USA was only half the 10 million or so in the UK, while Japan already had a population topping 30 million.

As well as maintaining such a huge population for so many generations, the physical geography of Honshu (Japan’s main island), means that only the relatively small coastal plains can be developed today – just as was the case in the past. As a result, greater Tokyo is now home to an eye-popping 35 million residents, on an island with an overall population of 105 million.

In both legacy and scale therefore, Japanese urban development is quite a different beast from its Occidental cousins. While it would be ridiculous on the back of a 2-week holiday to declare which is ‘better’, here are just a few of the clearly different approaches taken there that caused me some food for thought.

1. Mixed Uses/Amenity

It’s currently a very hot topic in Edinburgh where the Council has decided that it will have very little tolerance for any non-residential uses in areas of the city where people live. By contrast in Japan, where space constraints limit how many commercial enterprises can enjoy a ground floor presence, and where the food and drink culture means that there is a restaurant for every c.250 people, food and drink establishments are accommodated at every level of mixed use blocks that also include residential properties. In this example from Hiroshima, you will note the surprising presence of an Orcadian themed whisky bar on floor 2!

2. Eating out

Competition is inevitably high with such an elevated concentration of restaurants, and with the continued post-pandemic presence of the ‘salaryman’ commuter (Japanese work life remains stubbornly a male-domain), there are amazing lunchtime deals to be had.

I was feeling painfully jet-lagged at this restaurant beneath Tokyo’s Maranouchi station on our first day! Nevertheless, I was revived by a classic set lunch of miso soup, kimchi salad, beansprouts, chicken and omelette, steamed rice, tofu and green tea. All for the princely sum of 950JPY (£5.12). Incidentally I could have had a beer for an extra £2.50.

By contrast, such princely fare makes this sign I saw on my return to Edinburgh, a rather depressing sight. Given the average monthly net salary after tax in Edinburgh and Tokyo are so similar (Edinburgh £2387; Tokyo £2473), comparators like this really hammer home why discussions around the cost of living in the UK are so current.

3. Trains

Visit Detroit today and you’ll see that its passenger railway station is about the same size as Stonehaven’s; the colossal Michigan Central station having been closed in 1988 due to plummeting passenger numbers. It’s ironic then, that in Japan, the country largely responsible for the decline of ‘Motown’ through the success of its own automotive industry, trains and train stations act as the oil and the machinery that keeps its major centres moving today.

In contrast to Detroit, Japan’s urban stations are gargantuan. And in ways now being copied in the UK, they play host to shopping, leisure and entertainment, food and drink, hotels, as well as accommodating the lightning-fast bullet trains that Japan is so famous for.

What I hadn’t realised about bullet trains however, is just how long they have been a feature of Japan’s transport mix. As the UK still prevaricates over the provision of high-speed rail, its astonishing to note that the ‘shinkansen’ (Japanese for ‘new trunk line’) was first introduced in 1964 to accommodate 130mph trains which immediately shaved 2 hours 40 minutes off the 247-mile journey from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka. Even faster trains today mean this journey has been cut by a further 40% to only 2 hours 25 minutes.

I also hadn’t reckoned on the frequency of shinkansen services. These aren’t just show-ponies, rolled out a few times a day for visitors and tourists. If travelling during office hours, you can expect 7 bullet trains an hour travelling the original Tokyo to Shin-Osaka route. Mind you, given the route also stops at Yokohama, Nagoya and Kyoto (aggregate metropolitan population of all stops c.65 million), it’s maybe no wonder that the shinkansen lies at the heart of the country’s public transport system.

4. Luggage

High speeds aside, where train travel in Japan is also in marked contrast to the UK, is through the absence of large suitcases cluttering up carriage aisles and acting as trip hazards in the streets surrounding train stations. The reason for this, is that the enterprising Japanese long-ago realised that there was little joy to be had humffing heavy suitcases through crowds and onto public transport. As a result, a highly sophisticated and entirely reliable national luggage-transfer service came into being.

The concept is very simple, with almost all major hotels linked into a system that incorporates Japan Rail’s smaller local lines and an armada of Postman Pat style delivery vehicles (see photograph). Together, these transport your luggage in 24 hours from the reception desk of your hotel on departure to the bedroom of your hotel the following night. While this means that you do need to pack a small bag with whatever you need in your accommodation that night and the following morning, overall, it makes longer trips with multiple longer stays an absolute breeze.

Our longest luggage transfer covered a distance longer than that from Edinburgh to London, for around £12 per c.20kg suitcase. Just as expected, our bags were there on time, on the floor of our bedroom in Matsumoto in the Japanese Alps, a day after leaving them in sub-tropical Hiroshima (an understandably fascinating but surprisingly fun city).

5. Litter

Quite incredibly, there is next to no litter in Japan. None. This absence is not just in the manicured gardens of Kyoto, but also on the streets of any of its great cities. Even more surprisingly, there is also an almost complete absence of public bins on Japanese streets. Given its bulging population in almost every direction, not to mention the preponderance of convenience stores and vending machines on the streets of every settlement, the lack of litter puts our own approach to discarding waste in disgraceful relief.

Truth be told, more than any other single thing I saw or encountered in Japan, the lack of litter seemed both the most unbelievable thing, yet perhaps also the easiest thing to aspire to copy. It wouldn’t require the billions involved in providing a new high-speed rail system, nor would it involve inverting our cultural mores when it comes to accommodating activity in residential areas. In fact, the Venn diagram of ‘litter’ and ‘planning’ has only the slightest of intersections. Nevertheless, none but the archest contrarian could argue that taking more of a Japanese approach to litter would be undeniably in the long-term public interest.

My Local elected representatives should expect correspondence on some or all of the above, later in 2024!…

If you want to speak to Angus about anything at all concerned with planning, feel free to Get in touch on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com

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Storks, ceramics and squares: a new year well-spent

Angus Dodds / March 7, 2023

After two months in Southern Europe soaking up as much vitamin-D as possible, Angus Dodds provides some observations on urban living on the continent – some of which we might do worse than try to emulate in Scotland…

Whether I’m in Aberdeen, Addis Ababa or Aosta, as long as I have wifi I can submit planning applications. Accordingly, back in November I thought I would make the most of being a footloose planning consultant and head for warmer climes this new year. Having spent the last 2 months travelling and working around a fair chunk of latin Europe, here are a few of the things that have stopped me in my tracks.

Storks

Olhao, Portugal

I now realise that they are ten-a-penny in the Algarve, but I couldn’t quite believe just how many white storks there are in Southern Portugal. They might never be described as graceful, but there is something endlessly fascinating about watching a stork doing its thing – and seeing how these prehistoric looking creatures have colonised so many parts of the urban landscape was quite a revelation for me.

Thinking of my Aberdeen analogy, it seems to me that storks have two major advantages in this regard over seagulls: firstly they don’t swoop down to steal your chips/pastel de natas; secondly, by an evolutionary quirk the white stork doesn’t have a voicebox, but communicates instead by clattering its beak (which is only mildly annoying). In the circumstances, as urban bedfellows they’re an unexpected delight.

Having read up a little more about them I was also surprised to learn that historically they used to live on the British Isles in pretty large numbers – the last recorded pair of breeding white storks were evicted from the roof of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh in 1416.

That of course was before the start of the ‘little ice age’. With that period now well and truly over however, the UK might well be a stork friendly environment once again. Three years ago in fact the first pair to successfully breed in the UK since the 15th Century were announced as having set up home in Sussex.

All I’m saying is that if (urban) rewilding becomes a thing, let’s get some storks in Scotland!

Tiles

Olhao, Portugal

I also hadn’t realised quite how ubiquitous ‘azulejo’ tiling decoration was across Portugal. I had assumed that it was something you only found in the gentrified barrios of Lisbon or Porto. How wrong I was.

Olhao, a fairly animated town of about 40,000 people in the eastern Algarve was where I spent most of February. It’s a great place. Neither twee nor down-at-heel, it just felt like a normal, medium-sized town. There were a few supermarkets, a lively High Street, a harbour that landed fish, a few schools, a public swimming-pool, a local football team etc etc. It seemed like a place where Portuguese people actually lived and did stuff.

It was also clearly a place where people did stuff to their houses with whatever was to hand rather than by trying to win any design awards. When it came to the exterior tiles on display therefore, there was a lot less shabby-chic on show, and a lot more of the garish tile designs your grandparents might have had on display in their bathrooms in the 1980s. It turns out however, that when they’re not vying for prominence with a crinoline-skirted loo-roll holder, these striking tiles actually look great as the external finish of choice for ensembles of informal buildings.

Reflecting on these houses with an Irish friend that came to visit, she remarked that when she’d first come to Scotland 23 years ago, she found the drab colours of our housing seriously depressing and a sad contrast to what was on offer in Ireland. When I pointed out that climatic factors and the dread of never-ending maintenance may explain our hesitancy with colour, she reminded me that twice the amount of rain falls across the Irish Sea, but unlike us, they still routinely try and keep things looking cheery with a spot of paint.

As Olhao demonstrates very effectively, if the basic urban design of a place isn’t overly formal, we certainly shouldn’t be afraid of colour, or of necessarily using the ‘right type’ of external materials to enliven our urban landscapes.

Open Spaces

No revelations here, but confirmation of my long-held belief that Spanish people use public open spaces more effectively and thoughtfully than anyone else. Ghandi said you could tell the greatness of a nation from the way they treat their animals; I’d say you can tell how civilized an urban population is from the way they use public open spaces together.

One in particular that sticks in my mind was a square in Valladolid – roughly halfway between Porto and Bilbao. I had a beer there in mid-February around teatime. Here in a fairly central residential suburb, I must have seen perhaps 50 -100 people using this public space, ranging in age from 5 year-olds to those in their 80’s and 90’s.

It was remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, the square was absolutely nothing to look at. I had stopped there for a drink because I’d just been swimming and it was a handy place to grab a beer and check some emails. Generally however, the buildings surrounding the square were grotty 1980’s flatted residential blocks, with a swimming pool along one side and a café at one of the opposing corners. This wasn’t a showpiece activity space.

Secondly, with to the best my knowledge no supervisors on hand, throughout the whole 40 minutes or so I sat there, no single group seemed to take over the square to the detriment of other users. I don’t doubt there is occasional user conflict in spaces like this, but from my own experience of sipping various beers on various squares around Spain, I just didn’t see much evidence of the dog-walkers impacting the footballers impacting the toddlers impacting the skateboarders etc etc.

In Spain public open spaces that work don’t need to be fancy. Yet somehow, from the downright dog-ugly to the grand and statue-crammed, squares all over the country in villages, towns and big cities, all seem capable of being enjoyed by a full range of different users. I don’t know what the secret is (and it’s not weather by the way, it was about 6 degrees celsius in Valladolid), but it’s something we could learn a lot from.

Signage in Aberdeen

I love Nice (France) - Sign — **Nice, France**

And on the subject of learning from other places, while trying to keep abreast of what was going on back home, I learnt of the furious debate that seems to have been generated by proposals from Aberdeen Inspired to create a ‘Holywood-style sign’ for instagrammers to pout in front of when visiting my hometown.

I’m all for anything that helps instill residents and visitors with a sense of place in the Granite City – which to my mind is the most distinctive looking city in Scotland. However, from my travels, I did see quite a number of these very similar signs in various places across Iberia and France, as well as here in the UK.

As a subtle alternative therefore, I would love to see some clever signage being used to bring attention to the place; but which also shows that Aberdeen isn’t just somewhere that follows the herd.

It needn’t look too far for an interesting way to address this either, as it actually already has its own striking signage that helps to amplify its visual independence. Couldn’t something instantly instagrammable and straight out of the ‘azulejo’ book be created by using the Council’s own proprietary street tiles in an inventive way? The City is home to many talented public artists like Craig Barrowman who could doubtless come up with something playful and visually arresting that could draw on good ideas from elsewhere – without losing the distinctiveness which really marks out the city in the first place.
Craig Barrowman

If you want to speak to Angus about anything at all concerned with planning (and not just big birds, shiny tiles or public squares) feel free to Get in touch on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com

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Back to the Future (of Scottish Housing)

Angus Dodds / April 25, 2022

Betraying his many years in the planning game, Angus Dodds returned to Milton of Leys near Inverness earlier in the month, to see how the exciting future of family housing he saw at Scotland’s Housing Expo back in 2010 is shaping up more than a decade later…

You know how long in the tooth you must be getting as a planner when you’ve been practicing your metier for longer than all the years you were in education, and when radio 4 is the station of choice when you’re out on a site visit. Driving back from a weekend in Sutherland recently, I had these important milestones in mind when I decided to swing (at a now conservative speed) past the Inverness suburb of Milton of Leys.

Back in the summer of 2010, two youthful Fife Council planning Officers – David Shankland and me – made our way up the A9 in our tiny Council pool car to tour Scotland’s Housing Expo and see what the future of cutting-edge design and energy efficiency would mean for the nation’s housing.

The project itself took its inspiration from Scandinavia (where else?) and in particular, a well-established series of Finnish Housing Fairs that had been taking place for decades. Backed and funded in various parts by the Scottish Government, Highland Council and the Highland Housing Alliance, the purpose of Scotland’s original Housing Expo was to showcase ground-breaking energy efficiency and exemplary design for affordable family homes.

The site at Milton of Leys, masterplanned as a terrace, avenue, square and village green by Cadell2 Urban Designers, provided space and services for around 50 individually designed houses by architects from across the country. A comprehensive description of the project and all the final designs were collated in a handbook by A+DS which I bought at the event, but is now available to examine online.
Scotlands-Housing-Expo-2010

The chat at the time was all about creating the ‘Conservation Areas of the future’. A hail of new design guidance across the UK then included the Urban Task Force’s ‘Towards an Urban Renaissance’ (1999); the Scottish Government’s ‘Designing Places’ (2001); and the hot off the press ‘Designing Streets’ (2010). These documents were beginning to force many built environment professionals to challenge the standard housing orthodoxy and think a little more creatively about how we shape and build our residential areas. Milton of Leys was to be a living showcase of what could be possible.

So, now the trees and hedges have had time to properly bed-in, how well does it all stand the test of time 12 years on?

Well first up, it’s still not a Conservation Area – although the good people at Historic Environment Scotland have produced a very nice webpage that captures the raw state of many of the buildings when David and I saw them back in 2010.
Inverness, Milton Of Leys, Site Of Scotland’s Housing Expo | Canmore

Overall though, and rather like the curate’s egg, I think it’s fair to say that the project today is good in parts. At a macro-scale I was struck on my return by just how much tarmac is in evidence throughout the scheme; something I didn’t remember as being so striking back then. I think the approach to streets in the project was supposed to blur the lines between what is pedestrian space and what is vehicular space in order to reduce vehicle speeds and create more ambivalent spaces where kids can safely play in the street – woonerf-style. Interpreting these ‘shared spaces’ (if that’s what they are) today, you can’t help but see them as little more than big swathes of asphalt, occasionally punctuated by man-hole covers – made all the more visible due to the oceans of black-top around them.

Balvonie Green - Family housing — **Lots of asphalt; not many cars – but a more interesting roofscape than the average**

The green swales that run parallel to the main streets do seem well maintained and no doubt effective as part of the project’s SUDs scheme. Sadly though, while certainly green, they are desperately boring. Closely cropped and grassed over, they look more like the engineered drainage channels of a major road than the linear water meadows that the original designers perhaps hoped for.

These observations aside, there is still plenty to applaud here a decade on from construction. What does really work today are the framed views that the masterplan was keen to preserve throughout the project. Even under leaden skies, the views down the main streets to the Kessock Bridge and the Black Isle beyond are impressive, and I dare say do create the sense of place that all new developments should be trying to achieve.

What also works well (no doubt to the groans of volume house builders) are the more bespoke areas. The intimate scale of the village green and the attention to detail on the finishing materials and surfaces that surround it work a treat – aided no doubt by some of the more interesting house designs that front onto the village green area.

In addition, the variety of house types does create decidedly more playful rooflines than you would see in a standard housing layout. One of the perhaps unforeseen outcomes of this level of variety is that occupiers seem to be using the spaces around their houses in more creative ways. When I visited there was plenty evidence of different types of ‘sitooteries’, balcony spaces actually being used, as well as some interesting ancillary developments in back gardens and yards. This did seem like a place where there would be ‘eyes on the street’, helping to provide something of a sense of security.

The most striking visual aspect of the project however was in how its overall approach provides an atmosphere that feels so different to the norm. I’ve long thought that the athletics events at the Olympics could be greatly improved by inviting ‘control’ participants to run alongside the professionals in a specially designated lane. These volunteers, lacking any athletic talent, would prove invaluable by illustrating why for example running 100 metres in under 10 seconds is actually quite impressive (I’ve always found it difficult to get a sense of this on the telly when everyone in the field will finish in under 11 seconds).

Transporting this idea into housing design then, by far the most eye-catching thing about the expo site today must be the contrast it strikes with the standard housing scheme immediately to the west. Both were built around the same time; but cross the footbridge connecting Balvonie Green and Pinewood Drive today, and you could be walking into Dunfermline’s Eastern Expansion, or Livingston, or Cumbernauld… or pretty much anywhere else in Scotland where volume house builders are active.

There’s nothing wrong with the housing to the west of course, it’s just that it’s all so very predictable. Opportunities for framed views are obscured by blobby landscaping strips and other houses; the palette of surface materials are limited to the trusty old standards of reconstituted stone quoins and white wet-dash render; and the form of the streets themselves take on that familiar, meandering, contour hugging line that makes so much of the housing constructed in the last 50 years instantly recognisable from space. By contrast with all that, the Expo site feels well…interesting!

As the rain came on, I got back in my car, switched radio 4 back on and thumbed again through my old copy of the A+DS guide. The news was dominated by the cost-of-living crisis and the eye-watering spikes anticipated in energy prices over the foreseeable future. It was quite a shock therefore to read again the projected annual energy bills for all of these houses back in 2010. Almost unbelievably they ranged from a miniscule £64 per annum to a still exceptionally good value £528 a year.

I guess nothing makes you feel old like reflecting on how much further money used to go ‘back in my day’. As I pulled away from the car park I also couldn’t help but wonder how much the cost of heating a standard house today is really all about today’s geo-politics, or steps that we have or haven’t taken in a generation to put energy efficiency front and centre of our efforts to build houses that really are fit for the future.

The project at Milton of Leys is a fascinating snapshot of what built environment professionals thought the future of Scottish housing could look like a generation ago, and presents some novel and interesting approaches to housing development; some that have been taken further, and some that have perhaps fallen by the wayside. And for a greying practitioner like me – it was quite fun to tread my sensible shoes around the place all these years later!

Milton of Leys map — **The Housing Expo site is accessed via the Milton of Leys turn off on the A9, about 3 miles south of the Raigmore Interchange. Park at the front of the development or on Balvonie Street itself.**

Get in touch with Angus Dodds on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com

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Edinburgh’s Short-term let control area gets set for Council approval

Angus Dodds / February 22, 2022

Only a month after the long-awaited Short Term Lets Licensing Order was made by the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh Council planners have been quick out of the blocks to finalise their proposed short-term let control area. As previously anticipated in one of our blogs last year, approval will be sought from Committee this Wednesday (23^rd February) to confirm that the whole city will be included within the new zone. Given this means that all permanent short term let properties across the entire city will need to obtain planning permission for a ‘change of use’ before they can secure a license to operate, Angus Dodds looks at 5 interesting examples across the Capital that highlight how important ‘re-purposing’ has been over many years in providing the city with much-needed visitor accommodation.

Many of the hotels we see today in the city centre were not purpose built for this use but began life as something else entirely. Accordingly the need for planning permission for the short-term lets of tomorrow mean that these properties will need to follow a path well-trodden by the visitor accommodation of yesterday. Here is our guide to some of the more interesting ones…

Hotel du Vin

Part of the building that houses the boutique hotel by the University was originally built as Edinburgh’s poor house, before being used as its lunatic asylum until the early 1800s (hence the name of the Bedlam theatre next door). Later still it served as science laboratories and a blood donation centre.

The Hotel du Vin group is of course no stranger to interesting conversions. Its Malmaison hotels in Oxford, Belfast and Leith are respectively hosted in: a former seed warehouse; a prison; and, a seaman’s mission/brothel.

The other interesting piece of built-environment miscellany on this block is at numbers 15-19 Bristo Place, which is built on the site of the Darien House – the Headquarters of the Company of Scotland which hoovered up an estimated 20% of all the money in circulation in Scotland in the closing years of the 17^th Century. This was undertaken to pay for the ill-fated expedition to establish a Scottish colony in present-day Panama. The expedition was a failure, Scotland very nearly went bankrupt, and by 1707 was so impoverished it agreed to the Treaty of Union with England. The rest as they say… is history.

The Scotsman Hotel

The clue’s in the name here really. This colossal ‘A’ listed Edwardian building was designed as a Scottish adaptation of ‘Free Renaissance style with French chateau features’ and was built as the HQ of the Scotsman newspaper over 3 years from 1902. While it all looks fittingly olde-worlde with the standard Edinburgh faux-turrets and fenestration, the building is actually steel-framed with concrete floors – which made it easy to convert to its hotel use in 2000.

The 1905 Grand Café accessed from the North Bridge has always been the building’s public face since opening its doors in 1905 – hence the name. This space with its marble pillars and massive chandeliers today, was formerly the Advertising and Notices Department – where generations of townsfolk would go to tell the world their cat was missing or their granny had died.

Within the building at third floor level, a hefty nod to its printing heritage comes in the form of a ‘Columbian’ printing press, dating from 1830. The reception level above offers a view of the stained glass window that follows you down the main staircase. Reflecting the national coverage of this national daily paper, the window features the coats of arms of Dundee, Inverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Stirling.

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Edinburgh City Centre

This rather snappily titled hotel is probably better known to many modern-day locals as the ‘Point Hotel’ on Bread Street. Older residents of the city though, might still refer to it as the ‘the coop-ey’ as it was here from 1892 that the St Cuthbert Co-operative Society had its main department store in the city – its largest store of this kind anywhere in the country.

As the role of Department stores changed at the beginning of the 20^th Century, the Bread Street co-op expanded and embraced the modernism of the time – injecting Tollcross with a little touch of Mies Van der Rohe in 1937 through its commissioning of the first glass curtain-wall to be built in Scotland. The glass extension, originally built to house the furniture department, still looks startlingly contemporary 85 years later, justifying its inclusion as one of the best Scottish buildings of the last century in Neil Baxter and Fiona Sinclair’s excellent book ‘Scotstyle’.

Incidentally, while the co-op’s most famous former employee and future 007 was born only half a mile away on Fountainbridge, Sean Connery didn’t actually work in this branch of the store. His milk delivering days were conducted from the chain’s Corstorphine branch – although he did for a spell find gainful employment round the corner as a life model at the art school.

The Edinburgh Grand

Described by Historic Environment Scotland in its ‘A’ listing description as a “massive austere cubic palazzo bank on corner site with portico”, the former bank that houses the Edinburgh Grand was perhaps surprisingly built at the same time as the glass extension to the Co-op department store on Bread Street. Reflecting the fairly diverse range of architectural styles being employed at the time across Scotland, its construction was also contemporary with the Glasgow Film Theatre, St Andrews House on Calton Hill, and the Bon-Accord baths in Aberdeen.

Its further description as an ‘American inspired composition’ rings true for anyone who has been inside the building and recently seen Guillermo del Toro’s excellent new noir drama ‘Nightmare Alley’; some scenes of which could have almost been shot in the building. The opulent American elm, Mexican pine, Honduran mahogany and English oak that were originally used to decorate the Bank’s interior spaces, wouldn’t have looked out of place in Cate Blanchett’s consulting room.

Interestingly, unlike the others in this selection, the bank headquarters were actually built on the site of what had originally been a hotel back in the early 19^th Century – a nice illustration of the extent to which successive development cycles can sometimes result in cities reverting back to square one.

Learmonth Hotel Travelodge

Repurposing a series of rather grand mid-Victorian terraced townhouses, the former Learmonth Hotel and esrtwhile Travelodge, was the setting for Edinburgh’s version of the Shawshank Redemption… sort of.

Lieutenant-General Stanislaw Maczek, was a veteran of World War 1 where he had served as a Battalion Commander for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By World War II he had risen to become Commander of the 1^st Polish Armoured Division. Under his command the armoured Division liberated major cities in the Low Countries including Ypres, Ghent and Breda, as well as taking the German navy’s surrender in the port of Willhelmshaven.

Once hostilities ended however, Maczek was stripped of Polish citizenship by the Communist government of the Polish People’s Republic; while the British Government refused to grant him a General’s pension as he was not a British subject. In the circumstances, the Polish war hero, who had settled after the war in Edinburgh, spent many decades working instead as a barman in the Learmonth Hotel.

The silver cloud to this rather sad tale is that secret papers revealed in the last couple of decades, show that the Dutch Government, so grateful for his liberation of Breda, had in fact been secretly paying the elderly barman a General’s pension since the 1950’s. He lived in Edinburgh till his death at the ripe old age of 102, and a plaque commemorating his life is visible on his former home in Arden Street. A more significant commemoration of the General is the new bronze statue of him outside the City Chambers that was unveiled in 2018.

The comprehensive scope of the short-term let control area and the new Licensing Order, allied with proposed policy changes in the next Development Plan, will bring fairly seismic changes quite rapidly to Edinburgh’s visitor accommodation landscape. All existing operators will need to apply for an operating licence by April 2023, with planning permission or a ‘Certificate of Lawfulness’ a necessary pre-condition to such licences being granted.

Already, non-main door properties that have been operating permanently as short term lets for less than ten years, have very little chance of securing planning permission. If and when the proposed planning policy changes begin to impact on decision making – perhaps as early as this summer – we are likely to see the remaining window of opportunity for main door properties slam shut too.

Contour Town Planning has been helping a considerable number of clients to make planning applications and certificates of lawfulness applications for such changes of use in recent months. If you own a main door property that you let out as short-term visitor accommodation, and if you would like to continue offering tourists the opportunity to ‘live like a local’ in the years to come, get in touch with Contour Town Planning to discuss how we can help you also best negotiate the significant planning challenges all such operators now face.

Get in touch with Angus Dodds on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com

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Draft National Planning Framework opens for consultation and piles on the misery for hosts

Angus Dodds / November 17, 2021

The draft National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4), published a week after Guy Fawkes night, packs even more explosives under Edinburgh’s short-term let sector. Angus Dodds explains why its final version may impact hosts even sooner than the next Local Development Plan and ponders what might happen next and what some owners might want to do now.

In our last blog, I noted how the consultation on Edinburgh’s Short Term Let control area used relatively placid language in explaining the way that the Council would continue to ‘manage’ short-term lets in the city; while only two months later, policy HOU7 in the Proposed City Plan 2030 (currently itself out for consultation) was far more strident, stating that applications resulting in a loss of housing would simply be refused.

There is a definite sense of déjà vu then when one considers how the Scottish Government’s language has also hardened on this topic in a relatively short period of time. Last November’s Position Statement on the next NPF did briefly mention short-term lets. It noted that one of its priority policy changes would be “Tackling the impact of short term lets in pressured areas by providing a framework for decision making on planning applications”.

Last week’s publication, now open for consultation until 31 March next year, puts some meaty flesh on these bones, stating:

“Development proposals for the reuse of existing buildings for short term holiday letting should not be supported if it would result in:

• an unacceptable impact on the local amenity or character of a neighbourhood or area; or

• the loss of residential accommodation where such loss is not outweighed by local economic benefits”.

There’s not much nuance in the chosen wording here; no safety net for ‘main door flats’ and ‘detached properties’, while use of the word ‘or’ suggests that this is planning policy that really means business. Yet on the face of it, (and from a purely personal standpoint), I don’t think there’s too much to argue about in the stated approach.

Unlike previous NPFs however, the wording this version uses will be even more important than that of its predecessors, as the recent Planning Act confers an enhanced status to NPF – making it part of the Development Plan. This is significant as under the planning system in Scotland, planning decisions have to be taken in accordance with the Development Plan (unless material considerations indicate otherwise). By clearly setting out a position on short-term lets therefore, what NPF4 says about this contentious topic will be a determining factor when deciding if planning applications should be granted planning permission. With a projected adoption date later in 2022, what NPF4 says about short-term lets could therefore be more significant more quickly than even City Plan 2030.

Of course in places like Edinburgh where a short-term let control area is proposed, planning permissions are the entry tickets that the new licensing regulations insist upon; no permission, no right to apply for a licence. The licencing system incidentally is currently anticipated as being up and running by October 2022, with all existing operators still expected to have applied for their licences, with planning permissions in hand, by March 2023.

So for Edinburgh, what does all this mean in a practical sense? What should short-term let property owners do now? Well, at the time of writing nothing has actually been approved and so nobody really has to ‘do’ anything. And here’s the funny thing, given the radical changes proposed in the way short-term lets are to be regulated in the City, it’s curious to consider that none of the 4 key pieces of infrastructure that will support its future regulation have actually been approved or adopted yet. The licensing regulations are currently being tweaked by the Housing Minister; consultation has only just finished on the extent of the City’s short-term let control area; Proposed City Plan 2030 is out for consultation until 20 December; and, NPF4 has only just been published as a consultation draft. Theoretically then, all four could yet ‘fall out of bed’ and nothing at all might change.

That of course seems highly unlikely. If the authors of the various measures are successful in achieving their stated outcomes, Edinburgh’s short-term letting landscape will completely change and quite quickly. If they all survive their respective rounds of consultation and challenge, October 2022 will be when all permanent short-term let properties across the whole city will need to seek the benefit of planning permission. Of course by then, probably such permissions will be impossible to secure, as at both the national and local levels there will be very little planning policy support for short-term letting uses in flats and houses.

And so for the most part, that will probably be the end of that. There will be precious little to remind future generations of the impact Airbnb had on the city – save perhaps the ghostly scrape marks of clumsily handled suitcases on the walls of tenement landings across the city.

Joking aside, I do say for the most part quite seriously. As noted above, planning decisions are to be taken in accordance with the Development Plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Right now, the Development Plan is the 2016 Plan that is completely silent on loss of housing and short term lets. Non-statutory guidance on change of use that was drafted in support of this Plan has just been updated this month however, and continues to state that:

“Change of use in flatted properties will generally only be acceptable where there is a private access from the street, except in the case of HMOs”.

Clearly this presumes against allowing changes of use for flatted properties in tenement buildings. However, it does continue to provide support in principle for main door properties. This means that these types of properties might be in a select group that could survive the impending closure of short-term letting across the city. Other property types in this exclusive club would include those that can prove that they have been operated as short-term lets for at least 10 years, and other properties that have perhaps become short-term lets after an earlier non-residential past (eg artists studios, offices or even shops).

As noted above, I fully understand the rationale behind attempts to get a grip on short-term letting. The obvious consequence of all the controlling measures coming into force however is that there will be both a huge and fairly sudden drop in the supply of tourist accommodation, and a commensurately huge spike in hotel prices. Nevertheless, if that is the only way to get housing in the city back on an even keel, then so be it. During a housing crisis, housing for permanent residents does need to be the Council’s main priority.

Presently though, Edinburgh has an overall housing stock of around 200,000. It seems likely that the small group of properties that might still be able to negotiate a way through the planning obstacles even now, probably only number in the dozens, and certainly nothing like the thousands across all property types that are currently advertised on Airbnb and other platforms. Numerically therefore any impact they might have on overall housing stock could be considered as pretty negligible.

Notwithstanding any such good arguments for keeping these properties as visitor accommodation, the reality is that hosts that do operate from such properties will need to get their skates on if they want to preserve their position. While I said earlier that no such property owners technically need to ‘do’ anything right now, that’s not to say that voluntary action now would seem wise in anticipation of the drastic changes coming. The reality is that in the world of planning, policy is king, and even for these types of properties the policies emerging at the National and Local level will quite quickly begin to affect them too, therefore also blocking their route to securing a licence.

Despite the relentlessly negative portrayal of short-term letting, if the numbers involved are small and the level of customer satisfaction consistently high, they can be a real asset to their locality. It would therefore be nice to think that some more main door hosts will still be keen to fly the flag for short-term let visitor accommodation, and in so doing offer a hugely reduced but still very important degree of choice to visitors who, we are increasingly told, are looking for an ‘authentic experience’ while staying in our City.

Contour Town Planning has recently secured a number of Certificates of Lawfulness from City of Edinburgh Council for properties that have been run as short-term lets for more than 10 years, and has also recently been instructed by a number of main door property owners to assist them with securing planning permission. If you would like to discuss how we could assist you with this type of work or anything mentioned above, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Angus Dodds on 07729 873829, or by email at angus@contourtownplanning.com

Draft National Planning Framework opens for consultation and piles on the misery for hosts Read More »

A short-sighted view on short-term letting?

Angus Dodds / September 24, 2021

As noted in our blog earlier this month, the forthcoming Planning Committee of 29 September will be hugely important in understanding how the Council plans to manage short-term letting in the city over the next decade. Documents for the Committee were published online yesterday, and show that Council Officers are clearly seeking to address this thorny issue head-on through the Council’s Proposed Local Development Plan. Angus Dodds has pored over the relevant sections of Proposed City Plan 2030 and sets out his own thoughts on why the suggested approach leaves him feeling a little uneasy.

Proposed City Plan 2030

Earlier this month I commented that there was something of a contradiction in the supporting Committee papers that introduced Edinburgh’s proposed new ‘short term let control area’. I was puzzled by the assurance that ‘the designation of a short-term let control area … does not mean a blanket ban on such uses: each case will have to be assessed on its own merits’, while the same paper also noted that ‘regular use of any tenement flat as a short term let is inconsistent with tenement living and generates a high number of complaints to the Council’. My concern was that this last statement seemed to leave very little wriggle room for circumstances where the Council would actually support such uses.

I felt reasonably reassured though that the Council’s earlier ‘Choices for City Plan 2030’ document published in January 2020, had stated that the proposed new policy on the loss of homes to alternative uses would set out criteria where such losses would be acceptable. I also noted the comments of the Council’s planning convener yesterday evening that Edinburgh has almost a third of all the short term lets in Scotland, and that policies in the new plan would help the Council to ‘manage’ these.

Accordingly, I was rather surprised by what I found in the eagerly awaited Committee papers last night. Having been through all the Housing policies in the Proposed Plan, it does seem (unless I’m missing something fundamental) that there are really no crumbs of comfort at all for the short-term letting sector within the document. There are frankly very few instances where such changes of use will be considered as being acceptable.

The clearest indication of this does come in the proposed new ‘Loss of Housing’ policy (HOU7). This unequivocally states that “proposals which would result in the loss of residential dwellings through demolition or a change of use will not be permitted, unless in exceptional circumstances, where it would provide necessary community facilities without loss of amenity for neighbouring residents”. Off the top of my head, I’m struggling to think what such circumstances might look like in practice.

Could the council approach this differently?

Given this is the first time that text for a ‘Loss of Housing’ policy has been seen, the immediate big question has to be whether the policy as currently framed is the optimal way for the Council to deliver the additional housing it seeks, while having the least detrimental impact on other aspects of the city’s life.

My blog earlier in the month noted that from a tourism standpoint, hotel supply is not there to plug the large gaps that will be created if short-term lets simply disappear overnight; especially as the City’s tourist economy is forecast to continue its growth. The Proposed Plan itself recognises that ‘there is scope for further growth in the visitor accommodation sector over the lifetime of the City Plan 2030’. Anecdotally, the 100-bedroom hotel round the corner from my flat has been full every weekend in September, with occupancy rates well above 90% during the week.

Accordingly, while policy HOU7 might in some quarters seem a most satisfying tool with which to burst the ‘Airbnb bubble’, the policy will almost certainly lead to a quite sudden dearth of visitor accommodation across the city. The reality is that the short-term let accommodation ‘bubble’ has actually been fairly slowly inflating over the last decade or so. A more controlled way to move back to more residential uses without seriously impacting the tourism industry (which currently employs c.31,000 in the city) would surely be to let the air out of this gradually.

An obvious way to do this would be by using planning conditions. Simple planning conditions could easily ensure that permissions sought within the short term let control area are only granted on a temporary basis. Planning permissions to continue to allow such uses for perhaps 5 years would prevent a sudden loss of supply, while also providing clear market certainty to hotel developers that are either about to start building, or who are looking at their longer-term pipeline of sites. It would also help to quickly dissuade anybody considering the short-term letting market in Edinburgh as an attractive investment opportunity.

The Loss of Housing policy also strikes me as being a little quixotic if the intention is that all areas of the city will become truly residential again as a result of its controls. It’s interesting to think that the Proposed City Plan 2030 will probably be at Examination for the bicentenary of George IV’s famously tartan-tastic visit to Edinburgh in August 1822. Looking around the High Street and Lawnmarket today, it’s fair to say that even Sir Walter Scott couldn’t have concocted a more overblown Scottish stage-set than the one that has evolved here in recent decades. Yet, this hasn’t emerged as a result of short-term letting. Areas of the city’s life that planning has no control over – tartan gonk shops, tour guides in capes, wall-to-wall bagpipers, and a bewildering range of tour buses are the components that have really defined this area’s character today. Airbnb’s other innovation ‘Airbnb experiences’ shows that the Royal Mile and its immediate surroundings is without a doubt where the action’s at for tourism in the capital.

The accretion of these types of function has meant that such areas are generally loved by tourists and generally avoided by locals. Like it or not, staying in an Edinburgh tenement on the High Street (rather like staying in a riad in Marrakesh, or a trulli in Puglia) does hold a certain appeal to the visitor that is perhaps not shared by local people. In areas which are already well-established as providing tourist accommodation, the trundle of wheeled luggage is maybe less of an issue today than the playing of bagpipes all afternoon might become to permanent residents if they are all forced to return to a residential use. This incidentally is a view that is broadly shared in a recent decision from one of the Scottish Government’s Appeal Reporters.

HOU7 as currently drafted simply doesn’t take any account of these small but quite exceptional zones within the city where in my opinion it would be entirely appropriate to allow for the continued presence of short-term lettings to augment other forms of visitor accommodation. A tightly defined area where such accommodation can be provided – rather like a retail core – centred perhaps on the High Street, Cockburn Street and Victoria Street, would seem a more pragmatic way to sensibly ‘manage’ such accommodation.

Depending on the outcome of next week’s Committee, consultation on the Proposed Plan is intended to begin on 7 November 2021 for 6 weeks till mid-December. Contour Town Planning will be watching the events of next week with great interest. If you are considering a planning application for a short-term let property, or potentially making representations to Proposed City Plan 2030, or if you would just like to chat through any of the issues raised, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

A short-sighted view on short-term letting? Read More »

Short term let control area consultation opens

Angus Dodds / September 8, 2021

Edinburgh Council’s consultation on its proposed Short-term let control area opened at the end of last week and will run until November 5. Angus Dodds reflects on how the Council is moving fast to use new powers to create such a zone, while suggesting that the real area of public interest in this matter may be at the end of this month when Proposed City Plan 2030 comes to Committee.

As anticipated in our July blog, after agreement at its Planning Committee of 11 August, the City of Edinburgh Council is moving swiftly to consult on the boundaries of a new short-term let control area encompassing the whole city. This follows new Regulations introduced by the Scottish Parliament in April that allow Councils to establish such zones where the securing of planning permission for such uses will be compulsory. The exception being where they can evidence that they have been using them as short-term lets for more than 10 years. Ministers can be expected to agree to the final boundary of the control area early in 2022.

The whole city approach to the initial proposed boundary is perhaps not surprising, as it does keep open the possibility of shrinking the control area at the conclusion of the consultation; although it may well remain as currently proposed, given fears that a tighter zone would merely create a ‘ring’ of such properties around any smaller control area.

Aside from requiring planning applications from all those within any affected zone, the precise boundaries of the final area are perhaps less important to property owners than understanding the criteria the Council will apply when determining whether their compulsory applications will be acceptable or not. The wording of the relevant draft policy that is due to go to Committee on 29 September as part of the ‘Proposed City Plan 2030’, will therefore be of critical importance

The supporting papers to the August Planning Committee report stress that ‘the designation of a short-term let control area … does not mean a blanket ban on such uses: each case will have to be assessed on its own merits’. At the same time however it also rather alarmingly notes that ‘regular use of any tenement flat as a short term let is inconsistent with tenement living and generates a high number of complaints to the Council’.

Given that the vast majority of the 3533 ‘entire properties’ shown as being available across the city as short-term lets in March 2020 are likely to be found behind tenement doors, and that the existing policy used to assess these applications in the current Local Development Plan does not offer much support to such uses in these settings, the question needs to be asked: under what circumstances will the Council be happy to support these in the future?

The reasons the Council wants to introduce a short term let control area have been well-rehearsed. Loss of long-term rental housing, loss of residential amenity, and loss of an area’s character are well-understood as important issues by the many short-term let property owners and managers that Contour Town Planning has been liaising with on this issue. However, its also clear that there are distinct areas within the city where individual circumstances of geography and proximity have led to a greater concentration of this Use Class as a positive and necessary response to a burgeoning tourism economy. Such circumstances have not incidentally escaped the attention of Scottish Government Planning Appeal Reporters.

It is easily understood why the Council should want to use the planning system to better control the enforcement of such uses, and perhaps why it should look to purpose-built tourist accommodation as the main provider for short-term stays. However, given the complex investment contingencies behind every new hotel, it is illusory to think that every permission granted for a purpose-built hotel inevitably results in new bedspaces delivered in rapid course thereafter. The highest annual number of hotel room completions delivered to date in Edinburgh was in 2019 when 1268 were completed. Such a delivery rate won’t compensate any time soon for the large-scale loss of short-term visitor accommodation if the Council feels that only a radically restrictive policy will be appropriate in the next Local Development Plan.

Put simply, a blunt embargo on short-term letting in tenements would largely remove a popular style of visitor accommodation in the city, just as the St James Quarter and the Johnnie Walker Experience open, just as Edinburgh Airport gears itself up to double passenger numbers by 2030, and just as Visit Scotland’s latest Innovation Insight research anticipates visitors craving to live “like a local and creating memories discovering their own authentic Scotland.”

Edinburgh quite rightly needs to carefully consider how development management decisions should be approached in order to safeguard housing – the undisputed number one priority in securing a sustainable future for the capital. However, it would be regrettable if no creative thinking was applied to the challenge of considering how and in what circumstances short-term lettings could play a part in the future of the Edinburgh tenement – a built-form synonymous with the capital since the Middle Ages, and still the city’s dominant building typology.

Planning is increasingly asked to try and equitably manage an increasingly complex built landscape. The challenge of framing a policy for Edinburgh in relation to short-term letting seems like a splendid example of managing exactly that. Contour Town Planning will be watching developments in this area with great interest toward the end of this month. If you would like to discuss anything mentioned above or to have a general planning chat about short-term letting in the Capital or further afield, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Angus Dodds 07729 873829 or by email angus@contourtownplanning.com

Short term let control area consultation opens Read More »

Second wave of Airbnb regulation booked in for autumn

Angus Dodds / July 6, 2021

The minimal regulation and ease of commercial entry to short-term holiday letting, has made it both a mellow and highly fruitful business opportunity for thousands of property owners across Scotland. This may begin to change this Autumn however with the second wave of Scottish Government controls coming before Parliament. With less favourable weather ahead for the sector, Angus Dodds tries to peer through the mist to explain what’s in store and suggest how affected property owners should respond.

Owners of properties that are let out on a short-term basis to provide visitor accommodation should already be aware that the Scottish Government is effectively halfway through its programme to better regulate the sector. For some MSP’s heading off for the summer recess, the break will act as a chance to prepare for the frenetic Committee work that will await them at the end of August, when they are expected to put the second half of these regulatory controls in place.

Nearly two months on from the Scottish parliamentary elections, the composition of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee is now known. This Committee will effectively replace the Local Government and Communities Committee from the last parliament. It is this body that will scrutinise the amended short-term letting Licensing Order that was held back from being laid before parliament in April this year.

On 21 June, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government wrote to the new Committee, explaining the planned way forward for the amended Order. Later the same week, the Scottish Government published the draft Legislation and Guidance for a final round of consultation until 13 August. The consultation documents make it clear that this is not to revisit the principle of implementing a licensing scheme, but rather to focus on technical and practical aspects of the draft Order. The new Committee will have the chance in late August and September to reflect on this final consultation to help inform its critique of the proposed legislation before it becomes law. Following Committee scrutiny, the Order is now expected to be laid before Parliament in September 2021.

For those in need of a refresher course on how the Government plans to better control the sector, it’s worth thinking of the regulatory proposals as a two stage process. In April this year, regulations under the Planning Act came into force empowering those Local Authorities that feel they have an over-concentration of such properties in specific localities to create ‘short-term letting control areas’. Within these areas, any such premises previously used as conventional flats and houses but now providing visitor accommodation (even if already well-established) will need to seek the benefit of planning permission to formalise this change of use. To help this process along, the Scottish Government also just published its Planning Circular on how these areas should be created – effectively firing the starting gun for Local Authorities to begin formalizing these zones.

The second half of the proposed regulations come under the Civic Government Act, and will add some real bite to the new planning requirements. The measures in the Order have been drafted to prompt property owners in the new control zones to be proactive about seeking planning permission. It is these controls that will be discussed after the summer break and made law in September.

In short, unlike the Planning Order which will only affect areas selected at a Council’s discretion, the Licensing Order will cover the whole country. Crucially though, the draft Licensing Order stipulates that in areas where Council’s have already created short-term letting control zones, having a planning permission in place will be a necessary pre-condition to securing a Licence. After April 2024, only licence holders will be able to operate such visitor accommodation, with fines of up to £50,000 proposed as sanctions for those without the necessary paperwork in place.

Where the draft Order does give discretion to Councils is in determining the exact format and content of their licence applications; which will be administered and enforced locally. Local Authorities will have until October 2022 to finalise these, with all affected property owners expected to have licence applications submitted by April 2023.

For many accommodation providers across the country, the new measures are perhaps unlikely to carry much risk to their business. The six month window between any new regulations and the application deadline should be ample time for straightforward submissions to be prepared and sent in. For those where planning permission may be required however, the 20 month window to April 2023 shouldn’t be a period to prevaricate. Especially for property owners in Edinburgh, they would be well advised to watch this issue carefully – and think seriously about trying to secure planning permission sooner rather than later.

Firstly, there is no certainty at this time exactly which areas might be covered by a short term letting control area in the capital. However every indication is that such a zone will definitely be set up to capture the City Centre Council Ward, where around 8% of Scotland’s total short-term holiday lets are situated. If the Council was to look to operate a quota system in such areas, early movers would be rewarded.

Secondly, Edinburgh’s current Local Development Plan was adopted in November 2016, before the issue of short-term letting became such a hot topic. Accordingly the policy currently used to assess these types of planning applications is perhaps not entirely fit for purpose. It does however seem to be reasonably permissive, subject to applicants satisfactorily addressing neighbourhood amenity issues. Accordingly property owners will need to decide whether they apply for planning permission sooner under the current policy, or wait and see in the hope that the revised policy in the next iteration of the Plan (expected in September 2021) looks even more favourable. Based on consultation responses on the next Local Plan however, the risk would be that the next policy might be even less charitable.

Finally, there is also the issue of resourcing. Edinburgh City Council currently deals with around 400- 500 applications per month. If the figures suggested in the consultation papers are accurate, there may be over 10,000 properties in the capital requiring planning permission under the new measures. Getting all of these through the planning production line could take a very long time indeed.

Taking all of the above into account, perhaps moving sooner rather than later to address the new planning requirements might be a wise move. Then again, affected property owners couldn’t be blamed for choosing to sit on the sidelines in the immediate term, given there is still much uncertainty about exactly which areas might be affected, and exactly what type of properties might be successful in securing a consent.

If you want to discuss any of the above in greater detail, please feel free to contact me by phone or email for an informal chat.

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