Eco-towns – a grand idea, or maybe a bit too grand?

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Strict government guidelines for what constitutes an eco-town are proving hard to meet. Chris Ames looks at some of the current proposals and suggests that building sustainable communities is more important than complying with unrealistic expectations

When is an eco-town not an eco-town? Will Godfrey, chief executive of East Hampshire District Council, is commit ted to securing the brand for his Whitehill Bordon scheme. But when it comes to the crunch, Godfrey is more pragmatist than purist: "We’re not going to create a 21st century folly. It’s got to be a community, not an environmental experiment."

Photo courtesy of the Town & Country Planning Association

Whitehill Bordon is tipped to be one of only two or three proposals to survive the ongoing process of trial by fire that will culminate in a final decision early next year. A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) told Public Servant that getting the right locations for eco-towns is a higher priority than meeting Gordon Brown’s promise of 10 by 2020. A consensus is forming that three really good exemplars could be a good outcome and that eco-towns will only be one answer to the environmental and housing challenges they are intended to meet.

It’s hard to believe the government is losing the propaganda battle over eco-towns. What should be – and is – a popular idea is in danger of going down under a heavy pounding of criticism from politicians, pressure groups and celebrities, with the media only too happy to report the bad news.

The scale of the opposition is daunting. Many of the local authorities in whose areas they are proposed are against them and residents tend not to want them in their green and pleasant backyards. Now the BARD group, which is campaigning against the proposed scheme at Middle Quinton, has won the right to a judicial review of the whole programme, to be heard later this year.

The main opposition parties like the idea, just not the government’s execution of it. Tory shadow housing minister Grant Shapps says: "Eco-towns started off as an idea that sounded good, but Labour’s incompetent handling of the project has led to wide-scale distrust."

But a majority of public opinion is in favour and everyone agrees that new homes are needed and that they should be environmentally sustainable. With increasing concern over climate change and domestic fuel costs, eco-towns could be an idea whose time has come.

Where the government struggles is in explaining why entirely new towns are the way to promote sustainable housing. The DCLG says "the scale of the housing challenge facing this country means that we need to develop new towns" and that eco-towns will provide "lessons from which all future house building in this country might be able to learn". However, even 10 eco-towns will only make a small dent in the country’s housing needs. Liberal Democrat housing spokesman Lembit Opik argues that eco-towns, which will have between 30-50 per cent "affordable" housing, "do not come near to addressing the social housing gap".

Opinion is divided on how green eco-towns really are. When the DCLG announced its eco-criteria in July, it received a mixed response. Opponents and supporters pointed out that the criteria should be implemented in all new housing, except that, where eco-town homes must meet level four of the code for sustainable homes, all new homes after 2016 must be at level six. Opik says "the green gimmick label becomes tempting" if eco-towns are less environmentally friendly than normal towns.

While many of the proposed sites are on brown- field land, such as disused military bases, some will tear up farmland. Critics also argue that eco-towns could actually promote car use if residents have to travel out for work. Others point out that steps to retrofit existing homes with energy and water-saving measures will have greater environmental benefits.

The government’s determination to promote eco-towns and its implications for the planning process will be at the heart of the forthcoming judicial review. As Public Servant went to press the DCLG was due to publish a sustainability appraisal of the shortlisted proposals and a "place specific" draft planning policy statement (PPS). Kate Gordon, senior planner at the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) doubts the legality of the DCLG’s approach, which she says undermines the process of plan-led development through regional spatial strategies (RSS) and local plans. A PPS promoting eco-towns "would be an important material consideration for councils, providing Government with a convenient tool to potentially override local plans and policies. This detracts from the government’s pledge that they will take planning decisions in the normal way."

In August, Tesco withdrew its proposal for Hanley Grange in Cambridgeshire from the eco-town process, in the face of opposition from South Cambridgeshire District Council and the county council. The councils argued that it threatened delivery of the locally agreed growth strategy for the area, including the "prototype eco-town" at Northstowe in the same district. Tesco will now seek the scheme’s inclusion in a revised RSS.

Will Godfrey is keen to stress how different his Whitehill Bordon scheme is, not least in being put forward by the local authority rather than against its wishes. He is confident of getting government approval but insists the development will "absolutely" go ahead without it. He believes Whitehill Bordon "could come to define what an eco-town is seen to be".

For the moment, the plan is bending the rules a bit. Although eco-towns should be "new settlements, separate and distinct from existing towns", Whitehill Bordon is not. The eco-town will be grafted onto an existing settlement of 14,000 people when the Ministry of Defence closes a training base that takes up half the town. For this reason, and because it is mainly a brownfield site, it gets the backing of the CPRE.

Neither was Whitehill Bordon conceived as an eco-town, but as an opportunity to meet the needs of a community that had complained for decades of a lack of facilities. Godfrey had a "green town vision" of a "development that will complement the environment, not compromise it" long before the DCLG developed the concept. He sees eco-town status as "an ideal mechanism to deliver the vision".

Does it matter that Whitehill Bordon isn’t a new freestanding development? Godfrey doesn’t think so. The CPRE points out the contradiction in supposedly requiring eco-towns to be freestanding while most other new development should be in and around existing towns.

Indeed, many of those who are lukewarm about eco-towns think eco-quarters, or extensions to existing communities might be a better option. They include the CPRE and the Royal Town Planning Institute, which says the government should be switching "from an eco-town to an eco-quarters policy".

If Whitehill Bordon isn’t strictly an eco-town, will Northstowe be an eco-town by another name? It was seen by the DCLG as an exemplar scheme before the eco-town programme was announced, then briefly became part of Gordon Brown’s initial promise of five eco-towns before being downgraded to a mere "prototype". A DCLG spokesman told Public Servant that while Northstowe is eco-friendly, it "does not meet the high green standards required of eco-towns".

But Keith Miles, South Cambridgeshire’s policy planning manager, says Northstowe easily matches the DCLG criteria. He says other proposals, such as Hanley Grange, are not in the same league. Miles is happy not to be saddled with the eco-town requirements, including what he sees as the DCLG’s unrealistic stipulation that eco-towns should be built without cost to the public purse. This, he argues, is likely to drive standards down.

Could Hanley Grange still seek to be an eco-town without the brand? Miles acknowledges that it would still face the same objections, including competition with Northstowe. And there is another alternative. A day before Tesco withdrew Hanley Grange, Huntingdonshire District Council suggested an extension to the town of St Neots instead. It argued: "Five thousand homes, with related employment opportunities and community facilities, could be brought forward with low-carbon and quality standards similar to those envisaged for eco-towns.

Whatever happens to existing eco-town plans, it seems a new approach to development is already taking root. It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t think the government’s grand plans for eco towns aren’t a bit too grand. Even the DCLG, while saying that "the more there are, the more we would expect to learn" will not say that 10 are necessary to gain the exemplar benefits. Most people, including the sceptics, agree that if the best proposals are taken forward with local support, they could be worth the fight. The government may lose the propaganda battle but win the sustainability war.