Giving service users a say: how self-directed support is shaking up social care service delivery in Scotland

Posted on July 27, 2015 by lauracdobie

Image courtesy of Time To Change campaign

Back in 2010, the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) published a ten year self-directed support (SDS) strategy, with proposals to give individuals real choice and control in the health and social care services that they receive. The strategy is part of a broader reform agenda, and supports current health and social care policy to deliver improved outcomes for individuals and communities.

Halfway through the ten-year strategy period, it seems timely to consider the impact that implementing this transformation in service delivery is having on local authorities in Scotland.

What is self-directed support?

SDS allows individuals to choose the way in which their support is provided, and allows them as much control as they would like over their individual budget. It is not the same as personalisation or direct payments. SDS is a means of delivering personalisation, while direct payments are one of four options for delivering SDS:

Local authorities make direct payments to individuals which they can use to arrange their own support;
The local authority allocates funding to the provider of the individual’s choosing;
The local authority arranges a service for the individual; or
A combination of all three.

The benefits

An advantage of SDS is that it gives individuals the freedom to purchase the support that is best suited to their requirements. Some of the benefits highlighted in a review of self-directed support in Scotland are:

Flexibility, control, choice and independence;
The sustained delivery of personalised, quality, hands-on care;
Enabling clients to continue living their lives as they wished, such as by remaining in work or keeping up long-established activities, instead of conforming to rigid routines of care;
Helping families to stay together and family carers to continue in their caring role.

Implementation and impact on councils

SDS has required considerable change from service providers, who have had to alter the way in which they design, deliver and market services. Challenges in the implementation of SDS include training for social workers, dealing with the loss of economies of scale associated with personalisation, and achieving a greater degree of consistency in the approach employed by local authorities. There have also been concerns about costs and administration.

An Audit Scotland report last year, which reviewed local authorities’ progress in implementing SDS, has noted that SDS will have a considerable impact on social care at a time of growing demand and financial pressures. Professional staff are required to work in partnership with service users and their families, where appropriate, to identify services that will meet their needs. This approach is sometimes called co-production. The report found that council staff meet regularly with users, carers and organisations providing care, but have not always worked together with them in planning SDS.

The SDS strategy is a ten-year strategy running from 2010 to 2020, and it is not anticipated that councils will change the way in which they plan and deliver social care immediately. The Audit Scotland report found that councils have started to make substantial changes to social care, although progress has been slower in some areas.

Its case study councils expect to take between one and three years to offer the SDS options to all eligible individuals. They expect that fewer people will opt for day care centres and respite care but it will be challenging to shift away from this form of service provision – some people will want to continue to receive this form of support, however lower uptake may threaten the financial viability of these services.

The Audit Scotland report also found that some councils have underestimated the extent of cultural change required and the need for effective leadership. SDS is also changing the way in which councils are managing their social care budgets, and it is necessary for them to manage financial risks when implementing SDS.

Achieving successful co-design

The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) Pilotlight project has explored effective pathways to self-directed support (SDS) and ways of achieving successful co-design. The project website launched in May and contains useful SDS resources, lessons learned and a toolbox for successful co-design.

One of the project’s objectives was to explore how services can be delivered differently, in particular by engaging goups of service users and their families who can be excluded from participation. These groups could include people with mental health problems, vulnerable adults, disabled people of working age, and young people with additional support needs.

The project found that co-design could help councils develop more effective pathways to self-directed support for people who previously faced barriers. In a case study of the project, one service manager reported:

“Seeing the service users who have been involved in the process, I have known a lot of them for a long time and to see them take control and flourish and for their ideas to be taken on board has been a great success.”

Looking to the future

It is clear that self-directed support has required councils to make significant changes to the ways in which they work and deliver services, and that this transformation has occurred at a time when social care services are facing challenges related to demand and budget pressures.

Projects such as Pilotlight offer lessons and resources which can help councils and providers to plan and deliver support in conjunction with service users.

In June, the Scottish Government announced the award of funding to continue building the capacity of provider organisations to provide self-directed support, help develop the workforce and to ensure that support and information is available to individuals throughout Scotland to assist them in making informed choices. This three-year funding programme should help continue the major culture shift in the way health and social care services are delivered.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on social care services – to find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Further reading

Self-directed support, Audit Scotland (2014)

Self-directed support: preparing for delivery, IRISS (2012)

Self-directed support: a review of the barriers and facilitators, Scottish Government (2011)

Social labs … tackling social problems through collaboration and design

Posted on July 9, 2015 by lauracdobie

by Laura Dobie

Nesta’s LabWorks 2015 global lab gathering kicks off today in London, bringing together innovation labs, units, offices and teams working within and with government to address social challenges.

Today on the blog we look at social labs, their potential to improve public services and a couple of social labs who are carrying out innovative work in public services.

What are social labs?

Social labs are platforms for tackling complex social challenges.

Zaid Hassan highlights the following key characteristics of social labs:

They are social, facilitating participation by a broad range of stakeholders
They are experimental, taking an iterative approach to problem-solving
They are systemic, seeking to address the root cause of a problem, and not just its symptoms (Hassan, 2014, p.3)

Social labs draw inspiration from design thinking, which is centred on the following principles of design which were promoted by design firm IDEO:

A user-centred approach to problem solving
Using direct observation as a main source of learning
Moving quickly to creating prototypes as a means of generating additional knowledge
Learning from failures to refine and redevelop

Social labs in the public sector

The public sector is making increasing use of design, policy or social labs as a means of complementing and reinforcing skills in public policy, programme and service design. They contribute a different perspective to challenges and use a range of research methods and facilitation techniques to foster ideas and insights that attempt to incorporate many different points of view.

Recent Canadian research on a What Works Lab, which was established to develop approaches to increase employer engagement in workplace training, found that using lab methodology enhances the ability to generate insights into potential policy responses, and that lab techniques can also substantially reduce the transmission cycle between research, policy and service delivery. The research also highlighted how experimentation in a lab setting can be used to de-risk an initiative before wider implementation, and demonstrated that labs are an effective means of generating high-quality policy work.

Social Innovation Lab Kent (SILK)

SILK is a small team based within Kent County Council established in 2007 to ‘do policy differently’. They consider that the best solutions come from people who are at the heart of an issue, those with lived experience, families, friends, volunteers, and front line workers, and they ensure that these groups are involved at all stages their projects.

Projects are broken down into the following phases:

Initiate. Involve the right people, create a project plan collectively and decide who needs to be informed about the project.
Create. Collect as many insights as possible, involve a broad range of stakeholders and generate ideas for testing in the next phase.
Test. Test the ideas which were proposed during the create phase, and continue testing until a model that woks is identified. Trial runs, prototypes or ‘mock ups’ can be a part of this process.
Define. A model which has been tested and known to work is defined and consolidated.

SILK has delivered a variety of projects across the themes of future services, service (re)design and sustainable services, and tackled a range of social issues, including accessible and affordable food, the resettlement of offenders and creating a dementia-friendly community.

MindLab

Based in Danish central government, MindLab employs a human-centred design approach to address public sector challenges. Its board sets its strategic direction and approves its portfolio of projects, ensuring that their work is aligned with their sponsors’ priorities. Its emphasis on human-centred design helps to forge links between the perspectives of end users and government decision making.

MindLab’s team has a variety of skills which are indicative of its ethos and method, including social research, design, public administration, project management, organisational development and creative facilitation.

In one project MindLab worked with National Board of Industrial Injuries (ASK) to increase the number of people who remain in employment after suffering an injury at work. MindLab highlighted the potential in strategic working across working across public, private and non-governmental organisations and a change in attitude in helping these people return to the labour market.

MindLab interviewed people who had suffered industrial injuries and put together service journeys, which mapped the different stakeholders involved in a work injury case from a citizen’s perspective. They demonstrated through a case study how cooperation between the municipality, the insurance company and ASK improved an injured person’s employment prospects. MindLab also conducted internal workshops with ASK management to support a change in strategic focus from case resolution to employment outcomes for injured people.

It is clear that social labs are taking a different approach to policy and service delivery, focusing on the experiences and needs of service users to devise innovative solutions to a range of social challenges.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of information on economic and social policy and public service delivery. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Further reading

Hassan, Zaid (2014). The social revolution: a new approach to solving out most complex challenges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. (Available for loan from the Idox Information Service Library)

The What Works Lab process: report for the Skills and Employment Branch, Employment and Social Development Canada

The potential of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill to strengthen community planning

Posted on June 19, 2015 by lauracdobie

by Laura Dobie

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill was finally passed by the Scottish Parliament after a debate and vote late on Wednesday evening. In this article we look at the background to the Bill, the reforms that it proposes and its potential to strengthen community planning.

Background

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill was introduced in the Scottish Parliament on 11^th June 2014, and the Stage 2 debate took place in March 2015. The Bill has its origins in the 2011 Scottish National Party election manifesto (where it was referred to as the Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill). This was followed by two Scottish Government consultations. The Bill is part of a broader programme for public service reform in Scotland which was introduced by the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services, which stressed the need to ensure that public services are built around people and communities.

The Bill sets out reforms in areas including community planning, community right to buy land, involving communities in the delivery of public services and the acquisition of public assets by communities.

Community planning provisions

The Bill gives community planning partnerships (CPPs) a statutory basis and extends the range of public bodies which are defined as community planning partners beyond those set out in the 2003 Local Government in Scotland Act, which introduced community planning. It sets out a legal obligation for local authorities and their partners to participate with each other and to participate with any community bodies which the partnership considers likely to be able to contribute to community planning.

There is a particular focus on involving organisations which represent disadvantaged groups, and CPPs are required to “act with a view to reducing inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage unless the partnership considers that it would be inappropriate to do so.”

CPPs are also required to prepare and publish a local outcomes improvement plan and to review whether they are making progress in achieving these outcomes. They must also publish progress reports for each reporting year.

Will the reforms strengthen community planning?

A number of reports have been critical of community planning since its inception, in particular with respect to its involvement of, and impact on, local communities. The Christie Commission highlighted “variations in the effectiveness of community planning partnerships,” while an Audit Scotland report found that barriers such as the lack of a clear accountability framework have prevented CPPs from operating as intended. It argued that all community planning partners need to work together to address these barriers.

A SPICe briefing on the Bill noted that “putting community planning on a statutory basis, and requiring participation from all partners, not just local authorities, has long been considered a way in which community planning could be improved.” The general duty on all partners to participate, and specific responsibilities conferred on some partners to ensure the efficient and effective operation of the partnerships, may help to address some of the previous shortcomings of CPPs.

However, the Local Government and Regeneration Committee does not consider that a statutory duty is sufficient to ensure the effective participation of all public bodies in community planning. Some stakeholders have also highlighted issues with how outcomes will be selected and prioritised by CPPs, while others have voiced concerns that the process will remain top down, and will not give communities much of an opportunity to contribute to determining outcomes.

While the proposed reforms place clear responsibilities on CPPs to involve relevant bodies in community planning, and contain provisions which aim to address previous problems with CPPs, we will need to see how they are applied in practice in order to determine whether they will bring about improvements in community planning, and ultimately lead to improved outcomes for communities.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on community planning. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Who’s influencing thinking on democracy and voting in the UK?

Posted on April 30, 2015 by lauracdobie

Ahead of next week’s general election, the Knowledge Exchange has published its elections white paper, Democracy and voting: key organisations and individuals.

The white paper provides an overview of the following key themes in elections research:

Accountability and transparency
Representative groups
Voter participation and engagement

It highlights areas of overlap across these themes, and the different organisations which are producing research in each area:

The paper highlights different democracy campaign groups, and provides summaries and biographies of think tanks, research institutes, government departments and individuals involved in UK elections research.

The briefing also includes summaries of a selection of recent publications on democracy and voting from some of the organisations listed, which are available on our Idox Information Service database.

We’ve written blog posts on a range of issues in relation to democracy and voting, which you can view here. We’ll also be publishing more elections material in the coming week.

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on democracy and voting, to find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Happiness and productivity, and how our Ask A Researcher enquiry service can help to increase at least one of these things…

Posted on March 20, 2015 by lauracdobie

Image created by Sergio Barros from the Noun Project

by Laura Dobie

It’s the International Day of Happiness today. To mark the occasion on the blog, we’re going to take a closer look at a recent literature search that we did on happiness and productivity, and how the service can help our members to be more productive in their work.

Ask A Researcher

The Idox Information Service offers an Ask A Researcher enquiry service, which is very popular with our members who need to source and synthesise evidence and policy documents to meet tight deadlines. We’re often told that our searches save our members a day’s work or more, were they to conduct the searches and synthesise the research themselves, and they free up our members to work on other areas and achieve more with their day.

They can ask us to search for information on their behalf, and our team of research officers will conduct complex searches of our in-house database (over 200,000 references across a broad range of subjects in relation to economic and social policy), and other sources, where appropriate, to compile lists of relevant references to send back to the enquirer.

We don’t just send on a list of references for you to sift through: our research officers will also produce a research summary to accompany the results, which provides an analysis of the references that we have retrieved. This highlights:

Trends;
Key findings;
Implications for policy and practice; and
Significant research reports and articles, which are particularly relevant to the enquirer’s needs.

If the enquirer has asked a specific question, we will do our best to find an answer in the documents that we have sourced and present this in the summary.

Literature search on happiness and productivity

We recently carried out a search on our database for research which examined the link between levels of happiness in organisations and productivity and organisational performance. You can view this sample search here.

This search provides an ideal example of what we’re trying to do with the Ask A Researcher service: rather than simply compiling references, we have specifically highlighted resources in the results (and key words in the abstracts) which help to answer the research question.

The results describe the search terms and date limits which were used, and provide an overview of the content of the resources which were retrieved.

The summary highlights key documents within the results which are particularly pertinent to the research question, including:

MacLeod and Clarke’s concept of employee engagement: an analysis based on the Workplace Employment Relations Study, which explores employee engagement and organisational performance. It found that high levels of employee engagement were strongly associated with both financial performance and labour productivity.
Healthy staff equal healthy profits, IN Management Today, Jul/Aug 2013, pp56-57, which observes that organisations which look after the wellbeing of their employees see a return in greater commitment and higher productivity. It stressed the importance of effective communication of employee benefits, which can have a significant impact on productivity.
A government literature review, which has investigated the business benefits of adopting work-life balance practices, highlighting the positive association between flexible working and productivity and reduced absences, and between family friendly policies and retention and reduced absences. It observes that “A large body of evidence demonstrates that effective outcomes at the level of the individual, including job commitment, ‘happiness’, satisfaction, engagement and, in turn, discretionary effort, are all associated with business benefits such as reduced leaving intentions, fewer absences, less tardiness and improvements to performance and productivity.” (p.viii)

In addition to the results sourced from our own database, we also highlighted research from the University of Warwick, retrieved online, which also demonstrates the link between happiness and productivity.

Hopefully this article has provided some useful insights into the links between happiness and productivity, and demonstrated how our Ask A Researcher service can help our members to source and synthesise research in a short space of time and be more productive at work.

If you’d like to find out more about our Ask A Researcher service, or any other aspect of the Idox Information Service, you can contact us.

Issues around care for older people towards the end of life

Posted on March 13, 2015 by lauracdobie

by Laura Dobie

On Wednesday 25^th February I attended a lecture by Dr Bee Wee, National Clinical Director for End of Life Care for NHS England, titled Care for older people towards the end of life: tensions and challenges. It was part of the Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care and Marie Curie winter lecture series, Can death get any better?, which is exploring ongoing challenges and unmet needs in death and dying. The event provided a very interesting and thought-provoking account of issues in palliative care for society, professionals, and individuals.

Context

Dr Bee Wee began by outlining the context for palliative care services today. She commented that people want to live longer, healthier lives, but there are challenges with an ageing population, a greater number of people with long-term conditions, and rising numbers of people with multiple conditions and complex needs. There have been changes in family size and location, with people caring at a distance, which presents problems for support. There are also difficulties with rising health and social care costs.

Problems with end of life care

She then went on to highlight some specific problems with end of life care. End of life care can be fraught, caregivers are now older, and people’s situations change with progressive illnesses. It is also difficult to assess the effectiveness of care, as other areas of healthcare are measured on mortality. She commented that monitoring the number of people dying in their place of residence does not necessarily give an accurate reflection of how well services are performing, as these figures combine numbers for both homes and cares homes, which include temporary admissions. There are also challenges with scaling up care, and tensions between policy and service delivery.

She highlighted the following key challenges for palliative care:

Numbers/scale
The needs of the population and the individual
Resources
Attitudes

Regarding attitudes, Dr Wee commented on issues with how people are labelled. Rather than discussing the frail elderly, if we look at older people living with frailty, this places the emphasis on a person who is living with a condition and how best to help this person.

What does good end of life care look like?

Dr Wee discussed frameworks for high-quality end of life care, highlighting the NICE Quality Standard for End of Life Care for Adults, which presents a detailed picture of what high quality end of life care should look like. The standard contains 16 quality statements, 14 centred on the patient and two on the workforce .

She also outlined the House of Care, a concept for the delivery of person-centred coordinated care, and described how it has been used to set out NHS England’s commitments to end of life care. The House of Care has patient-centred, coordinated care at its centre, with engaged and informed patients and carers and professionals committed to partnership as its pillars, commissioning as its foundation, and organisational and supporting processes as its roof. She also highlighted the need for engaged, involved and compassionate communities in addition to these elements.

Looking at person-centred care in practice, Dr Wee described one page profiles which are being used to improve care. These include a photo of the patient, what people admire about him or her, what matters to the person, and information on how best to support the patient. She also emphasised that older people at the end of life have experienced multiple losses, both in terms of bereavement and their sensory capacities, which should be taken into account in care.

Challenges for professionals

Dr Wee highlighted the following issues facing professionals:

The vast knowledge and skills required, and the need to have this information at your fingertips.
Specialism v generalism: the challenge of integrating care when patients see different specialists for different health problems.
Multiple roles, which increase the risk of fragmentation.
How to achieve team working and the systems to support this.
The tyranny of protocols. Checklists are important tools and are good for ensuring safety in surgery, but it is important to ensure that these protocols do not eclipse the person.

Challenges for society

The following issues for society were raised:

Where care takes place. Dr Wee questioned why people dislike care homes, but like hospices. She stressed the need to make care as good as possible, regardless of the location.
Attitudes and conversations. End of life care isn’t something that people talk about, but it is an issue which it is necessary to discuss as a society, and also in terms of living well.
Social media, which can have a positive effect if it is giving accurate information, but a damaging effect if information is uncontrolled and inaccurate.
Are we willing to tackle inequalities?
A lack of discussion around the affordability of care.

Tensions

A number of areas of conflict in care were highlighted:

Risk v safety. Society is risk averse, and mistakes are met with public censure.
Individual choice over equity and standardisation.
Black and white v grey: issues in care are not always clear cut.
Planning v responsiveness. While advanced care planning offers a greater chance of meeting people’s wishes, if all resources are directed towards this it can present problems when something unexpected happens.
Good governance v performance management.

Looking forward

Dr Wee discussed a new approach to care which is focused on the outcome, rather than the process of care and what good looks like. She argued that it is necessary to resist micro managing from the centre, acknowledge the need for continued learning, and restore the conditions for trust.

The lecture was followed by a lively discussion on a range of issues, including the role of junior doctors, addressing growing inequality, resource problems and the role of hospices. The comments on measures and metrics were particularly interesting. Dr Wee questioned why we have measures and metrics which drive certain behaviours, and stressed need to shift public perception away from areas such as waiting lists in order to change measurements.

One delegate commented on the balance that needs to be struck between targets and care. Care is what matters to professionals, but it is also necessary to have accountability and metrics, which influence practitioners’ actions both positively and negatively.

Dr Wee commented that the fact that dying in hospital is used as a measure in palliative care and considered a negative outcome can lead to professionals attempting to discharge patients whatever the cost, when the focus should be on providing good care, wherever the location. Clearly this is an area which requires a great degree of consideration to develop measures which both ensure accountability and reflect the needs of patients.

I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture and felt that it gave me a thorough grounding in issues surrounding end of life care for older people, and provided much food for thought.

The Idox Information Service has a wealth of resources on health and social care. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Celebrating a different kind of library: the Idox Information Service

Posted on February 6, 2015 by lauracdobie

Exterior of the Idox Information Service office, an art deco building in Glasgow

by Laura Dobie

It’s National Libraries Day this Saturday, and events are being held up and down the country to celebrate libraries and their contribution to communities. When people think of libraries, it tends to be public libraries which spring to mind and rows of bookshelves. However, the library sector is diverse. Many librarians and information professionals work in different types of organisations, with different kinds of service users.

With libraries taking centre stage over the course of this weekend, we wanted to showcase our own specialist library service and the skills of our library staff.

Who we are

The Idox Information Service is a membership library service, which was established over thirty years ago under its earlier name of the Planning Exchange. At the outset the emphasis was on the provision of resources to support professionals working in planning and the built environment, but we’ve expanded our subject coverage over the years to cover the whole spectrum of public sector information.

Our members include policy makers and practitioners from organisations including local authorities, central government, universities, think tanks, consultancies and charities. They work in challenging environments and often need evidence to inform service delivery or decision-making.

Our work

Our research officers are all qualified librarians, and many are chartered members of CILIP. This picture shows the range of activities last year:

Grey literature is a particular strength of our collection. We spend a lot of time sourcing documents such as technical reports from government agencies, and research reports produced by think tanks, university departments, charities and consultancies which are often overlooked by other databases. Recent research has highlighted the value of grey literature for public policy and practice.

Although we may work in a specialist sector, many of our activities will be familiar from other libraries. We do our own abstracting and cataloguing, and current awareness services are a big part of what we do.

We also write our own research briefings for members on different topics, with more detailed analysis of research and policy developments, and including case studies and good practice. Some of these briefings are publicly available on our publications page.

The interest from members in using our Ask a Researcher service has been increasing, due to the time pressures and other challenges that people face in sourcing and reviewing information. A recent example looking at the links between employee wellbeing and productivity is on our website. Members regularly comment on the usefulness of the results, and it’s satisfying to be able to make a direct contribution to their work in this way.

Keeping it personal

While there has been an increasing trend towards self-service in libraries, and our online database allows our members to search for and access resources themselves, there is a strong personal element to our work.

Our members know that we’re always available at the end of the phone or via email to provide them with dedicated support when they need it. It’s important to us that we provide a quality service which keeps pace with the changing needs and expectations of a varied membership base.

Hopefully this article has provided some insight into a different kind of library, and library and information work, and the way in which we support professionals across a variety of fields. More information about the service can be found here.

Laura Dobie is a Research Officer at the Idox Information Service and a chartered librarian. She writes regular blog articles and research briefings for the service, and tweets for @IdoxInfoService

Can the NPPF be used to encourage better design? A look at a recent High Court decision…

Posted on February 2, 2015 by lauracdobie

Image by Andrea Vail under Creative Commons License

by Laura Dobie

A recent High Court decision has significant implications for interpreting the design policies in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the National Planning Policy Guidance (NPPG).

Handing down the decision in Horsham District Council v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (1), Barratt Southern Counties Limited (2) on 23^rd January 2015, Mr Justice Lindblom stated “It is not a general principle in planning law that an acceptable proposal for development should be turned away because a better one might be put forward instead”, dismissing the notion that this principle had not persisted with the introduction of the NPPF.

The case revolved around the question of whether an inspector had failed to take account of whether a better designed scheme could be conceived for a development site.

The Court dismissed an application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 by Horsham District Council for an order to quash the decision of the inspector – appointed by the first defendant, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government – to allow the appeal of the second defendant, Barratt Southern Counties Limited (“Barratt”), against refusal of planning permission for a development of 160 dwellings on land to the north of West End Lane in Henfield, West Sussex.

The Council had contested the grant of planning permission. During an inquiry the council submitted that the proposed development was a poor design which obscured views of the landscape, that a well-designed scheme should contain view corridors to retain these important views, and that it was fundamental to the principles in the NPPF regarding good design and the need to incorporate development into the character of the area, that such a scheme should preserve these views.

The inspector concluded that the likely “adverse environmental effects” of the proposed development were “limited” and did not outweigh “the considerable social and economic benefits” with respect to the early provision of new homes in circumstances of a local shortfall. He considered that policy in the NPPF did not indicate that the development should be restricted, and that the development would therefore be “sustainable”, and “the presumption in favour of such development should be applied”.

The Council argued that the inspector was not entitled to grant planning permission for Barratt’s proposal while it was still possible for a scheme to come forward in which long views from the site would be better protected, in light of policy set out in paragraph 64 of the NPPF that “permission should be refused for development of poor design that fails to take the opportunities available for improving the character and quality of an area and the way it functions.”

In his ruling, Mr Justice Lindblom stated that the NPPF does not say that a proposal which does not take every conceivable opportunity to enhance the character and quality of an area, or which does not deliver as well in this respect as a different proposal might have done, must therefore automatically be rejected.

He noted that the inspector focused on the policy in paragraph 64, as well as the wider policies on the design of development within which that paragraph is set, and that he exercised his own judgment on the issues relating to “good design” and “poor design” in light of these policies, concluded firmly that the proposal was not of “poor design”, and brought that conclusion into the comprehensive assessment of the planning merits on which he based his decision.

Referring to the decision in First Secretary of State and West End Green (Properties) Ltd. v Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd., Mr Justice Lindblom stated that in this case, the fact that an alternative approach could have been adopted in the design of the development, and that this could have maintained some views from the site which would have been obscured by Barratt’s development, did not mean that the design of the proposal the inspector was considering contravened government policy in the NPPF.

The judge went on to state that the inspector was entitled, and in fact, required, to exercise his own judgment on whether the scheme constituted poor design under the NPPF, and that he did so in an entirely lawful manner, applying NPPF policy appropriately. He noted that, “It may be that the council disagrees with him, but such disagreement is not ammunition for a legal challenge.”

The Court also reiterated the principle that an application under section 288 of the 1990 Act does not afford “an opportunity for a review of the planning merits” of an inspector’s decision.

This case indicates that an acceptable scheme cannot be rejected to encourage an improved scheme, given the design policies of the NPPF and the NPPG.

Full details of the final judgement are available here.

Blustery conditions: conflicting priorities in wind farm planning decisions

Posted on January 14, 2015 by lauracdobie

Image by Jondaar_1 via Creative Commons License

by Laura Dobie

The recent decision by the Secretary of State to refuse planning permission for Spring Farm Ridge wind farm brings into focus the tension between government policy and targets on renewable energy, and opponents of these schemes who are concerned about the possible negative effects of renewable energy developments, in particular on the environment.

Government policy on renewable energy

The UK government “is committed to supporting renewable energy as part of a diverse, low-carbon and secure energy mix.” (DECC, 2012, p.4), and recognises the contribution that renewables can make to energy security, the decarbonisation of the economy and sustainable growth. It has a target set out in the 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive to deliver 15% of the UK’s energy demand from renewable sources by 2020, and it is anticipated that renewables will play a key role in the UK’s energy mix in subsequent decades.

The most recent update to the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Renewable Energy Roadmap suggests that the UK is making good progress against this target, although it acknowledges that the siting of certain renewable energy projects has caused concern. It recommended that greater numbers of communities should be actively involved in small-scale renewable energy projects and emphasised the importance of ensuring that communities are properly engaged with, and can see the benefits of, renewable energy developments.

Public opposition to wind farm projects

While wind turbine developments can offer a range of community benefits, wind farms have faced considerable opposition from local residents and other stakeholders concerned with environmental and other costs of such developments, particularly their visual impact: optimal sites for developments tend to be in rural, coastal and remote locations in which the natural environment is prized.

While there has been much debate around nimbyism, with suggestions that people tend to favour wind power until schemes intrude upon their local areas, developments may well have an impact at the individual level: a recent study has found that operational wind farm developments reduce house prices in areas in which turbines are visible, in comparison with locations where they are not visible.

In its campaign against a wind farm development, Allt Duine, on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park, the Save the Monadhliath Mountains group has highlighted the potential impact of the scheme on the landscape and wildlife, and also on tourism: the development could have negative effects on the amenity of the area for those who visit the Cairngorms for leisure. While renewable energy schemes can create new jobs in communities, they could also have a negative effect on another major employment sector in rural areas.

It is clear that there are competing interests at stake in the siting and construction of wind farms: the need for a greater proportion of renewable energy in the UK’s energy mix, and the need to protect our natural landscape and heritage assets. The job creation potential of such schemes must also be weighed against the possible adverse impact on the tourism sector.

The Spring Farm Ridge Development

On 22^nd December 2014 the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government refused planning permission for a commercial scale wind farm, Spring Farm Ridge, between Greatworth and Helmdon in Northamptonshire, overturning the recommendation of the Inspector.

He acknowledged that all communities have a duty to help to drive up the use and supply of green energy, but that this does not mean that the requirement for renewable energy will automatically take precedence over the environmental protection and planning concerns of local communities.

While the Secretary of State agreed with the Inspector that the benefits and disadvantages of the proposal were finely balanced, he disagreed with the Inspector as to where the balance should lie. The proposal would not accord with the Development Plan and, although there were some material considerations which counted in favour of the proposal, including the renewable energy benefits, the Secretary of State did not consider those benefits to be sufficient to outweigh the likely negative effects of the development, notably identified harm to heritage assets, as well as to the character and visual amenity of the area.

This decision highlights the competing environmental priorities and stakeholder interests which are at play in proposals for new renewable energy developments, and the challenges in determining whether renewable energy benefits should override the negative environmental impacts of these schemes in planning decisions. Perhaps there is a need for greater community engagement and careful consideration of the siting of such developments in relation to the natural environment in order to gain wider public acceptance for such schemes and to improve their chances of approval in the future.

Enterprise Zones … did they work then, will they work now?

Posted on November 6, 2014 by lauracdobie

by Laura Dobie

In this article we look at past and present incarnations of Enterprise Zones, their potential to create jobs and growth, and issues to address in policy approaches.

Past experiences and lessons learned

The Enterprise Zone concept emerged in the UK in the 1970s. They were conceived by the planning academic Peter Hall, with the idea that removing all obstacles faced by businesses, such as regulation and bureaucracy, would allow enterprise to prosper, prompting a surge in the number of companies, employment levels and incomes in areas which had been ravaged by industrial decline and restructuring.

Enterprise Zones were created in the UK between 1981 and 1996 and were mostly concentrated in areas of post-industrial decline on the outskirts of towns and cities. The policy, as it was implemented, departed somewhat from the original, free-for-all vision: the zones concentrated on built environment challenges and the use of capital-based grants and rebates to drive growth.

The incentives offered included:

100 percent tax allowances for capital expenditure on constructing, improving or extending commercial or industrial buildings;
Exemption from Business Rates for industrial and commercial premises;
Simplified planning procedures;
Exemption from industrial training levies;
Faster processing of applications for firms requiring warehousing free of Customs duties;
A reduction in government requests for statistical information.

The Department for Environment’s final evaluation found that approximately 126,000 jobs were created, of which up to 58,000 were additional, and that additionality was highest for manufacturing and lowest for retailing and distribution activity. It estimated that the cost per additional job created was around £17,000 (£26,000 at current prices), assuming a ten year job life, and that over than £2 billion (1994/95 prices) of private capital was invested in property on the Enterprise Zones, a public to private leverage ratio of about 1 to 2.3.

However, Enterprise Zones have been subject to much criticism, and it has been argued that, overall, they did not produce a lasting recovery in investment and employment. (Danson, 2013, p17). Critics have highlighted the displacement effects of Enterprise Zones, i.e. that many jobs created in Enterprise Zones were displaced from other areas (Sissons and Brown, 2011), and the expensiveness of the policy (Larkin and Wilcox, 2011).

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