One intractable idea a week

 Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.” 

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

This well-known quote from Alice in Wonderland captures the importance of stretching one's idea of the possible. If you practice imagining impossible futures, they will become more possible. It's just like yoga.

The other day I was at a dinner with my old friend Ben Yeoh and he asked everyone an 'intractable' policy idea as a conversation starter. The idea of what is tractable and intractable in policy terms - the Overton window as policy geeks refer to it - and how to stretch or move the window - is much discussed. Most efforts are focused at the margins of the window - trying to stretch it ever so slightly - or in posing something that's deliberately so far beyond the window that it 'drags' the whole window ever so slightly in that direction.

As I have a backlog of somewhat intractable policy ideas, many languishing in draft posts, I thought I might have a go at posting one a week until I get through them (ha...you think you'll get through them! Good luck. Ed.) Some might stick and some might be really stupid, and I'd welcome anyone pointing out how flawed they are.

I'm starting with a pet bugbear of mine. Planning committees made up of elected councillors. Who thought that was a good idea? It's like making elected officials act as magistrates or jury members - obviously daft. Planning committee members may be meant to act apolitically, but it's impossible for councillors not to have one eye on the ballot box when making decisions. We've all been in committee meetings where decisions are split down party lines. 

It is sheer madness - and a huge cost to the public purse - when a committee refuses an application that is policy compliant and recommended for approval, with the inevitable overturning at appeal. This is becoming ever more frequent, as committees are now getting in the habit of refusing outline applications on sites which are allocated in Local Plans, allowing councillors to claim they are standing up for their communities - a disingenous position when they know full well that the appeals will be successful. Officers are stuck between a rock and a hard place in making their recommendations.

But I don't think decision-making should be just down to officers. We do need a 'common sense test' on applications, a local perspective, and a judgement call whether they meet the spirit and not just the letter of the law. So I would institute neighbourhood panels, where randomly selected members of the local community, drawn from a pool that would be refreshed and trained on a regular basis, serve as the committee. This neighbourhood panel, like the jury in a trial, would have decision-making power over major schemes and those called in under a strictly applied, and nationally consistent, protocol - no more random schemes of delegation. 

The success of citizen design review panels shows that members of the public can reach sensible and insightful conclusions on even difficult and controversial applications. Just as jury trials, by and large, reach verdicts that are found to be sound when appealed to higher courts, I think our fellow humans can make planning decisions that will be largely found sound at appeal. They would be assisted by officers, just as the judge in a jury trial  directs jury members as to the points of law they are being asked to decide, and I'm confident they would manage just fine.

Taking politicians out of planning determination would lead to far greater trust in the system, from the community as a whole. Officers would have to explain their assessment in plain English and with clear, unambiguous logic. And local politicians would be free to soapbox all they liked. For all that councillors claim planning committee is a vital part of their powers, I think they'd secretly prefer to have nothing to do with it. 

If the government is so keen on local democracy in planning (Street Votes...Neighbourhood Plans) - why not take this simple step to embed it at the point where decisions really get made. This shouldn't be that intractable, really.