Today represents Bob Robinson’s final day at DPP. For the past ten years, he has been working extensively in the delivery of education projects across England. Here he shares his thoughts on planning for schools – the challenges and opportunities.
For the past decade I have been involved in the delivery of new schools and school expansions working for contractors appointed by the Department for Education (DFE), Local Education Authorities and School Academy Trusts. Over that same time, the wider DPP business has helped in the delivery of over 165 new or replacement schools and over 70,000 new or improved pupil places.
Consequently, as I approach my retirement in just a few weeks, this gives me an opportunity to reflect on the key experiences of the past decade in planning for schools as well as highlighting future changes that are likely to impact on the sector, as the contractors are announced for the next phase of new schools under DFE framework CF25.
To date, there has been a strong political consensus behind the delivery of state schools. Interestingly the Joint Ministerial Statement – Planning For Schools issued under the coalition Government in 2011, which essentially advised that Local Planning Authorities (LPA) should approve state school applications or suffer the consequences at appeal – has survived subsequent Conservative and Labour Governments and its aims will, I’m sure, also be reflected in the forthcoming National Development Management Policies.
By August 2021, planning applications for schools (along with other social Infrastructure) were also prioritised in terms of case management, introducing a compressed time period for consultation (18 days) and determination (10 weeks). In practice of course, such timescales are rarely met and this is a wider issue, but perhaps more concerning is that in well over 50% of cases we have to go back to LPAs on validation to remind them of the bespoke determination criteria for Social Infrastructure
Initially much of our work was the delivery of new academy schools to address rising population with a notable focus on London and the South East. Perhaps not surprisingly the key issues here were related to the introduction of a major traffic generator (albeit over a condensed period) and invariably use of green belt land or Metropolitan Open Land (MOL) or designated open space, as the limited budgets available and the public sector requirement to achieve best value meant that the DFE were not in a position to compete with commercial developers for brownfield sites much in demand for alternative uses.
This led to some very contentious planning applications and the need to demonstrate Very Special Circumstances involving evidence of pupil place need and the absence of alternative minus planning constrained sites. Nonetheless, we successfully secured consents in all but one case.
More recently the focus has been on replacement of the existing school estate as many schools reach the end of their life. In many cases the new school buildings are constructed on current open areas of a school campus (to maintain continuity of education on site) and consequently there are winners and losers in terms of the outlook for adjoining properties which need to be addressed and managed. Invariably, the open areas of a school site are used as playing field triggering an automatic referral to Sport England as a statutory consultee. Indeed, as noted in the recent consultation on statutory consultees, some 60% of Sport England’s caseload is commenting on school schemes.
Sport England’s current remit is simple, they will oppose any loss of playing field unless at least one of five exceptions are met. In most cases this can be addressed or compensated for but in a few, some loss of playing field is inevitable. In these circumstances, Sport England is obliged to maintain an objection. This can be frustrating, but it is not its role to take a balanced view weighing the loss of playing fields against the benefits of a new school – that is down to the planning officer, the planning committee and ultimately the secretary of state as an automatic referral is triggered. To date, none of our referrals has resulted in the application being called in.
There are now proposals for Sport England to lose their statutory consultee role and personally I think this is a positive move. Local Plans invariably have policies to secure the retention of important open space and playing fields and Local Planning Authorities are well placed to balance the competing issues.
As highlighted above, the DFE have now appointed contractors for the next batch of school redevelopment and expansion schemes and of the contractors that DPP work with have been reappointed to the framework. As such, I anticipate DPP will be busy on these kinds of projects following my retirement and, of course, have a strong track record of delivering.
The more pressing issue perhaps is whether the planning system will be able to deal with the workload? The Government has, at the same time, set a target of replacing all schools built using RAAC by the end of 2029. When the scale of the RAAC issue was first identified, Government brought in immediate Permitted Development rights to allow temporary accommodation to be installed, but those rights expire at the end of 2026. I understand that the DFE is in discussion with the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to extend these rights, but this is not yet confirmed and even if extended, the timescales are tight to meet the 2029 target.
One option may, of course, be to broaden the existing PD rights for school buildings to cover the replacement of existing schools, utilising a system of prior approval and guidance on siting and scale. This, however, may be seen as a step too far, notwithstanding the consensus for enhancing the school estate.
There’s a lot going on in this sector – lots of ifs and buts and lots of uncertainty, nevertheless, as I head off to focus on other ambitions in my retirement, I do so knowing that DPP is well placed to help in the delivery of the DFE’s ambitions, and facilitate enhanced educational environments across the country. I look forward to seeing my colleagues work come to fruition.
