Is the octopus losing another leg? Greater Manchester’s planning struggles

My January 2021 column was called ‘The Octopus has lost a leg’ and described how Stockport had decided to pull out of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework. It was a huge blow to the Greater Manchester planners, who nevertheless pressed on and managed to get the plan adopted this time last year. Then, with impeccable timing, just as the devolution white paper arrived suggesting that everywhere should be covered by spatial frameworks like Manchester, councillors in Oldham also voted to withdraw from the plan.

The octopus referred to a piece of work that we had done as part of the preparation of the Greater Manchester plan. In this, we had come up with the idea of the ‘Octopus of Accessibility’ to describe transport corridors from the urban core to each of Greater Manchester’s eight principal towns.

We were very pleased with ourselves, although we soon realised that the use of the octopus metaphor generally had negative connotations. It was often used to depict an empire with tentacles encircling the world. Closer to home, Clough Williams-Ellis, creator of Portmeirion, published an influential book in 1928 called ‘England and the Octopus’, railing against the suburban development that was stretching its tentacles into the countryside. In hindsight, it may not have been the best allusion for the Manchester plan, in which green belt development has become such an issue.

The devolution white paper, in addition to the headline-grabbing amalgamation of the remaining two-tier councils, also proposed that there would be universal coverage of Strategic Authorities. Modelled on the combined authorities, these strategic authorities would each have a mayor and would be governed by majority voting (so that no council had a veto). Furthermore, each of these strategic authorities would be required to produce a Spatial Development Strategy (SDS).

For the system to work, we need collective decision-making, majority voting and no right to withdraw if you don’t like the results

Except, if we are being pedantic, the Greater Manchester plan is no longer an SDS. It couldn’t be after Stockport pulled out. Technically, it is a Joint Development Plan Document (DPD) called ‘Places for Everyone’ (which I can’t help thinking was a dig at Stockport). Speculation in Greater Manchester is that the new white paper not only means that Oldham won’t be allowed to withdraw, but that Stockport may be forced to rejoin.

The newly elected Lib Dem administration in Oldham voted in February to write to Angela Rayner requesting that they be allowed to pull out of the plan. They criticised it for being “developer-led”, preventing the development of affordable homes and not prioritising brownfield land. The decision was taken despite an officer report calling the move “legally perverse and unreasonable”. As officers pointed out, there is no legal mechanism for a council to withdraw from its adopted plan other than by adopting a new plan – unless, that is, Angela Rayner revokes the entire Greater Manchester plan and, let’s face it, that’s not going to happen.

Stockport withdrew from the plan before it had been adopted, but it has left their planners with no end of problems. They are nowhere near adopting their replacement plan, not least because their housing numbers are now 1,800 a year – 800 more than they would have been if they had remained in the plan. What’s more, they have lost a number of recent planning appeals (278 homes on the former Gatley Golf Course and another 200-home scheme in Hazel Grove) because of their inability to show a five-year housing supply.

In Oldham, their housing target is 772 homes while they remain in the Places for Everyone plan, but this would rise to 1,049 homes per year if they were to withdraw. However, the council’s Lib Dem leader, Howard Sykes, is now worried about the council’s inability to defend planning appeals, telling the Manchester Mill: “If we were in a place where we had plenty of developers and planning applications, I’d be a lot more worried.”

All of this despite more than 90% of the 175,000 proposed new homes in the Places for Everyone plan being within the existing urban areas. The plan assumes that all brownfield sites in the conurbation will be developed, which is almost certainly unrealistic, particularly in the northern towns where viability is marginal.

The idea of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework was to avoid all of this. Rather than each of the ten districts fighting their own battles over the green belt, they would pool responsibility and take rational decisions at the conurbation scale.I still think this is the right approach and applaud the white paper’s proposals, but it is important to learn from Manchester’s experience.

After all, Greater Manchester is a haven of cooperation and mutual understanding compared to many parts of the country. For the system to work, we need collective decision-making, majority voting and no right to withdraw if you don’t like the results.