Can the planning system meet the needs of disabled people? Rob Imrie looks at how existing...

'The Government is fully committed to an inclusive society in which nobody is disadvantaged. An important part of delivering this commitment is breaking down unnecessary physical barriers and exclusions imposed on disabled people by poor design of buildings and places' Tony McNulty, Parliamentary

TONY MCNULTY'S STATEMENT, in the Foreword of the Planning and Access for Disabled People good practice guide, (1) provides an insight into a rapidly changing agenda for planners. It is one in which terms such as 'diversity', 'difference', and 'inclusion' have come to the fore in requiring planners to be increasingly aware of, and responsive to, the multiple needs of a diverse population. This is particularly so in relation to planning for the access needs of disabled people. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act is set to make access issues a core part of the planning system and, as Fleck suggests, (2) it will mainstream 'disability equality into the planning process and culture'.

This is not before time: research on planning and access shows that access issues have never been a priority for planners, with most regarding access as, primarily, a matter for building control.

However, access is a planning to alter and it has been, in a legal sense, since 1971, when section 76 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 required planners to draw the attention of developers, when granting planning permission, to the relevant provisions of the 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Person's Act (CSDP), and to the BS5810 code of practice for access of disabled people to buildings. The CSDP's provisions were vague and weak, and only required developers to provide access in public buildings if 'practical and reasonable'. Even when planners drew developers' attention to the provisions of the CSDP, there was little guidance, advice, or legal imperative for planners to do much more.

The advent of Part M of the Building Regulations in 1987, and its subsequent revisions, most notably in relation to dwellings in 1999, and a major revision in 2004, meant that many planners were happy to defer judgements on access issues to building control officers.

While this is still often the case, an increase in the volume of government advice and guidance on planning for access is providing useful and much needed direction for planners, particularly in tackling access issues at the pre-planning application stages of the process.

Most notable is PPG1: General Policies and Principles (1997), which says (in para. 33) that 'local planning authorities, both in development plans and in determining individual planning applications, should take into account access issues. These will include access to and into building, and the need for accessible housing.' In particular, the guidance note suggests that 'the developer and local planning authority should consider the needs of people with disabilities at an early stage of the design process' and that they 'should be flexible and imaginative in seeking solutions'. The PPG also suggests that 'where appropriate the planning authority may impose conditions requiring access provision for disabled people'. The recent consultation draft of new Planning Policy Statement 1 (PPS1): Creating Sustainable Communities states (in Annex C) that 'development plans should contain clear and comprehensive inclusive access polices' which should 'consider people's diverse needs'. It goes on to deprecate the way that 'many people are unnecessarily affected by in-conceived design, with the mobility needs of, for example, disabled people, elderly people and others considered separately from others and only once designs are completed'.

The PPG1 advice was supplemented by additional guidance in relation to housing, town centres, historic buildings, transport, and development plans. For instance, PPG12: Development Plans (1999) asked planners (in para. 4.13), when preparing the development plan, to 'consider the relationship of planning policies and proposals to social needs and problems, including their likely impact on different groups in the population, such as ... disabled people'. Draft PPS12 stated (in para. 3.1.10) that local planning authorities should 3.1.10 'comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 which place's a ditty on all those responsible for providing a service to the public not to discriminate against disabled people by providing a lower standard of service'.

PPG6: Town Centres and Retail Developments (1996), requires new schemes 'to meet the access and mobility needs of disabled people' (para. 2.28) (this statement also appears in the draft of PPS6, Annex B) Likewise, PPG15: Planning and the Historic Environment (1994), suggests that 'it is important that disabled people have dignified easy access to aim within historic buildings' (para. 10.1), while PPG13: Transport (2001) notes that 'local authorities, developers and transport providers should work together to seek to meet the accessibility needs of disabled people in all developments' (para. 31).

The range of government directives provide much needed encouragement to planners to respond, as a matter of routine, to access issues because, as some research suggests, planners are often risk-averse in their use of planning instruments, and the local planning system may well be undervalued, by its practitioners, as a means of ensuring access. (3,4) For instance, Imrie's survey of 264 UK planning departments in 1996 (3) revealed that only 2 per cent of them attached access-related planning conditions to all of the applications they were adjudicating. One respondent rationalised this by commenting that 'planning conditions imposed on planning decisions requiring disabled access are often overturned on appeal; while another respondent remarked that 'we could never make a planning condition on access stick ... so why bother in the first place?'

Such views seem timid given that the emergence of the plan-led system after 1990 provided quite a bit of leverage for planners to be proactive in planning for disabled people's access needs. The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was clear enough in noting that planning applications were to be decided in accordance with relevant policies and principles in local plans and this, at face value, seemed to provide planners with the tool for securing an accessible environment.

The ODPM's good practice guide on planning and access (1) has gone further in suggesting that planning authorities should 'include appropriate inclusive access plan policies at all levels the development plan supported by a specific strategic policy' (p.33). This is recognition that a deficiency in planning for access is the relative absence of access policies in regional plans and strategies. By including access policies and guidelines in the development planning framework as a whole, planners, so the good practice guide notes (on p.33), have 'the single most effective way of ensuring the consistent delivery of inclusive environments during the development process'.

That this point should be made 13 years after the inauguration of the plan-led system is perplexing, but it reflects, perhaps understandably, planners' general unwillingness to incorporate strong statements about planning for access into development plans for fear of them being watered down, or even deleted, during the development plan review process. It also reflects the vagueness of policy guidance and the difficulties for planners in interpreting what scope they have to pursue access policies.

Most guidance states that planning authorities 'should plan to meet', 'should take into account; or 'should consider'--language or terminology that has a negative and vague tone, a point that MacDonald (5) made about the 1992 version of PPG1, which he regarded as a 'disappointing start to an examination of disability and planning' (p.5). The 1997 version is an improvement on this, but it is still couched in terms that provide potential for planners to respond in a minimal way to access issues.

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act provides a new opportunity to build on the ODPM's good practice guide and related documents. The Act requires developers to provide an access statement, on the standard planning application form, outlining how they will make non-residential schemes accessible and inclusive.

While the precise content of such statements is still to be worked out, and will form part of forthcoming government guidance, it complements the directive to planning authorities that they must include a statement of access policies in their local development framework (LDF). Guidance on the details of such statements will form part of the new PPS12 on development plans. The intention here is to ensure that access issues are up-front in the planning process, although the extent to which inclusive environments will result depends, in large part, on how statements are interpreted and applied by planning authorities.

Moreover, the Act will require local planning authorities to produce a statement of community involvement (SCI) as part of die process of producing the LDF documents. This is all well and good, but there is no guarantee that such statements will be inclusive of disabled people or that they can, in and of themselves, provide the impetus for planners to respond to access issues.

There is also doubt about how far disabled people will be able to contribute to an SCI because, as Shipley (6) suggests, local access groups of disabled people 'often run on fresh air and enthusiasm' (p.5) and lack effective means to participate in the planning system. For Shipley, (6) if the Government is serious about consultation with well informed and genuinely representative access groups, it needs to provide the means to support them (see also the arguments in Disability and the City (3)).

In contrast to a decade ago, planning for access is almost a mainstream issue, albeit one that is still beset by misunderstanding about who is responsible for what, and what the legal powers and limits of planning are. However, given the emerging raft of legislation and guidance, planners have no excuse to defer to building control, and there is much scope for imaginative--even far-reaching--interpretation of guidance to ensure that good access becomes integral to all aspects of the development process.

Notes

(1) Planning and Access for Disabled People: a Good Practice Guide. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, London, 2003

(2) J. Fleck: Accessible London: Achieving an Inclusive Environment. The London Plan Supplementary Planning Guidance. Greater London Authority, London, 2004, p.5

(3) R. Imrie: Disability and the City. Paul Chapman Publishing, London, 1996

(4) R. Imrie: 'Challenging disabled access in the built environment: an evaluation of evidence from the United Kingdom'. Town Planning Review, 1997, 68 (4), pp.423-448

(5) R. MacDonald: Disability and Planning Policy Guidance. Paper presented to the Access Subcommittee, Oxford City Council, 7 Mar. 1995

(6) A. Shipley: An Inclusive Environment for All? Making the Planning Bill Deliver for Disabled People. Briefing for the All Party Parliamentary Disability Group, Disability Rights Commission, London, 2003

Professor Rob Emrie is with the Department of Geography at the Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey, and can be contacted on r.imrie@rhul.ac.uk