Out-of town development; why no stats?

The daily E Planning newsletter reports that the (presumably English):

‘…Government is proposing to stop collecting its own data on the proportion of retail development taking place in town centres.’

The Item continues:

The move comes despite the abolition in 2009 by the Labour Government of the need test, which required developers to show need for proposed edge-of-town or out-of-town stores.

The abolition came despite warnings from the RTPI that it could accelerate the decline of the high street, and surveys that showed that twice as many senior local authority planning officers thought that it would undermine town centres than that it would not.

The Conservatives, then in opposition, said that if elected, they would reinstate the test.

The Department of Communities and Local Government pledged in 2008, in response to a select committee report, that it would publish data on the proportion of retail development that is located in town centres every year.

The committee had said that the Government needed to improve its collection and publication of statistics on town centres to ensure adequate monitoring of the results of the need test abolition.

However, in February last year a DCLG consultation document proposed releasing the data only biannually. A summary of responses to the consultation, published in October, said no decision had been made on the proposal.

But a wider DCLG consultation, launched in April this year, on departmental data-gathering proposes ending the collection of statistics on the extent of retail development taking place in town centres due to the "high cost of purchase and analysis" of the data.

The document suggests that, given the necessary resources, data could be procured from private companies offering monitoring services.

Planning journalists came across the latest proposal as they researched an article, which appears in the current issue of the magazine, exploring whether retail development was moving out of town.

Lobby group the British Council of Shopping Centres said it was concerned by the news. "More frequent and localised data on where development is taking place is essential if government is to monitor the impacts of policies and respond effectively," said executive director Edward Cooke.

Just off to check if they collect data in Scotland

(The article by Richard Garlick, Adam Branson and Susanna Gillman Thursday, 14 July 2011 can be found here)

Scottish Planning Series Circular 4 2009: Development Management Procedures

Extract

The planning system operates in the long term public interest. It does not exist to protect the interests of one person or business against the activities of another. In distinguishing between public and private interests, the basic question is whether the proposal would unacceptably affect the amenity and existing use of land and buildings which ought to be protected in the public interest, not whether owners or occupiers of neighbouring or other existing properties would experience financial or other loss from a particular development.

Full document here

Out of Town Retail; The Way Forward?

A survey of Sept 2008 apparently suggested (not a paid subscriber so cannot get access) that out-of town retail would be more successful than town centres in terms of instigating retail resurgence. This assertion is given some credence, perhaps, through the tone of a more recent item from June 2011 which talks of vacant shops triggering 'terminal' town decline,

The Inverness Courier however has news that 5 stores are to open in the 'Eastgate' in Inverness Town Centre, more here, and in the same paper a relatively recent item covered the proposals for six new restaurants etc at the out-of-town Inverness Retail Park

So could the wider Inverness / A96 corridor area be the exception? Could 'blanket' retail development - Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Co-op, Lidl, Aldi, Morrisons, Town Centre and 'Out-of Town' all work together to help us spend our way out of this recession?