English Planning Research Articles

FROM DISCRETION TO EXPERT JUDGEMENT: RECASTING SEDIMENTED CONCEPTS IN ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

Abstract This article re-examines the traditional account of administrative decision-making under wide conferrals of statutory power. The received wisdom in such cases is that public officials exercise “discretion”, usually defined as freedom of choice. Based on a doctrinal study of the English planning system and related case law, this paper contends that the notion of discretion as choice obscures one of the defining characteristics of modern government. That is, the making of public decisions tackling practical problems with intelligent and expert judgement under legal standards set out in legislation and further developed by the courts. More widely, the paper discusses the foundational role of tacit knowledge and decision-making expertise in public administration.

Financial viability decision rules in residual valuation method of property development appraisal: case study of London, England

Purpose An appraisal is normally conducted to determine financial viability of property development projects for several purposes. The residual valuation method is normally used to appraise such projects and the purpose of the paper is to examine its financial viability decision rules (FVDRs) used by practitioners. Design/methodology/approach The qualitative research approach was adopted based on the case study strategy of enquiry where 48 development appraisal reports from 37 Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors registered firms in London were accessed from the internet and critically reviewed. Findings Site-specific and area-wide development appraisals for planning purposes dominated the reports. Five FVDRs were identified. A development project is financially viable if: (i) computed residual profit expressed as a percentage return is equal to or greater than a determined market benchmark risk-adjusted return; (ii) computed residual profit expressed as a percentage return is positive; (iii) calculated residual land value is greater than open market land value or benchmark land value; (iv) computed residual land value is positive; and (v) there is a surplus when appraisal cost variables including land costs plus allowance for developer’s profit are deducted from gross development value. In some reports, it was discovered some appraisal cost variables were excluded whilst others were inappropriately treated. Practical implications The first and third FVDRs are reasonable whilst the remaining are fraught with problems and using them can make development projects that are financially unviable to be viable. Also, excluding relevant cost variables and treating some inappropriately understate the appraisal cost component resulting in incorrect financial viability outcomes. These can lead to wrong recommendations about financial viability being proffered that negatively affect the practitioners’ clientele. The dominance of development appraisals for planning purposes shows the important role development appraisals continue to play in the English planning system. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, it is the first time FVDRs in development appraisals have been systematically investigated in England with resultant new empirical findings and arguments.

Heat and the planning system: how can local authorities encourage deployment of low and zero-carbon heating?

There is widespread recognition of the need for new homes to feature only low or zero-carbon (LZC) heating. However, residential developers continue to choose conventional high-carbon options such as natural gas boilers over net-zero compatible alternatives. This study explores how UK local authorities (LAs) within the English planning system can encourage residential developers to deploy LZC heating systems within their projects. We adopt an embedded case study design and analyse 30 residential project proposals within two LA areas. Our study examines local planning policies and interactions between developers and LA officers, along with the resultant outcomes, through documentary analysis and expert interviews with local stakeholders. We find that LAs can encourage developers to adopt LZC heating technologies above and beyond what is required nationally. The conditions for this to occur are (1) a planning policy which restricts allowable heating technology options, (2) empowering LA officers to enforce policies, (3) advice and support for developers to consider alternatives, and where necessary, (4) political backing to challenge unwilling developers. Study findings highlight the important role of LAs in creating the conditions for the transition to LZC heating, which show how they can use powers within the planning system to encourage developers to make low carbon choices without the need for direct investment.

The quest for certainty: Introducing zoning into a discretionary system in England and the European experience

The critique of planning and new proposals to reform the English planning system and “rethink planning from first principles” have led to the introduction of rules-based principles into what is regarded as the paradigm of a discretionary planning system, culminating in a recent White Paper, which it is claimed will create a faster and better planning system than the existing discretionary approach. But are these proposals based on an oversimplified understanding of the differences between discretionary and regulatory models, neglecting, for example, the negotiation between stakeholders and the flexibility which also exists in regulatory planning systems? Our contribution will review some of the recent changes of the English planning system and reflect on experiences with zoning in European countries to bust the myth that the planning reform claims to address: the possibility to combine faster decision making with better place making and less interference from local planning authorities.

Housing development, land values and the decentred state: Traditions and dilemmas in House of Commons planning debates

ABSTRACT The paper examines the narratives and traditions that converged in the debates that raged in the House of Commons in response to the UK government’s controversial proposals for planning reform in 2020. Using decentred theory, it is argued that planning is essentially decentred in that it has no essence, no fixed core beyond a general concern with the relationships between town and country, central and local government, economic development and the environment, private property and community, individual freedom and state power. This means that English planning comprises a web of contradictory traditions that can be articulated in service of various agendas. The analysis explores how the traditions in planning were interpreted through and reframed by various ideological traditions in the Conservative Party to legitimise different arguments concerning the desirability, or otherwise, of housebuilding and how planning should govern new housing development.

Socio-spatial relations and the governance of city-regional growth: A comparative analysis of two European high-tech regions

Oxford-Oxfordshire, UK, and the Verband Region Stuttgart or the Metro Region in Germany are two of Europe’s high-tech powerhouses, facing similar challenges concerning housing and infrastructure provision and accommodating regional as well as local economic growth. Based on desktop studies and semi-structured expert interviews, this paper examines the respective institutional, political and cultural contexts for strategic planning in the two distinct settings, aiming to identify the evolving balance of socio-spatial dimensions influencing each case. While the interplay of territory, place, scale and network is different across the two cases, both face ongoing dilemmas. In the Stuttgart region, an established and smoothly running economic and spatial growth-machine has stuttered as growth has reached capacity and localities have asserted their constitutional controls on urban expansion. In Oxford (and the wider county of Oxfordshire), there has been a contrasting dislocation between an emerging growth agenda and a fractured governance context that is historically less oriented towards growth. Additionally, Oxfordshire has operated since 2010 against the background of localism in English planning and an increasing reliance on city and housing/growth ‘deals’ negotiated with central government to access planning flexibilities and infrastructure funding. Conclusions are drawn with the aim of mutual learning from the different international experiences and of informing approaches to strategic and inter-municipal planning.

The rise of polycentric regulation and its impacts on the governance of housing associations in England

Since 2010 the English planning system, like others across Europe, has undergone a series of market- oriented reforms. There has been a concerted attempt to make state organisations, and those in receipt of public funds, more entrepreneurial and financially proactive and independent. This paper focuses on one manifestation of these wider trends - the regulation of English Housing Associations [HAs] as examples of organisations that are under pressure to take on more financial risks and deliver a wider range of affordable housing for communities in need. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research, the paper assesses some of the regulatory and governmental challenges that emerge in using market-led forms of coordination. It examines the role of new regulators and the ways which they seek to ‘co- produce’ regulations with HAs in more liquid and negotiated ways. We show that in reality decisions are taken in response to a polycentric mix of simultaneous regulatory pressures that act as gravitational pulls on the activities and decisions made by HAs, rather than enforcing a consistent and linear form of regulatory control. We conclude with wider reflections for planning theory and practice.

Housing and the politics of Nationally Strategic Infrastructure Planning in England

The 2008 Planning Act introduced a new approach for determining large (‘nationally significant’) infrastructure projects in a new national process that would unify consent regimes and speed up decisions within fixed timescales outside of local planning. Major housing schemes have been excluded from this process, despite repeated attempts by recent UK governments to allocate more land for housebuilding through parallel reforms to the English planning system. This paper explores why Nationally Significant Infrastructure Planning (NSIP) has not been used for housing schemes, using the example of housing to reflect on debates about potential democratic deficits in the NSIP process and the selective politicisation of infrastructure planning in England. In doing so, the paper makes a distinctive contribution to practice and research by linking together debates about the politics of planning for housing in England and international literature on democratic process in the delivery of critical infrastructure.

Planning System of England to Respond to ‘Housing Crisis’ and Policy Implication to Korea

The purpose of this study is to explore the implications from the recent changes in the English planning system. In England, the ‘housing crisis’ led to changes in the planning system aimed at expanding the housing supply: The central government set strategic aims for housing supply which were linked to the local plan; a standard calculation method for housing needs was used; and local plans including the housing needs and supply were used to determine whether to permit planning applications. However, in Korea, the central government produces the comprehensive housing plan by itself, and the link between the plans of the central and local governments is not clear. The method of estimating housing demand and needs is not uniform, so reliability and comparability are low. And, the housing plan made by local governments is not being used to assess the adequacy of development projects. The fundamental reason for such a difference is that Korea’s housing policy is being implemented by the central government. In order to develop a new planning system suitable for decentralization, it is necessary to consider a planning system that the central government’s strategic aims are compatible with local governments’ leading role in the implementation of the plan.

Entitlement, Indeterminacy and Professional Discretion in Urban Planning: Problematising a Child’s Right to Clean Air for Play in London

The interaction between air quality and play space receives less focus in planning than it has in public health and environmental sciences research. In this paper, seven local planning authorities of inner London (UK) were sampled from the 10 boroughs with the worst air quality in parks. Greenwich, with significantly better air quality, was included for comparison. The selected authorities were validated against deprivation data, ensuring variance in socio-economic terms. Across this sample, 21 major residential planning applications were assessed, alongside a document analysis of planning policy documents for each authority. Lastly, five semi-structured interviews with different practitioners collectively provided multi-disciplinary perspectives on the planning processes across the sample. Despite the national government having conferred children a right to leisure space and a healthy environment via international conventions, the English planning system, as an institutional rights framework, is not consistently prioritising the delivery of children’s play space nor delivering play space where the air quality has been robustly assessed. In other words, such rights have been subjugated to other priorities in limited urban space in London. Therefore, a discretionary planning system does not preclude individual human rights from becoming disadvantaged under democratically controlled decision-making processes.

Self-Regulated learning strategies and reading comprehension among bilingual primary school students in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT The study examined the relationships between self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies used by 2,894 bilingual primary school students and their Chinese and English reading test performance. Exploratory factor analysis of the self-reported SRL strategy use questionnaire yielded two factors of strategies (planning and monitoring) used in both Chinese and English reading. The analysis of the structural equation model indicated that the planning and monitoring strategies used in Chinese reading positively affected their corresponding strategies used in English reading. The Chinese planning and monitoring strategies directly and positively affected both Chinese and English reading test performance. The English planning had a positive effect on English reading test performance while the English monitoring strategy did not affect English reading test performance. The results contribute to the knowledge of SRL in second language and bilingual education in the Chinese context.

THE INVOLVEMENT OF ENGLISH TEACHERS ON MINIMUM COMPETENCY ASSESSMENT (AKM)

Minimum Competency Assessment or AKM is one of the instruments used by the Indonesian government to evaluate the education system. Several studies have been done related to AKM. However, there are no studies about English teachers' involvement in AKM. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating English teachers' participation in AKM. It covers; (1) English teachers' perception of AKM and (2) English teachers' action plans to support students facing AKM. This is a survey study with 23 English teachers from secondary and high schools in East Java as participants. Online questionnaires and phone interviews were used as instruments to collect the data. The result shows that most English teachers have a positive perception of AKM. They show their positive emotion, motivation, and belief in AKM. Furthermore, the English teachers have created action plans as a form of their readiness to support students facing AKM. The planning covers teaching material, AKM exercise, teaching media, and teaching methods, and further investigation about those aspects is still needed.

An analyze Relevancy of Intern English Teacher’s Lesson Plan in Senior High School Of Malang

"For teachers, plan gives the lesson a framework, an overall shape," according to Harmer (2007, p.156). It refers to a lesson plan that instructs teachers on how to deliver teaching-learning activities. Teachers' ability to create lessons is critical for developing a strategy to increase the quality of teaching and learning activities. In order to achieve the National Education goals, lesson plans must be relevant to government regulations. The Indonesian government enacted Permendikbud No. 22 Tahun 2016 to control the Standar Proses. To assist instructors in creating lesson plans, the rule lists components of a lesson plan based on the 2013 curriculum. Especially for intern English teacher in order to designing lesson plan. The results of the document analysis revealed that all lesson plans included every component of a lesson plan, such as indicators and basic competences, objectives, materials, media, activities, and assessment; however, when the quality of each component was assessed using Permendikbud Nomor 22 Tahun 2016, the quality of each component varied. The findings of the study revealed that while intern English teachers' lesson plans were totally based on the 2013 curriculum, some components of the lesson plan were not applicable.

INTEGRATING COLLABORATIVE SKILLS IN 8TH GRADE ENGLISH TEACHING LESSON PLANS AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Collaboration is one of the 21st-century skills needed to survive in this era. The need in society to think and work together on issues of critical concern has increased, shifting the emphasis from individual efforts to group work, from independence to community. Integrating Collaborative skills in the educational field, particularly in assessment, has been broadly employed. However, lesson plans that incorporate collaborative skills are lacking. This study aims to explore the collaborative skill in English teaching lesson plan in junior high school in Indonesia. A content analysis approach is used in this study. The data was analyzed using a systematic content descriptive text methodology based on the ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research) Framework, which was used in this study as an instrument to analyze lesson plans to see if they were integrating or not. The expected result of the study is that Collaborative skills are found in lesson plans, indicators, and the learning process.

Governmental Logics in Commercialised Planning Practices. The Case of Local Authority Pre-Application Negotiations in the English Planning System

ABSTRACT The paper provides an empirical review of a widely used tool in the English planning system – pre-application discussions (‘pre-apps’) and a theoretical exposition of governmental ‘logics’ that underpin neoliberal-informed planning reforms. We present five logic frames of growth, efficiency, commercialisation, participation and quality, and apply these to pre-application negotiation practice, to highlight how Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) are faced with the challenge of reconciling a complex of multiple and often competing aims that appear irreconcilable in practice. We highlight that whilst ‘ordinary’ planning tools such as pre-apps may appear mundane, they can provide valuable instantiations where logics collide.

Identification of Higher Order Thinking Skill Domain in The Eleventh Grade English Lesson Plan at SMK N 1 Singaraja

This research aimed to identify the cognitive domains of Higher Order Thinking Skills that appear in the four English Lesson Plans in eleventh grade and the most dominant cognitive domain of Higher Order Thinking Skill used in the four English lesson plans in eleventh grade. This research used descriptive qualitative research design. The setting of this research is in SMK N 1 Singaraja. The subject of this research were the English lesson plans and one of the teachers in SMK N 1 Singaraja. The data were collected by using documentation, checklist, and interview guide. The results of this research are, (1) There are two cognitive domains (C4 & C6) appear in those four lesson plans, (2) The most cognitive domain appear in the four English lesson plans is C6 with the operational verb is arrange.

The age of the manager is over? Shale gas fracking and the challenge to the post-political regime for English planning

Planning systems developed through the period of ‘normative’, ‘third way’ neoliberalism were critiqued as being ‘post-political’. Planning systems were developed that bypassed political conflicts through technocratic and consensus-seeking approaches following a so-called ‘end of history’ in which left/right ideological conflicts were deemed settled. Following the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007/8 though, scholars have begun to question whether this is a suitable critique of planning, and state institutions more generally, as political and economic conditions shift. This paper examines a case of an exemplar post-political planning system: England. The paper identifies three key logics of a ‘post-political regime’ for planning: techno-managerialism, consensus and participation. Through an analysis of texts and interviews of contested planning decisions made over shale gas fracking sites, this paper shows a ‘post-political regime’ for planning facing a crisis of legitimacy as it is challenged by an anti-fracking movement and reactionary interventions from central government. The paper provides an institutional level analysis of the crisis of post-political planning, which has lost legitimacy amidst the slow collapse of normative neoliberalism.

Identification of Higher Order Thinking Skill Domain in the Eleventh Grade English Lesson Plan at SMK N 1 Singaraja

This research aimed to identify the cognitive domains of Higher Order Thinking Skills that appear in the four English Lesson Plans in eleventh grade and the most dominant cognitive domain of Higher Order Thinking Skill used in the four English lesson plans in eleventh grade. This research used descriptive qualitative research design. The subject of this research were the English lesson plans and one of the teachers in SMK N 1 Singaraja. The data were collected by using documentation, checklist, and interview guide. The result of this research are, (1) There are two cognitive domains (C4 & C6) appear in those four lesson plans, (2) The most cognitive domain appear in the four English lesson plans is C6 with the operational verb is arrange.

From post‐political to authoritarian planning in England, a crisis of legitimacy

AbstractThis paper argues that the crisis of post‐politics has sparked an authoritarian turn in spatial planning in England. The proposed reform of the English planning system in 2020 is a defining moment, marking not only the failure of consensus‐seeking politics in governing dissents but also the rising authoritarian responses to fix it. This is manifest in the intensification of state control, strengthening of executive power, and decline of democratic institutions, with a shift of emphasis from techno‐managerial to executive‐punitive practices, and from seemingly consensual to openly antagonistic approaches. This drift to authoritarianism has been justified by invoking a “state of exception,” whereby the established rules and procedures are displaced by the appeal to “exceptional” circumstances, such as emergencies, national securities, and global pandemics. We draw on a case study of shale gas “fracking” in England to show how authoritarianism has crept into planning processes through changes in legislation, reconfiguration of rules, rescaling of decision‐making, and shrinking of democratic spaces. We discuss the role of a “political moment” in the politicisation of fracking, arguing that the return of the political has engendered antagonistic and exclusionary practices, rather than the agonistic pluralism that planning scholars have called for. In managing planning conflicts, consent, compromise, and co‐option are increasingly complemented or replaced by discipline, control, and explicit exclusion. Instead of denying, neutralising, or suppressing antagonism by calling for consensus, authoritarian politics exaggerates it by establishing frontiers between legitimate and non‐legitimate voices of dissents. The paper concludes by emphasising that the authoritarian turn can only offer a contingent and fleeting solution to the failure of post‐political planning to deliver neoliberal pro‐growth goals. It cannot eradicate the crisis of legitimacy in planning, nor can it foreclose the political struggle for fixing its meaning and purpose.

College English Learning Center Planning Based on Language Learning

Objectives: Planning for English learning centers for college students can meet the needs of students’ independent learning and achieve the purpose of enhancing students’ comprehensive English practice and application ability. Methods: This study proposed the characteristics and functions of the English learning center, as well as the resources and facilities of the learning center when planning the university English learning center, and explained the construction of the English learning center’s learning materials and the division of functional areas. The influencing factors of the construction of learning center materials mainly include students’ language level, learning needs, authority and applicability of learning materials. Results: On this basis, taking the English learning center plan of a university library as an example, the functional areas are divided into four functional areas: English listening, speaking, reading and writing. Conclusion: It is hoped that this research will provide some reference and reference for the planning study of university English learning center based on language learning.