Planning beyond planning
insights from Exeter and East Devon
written by Liz Warren, SE2
This morning’s national Divas get-together featured the amazing district heating work done by Naomi Harnett, Frances Wadsley and colleagues in Exeter and East Devon. Here are some thoughts based on my scribbled notes (so any factual errors are mine!).
Many of you will be familiar with the Cranbrook development, between the east edge of Exeter and Exeter Airport. Back in the 2010s, detailed analysis showed that it would be more cost effective to have a networked heating system for this large-scale new development than to have individual heating systems. Hence the heat network was born… It’s now up and running and operated by EON, but so much has happened since…
Firstly, the whole development site has increased in scale. This means that the initial plans to switch from gas CHP to biomass CHP have had to be revisited to make sure that the path to decarbonisation makes technical and commercial sense.
Secondly, development plans and the ambition around heat networks have expanded to the south west and south of Exeter. There has also been a proposal to connect the networks to a nearby energy from waste facility (more on this later….!).
So what about planning?
The authorities have worked to find ways to encourage developers to connect to networks, using mandates and incentives to make this happen. Developers make contributions to the heat network through connection fees (the stick) but there are also planning aspects implemented through Local Development Orders in both Exeter and East Devon (the carrot). The LDOs mean that developers don’t have to apply for planning permission for below ground works and small, above-ground works related to district heating. It helps speed up the roll-out of the networks by reducing planning admin barriers.
The team described it as “quite a simple process to go through”, even if it feels quite daunting! When thinking about requiring connections, they kept the scope and scale of things pretty tight, avoiding listed buildings and heritage sites and keeping a buffer between key environmental sites like SSSIs.
We asked about the attitudes of elected Members to this – yes, it takes effort to get these policies in place, but once they exist, they don’t get re-examined unless something goes wrong.
We also asked about the relationship with developers. It’s a you-win-some-you-lose-some sort of situation. At Cranbrook, there was no planning policy in place but the funding for development was conditional on their being a heat network. At Monkerton, planning policy really drove things and a network is going ahead (you can view the story here) . At another site, the developers were able to win a challenge and 2,500 homes are going ahead with individual gas boilers (sigh).
It's about using a mix of planning and non-planning tools – what Andy Wood called “planning beyond planning”. The view from Exeter and East Devon is that the direction of travel from BEIS regarding heat network zoning is really positive as it creates a statutory underpinning for connections which would be outside the planning process.
My reflections
What the experience of Exeter and East Devon reminds us is that heat networks don’t happen overnight, that local authorities need courage and commitment but that this can be sustained over a long period, that it takes collaborative effort across multiple teams (and in this case, multiple Councils) to push things forward and achieve scale, and that the victories along the way are truly worth celebrating – congratulations to the team for securing HNIP funding for further development of the energy from waste scheme!
If you’d like to know more about the work being done in and around Exeter, you can view the presentation given at the Divas group below or you can contact Naomi Harnett through the Divas LinkedIn group!