Perspectives on the role of UK planning in land and property markets

There is a popular view that land use planning regulations (‘planning’) is hostile to both development and the development industry. Part of the reason for the prominence of this view is the homogenising of the notion of ‘planning’ and its reduction to development control. This paper argues that panning controls in the UK are far more sophisticated and, drawing upon empirical evidence of key property interests proposes a more complex and nuanced view of planning controls that, in large part, has the support of the developers and others

Change, rigidity & delay in the UK system of land-use development control

The British system of development control is time-consuming and uncertain in outcome. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly overloaded as it has gradually switched away from being centred on a traditional ‘is it an appropriate land-use?’ type approach to one based on multi-faceted inspections of projects and negotiations over the distribution of the potential financial gains arising from them. Recent policy developments have centred on improving the operation of development control. This paper argues that more fundamental issues may be a stake as well. Important market changes have increased workloads. Furthermore, the UK planning system's institutional framework encourages change to move in specific directions, which is not always helpful. If expectations of increased long-term housing supply are to be met more substantial changes to development control may be essential but hard to achieve

Change, Rigidity & Delay in the UK System of Land-use Development Control

The British system of development control is time-consuming and uncertain in outcome. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly overloaded as it has gradually switched away from being centred on a traditional ‘is it an appropriate land-use?’ type approach to one based on multi-faceted inspections of projects and negotiations over the distribution of the potential financial gains arising from them. Recent policy developments have centred on improving the operation of development control. This paper argues that more fundamental issues may be a stake as well. Important market changes have increased workloads. Furthermore, the UK planning system's institutional framework encourages change to move in specific directions, which is not always helpful. If expectations of increased long-term housing supply are to be met more substantial changes to development control may be essential but hard to achieve.

Housing supply and planning delay in the South of England

There is growing international interest in the impact of regulatory controls on the supply of housing The UK has a particularly restrictive planning regime and a detailed and uncertain process of development control linked to it. This paper presents the findings of empirical research on the time taken to gain planning permission for selected recent major housing projects from a sample of local authorities in southern England. The scale of delay found was far greater than is indicated by average official data measuring the extent to which local authorities meet planning delay targets. If these results are representative of the country as a whole, they indicate that planning delay could be a major cause of the slow responsiveness of British housing supply

Housing Supply and Planning Delay in the South of England

There is growing international interest in the impact of regulatory controls on the supply of housing The UK has a particularly restrictive planning regime and a detailed and uncertain process of development control linked to it. This paper presents the findings of empirical research on the time taken to gain planning permission for selected recent major housing projects from a sample of local authorities in southern England. The scale of delay found was far greater than is indicated by average official data measuring the extent to which local authorities meet planning delay targets. If these results are representative of the country as a whole, they indicate that planning delay could be a major cause of the slow responsiveness of British housing supply.

Company Law in the European Union and the United States: A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of the EU Freedoms of Establishment and Capital and the U.S. Interstate Commerce Clause

Since the decision of the European Court of Justice in the Centros case, it has become popular in company law to draw comparisons between the United States economic constitution and the Single European Market. Since then, fears of a European “Delaware Effect,” which would create a “race to the bottom,” have hounded the debate on European company law. In this discussion, however, the unique constitutional framework of both the EU and the U.S. is seldom regarded. This constitutional framework, nevertheless, determines the behavior of both the legislators at state level and the market participants. This Article compares the impact of two major principles of both constitutions on company law: the U.S. dormant Interstate Commerce Clause and the Freedom of Establishment and the Freedom of Capital in the EU Treaties. The Article finds that the U.S. constitutional framework is more lenient on states and thereby grants them broader discretion to regulate company law. Further, it will argue that this is rooted in the specific legal set-up of the two common markets. The European Single Market, unlike the U.S., grants explicit free movement rights to capital and direct investments, establishing a modern framework. Further, European legal doctrine is faced with the paradox that the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) equates natural persons and companies, whereas in reality, companies differ from natural persons in many respects. The U.S. constitutional framework instead relies on the concept that companies are creatures of state law in order to grant states larger powers

We Can Only Say What a Basque Is Not

What does it mean to be Basque, and why has this question become more complicated in the twenty-first century? An examination of several artists and their work provide possible answers to this question. American avant-garde artist Man Ray produced an experimental silent film in 1926 entitled Emak Bakia. Why he used this Basque phrase—which roughly translates as “Leave me alone”— is a mystery that has never been solved. In 2012, Basque filmmaker Oskar Alegria decided to track down the source of Ray’s inspiration in his documentary, The Search for Emak Bakia, 2012. By a strange twist of circumstance, searching for Alegria’s film turns out to be as difficult as solving the mystery of Emak Bakia. The film has never been shown in the United States, though a private copy was made available to the author of this article with the director’s permission. A Maurice Ravel musical composition and Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture in the Basque Country also help to explore this question. Together, the nuances of these collective artistic endeavors and their focus on “what is not” can suggest an alternative way to think about “what is.

BSAURUS- A Package For Inclusive B-Reconstruction in DELPHI

BSAURUS is a software package for the inclusive reconstruction of B-hadrons in Z-decay events taken by the DELPHI detector at LEP. The BSAURUS goal is to reconstruct B-decays, by making use of as many properties of b-jets as possible, with high efficiency and good purity. This is achieved by exploiting the capabilities of the DELPHI detector to their extreme, applying wherever possible physics knowledge about B production and decays and combining different information sources with modern tools- mainly artificial neural networks. This note provides a reference of how BSAURUS outputs are formed, how to access them within the DELPHI framework, and the physics performance one can expect.Comment: 52 pages, 24 figures, added author Z.