EP and Milton Keynes council set up new-style planning body

English Partnerships is to set up a planning body, the first of its kind, with Milton Keynes council to deliver the 70,000 homes designated for the town in the Communities Plan.

The special purpose vehicle is intended to streamline planning decisions.

It will go ahead despite the reservations of Milton Keynes council, which wanted to keep full control of the development.

Council chief executive John Best said: "Our preference is that everything be done by the local authority, but we have to accept this solution in the light of the real world. The government clearly feels the development's scale means it is too risky to leave it up to us.

"We would just ask that the government keeps its side of the bargain and gives us the funding we need to deliver rounded communities, not just houses."

The proposal will see planning powers for a specified growth region transferred to the new body, leaving regeneration quango EP, rather than the council, in charge of taking key decisions over greenfield land use.

The partnership, provisionally called an urban development area, will be legally constituted in April after a consultation that will end on 1 March. Its board of 10 will comprise two people from EP including chief executive David Higgins, three Milton Keynes councillors, two independents and three representatives from the local strategic partnership.

The body will exist until 2016. Between 80 and 90 EP staff, presently working in the quango's Milton Keynes office, will transfer to the new company when the consultation ends.

EP chairman Margaret Ford said: "The main problem with the traditional urban development corporation is that it is not really linked to local democracy.

"This is overcome by the urban development area, as it will be a partnership with the council and councillors."

However, the council is sceptical that the new body will improve accountability. Best said: "Normal development has systems for holding it to account: who is holding this body to account?"

n There are "four or five possible models" under consideration for the joint venture between EP and the Housing Corporation, the Housing Partnership, EP chairman Margaret Ford has revealed.

The partnership was responsible for the 56 sites given for free by EP to two associations – Genesis and Bedfordshire Pilgrims – in October last year.

Ford said that it was unlikely this move would be repeated, but said EP was looking at changing the use classification of its land holdings – which include industrial and residential – to more residential use.