COMMENT Planning Reform. Again. You don’t have to be actually meeting people in person to hear the resounding collective groan coming from the property industry.
Eyes roll to the ceiling. Here we go again. Tin hats time everybody. Every couple of years (or every few months, these days) some bright spark in a senior position at No.10, or No.11, decides to have a go at the planning system. This, in some misguided belief that it is planning – and town planners – that are holding up the delivery of housing.
Never mind that there is extant permission for more than 1m homes sitting there waiting to be built out – a conservative (small “c”) estimate by the Local Government Association – and never mind that anyone who knows anything at all about the housing market (including the senior management and board of Homes England, the government’s own housing agency) will tell you that the planning system, while having room for improvement, is not the problem.
This shibboleth about planning persists, mainly fuelled by HM Treasury, which has always “had it in” for planning. Why? Well, it has been this way since anyone can remember. It is such a deep-seated “received wisdom” corporate belief within HMT that it seems almost impossible to argue against. And one is forced to conclude, with a deep sigh, that the mystery of why the Treasury cleaves to the “planning system“ as the response to HMG reaching its (never attained and probably unattainable) 300,000 homes per annum target, is because blaming the system is a lot cheaper than funding 70,000 social housing homes each year.
Anyone who has lived through the various forays into planning reform over the past three decades will tell you, wearily, that changes in planning doctrine come and go, but they generally have minimal effect on the ground.
These latest proposals will certainly create heat and light within the planning profession (expect endless webinars with leading planning lawyers) and a furore in the Palace of Westminster (sit back and watch it unfold this week as some of the Tory backbenchers do the maths). But two constants never change: the first is that getting a planning permission will be a trial by fire. It is meant to be. The planning system is there to protect places and communities. Stop moaning. The second is that new homes are built by housebuilders, not those praying in parliament for new homes to be built (I refer anyone who needs this argument unpacked further to Broken Homes, a book I co-authored with m’learned friend Peter Bill, of this parish).
And now we have the absurdity of the latest proposed planning reforms being framed as the route to the government’s “levelling-up” agenda. This is utterly mis-directed, to put it mildly. What on earth are they thinking? A cynic could be tempted by the thought that they had nothing else to put into the Queen’s Speech. The “levelling-up” agenda is a hugely laudable and desirable one, of course. But to claim that deregulating planning will automatically deliver homes and economic prosperity to our left-behind towns is for the birds.
The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that “levelling up” is what we oldies might have termed “urban regeneration”. As a lifelong champion of this cause, naturally I am a great supporter. And I am a huge fan of Neil O’Brien MP, who is universally highly regarded and super bright (and who I had direct experience of working with in government, as a Voice of Total Reason). I believe fervently that, under O’Brien’s leadership, the Levelling Up Unit being set up, as we speak, in Cabinet Office (presumably to work cross-department throughout Whitehall) could make massive inroads to building back better, in our Northern and Midlands conurbations. But we need to get real.
Issues such as skills training, land assembly, transport infrastructure, high street renewal, inward investment platforms – and possibly half a dozen others – will all be more, very much more, pressing challenges in these places than planning deregulation. Targeted support for these towns is needed. Clear thinking is needed more. Each town must be empowered to buy into one plan for regeneration, channel all its energy in that one direction, and be urged to deploy all its assets to that end. The Levelling Up Unit must not be blown off course by the (utterly predictable) impending row about planning reform. It must not be distracted by false premises. Moreover, these towns cannot afford to wait. It will take months, possibly years, for the proposed Planning Reform Bill to become law and to bed in. If the towns in question get going now, they will quickly realise they have all the planning powers they need.
It is a lazy and foolish assumption that, by throwing the planning system up in the air, yet again, we will create wealth in our poorer communities.
Jackie Sadek is chief operating officer of UK Regeneration and a former regeneration policy adviser to government. With Peter Bill, she is author of Broken Homes. Britain’s Housing Crisis: Faults Factoids and Fixes
