All I want for Christmas is planning reform

At the top of the Christmas lists of developers, planners, and prospective homeowners – alongside the usual pairs of socks, latest smartphones, and after dinner chocolates – you might well find something of a different nature: the hope of an effective planning system that delivers the housing the country needs.

And so today, our Housing Secretary, Michael Gove unveiled changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) aimed at delivering on this Christmas wish. Starting off in an appropriately festive fashion, Mr Gove harked back to Christmas in the Victorian era, at a time when our great cities were rapidly expanding. Embracing that same spirit, he pledged to help people “fall back in love with the future this Christmas”, ushering in new policies that would bring the innovative approach from Christmas’ past to Christmas present.

In summary, Gove’s proposals look to speed up the planning process and encourage brownfield development, whilst holding local authorities to account. This includes giving local authorities in England three months to put in place plans to meet their housing needs, with those that fail to do so potentially losing their planning powers to planning inspectors. 

In what appears to be a ‘name and shame’ style approach, league tables would also be published showing which local authorities are failing to deliver on their local plans and where planning committees are refusing applications against officer advice, to the detriment of the taxpayer. Delays to the determination of applications would also be laid bare, with extension of time agreements being banned in some cases.

Whilst greater accountability amongst local authorities will be welcomed by the industry, with the measures proposed, could the government be accused of trying to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause of the issue?

Mr Gove would undoubtedly argue not. In his speech, he suggested that resistance to development amongst communities is a major blocker to housing growth but is the result of poor-quality design of new homes, lack of infrastructure to support it, potential impacts on the environment, and impact on sense of place. His solution is BIDEN – no, not the US President, but a policy framework focused on beauty, infrastructure, democracy, environment, and neighbourhoods, designed to encourage a more favourable view towards new development.

Part of that proposed solution, and perhaps tantamount to a piece of coal in the stockings of planning industry professionals, is the scrapping of requirements for local authorities to allocate greenfield land to meet their housing targets. Rather than further demonising ‘greenfield’ development, would it not be better to take a more pragmatic approach that better engages communities in the process?

There also remains the big question of resource, which was largely skimmed over. Whilst Mr Gove claimed that local authorities would have ‘no excuse’ not to implement their housing plans, the fact that over a quarter of planners left the public sector between 2013-2020 is surely an indication of why planning departments struggle to keep up. Indeed, SEC Newgate UK’s National Planning Barometer, which sought planning committee members’ views on the planning system, concluded that lack of resource in planning teams is proving to be a critical brake on delivery. Interestingly enough, most respondents also felt that updates to the NPPF would not have a positive impact on their local authorities.

And so asked whether the government can deliver on its target of 300,000 homes per year, the Housing Minister said he believed it could, but with the caveat of interest rates falling to “normal” levels – something not expected to happen in any meaningful way before next year’s General Election. Notably, he also mentioned that the approach to the significant expansion of Cambridge is also being designed to withhold “the shifting sands of Westminster”.

This could be indicative of an underlying expectation that next year, a new Father Christmas will be taking the reins on planning policy, with the gargantuan task of granting the nation’s wishes. In the meantime, will the new NPPF sit unloved under the Christmas tree?