ANDY ROGERS ON THE DYNAMICS OF PLANNING REFORM
ROGERS
A dull grey paper Andy Rogers is a planning consultant and former director in architects The Manser Practice
Latest efforts to modernise the planning system, as usual, have all the elements of the English novel as defined by Philip Larkin: “A beginning, a muddle, and an end”, says Andy Rogers Before I comment on the Levelling-Up White Paper, here are a couple of old Goon Show jokes: “Hi, are you the greengrocer?” “No, mate, more a dirty brown colour.” “But I was told you went to Eton?” “Yeah, I was delivering their groceries.” It turns out that the government’s planning white paper, prefaced by a PM who did indeed go to Eton, was not a patchy dull grey colour like its ‘levelling-up’ replacement. Although rather ironically entitled Planning for the Future, it was too white for its own good and has been binned, following last year’s startling by-election result at Cheshire and Amersham and no less than sixteen key recommendations for watering it down that were contained in June’s Housing, Communities and Local Government parliamentary report. Responses to the planning white paper consultation, originally promised last autumn, have not appeared. This means that instead of a wide-ranging Planning Bill with revisions to the infrastructure levy, housing need calculations, digitisation and various other Planning White Paper proposals, as promised by Boris Johnson in August 2020 (“Radical reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War”), we are promised a Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill “which will be set out in the Queen’s Speech in the spring”. It will also, presumably, be modelled on the Levelling-Up White Paper, which has been shown to be a dull grey colour. Radical reform is now off the agenda (the government is already looking towards the next general election). Criticism of the white paper includes its overall lack of a proper definition of community (Dr Catherine Queen), a failure to note the importance of ecosystems and nature (Timothy Crawshaw), misunderstanding of how devolution will work in practice (Alica Davidson), no consideration of the inter-generational divide (Marc Vlessing), and little about process (Nicholas Falk). But my own criticism of the paper is more basic - that it’s nowhere near the fundamental
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change that we were promised and which we need. Where is the excitement, the way to restore our faith in the planning system overall, and suggestions about modernisation (or even digitisation as included in its predecessor)? Politicians are not planners and tend to deal in concepts - such as Michael Heseltine’s concept of “jobs locked up in filing cabinets”. But now we are apparently going to deliver more homes while giving power back to local communities, presumably to say No, we don’t want them here. Then we’ll extend pd rights even more so that commu-
Although rather ironically entitled Planning for the Future, it was too white for its own good and has been binned nities have no say after all, according to Tim Perkins - a planner who is really looking forward to a straightforward, less bureaucratic planning system that can deliver everything everyone wants in a simple, easy to use digitally friendly way at no greater cost to the taxpayer. Studies of the bureaucratic hurdles in the planning system have been produced with monotonous regularity since about 1948. What these attempts at ‘fundamental planning reform’ show is that, however keen the desire for a more efficient system, unless there is a real political will and a proper allocation of resources, very little will actually change. Consider these statements: “The system itself is in need of reform… People feel they are not sufficiently involved in decisions that affect their lives. The planning system needs fundamental change ...” And “At present, the planning system .. is broken… we need a planning system that enables local people to shape their surroundings… ” And “There might be things you would alter in a perfect world, but you’d have to balance that against the aggravation that change causes…
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. – Edmund Burke, 1790 Constant reorganisation can be totally counterproductive.” A clue about the origin of these statements is in the description of the planning system as being “broken”. In fact the first comes from the introduction to Labour’s 2001 green paper Planning: delivering a fundamental change; the second from the Conservative’s 2010 green paper Open Source Planning; while the third is a line from an old article by Ed Vaisey in Art Quarterly. Which of the above includes what can be taken as a fair description of the planning system as it exists today: “…we want to create a planning system where there is a basic national framework of planning priorities and policies, within which local people and their accountable local governments can produce their own distinctive local policies to create communities which are sustainable, attractive and good to live in” ? The answer is not that this is an aspiration in 2001 for Labour’s revisions to the system, but the Tory’s own 2010 description of what they called Open Source Planning. And we are still waiting. As the Red Queen remarked to Alice: “…here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that”. The government is not running nearly fast enough and its latest efforts to modernise the planning system as usual have all the elements of the English novel, as defined by Philip Larkin: “A beginning, a muddle, and an end”. We are currently in the muddle bit, waiting for the end: watch this space. n Our patience will achieve more than our force. – Edmund Burke, 1790
Issue 121 April-June 2022
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