Town & Country Planning Journal – May-June 2024

town & country planning

The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association

May–June 2024 Volume 93 • Number 3

• Special issue - 125 years of the TCPA

• Harnessing Towns and Cities for Better Growth

• Diagnosing delay in Planning: Dobry at 50

• Codes and Communities

In 2024 we’re celebrating 125 years of the Town and Country Planning Association – and the 120th anniversary of Town & Country Planning.

Copies of Town & Country Planning published between 1904 and 2005 are archived and free to view at: archive.tcpa.org.uk.

information and subscriptions

Town & Country Planning

The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association ISSN 0040-9960 Published bi-monthly May-June 2024 • Volume 93 • Number 3

Town & Country Planning is the Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England under No. 146309. Registered Charity No. 214348

Copyright © TCPA and the authors, 2024

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Town & Country Planning May–June 2024 • Volume 93

regulars features

132 On the Agenda

Fiona Howie:

Celebrating 125 years of supporting people and places to thrive

134 Time and Tide

Hugh Ellis: Looking backwards for future inspiration

137 Snakes and Ladders

Sue Brownill, Debbie Humphry and Jason Slade: Communities, garden cities and Kropotkin

142 Bird’s Eye View

Catriona Riddell: The role of strategic planning in delivering sustainable development

148 Obituary – Patsy Healey

178 Legal Eye

Bob Pritchard: Compulsory purchase – reports and reforms revisited

180 Going Local

David Boyle: Space in the middle – localism for the regions?

182 Green Leaves

Danielle Sinnett:

From garden cities to green infrastructure

Special issue: 125 years of the TCPA

187 Personal Provocations

Baroness Hamwee

Kate Henderson

Ian Wray

Richard Simmons

Charlotte Llewellyn

Peter Hetherington

Iain White

Olivier Sykes & John Sturzaker

Nick Green

Feature articles

149 Harnessing Towns and Cities for Better Growth

Nicholas Falk and Richard Simmons on how a 'considered reset of how we do development' could transform the economy and reinvigorate urban life

157 Planning Provocations: The Green Belt

Janice Morphet on agreeing a secure future purpose for maintaining the Green Belt

163 Codes and Communities

Jeff Bishop on the National Model Design Code requirement to engage with communities

168 The Expansion of Permitted Development Rights will Result in More Poor-quality Homes

Sally Roscoe, Rosalie Callway and Julia Thrift on how the latest regulatory changes entirely ignore the evidence about the poor quality of homes produced through permitted development rights

173 Diagnosing Delay in Planning: Dobry at 50

Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson on the perennial issue of time taken in decision making in planning

on the agenda

TCPA Chief

Executive Fiona Howie

reviews the TCPA's work since its centenary in 1999

celebrating 125 years of supporting people and places to thrive

As someone who has only been closely involved with the TCPA for the last five years, I am very mindful that I am not best placed to reflect on the Association’s 125 year history and all that has been achieved. I am delighted, therefore, that this edition features so many contributions from people who have been part of the Association’s history and made it what it is today. As speculation continues about the timing and potential impact of the next UK general election, it is lovely to be able to take a moment to pause and reflect on this organisation’s great history and heritage.

As part of doing that, I looked back at how Town & Country Planning marked the Association's centenary. The July 1999 edition, which is available on the Association’s journal archive website,1 featured contributions from eight TCPA vice presidents.2 The contributions are an interesting mix of reflections on those individuals’ involvement in the organisation, thoughts on what had been achieved and what needed a focus for the future. I particularly enjoyed the Rt Hon. John Gummer, who was still an MP at the time and is now a peer,3 stating that ‘of course, [the TCPA] has not always been right or even successful, but it has always been challenging and worthwhile’. I wonder if our current cohort of Conservative MPs would say the same!

The Association was very sorry to receive news in January of the death of one of its former chairs, Mary Riley. We were pleased, therefore, to be able to include in the last edition an obituary to highlight and commemorate her remarkable achievements.4 Mary was still one of our vice presidents at the time

of her death and her passing made reading her contribution to the centenary piece even more poignant. Her contribution included:

‘After 100 years are we still relevant? The problems this country faces in land use and the environment are more intense now that [sic] in Howard’s time, and the local and human issues within them have become more explicit. We have a function to be objective, to seek solutions, and to express them. We must continue.’

This feels as true today as it no doubt was 25 years ago. The journal frequently carries articles focused on tackling the health, housing, climate, economic and nature crises. I frequently write about my belief that the Association and what we are trying to achieve in terms of supporting people, places and the planet to thrive, is as relevant today as it ever was. As Mary urged us to, we continue to seek and express solutions. But as John Gummer noted, we are not always successful in securing the changes we believe are necessary. Inevitably, this can be frustrating for staff, trustees, our members and the people this impacts – but we will persevere. In doing so, however, we must also continue to think about how we make our messages resonate with decision makers and those across the built environment sectors.

Both Mary and Ralph Rookwood included reference in their pieces to the TCPA, in partnership with the Housing Associations Charitable Trust, setting up The Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation. The establishment of the Foundation drew on the experience of work undertaken in Birkenhead, Wirral and later in Lightmoor, Shropshire, becoming recognised nationally as the leading body in providing local communities with practical techniques for being more effectively involved in local decision-making.

This links to my hopes for the TCPA as we look ahead another 25 years, in anticipation of the Association’s sesquicentennial. Seeking influence at

on the agenda

the national level and working with local authorities to share best practice and encourage ambition is a critically important part of our work. However, so too is seeking to empower people to have real influence over decisions about their locality. This is a key route for the Association to try to tackle inequalities. At times this work focuses on trying to improve processes – such as our work last year to try and influence the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill as it passed through parliament. But we are also trying to do more work directly with communities to enable and support change on the ground. We have examples of where we are doing this through Planning Aid for London; our involvement in a project to try and secure new affordable housing in Belfast, and our work in Peterlee New Town. I want us to be able to build on that work and learn lessons. My hope is that the Association will be able to secure sufficient funding to scale up this important, impactful work to make a real difference to people’s lives and the communities in which they live, work and play.

Finally, I want to thank you – our members and subscribers. At times people forget that the TCPA is a small organisation with a long and important history, and an incredibly wide remit. We are grateful for your support now and, I hope, in the future.

• Fiona Howie is Chief Executive of the TCPA

Notes

1 Over 100 years of past editions of the Association’s journal, along with minute books and FJ Osborn’s correspondence are available at https://archive.tcpa. org.uk/

2 See ‘Now we are one hundred’. Town & Country Planning, 1999, Vol. 68, Jul., 216-218

3 The Rt Hon. The Lord Deben was elevated to the House of Lords in 2010

4 G Bell: ‘Obituary – Mary Riley’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93, Mar./Apr., 85

The TCPA’s vision is for homes, places and communities in which everyone can thrive. Its mission is to challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone.

Informed by the Garden City Principles, the TCPA’s strategic priorities are to:

Work to secure a good home for everyone in inclusive, resilient and prosperous communities, which support people to live healthier lives.

Empower people to have real influence over decisions about their environments and to secure social justice within and between communities.

Support new and transform existing places to be adaptable to current and future challenges, including the climate crisis.

TCPA membership

The benefits of TCPA membership include:

• a subscription to Town & Country Planning;

• discounted fees for TCPA events and conferences;

• opportunities to become involved in policy-making;

• a monthly e-bulletin; and

• access to the members’ area on the TCPA website.

Contact the Membership Officer, David White t: (0)20 7930 8903

e: membership@tcpa.org.uk

w: www.tcpa.org.uk

TCPA policy and projects

Follow the TCPA’s policy and project work on Twitter, @theTCPA and on the TCPA website, at www.tcpa.org.uk

• Affordable housing

• Community participation in planning

• Garden Cities and New Towns

• Healthy Homes Act campaign

• Healthy place-making

• New Communities Group

• Parks and green infrastructure

• Planning reform

• Planning for climate change

time & tide

Hugh Ellis - to drift blindly into a dystopia or to strive for better - which?

looking backwards for future inspiration

‘One can only hope that the present crisis will lead to a better world’ – Albert Einstein in a speech at the Albert Hall, 1933

For 125 years the TCPA has held the flame of the utopian tradition. That tradition goes far beyond how we currently practise town planning to an ambitious programme for the entire reconstruction of society to achieve the conditions where people can thrive in the context of equality and social justice. The Garden City ideals were underpinned by the work of John Ruskin and William Morris which generated a deep concern to value nature both as a practical necessity for our survival but also for the way that it enriches the human spirit.

The relationship between these high aspirations and the TCPA’s often highly technical work on climate change can be hard to discern. Why have we spent more than 30 years focusing on the challenges of the growing climate crisis? Perhaps most obviously because climate change is clearly the greatest barrier to achieving all the values which have guided 125 years of the TCPA’s history. No planet no progress is an obvious reality. But the forces which have led to climate change also illustrate profound mistakes that humanity has made in the way we regard each other and the planet upon which we depend. We got into this mess because of a delusional attitude to nature based on endless extraction and consumption with no regard for obvious environmental limits. The reckless production of greenhouse gases is just one example of this disregard, the current shocking level of species extinction is another. This is a failure of a set of core beliefs which have dominated western thinking for 500 years and have led us to the brink of disaster.

The climate crisis is useful in illustrating the practical consequences of these delusional beliefs. Our failure to resolve that crisis represents all that's wrong in the current way we have chosen to organise ourselves. An obsession with short

termism, a refusal to acknowledge the reality of scientific evidence and a staggering failure to prepare ourselves for the future which is lapping at our doorsteps. All of this is set in a context where those with the least responsibility for climate change will be the most badly affected both in the UK and internationally. Our current desperate state shows a systemic failure to recognise the importance of nature to our well-being and of how distorted our democracy has become when it is more concerned with divisive trivia than our basic survival. We don't need to read any fiction to imagine a perfect dystopia, we are living through it’

We must be extremely careful in suggesting that there is any hope to be found in our current circumstances in case we fall into the very delusional assumptions that got us into this mess. But the history of the TCPA shows that hope can emerge from the darkest times.

During the Second World War the challenge was even more extreme for the civilian population and yet what emerged was one of the greatest periods of social progress in British history. In both cases the TCPA and the Garden City movement refused to surrender to the crushing negativity that conflict always generates. Instead, even amongst the height of the destruction, the TCPA’s moral obligation was fulfilled by beginning to plan for ambitious reconstruction.

It is that constructive and practical idealism which is so essential to navigating the intensifying climate crisis. So, let’s ask ourselves where we will be at the end of the next 125 years, the year 2150? The reality of our future is defined by two scenarios. The first is the most obvious and depressing. The politics of far-right nationalism along with the manufactured and appalling conflicts which we see around the globe delay effective action to radically

reduce greenhouse gases emissions condemning humanity to a desperate battle for survival. The scale of the climate damage will mean many of our world cities are underwater and the death toll from severe weather and starvation will run into the hundreds of millions. Rich nations and rich people will survive but the impact upon the poorest and most vulnerable will be extreme. It will be the ultimate dystopia in which the long-term prospects of humanity will be very bleak.

‘We don't need to read any fiction to imagine a perfect dystopia, we are living through it’

The second future will be defined by the same kind of systemic social transformation that accompanied the industrial revolution. It will have led by 2150 to a zero-carbon society in which overall global carbon dioxide concentrations have fallen below 400 parts per million and climate stability is beginning to return to the planet. That has been achieved by the

record deployment of all forms of renewable energy coupled with technological advances in battery storage. But these technological fixes will have been accompanied by a new moral philosophy of development comprising four core beliefs. That the purpose of social organization is to support the human thriving in all its diversity and underpinned by equality. That we recognise the indivisible relationship between nature and human well-being. That we have a circular economy which no longer depends on the extraction of primary resources nor the exploitation of human labour but seeks a fair and sustainable distribution of wealth. We have vibrant democracy which gives clear rights and meaningful agency to all citizens under an effective system of both global and local governance. Which of these two outcomes is most likely? In the UK context the breathtaking intransigence of the current government on climate policy points clearly towards disaster. On adaptation and mitigation, they have no credible strategy nor any political will to adopt one. They have failed in the most basic task of any government, which is to protect the basic security of its citizens. They have created a highly effective platform for systemic

Short-termism will lead to long-term harm

Freepik

failure in which the average citizen will pay a very heavy price.

We should not pretend that achieving the second outcome will be easy. Whilst the technologies are all available to us, our current politics will have to be transformed to secure a positive future. But there are two things that are absolute necessities for our survival. The first is that unbreakable human spirit when confronted with crisis that allows us to overcome the most enormous odds to achieve miraculous success. Our greatest enemy is losing that spirit and wallowing in understandable but dangerous demoralisation. The second vital element is that we have a strategic plan for national reconstruction which sets out the necessary transformation in the way we organise all aspects of our society in order to achieve a just transition to a zero-carbon society. Our survival will not be secured through the chaos of market forces or hoping for the best. It will be secured through visionary strategic plans with clear tactical outcomes.

‘Our survival will not be secured through the chaos of market forces or hoping for the best’

Our collective choice is clear, we can drift into the climate crisis unprepared, ill equipped and repeating and reinforcing the trends of inequality which blight human relations. Or we can face the future with practical realism and a determination to shape a new society defined by fairness and opportunity. That choice is in our hands, but time is running out fast. Our generation must make choices that will define the future of humanity. It is a heavy responsibility – a test not just for us but for the whole of our democracy. How should we meet the future? With realism but also with optimism and excitement. The future is in our hands, we just need to reach out and take it.

• Dr Hugh Ellis is Policy Director at the TCPA. All views expressed are personal.

Renewable energy generation is key to our utopian future. Green hydrogen production facility, Japan

The Government of Japan

snakes & ladders

How can anarchist theory help planners? Sue Brownill, Debbie Humphry and Jason Slade explain

communities, garden cities and Kropotkin

Over its 125-year history, a key thread of the work and philosophy of the Town and Country Planning Association has been the championing of what could be termed community planning. Although difficult to define, community or community-led planning (CLP) is an approach to planning and placemaking which is about, amongst other things, communities being in control, the inclusion and recognition of a wide array of ‘planning’ expertise and knowledge, local self-determination to determine and deliver appropriate and needed development, and the governance and mechanisms required to enable this, including the ownership of assets. To a large extent throughout its history, this approach has been intertwined with themes and ideas that the TCPA is perhaps better known for –its commitment to Garden Cities and more latterly to healthy cities and support for public participation in the more formalised planning system. So, the 125th anniversary is a perfect opportunity to highlight this important strand of the Association’s work in more detail and to explore the implications of bringing it into the spotlight both for the history of the TCPA and planning more broadly, but also for debates about where we are today and where we may go in the future.

As part of our recent project on the Hidden Histories of CLP,¹ which involved the TCPA as a partner, we examined Town & Country Planning and its predecessors (now available online as a fantastic resource) and spent some time looking at the TCPA’s physical collection of publications and documents, with this aim in mind. We also spoke to people involved with the TCPA, past and present. What we found is a long tradition of focusing on communities and planning, a fascinating history of the evolution of different approaches to CLP and a plethora of projects, debates and action. In particular, we were guided by a conversation with

Hugh Ellis, Director of Policy at the TCPA, to explore the changing dynamic over time between two approaches; one focused on community selfdetermination: ‘communities doing it for themselves’; and another on promoting community and public involvement in decision making in the more formal, state-led planning system. As evidence from the archives shows, the balance between these elements ebbs and flows over time, reflecting changing contexts and ideas about planning and debates within the TCPA itself.

One hundred and twenty-five years is a long time. So, in what follows we focus upon key time periods that help illustrate this shifting history. These are: the early years of the Association in the 1900s, the late 1940s, the 1960s and early 1970s, and the late 1980s. We conclude with some reflections on the present day.

The 1900s: origins

For the first postcard from history, we go back 120 years to the start of the Association’s journal, then called ‘The Garden City: The Official Organ of the Garden City Association’. This was the early days of the Garden City movement, just after Ebenezer Howard’s book was published in 1898 and during the time that Letchworth Garden City was being built (starting in 1903). Inevitably, Garden Cities and Letchworth feature heavily in the editions but what also struck us were an array of articles and letters that link Garden Cities to an approach in which communities have a significant amount of control. For example, there are a number of pieces on the links between Garden Cities and what is termed ‘co-partnership and co-operative housing’, including one in January 1906 detailing on-going schemes in Woolwich and Ealing. In August 1904, an article appears on co-operative communities in the United States as a precursor to Garden Cities and in 1907 (p. 217) and 1908 (p. 484) the Co-operative Society writes about a co-operative Garden City. In 1905, a letter Howard wrote to the Daily Mail about co-operative housekeeping is reproduced, which argues for shared facilities to be provided within housing schemes – what we might today understand as co-housing.

In many ways this should not be too much of a

surprise. The admiration that Howard had for the anarchist ideas of Peter Kropotkin is well known. These, rather than more popular perceptions of anarchism as brick-throwing and structurelessness, influenced the principles of self-determination and mutual ownership that are evident in how Letchworth was established, including the reinvestment of profits into the community.*

As Hugh Ellis told us:

‘the origins of that, therefore, go right to the heart of Letchworth, [that is] the principle of self-organisation, communities doing it for themselves… it is about communities making decisions and then owning those decisions through the mechanism that Howard set up.’

Therefore, these two elements – the idea of Garden Cities and the mechanisms to achieve them – together have to be seen as foundational to the Garden City movement. It is this element of the relationship between planning and communities that takes centre stage in the Association’s Journal at this time. This is to some extent understandable during a period when there was little in the way of national planning legislation and limited opportunities for consultation and public participation. Nevertheless, the richness of the debate; the number of examples that appear, and the obvious enthusiasm around the country for collective solutions are all apparent.

The 1940s: New Towns and planning systems

By contrast, the pages of Town & Country Planning in the 1940s reflect a move to a more

‘formal’ and state-led solution, centred around the New Towns programme and the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. The articles often explore participation in this more formalised planning system rather than the land-based and community control elements of the 1900s. This could in some senses reflect a more pragmatic and deliveryfocused view of Garden Cities and New Towns given the development of state-led interest and funding – a view shared by the then editor of the TCPA Journal, Frederic James Osborn (FJO). It could reflect in part the issues and obstacles experienced in establishing the early Garden Cities, but it could also arguably be seen as an ironing out of the more ‘difficult’ aspects of mutualism, anarchism, and collective provision in the original conceptions of Garden Cities.

This is not to say that there is complete silence on CLP related issues. For example, in March 1940 (p. 29) there is a critical commentary on current planning and in August 1940 (p. 69) community planning is mentioned. However, this is very much in the sense of planning facilities for the community, that is the planner considers the physical/land-use elements but needs to work with ‘students of social democracy and social relations’.

Individual examples of ‘good practice’ in participation such as the Knutsford Plan get a good write-up. In 1946 (pp. 110-114), there is a long article about the Middlesbrough Plan, focusing upon the participatory approach of Max Lock and his team, with multiple photographs showing workshops that prefigured the Planning for Real® of the 1970s and 1980s. In the same year, on page 78, there is an article on neighbourhoods in planning and on page 124 there is even one on planning and marriage guidance, talking about the impact of places on personal relations!

Reflecting the lobbying interests of the TCPA at the time, there is also considerable commentary on the 1947 Town and Country Planning Bill and Act. However, this often focuses more upon the involvement of a relatively well-off population than on the basic principles. Nevertheless, FJO also uses the pages of the TCPA Journal during this time to build support for more education about planning –one of his key concerns – which was to become a recurring theme in TCPA work in later years.

1968 and all that

The 1960s represent a pivotal moment in the history of community action and planning and it is interesting to see how this is reflected in the archives. At the start of the decade, the TCPA Journal is still edited by FJO and the focus remains

Cover of one of the first editions of The Garden City, a precursor of Town & Country Planning

firmly upon the New Towns, state-led industrial restructuring and planning, with Garden City ideals looming large. At this time concerns appear about community focus and how this element may have been neglected in planning for the New Towns, with suggestions for how this might be remedied. But the arguments do not return to the original intertwining of the Garden City movement with a CLP approach. The focus upon the participation of people within the formal system remains but it is framed in a context of how to accommodate an increasingly well-educated and affluent citizen with ever more leisure time. As well as the right to

‘The admiration that Howard had for the anarchist ideas of Peter Kropotkin is well known.’

participate and be heard democratically, ‘he’ may want a second home and the ability to access the countryside easily in ‘‘his’ motor car(s)’ [sic].

This concern with participation in the formal system continues towards the end of the decade. The Skeffington Committee into participation in planning was set up in 1968 and FJO does not hold back from criticising the make-up of the committee:

‘It astonishes me that the official committee… with a membership of twenty-eight, contains nineteen councillors and officers of government and only five that can be regarded as representing unofficial citizens and their voluntary associations. There is no representative of the TCPA, which has surely done more than any other body to stimulate public participation in planning. Nor are there any members of local civic societies… It is a remarkably ill-balanced committee for its highly important purposes.’

(Town & Country Planning, 1968, Vol. 36(6) Jun., 285)

The TCPA submission to the committee is also printed in full. But again, this is about participation in the formal planning system. The late 1960s are often seen as witnessing an upsurge in community action and advocacy planning. However, new movements and campaigns – for example, around motorways and slum clearance – which might be expected to deserve increased coverage are surprisingly sparsely covered in the TCPA Journal. There is a new section called People and Planning but this covers consultation issues and not necessarily CLP.

Yet, there are some signs of change. Firstly, there

is increasing coverage of some growing movements, such as adventure playgrounds in London and a focus upon children in the cityinfluenced by Colin Ward, later Director of the Education Unit at the TCPA. Secondly, the issue of how communities can get their voices heard through self-organisation is featured, with civic societies and civic trusts being particularly prominent. Thirdly there is the recurring issue of information and education for planning. There is also evidence that the framing of planning from a TCPA perspective is very much in terms of a focus on social matters. Articles refer to the dangers of an overly economic focus and the need for planners to have a social science training. Therefore, the possibilities for a rebalancing of the relationship are put in place.

1970s to mid 1980s: CLP to the fore?

This section covers a relatively long and busy period, when the social, economic and political context and the evolution of the work of the TCPA come together in a way that puts CLP in the vanguard.

Although coverage of community issues in the Journal ebbs and flows in the early to mid 1970s, there is evidence of growing support and activity around CLP. This includes the growth of Colin Ward’s work around adventure playgrounds and articles and books that re-explore an anarchist approach to planning. In January 1971, the Planning Aid service was launched, with the aim of levelling the playing field for people who are traditionally excluded from, or without the resources to engage effectively with, the planning system. This was also an effort to further democratise planning. Nevertheless, it is only from 1974 that a regular series of Planning Aid case notes appears in the TCPA Journal.

With the arrival of Colin Ward and his deputy, Tony Fyson, in 1973 there is a change of tone in Town & Country Planning. The framing of articles betrays an ebbing confidence in the potential, inevitability and desirability of top-down, ‘technical’ solutions. For example, the circulars produced in 1971 to implement recommendations in the Skeffington Report are heavily criticised. In parallel with this more forceful critique of ‘official’ participation there is a renewed focus upon community-based initiatives. The first time a community plan is referred to is in April 1971 (p. 227) – the Golborne Community Plan in North Kensington. Alternative technologies and rural self-sufficiency are explored through the Dartington model, whilst we have reports on the first

snakes & ladders

community-claimed city farms in London. Insurgency, self-help and co-operativism re-emerge, with coverage of the contestation at Coin Street;² community enterprise under the Westway in London; Walter Segal’s self-build houses;³ housing co-operatives in Glasgow and Nottingham, and workers co-operatives in Mondragon, Spain.⁴

During this time the focus of the TCPA upon planning education steps up a gear. This is reflected in extensive coverage of environmental education. In May 1972 (p. 261), the National Association for Urban Studies was formed, with the aim of promoting urban studies and facilitating participation in planning decisions. In 1973, with Colin Ward as founder editor, the TCPA started to publish the Bulletin of Environmental Education (BEE), which promoted urban environmental studies programmes. Then, in 1974, the Council for Urban Studies Centres was formed to encourage the establishment of urban field studies centres.⁵ Editions of BEE in the TCPA archive make for fascinating reading. Continuing this theme of opening planning up both democratically and in terms of expertise, the TCPA also set up technical aid centres, such as in Manchester, which worked with communities particularly in inner city areas to address their planning issues. In Issue 74, a Citizen’s Guide to Town Planning is referred to. In addition, the work of Tony Gibson, including publication of books by the TCPA such as Us Plus Them, and the work on Planning for Real® in Birkenhead, Wirral and later in Lightmoor, Shropshire put these principles into practice.

Speaking about this time Hugh Ellis remarks that with this work:

‘They're reinventing the Kropotkin proposition and saying ‘well actually we don't really need planners as a profession. You know what, why do we need these people, what we want to do is take back direct control for communities.’

Participation is not being promoted for its own sake but for how it can open up and be linked to a wider programme of enabling democracy. In addition, these alternative mechanisms of delivery in many ways splice those two strands of participation and CLP.

The wider sector played a significant role during this time. The TCPA was able to tap into and become part of a network of groups, individuals, projects and organisations – all arguing and working for advocacy planning, self-determination and community control. Many of these, including some TCPA initiatives, were funded through local and central government programmes such as the Urban

Programme, which was targeted at inner cities. However, it is noticeable that the 1970s ends with an editorial about how urban studies centres and other community groups are beginning to close.

Into the 1980s, CLP issues are now firmly on the TCPA Journal’s agenda – given a heightened significance by the changing and highly polarised political context. The national government was hostile to planning as a participatory state activity but, alongside this there are examples of local government pursuing a quite different agenda (such as in London and Sheffield). The battles between local and national manifestations of the State are well-evidenced in the Journal, with the community’s potential role placed front and centre stage and clear calls for decentralisation in a range of spheres.

Key examples such as Coin Street, Liverpool and London Docklands are covered. There is also discussion of the legal and financial basis for supporting community initiatives and critiques of policies that prevent this. Planning Aid goes on the road with its mobile unit and develops along more critical and political directions – one example of this being the support for the Divis community’s campaign in Belfast for the demolition and rebuilding of their estate.⁶ The Divis exhibition hosted by the TCPA in London in 1985, covered by the TCPA Journal seems to have been quite influential in this shift within the TCPA.

In May 1980, Colin Ward writes further about the continuation of Howard’s Kropotkinism and about how CLP appeals ‘to philosophies of both the

Cover of Bulletin of Environmental Education (BEE), October 1983

political right and the post-Marxist left’ (p. 161).

TCPA Director, David Hall, talks more openly about the need for ‘‘bottom-up’ planning and the third Garden City Initiative’, which has a ‘manifesto’ that enshrines CLP within it (October 1980 p. 326). In another article (Why we need community planning (March 1987 pp. 89-90)) David Hall talks about community planning zones and the overall need to support CLP. After the 1987 general election, Gibson puts forward a neighbourhood manifesto (July-August p. 298).

There is therefore clear evidence of the foundational elements and the different approaches to participation coalescing at this time, but funding cuts for services such as Planning Aid and local groups, as well as the continued shift in planning towards a more market-oriented and less democratic process, as documented in the TCPA Journal, made this difficult to sustain.

Into the present day

It would be too simplistic, and it is not our intention, to say that the period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s was a ‘golden age’ for CLP and the TCPA’s approach to it, from which there has been a steady decline. Nor are we implying that CLP represents an unproblematic practice that deserves uncritical support. Instead, we hope we have shown through this examination of the pages of the TCPA Journal and collection of publications, the long history of the TCPA's support for communities and how this has changed and evolved over time.

In this way the 1970s and 1980s arguably represented a context within which it was possible to bring together the different strands of the TCPA’s work and those different approaches to communities in a sustained and balanced way. Space and the scope of our project unfortunately precludes as detailed an exploration of the following 40 years, but as we approach the present day our work has identified an enduring commitment within the TCPA to communities along with the same ebb and flow of coverage and the continuing shift in balance between different approaches.

New concerns have emerged particularly around health, the environment and climate change alongside the continued promotion of Garden City principles. The focus upon democratic involvement and participation has persisted since the Raynsford Review.⁷ And significantly the TCPA is continuing to work with and support initiatives such as Incredible Edible and another alternative community plan in Belfast on the Mackies site,⁸ which took to realise those foundational principles of community

self-determination and control, as well as exploring the collective mechanisms currently available to deliver Garden Cities.

Moving forward, it is important not only to recognise CLP as a discipline but to embed it within all areas of planning practice; in effect to intertwine foundational elements with practical approaches. Within this perhaps one of the most significant lessons is the need to press for the reintroduction of the national networks of support and funding that proved to be such a crucial part of ensuring an effective mix in the past. But we also hope that we have shown how the creative tension between these approaches has sparked debate and led to different possibilities and outcomes emerging throughout the longstanding relationships between the TCPA and communities. May this continue for at least the next 125 years!

• Prof. Sue Brownill is at Oxford Brookes University. Dr Debbie Humphry is at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr Jason Slade is a Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. All views expressed are personal. Copies of Town & Country Planning published between 1904 and 2005 and other documents relating to the TCPA's history are available to view free of charge here: archive.tcpa.org.uk

Notes

1 See: https://www.peoplesplans.org Grant number AH/ T00729X/1

2 ‘Small Scale Utopia. The Coin Street's Case’. Blog. a+t architecture publishers, 19 Jan. 2009. https://aplust.net/ blog/_small_scale_utopia_the_coin_streets_case/

3 ‘Walter Segal’. Webpage. Wikipedia®, 2 Oct. 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Segal

4 ‘Mondragon Corporation’. Webpage. Wikipedia®, 30 Oct. 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_ Corporation

5 B Scott: ‘Environmental education in England 1960 to 1979 - a pen picture’. Blog. University of Bath, 18 Oct. 2020. https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/edswahs/2020/10/18/ a-sketch-of-environmental-education-in-england-1960to-1979/

6 L Petersen: ‘Life and Death in Divis Flats: The Enduring Symbolism of a 1960s Belfast Housing Project’. Webpage. War & Peace in Northern Ireland, 2 Jun. 2023. https://posc284.posc.sites.carleton.edu/uncategorized/ life-and-death-in-divis-flats-the-enduring-symbolism-ofa-1960s-belfast-housing-project/

7 'The Raynsford Review of Planning'. Online resource. Town and Country Planning Association, Nov. 2018. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/resources/the-raynsfordreview-of-planning/

8 See: https://www.takebackthecity.ie

Editor’s Note: *It is notable that this approach continues to this day because Letchworth Garden City is managed by a community benefit society – a type of co-operative, owned by its members.

bird’s eye view

Catriona Riddell asks: despite faltering progress, is regional planning making a political come-back?

the role of strategic planning in delivering sustainable development

As someone who has worked and lived in the South East of England for over 30 years, and played key roles in how it is planned during this time, the history of London’s post war planning journey and its influence on the wider ‘city region’ has always been of interest. Looking back at Sir Patrick Abercrombie's post war vision and the London County Council’s Greater London Plan 1944, it was clear that making London a healthier and happier place to live and work in was key. These were integrated plans which looked at what type of housing was needed, how this would work from a transport perspective, where employment land should be located and what was needed to support healthy living, particularly in relation to providing adequate greenspace.

To create this vision, Londoners were asked what they wanted and needed. In a film made to promote the plan,1 it was made clear that planners:

‘had to learn what people were thinking and what they wanted… to know what sort of homes they lived in and how and where they spent their leisure hours.'

There was recognition that supporting community cohesion mattered:

‘A city exists because men have realised that by living together, they can enjoy many advantages. The idea of people living in communities has formed the basis of our plan.'

A large part of the Greater London Plan 1944 was implemented and continues to play a critical role in how London and the wider areas are planned today- the Green Belt and the M25 being two of the key planks.

The view that healthy homes are just as important as the bricks and mortar that hold buildings together is still core to today’s London Plan 2 The scale of change envisaged within the city itself was not fully realised in the post war era, mainly due to lack of funding, but the philosophy of a plan based on human and community needs as opposed to ticking a box on housing numbers still has a clear legacy. Cities continue to be where most of the UK’s population live and work, despite the impact of the 2020 pandemic and the availability of technology that allows remote working. They are also where investment in public transport is prioritised and as such, continue to be favoured by successive governments for supporting national growth, especially the capital, which remains a ‘world city’.

In developing his vision for Greater London, Abercrombie also acknowledged the importance of ensuring that London worked as part of the wider South East. The post war new and expanded towns programme and investment in transport systems connecting them, was part of this and many of these areas remain vital to supporting London’s economic role today. Some, however, are now taking on an economic life of their own, recognising that, with the right vision and investment, they have their own economic potential and no longer need to rely fully upon their relationship with London. For example, Milton Keynes is increasingly looking north towards the midlands and to Oxford and Cambridge, and South Hampshire is increasingly looking to build its own economy and its relationship with places along the Dorset coast. A formal regional approach to strategic planning emerged as a result of the post war recognition of the role wider regions would play in the economic future of England’s cities. It may have been triggered initially by the need to support the managed population growth of London, but it was part of a national industrial strategy that recognised the value planning played in growing the nation’s economy and ensuring that the growth of one city or part of the country was not at the expense of another.

It was the start of levelling up.

A pivotal point in the history of planning in England and the need for a strategic approach across all regions came in the first half of the 1960s. It was evident by then that there was no clear plan for how the government envisaged employment growth to be distributed across the country and the role of migration and immigration in supporting this. It also became clear that without a national strategy for growth, there was a risk that a disproportionate amount of investment would go to the South East and not support any wider redistribution of growth, especially to the North.

The Conservative government at the time, with Sir Keith Joseph in charge of housing and planning, initiated the South East Study which had three main purposes: to provide for the growth of population in the South East region; to relieve the pressure on London; and to make enough land available to end the housing shortage in the South East. The study was a pilot for other regional studies and was published in 1964, just before the general election that returned a Labour government. To capture the importance of this study, not only for London and the South East but also for the nation's

economy as a whole, it is worth looking at one particular debate in Parliament from the 4 May 1964.3

The main speech came from Michael Stewart, MP for Fulham and shortly to become the new Labour government’s Secretary of State for Education and Science. He argued that, whilst a need to plan for the growth of London on a 'city region' scale was evident, there were a number of weaknesses in how the approach to planning for growth in the South East would be implemented as a result of the study.

Concerns were raised that the plans for the South East were being prepared in a silo, not only in relation to what the government’s approach to economic growth nationally was but also in terms of the lack of cohesion across different government departments and ministerial priorities. There was a clear disconnect between what the government was doing on transport, especially in relation to the plans for new and expanded communities in the South East and implementation of the Beeching Report recommendations4 which would see rail stations closed where population growth was being directed.

View across city of London from Muswell Hill

‘…we cannot study this problem of the South-East satisfactorily until we know a little more about the Government’s policy on the distribution of employment and its influence upon the distribution of population… what ought to have preceded the southern study was at least a sketch plan by the Government of how they see the distribution of employment and population in the next 20 years… first and foremost, we must have a national physical development plan for the whole country, at least in broad outline, before we can hope to plan sensibly at regional levels.’

The Labour Party also pointed out that implementation of the study would require resources to support planning staff in the local planning authorities which were then the county councils, and that a ‘pooled’ regional resource would be needed. Resources would also be needed to support infrastructure and to find the land to deliver the new homes needed, with concerns raised about the hope value and land value increases that would inevitably result from the study’s proposals.

The market-led approach to growth promoted by the Conservatives was also challenged by Michael Stewart who argued that increased public ownership (including of land) and state interventions, especially in planning, were essential components for managing growth successfully and that the government had to play a central part in this. Planning should be seen as a force for good, not a restrictive tool on growth.

‘There is the liberty of the individual to be able to do his work in happiness, able to get from his home to work and from his work to play and to have a chance of planning and choosing his own life. We cannot get that kind of liberty by a negative approach alone. It has to be done by positive and constructive planning. Government activity today is an instrument through which liberty can be created and must be created.’

To counter the opposition’s criticism of the government’s approach, Sir Keith Joseph pointed out that this was an attempt to recognise the value of the South East as the economic engine of the country, whilst balancing the need to support other parts of the country. There was also a very clear view that the physical growth of London outwards was not part of the strategy and that the metropolitan Green Belt therefore had a critical role to play.

A Strategy for the South East – planned London overspill schemes as at June 1967, p. 165

‘We must relieve the pressure on London; we must hold the green belt; and we must provide enough land to meet the housing shortage while preserving the maximum possible amount of undeveloped land in the South-East… We must achieve all these objectives without harming the rest of the country and without damaging the investment priorities which, for some years, have been promised to Scotland and the North-East. Since the South-East makes a great contribution to the national prosperity, we must also achieve all this without in any way hampering or crippling the prosperity of the South-East, which is a national asset.’

This was the genesis of a formalised approach to strategic and regional planning in England, recognising for the first time that a planned approach was needed in the interests of maximising the economic potential of the country as well as balancing the needs of the capital with the rest of the country. It was the first time it was recognised that changing the way the country works both inter and intra-regionally required a long term approach, one that could also be responsive to changes over time. It was also the first time that it was acknowledged that change on this scale could not happen without the appropriate interventions at different levels of government, the right resources and implementation over a long term.

A Strategy for the South East ⁵ and other regional strategies that emerged from this process in the

late 1960s were taken forward through the governance and policy infrastructure of the new Labour government and not the Conservative government that initiated it. Vitally, these were seen as economic vehicles and were therefore managed through the regional planning councils of the

regional economic boards established by the Department of Economic Affairs.

Although there was no national spatial plan within which these all fitted, they were primarily there to implement the government's national industrial strategy and the sum of the parts had to add up. This meant that the global economic role London and the South East played was supported but not at the cost of other parts of the country.

‘We are not putting forward expansionist plans for the South East at the expense of other regions; this report is a sober assessment of what needs to be done if the region is to continue to make its contribution to the country’s economy. Entry into the Common Market could well increase the importance of this contribution. Some of the region’s problems are formidable, for example, the urban renewal of areas of London, the construction of major transport systems, the development of new large city regions and the protection of the lovely countryside in many parts of the region; but they must be tackled if the region is to continue to play the important part in the national economy which it is vital for us all that it should do.’

Diagrammatic presentation of A Strategy for the South East, p.85

South East England Strategy 2008 – key diagram

Strategic spatial planning continued to play a key economic role through successive models at both the regional and sub-regional levels during the next four decades until it was dismantled by the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition government in 2010. It is important to revisit history and learn from both the good and the bad. As we move closer to a general election and a potential new government, it is also important to consider what we have lost as a result of the changes made to the planning system since 2010. So many of the challenges we face today are still the same as in the 1960s; how we plan for city growth without expanding their geographical spread and ensure they are sustainable (and the role Green Belt policy plays in this, where relevant); how we ensure we have an integrated approach to growth with housing an important but not exclusive issue; how we invest in infrastructure; and in the planning resources needed to manage plans for growth.

Probably the most significant change in how we use planning since the demise of regional planning in 2010 is its role in supporting economic growth and in planning long term. The irony is that the Conservative government of the 1960s initiated one of the most important changes in how we plan in history, recognising the need for state intervention to support economic growth, yet it was the Conservative governments from the 2010s that destroyed this. From David Cameron’s branding of planners in local authorities as the ‘enemies of enterprise’ in 20116 to Boris Johnson’s attack on planning in his 2020 White Paper,7 planning has lost its way in its role to support economic growth. Today, planning is seen as something that restricts growth, that prevents things from happening. Politicians at all levels do not want to take on planning responsibilities because of this; it is just too hard.

It is 60 years since that significant debate and we have never needed a positive and proactive approach to strategic planning across England as much as we do today, to tackle global economic and climate challenges; deliver the investment needed to support healthy and happy places, and to level up the socio-economic disparities. Despite the attempts to spread growth across the country in the 1960s, regional inequalities have grown progressively worse. The absence of an effective approach to strategic planning over the last 14 years has taken its toll and successive reports have acknowledged this, including the 2020 Raynsford Review which concluded that: '…the decision taken in 2010 to abolish regional plans and the organisational and intellectual

capital they contained was a major mistake and has made the job of producing sustainable growth much more complex.’⁸

More recently, a report by Harvard University with Ed Balls (Economic Secretary to the Treasury (2006-2007)) as one of the main authors, set out ten recommendations to get Britain’s economy growing again.9 Amongst other things, it recognised that the cities and regions outside of London and the South East have to play a much bigger role; that a national ‘Growth and Productivity Strategy’ was needed, and that all parts of the UK should have devolved systems of governance with mayoral combined authorities as the preferred model, thereby reducing reliance on centralised policy and interventions.

The second recommendation of the report sets out what the ‘Growth and Productivity Strategy’ should focus on. This includes a recommendation for sub-regional bodies (combined authorities): ‘to adopt a statutory spatial economic development strategy, which local spatial development plans should conform to. These strategies should be agreed by a qualified majority vote of local authorities, and should include plans for infrastructure including transport, energy and water, and an overall housing target. If they can’t agree, mayors should have the power to impose a plan. Mayors should be able to ‘call in’ decisions from local authorities if they do not confirm to the spatial development strategy.’

The current government appeared to recognise the vital role that strategic spatial planning needs to play in supporting economic growth and levelling up disparities in the 2022 Levelling Up White Paper This stated that a: ‘well-directed spatial strategy would address two market failures at source – the first affecting leftbehind places, the second afflicting well-performing places… That is the essence of levelling up.’10

This was lost in translation, however, through the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, which makes no real attempt to bring an effective approach to strategic planning back into the mix. Arguably, it has weakened the few mechanisms we have to deliver cross boundary cooperation by repealing the legal duty to cooperate and putting in place a yet unknown policy tool.11

The Labour Party may well form the next government and although we do not know yet in any detail what role strategic planning will play in this, we do know that it will be a core part of a

Labour government planning system. Matthew Pennycook MP, the Shadow Housing and Planning Minister, made this clear in the recent Westminster debate on planning reform.12

‘There is no way to meet housing need in England without planning for growth on a larger than local scale. However, this Government, for reasons I suspect are more ideological than practical, are now presiding over a planning system that lacks any effective sub-regional frameworks for cross-boundary planning… If we are to overcome housing delivery challenges around towns and cities with tightly drawn administrative boundaries we must have an effective mechanism for crossboundary strategic planning, and a Labour Government will introduce one.’

So much has changed in the 60 years since we started on a formalised approach to strategic planning but the need for something that helps support long term sustainable growth in the interests of the country as a whole remains the same, if not even greater given the wider global challenges we face as a country. There is a chance that this might happen in the near future, but it will depend upon a government that recognises the true value of planning as a positive tool for supporting sustainable growth and not the negative regulatory tool it has become over the last decade.

• Catriona Riddell is Director of Catriona Riddell & Associates, a TCPA vice-chair, and Strategic Planning Specialist for the Planning Officers Society. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 The Proud City – a plan for London (1945) Directed by Ralph Keene. London, England: A Greenpark Production in association with the Film Producers Guild Ltd for the Ministry of Information. Available to view at: https://archive.org/details/ProudCity

2 See https://www.london.gov.uk/programmesstrategies/planning/london-plan

3 The South-East Study. HC Deb 04 May 1964, vol. 694, cols. 919-1050. This was a key debate on the results of the pilot regional study, for the South East, which had been commissioned by the Conservative Government, with Sir Keith Joseph leading as Minister for Housing and Local Government. https://api.parliament.uk/ historic-hansard/commons/1964/may/04/the-southeast-study#S5CV0694P0_19640504_HOC_245

4 ‘Beeching Cuts’. Webpage. Wikipedia. 9 Mar. 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts

5 A Strategy for the South East – A first report by the South East Economic Planning Council. HMSO, 1967. Digitised by the University of Southampton Library Digitisation Unit, available at: https://archive.org/ details/op1267945-1001/mode/2up

6 D Cameron: Speech to Conservative Spring Conference, Cardiff, 6 Mar. 2011. https://www. newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2011/03/ enterprise-government-party

7 Planning for the Future. White Paper. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Aug. 2020. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/601bce418fa8f53fc149bc7d/MHCLG-PlanningConsultation.pdf

8 ‘Planning 2020 'One Year On' - 21st Century Slums?. Town and Country Planning Association, Jan. 2020, p.20. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ Raynsford_Review_one_year_on_WEBSITE-1.pdf

9 N Weinberg, D Turner, E Elsden, E Balls, A Stansbury: A Growth Policy to Close Britain's Regional Divides: What Needs to be Done. Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and Harvard University, Feb. 2024 https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/ files/centers/mrcbg/working.papers/Final_AWP_225.pdf

10 Levelling Up the United Kingdom. White Paper. CP 604. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. 2 Feb. 2022. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/media/61fd3ca28fa8f5388e9781c6/ Levelling_up_the_UK_white_paper.pdf

11 The statutory requirement for local planning authorities to work together on strategic matters was introduced by §110 of the Localism Act 2011, which inserted §33A into Part 2 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. This was the main strategic planning mechanism to replace strategic (regional) planning. However, it has been highly criticised over the years as being ineffective because it is not a ‘duty to agree’. Indeed, the Government’s Local Plan Expert Group in 2016 concluded that: ‘local plans are rarely coordinated in time and, whilst the Duty to Cooperate may encourage joint working between pairs of authorities, it is not sufficient in itself to generate strategic planning across wider areas… Apart from calls to revise [Strategic Housing Market Assessments], the call to facilitate strategic planning was the most frequent point made by respondents to our consultation – respondents in both the public and private sector – who recognise that some issues of agreeing the distribution of housing needs may prove intractable without a wider plan.’ Local Plans Expert Group: ‘Report to the Communities Secretary and to the Minister of Housing and Planning’. Mar. 2016, S18-S19, p.3. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/5a81813aed915d74e33fe924/Local-plans-reportto-governement.pdf

12 Planning Reform. HC Deb 13 Mar. 2024, Vol. 747, Col. 110WH. https://hansard.parliament.uk/ commons/2024-03-13/debates/65995D50-E335-444C8065-405F91548338/PlanningReform

Professor Emeritus Patsy Healey OBE FBA FAcSS

1 January 1940 – 7 March 2024

Patsy Healey was professor emeritus at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University and Founding Editor of the journal Planning Theory and Practice, jointly published by Taylor & Francis and the Royal Town Planning Institute.

Patsy joined Newcastle University in 1988 as the third Chair of Town Planning, having previously held posts at Oxford Brookes University. She led the then Department of Town Planning through a transformative period, and significantly enhanced its international reputation.

As a founding member and former president of the Association of European Schools of Planning, Patsy went on to become a leading figure in the world of planning education and research. Her work and innovative ideas helped influence policy and planning practices and demonstrated her commitment and dedication to shaping cities and building communities. This is aptly illustrated in her final book Caring for Place – Community Development in Rural England (2023)

Patsy’s contributions to planning theory, education and practice are internationally recognised as reflected in her various accolades. She was a Fellow of University College London; an Honorary Fellow of the Association of European Schools of Planning and held an honorary degree from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In 1999 Patsy was awarded an OBE for services to planning. In 2006 she was presented with the highly prestigious Royal Town Planning Institute Gold Medal. In 2009 she was made a Fellow of the

British Academy. In addition to her academic achievements, Patsy has made major contributions to her local community in her capacity as Chair of the Glendale Community Trust in Northumberland, always championing the ethos of the collective and the power of local civil society initiatives.

A truly remarkable academic, Patsy is held in great affection by her colleagues, former students and peers. Her generosity, kindness and care for others were second to none. Patsy has inspired a community of planners in the UK, and beyond, and she will undoubtedly continue to inspire future generations of planners through the legacy of intellectual contributions that she leaves behind. She will be greatly missed.

An online Book of Remembrance1 is available for anyone who wishes to leave a message.

Reproduced with the kind permission of Newcastle University

Note 1 https://rememberancebook.net/book/patsy-healey/

harnessing towns and cities for better growth

Nicholas Falk and Richard Simmons explain how a ‘considered reset of how we do development’ could transform the economy and reinvigorate urban life

The next government must tackle low productivity in our cities before it can make real progress on its vital mission to boost the UK’s miserable economic growth. We propose four steps to revive conurbations as economic and social powerhouses, creating places that add extra value by promoting wellbeing and sustainable living, not just short-term financial rewards.¹

1. Learning from what works

2. Restoring spatial planning

3. Using stations as development hubs

4. Innovation in finance and tenure

Both major political parties advocate building many more homes faster to solve the housing crisis and boost economic growth. The Conservatives have shifted from mandatory targets and George Osborne’s Garden Cities to brownfield development. Labour intends to ‘bulldoze’ the planning system and build 1.5 million homes in five years.²

Yet neither party seems willing to address the fundamentals. The bulk of UK output comes from cities whose performance is generally poor compared with their continental equivalents.³ Fractured local government; failure to devolve decisions to the most appropriate level, including the abolition of regional planning; the dominance of volume house builders, and a finance system biased

towards property all contribute to the lowest per capita economic growth rate and the highest house price inflation in Europe.⁴ This malaise has persisted for at least four decades.⁵

We need a considered reset of how we do development, especially in areas with the greatest growth potential. Housing can only play a positive role in getting Britain moving if it is combined with measures to improve local infrastructure – with a strategy to intervene where government and its partners can make most difference.⁶ Reinvigorating urban life through targeted investment will boost productivity, promote wellbeing and help us meet environmental goals such as restoring natural capital.

Rather than simply axing planning controls, we must learn from what worked in the past and what still works in much of Europe – focusing on building better, well-connected neighbourhoods, not just new homes, and tapping financial institutions for development partnerships. Finally, to be sustainable, growth needs to follow models closer to those of the foundational economy,⁷ doughnut economics⁸ and the circular economy⁹ rather than the market theories espoused by most think tanks.10

1. Learning from what works

The immediate solutions lie in rebuilding our capacity to deliver results quickly. Policies like the Dutch VINEX programme prove local leadership and

Vinex suburbs, Randstad, The Netherlands

Nicholas Falk

devolution of powers pay off. Across The Netherlands, 95 urban extensions increased the housing stock by 7.6% over ten years.11

With over 10,000 homes, the urban extension of Vathorst in the mid-sized town of Amersfoort is one of the most popular places to live, kicked off by a new railway station. Amersfoort was the Academy of Urbanism’s European City of the Year in 2023.

But we should also learn from closer to home. Historically, both major political parties sparked urban growth using innovative mechanisms. This included Development Corporations under Labour in the post war New Towns – a model adapted by the Conservatives for urban regeneration in the 1980s and now for housing growth. Partnerships conceived by the Tories in the City Challenge programme were adapted by Labour to administer and deliver successive rounds of the Single Regeneration Budget programme. English Partnerships and regional development agencies created thriving housing markets and quality regeneration in places like Ancoats, Manchester and in the centre of Nottingham.12 Labour’s approach to urban renaissance, recommended by the Urban Task Force led by Richard Rogers, was starting to deliver before the financial collapse in the US housing market precipitated a change of government.

A more recent example of smarter growth can be seen at Eddington, North West Cambridge. Inspired by a study tour to the Netherlands and Germany, Cambridge University decided to lead development of its own land into a place ‘designed for twenty-

first century sustainable living’. A bond issue raised £350 million, enabling advance infrastructure investment, which included an innovative sustainable urban drainage scheme. The first phase included 700 homes for staff, 700 market homes and 350 rooms for post-graduates – all designed by leading architects – plus shops and community facilities. The scheme shows the value of proactive planning by a progressive landowner in securing innovation.

‘Housing can only play a positive role in getting Britain moving if it is combined with measures to improve local infrastructure’

These domestic successes have three common elements: a coherent change strategy; a budget to build confidence, and skilled, dedicated teams. All three are singularly lacking in most places nowadays. Generations of politicians and professionals from the 1970s to the early 2000s had economic, planning and infrastructure delivery skills to broker change. The skills required to work in small multidisciplinary teams; focus upon outcomes not inputs; manage large urban development programmes and build partnerships that engage investors and communities are in short supply. Rebuilding a cadre of energetic and knowledgeable practitioners and leaders is a first priority.

Vathorst, Amersfoort, The Netherlands

Nicholas Falk

2. Restore spatial planning

It is time to replace our tortuous adversarial planning system with an integrated model of strategic spatial planning for housebuilding and infrastructure linked to a ‘green’ economic base. This can provide a strong sense of shared ambition, bringing stakeholders on board to ensure smoother delivery of better placemaking. URBED’s report for Sheffield’s growth as a Garden City illustrates how a well-visualised plan can win support from business, developers, local people and environmentalists, offering a model for spatial planning from city to neighbourhood.13

The digital revolution should make it much easier to bring together different sources of data at a sub-regional level in the manner that the Digital Planning Task Force has recommended.14 The Royal Society for the Arts’ Urban Futures Commission recommends strengthening data and modelling capabilities. Spatial science can map social and natural capital and travel patterns to identify the best growth points. It might also be used to assess the extra wealth created through effective strategic plans, rather than relying upon the sometimes dubious claims of site promoters. It helps local partnerships turn plans into places by evaluating the impact of different options and scenarios on a multiplicity of objectives. Cambridgeshire did this in the Structure Plan that has shaped its growth to date. Greater Cambridge is now using Bioregional’s innovative carbon calculator to optimise site selection.15, 16

The technology is there. What about the art of urbanism? When it called for an urban renaissance, Lord Rogers of Riverside’s multidisciplinary Urban Task Force (UTF) learnt from how European cities like Rotterdam rebuilt themselves after the Second World War.17 The UTF report drew upon a lot of accrued wisdom about how to shape places for the better. English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation complemented this with comprehensive advice on delivery in a companion to their Urban Design Compendium 18 Both are still useful.

Whatever one thinks of standard house types, the creation of beautiful neighbourhoods has been a challenge, as housing audits have revealed.19 Yet there is long history of providing advice for developers and local planning authorities. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) played an important role before its effective abolition in 2011. Its advice is still available online.20 The 2009 World Class Places strategy, introduced by Gordon Brown’s Labour government, was ditched by the Conservative/ Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010.21 The de facto hiatus in design policy that followed was, thankfully, ended by the Building Better Building Beautiful report, Living with Beauty. This was followed by the National Design Guide, the National Model Design

Code and an updated National Planning Policy Framework mandating design coding.22 If there is a hole in skills, it is in writing effective codes.

Richard Simmons undertook a review of a small sample of developer-written codes in 2023 for a non-governmental organisation and found a wide variation in quality – from detailed roadmaps to justifications for standard estate and house design without even a controlling diagram. The Office for Place, university design schools and architecture and built environment centres are trying to fill the skills gap, but all is dependent upon local authorities having the ambition to raise quality standards.

3. Using stations as development hubs

Even with the growth in working from home, connectivity that cuts travel times remains key to raising productivity. It takes twice as long to get to work in Birmingham as in French cities such as Lyon.23 Grand projects have inherent flaws, which lead to cost and time overruns.24 They need to be broken into incremental steps where transport and housebuilding can be joined together, and private investment mobilised.25 One opportunity is to make the most of underused railway lines, as Manchester and Croydon have done, by transforming them into tramways rather than pursuing grand projects like HS2.

An outstanding example of connected smarter growth is the London overground railway network. It has raised demand and private property values in previously neglected areas of east London like Dalston. Making better use of what already existed kept the cost relatively low. New trains and improved stations are popular. Compact apartment developments have followed. London, like other capitals, benefits not only from its public transport inheritance, but also from continual ‘metroisation’.26 This needs to become the norm within all of our main conurbations, as the Welsh government is demonstrating through the South Wales Metro, which uses smart electric trains to link the more socially deprived valley towns with the economic hub of Cardiff. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 helped to bring about this switch.27

Inflexible highways design brings connectivity into conflict with placemaking. The Department for Transport’s Manual for Streets promotes circumscribed, pedestrian and cycle-friendly residential roads, discouraging wasting land on over-specified carriageways.28 Yet in 2020, the Place Alliance’s National Housing Audit found highway design scored joint worst in new developments. Often, road space was not integral to urban design.29 Risk-averse local engineers continue to apply outmoded regulations that favour the car.

A better way forward is signposted by an alternative plan for Chippenham, Wiltshire, which is led by Sustrans and Create Streets. A ‘vision-led’

approach’, combining placemaking with investment in sustainable transport:

'could result in a healthier, happier, more productive and sustainable place [and] ‘gentle density’ [in] a walkable, well-connected and integrate[d] extension of the existing town, with good air quality, less congestion and vibrant neighbourhoods… the same number of homes can be delivered, within the same budget, and with a far smaller land take – simply by reducing the assumed need for a major road’.30

4. Innovation in finance and tenure

With little spare tax revenue, the next government must be innovative. Rowan Moore uses URBED’s 2014 Wolfson Prize Award-winning Uxcester Garden City plan to show ‘what else could there be,’ if only we disregarded ‘property myths’.31, 32 Building ‘visionary, popular and viable’ garden settlements is best done by extending existing towns and cities. The uplift in land values could then be shared with the community.33 Early results could come from intensifying locations with spare rail capacity and under-used land. Transport bodies should act as enablers, helped by streamlined compulsory purchase order powers. Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) would help end economic stagnation, house price inflation and congestion.34 Cities such as Portland, Oregon, USA use tax increment finance (TIF) to raise private investment against the promise of local tax revenues from development. The community banking sector is also strong in Portland, focusing on the needs of local businesses and civil society organisations.

A better model for land assembly could transform stagnant towns and cities.35 Development

corporations set up by groups of local authorities or city region mayors could assemble land and improve local infrastructure before selling serviced sites. Transport bodies should start with spare land they own, as Places for London is doing, backed by the £2 billion property portfolio of Transport for London. They plan to build 20,000 new homes by 2030 through joint ventures with housebuilders.36

‘Private investment could come through 30-50 year bonds for providing local infrastructure and rented homes, as in North West Cambridge.’

To scale up development, occupation rates must be accelerated through different forms of tenure and management, rather than relying mainly upon owner occupiers who need mortgages. A high proportion of residents rent their homes in some of the most productive and popular continental cities. Co-housing is common in the Danish cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus. In Vienna 60% live in rented apartments, most owned by the municipality. Some 200,000 homes are managed as cooperatives. The city is regularly ranked as the most liveable and happiest place to work. Zurich, Switzerland is raising its proportion of co-operative homes from 25% to 33% following a referendum. Spending less on housing means more to spend in town, supporting better public transport with more street space for pedestrians and cyclists.

South Wales Metro depot

Transport for Wales

The potential in the UK is there to be grasped, especially with an ageing population in need of more manageable homes. There is demand for some 278,000 new homes in community land trusts.37 Their great economic advantage is in knowing early on who is going to buy the homes, and in having a long-term management organisation. In Orchard Park, Cambridge, the Marmalade Lane cohousing scheme has won many awards and is spawning imitators. Whilst the homes of the future may look familiar, their tenure, finance, and delivery mechanisms are likely to be very different.

Private investment could come through 30-50 year bonds for providing local infrastructure and rented homes, as in North West Cambridge. They would create balanced sustainable urban neighbourhoods, secured against land values. Contractual agreements would give housebuilders large and small confidence to focus on meeting demand rather than engaging in land speculation. They would also help to fill the skills gaps by creating alliances between local colleges and prospective employers. Of course, the mindset of the Treasury would have to switch from antispending to pro-investment. But a change at the top would signal a national commitment to reset and replace stagnation with good growth and sustainable prosperity for all.

Achieving the necessary switch depends upon the next government tackling inequalities in wealth that polarise British society, not only between the

Line 1

Line 2

Line 3

Line 4

Proposed Neighbourhood

Existing Neighbourhood

regions but also between the young and the old. To win popular (and permanent) acceptance, overdue property tax reforms are needed to mobilise investment that frees up people, not the car. Congestion charges and supplementary business rates have already worked in London. A system of land charges for designated growth areas would encourage councils to respond to local priorities and apply here what works elsewhere in Europe.38

Conclusion: switching direction

Unlocking investment is vital. The UK has been constrained by an over-centralised state. To unleash the potential of our towns and cities, the Treasury must act as a motor, not a brake; as an enabler rather than a regulator. The expertise of the National Infrastructure Commission, Homes England and other experts could be combined in a new English growth commission, working through local offices wherever an ambitious growth strategy has been agreed. A Harvard University research group, led by Ed Balls, Economic Secretary to the Treasury (2006-2007), recommends that:

‘a Prime Minister-chaired Regional Growth Delivery Unit should be established, managed jointly by the Cabinet office and HM Treasury. The Unit will be responsible for holding Whitehall to account over delivery of the National Growth and Productivity Strategy, issuing statutory progress reports at each fiscal event.’39

Turning Oxford into ‘Uxcester Garden City’

KIDLINGTON

NORTHERN GATEWAY

EAST OXFORD

BOTLEY

ABINGDON

10KM RADIUS

COWLEY

The URBED Trust

Rebuilding the British economy calls for coalitions at a much larger spatial level, where strategic planning is crucial. Inspiration can come from cities like Rotterdam, Copenhagen or Leipzig that enjoyed a renaissance after periods of decline, and from places in the UK that transformed themselves in the past.40

Effort is needed to explain why change is needed and how it will benefit local people. Lessons can be shared through a simple ABC:

A. Ambition to create better places and override vested interests;

B. Brokerage, where leaders forge ‘quality deals’ in which most people benefit and nobody loses, and

C. Continuity over several decades, allowing enough time to stabilise systems, change travel habits, transform run-down areas, and for infrastructure investments to pay off.

Principles for Smarter Urbanism

• Select places with the capacity for change. The best areas for growth or regeneration need to be identified in spatial plans at a sub-regional level using digital intelligence and community engagement to inform priorities.

• Development frameworks should specify realistic objectives and desired outputs with the phasing of plans for the short, medium and longer terms.

• Special purpose vehicles should assemble complex sites and align development with infrastructure plans and share the uplift in land values with the existing community.

• Design codes should set standards for key sites and thus allow a wider range of builders to get involved in creating balanced and better looking neighbourhoods.

• Land assembly of neglected land and property should reflect the current planning status of each plot plus a bonus based on the ultimate value, in order to disincentivise ‘free riders’ and holding land to ransom.

• Dr Nicholas Falk founded URBED (Urban and Economic Development) in 1976 and is now Executive Director of the URBED Trust, which is sharing experience and promoting innovation in place making. Dr Richard Simmons is a Visiting Professor in the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL and was the last Chief Executive of CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) following a long career in urban policy and regeneration. Both combine practical and academic experience as economists, urbanists and planners. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 H Barton: City of Wellbeing, Routledge, 2016

2 ‘Starmer pledges ‘to build a new Britain’ and 'bulldoze' path through planning system’. Webpage. Building

Design, 10 Oct. 2023. https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/ starmer-pledges-to-build-a-new-britain-and-bulldozepath-through-planning-system/5125692.article

3 P Swinney: ‘Which parts of the UK make the greatest contribution to the national economy?’. Blog, Centre for Cities, 27 Jan. 2023. https://www.centreforcities.org/ blog/which-parts-of-the-uk-make-the-greatestcontribution-to-the-national-economy/

4 D Rudlin, N Falk: Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood: Building the 21st Century Home, Routledge, 2009

5 Unleashing the Potential of the UK’s Cities: Report of the UK Urban Futures Commission. The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Sep. 2023. https:// www.thersa.org/globalassets/_foundation/new-siteblocks-and-images/reports/2023/10/ukuf-final-reportand-annexes/uk-urban-futures-report-2023-v3.pdf ; and Ending Stagnation: A New Economic Strategy for Britain. Resolution Foundation & Centre for Economic Performance, LSE. Dec. 2023. https://economy2030. resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ Ending-stagnation-final-report.pdf ; and Cities Outlook 2024, Centre for Cities, Jan. 2024. https:// www.centreforcities.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ Cities-Outlook-2024.pdf

6 P Swinney: ‘Which parts of the UK make the greatest contribution to the national economy?’. Blog, Centre for Cities, 27 Jan. 2023. https://www.centreforcities.org/ blog/which-parts-of-the-uk-make-the-greatestcontribution-to-the-national-economy/

7 ‘Foundational Economy’. Webpage. Foundational Economy Collective, 2023. https://foundationaleconomy.com/

8 K Raworth: Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Penguin, 2018

9 ‘What is a circular economy?’. Webpage. Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2024. https://www. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economyintroduction/overview

10 J Williams: Circular Cities: A revolution in Urban Sustainability, Routledge, 2021

11 VINEX locations were a result of the Fourth Memorandum on Extra Spatial Planning (VINEX), a policy trajectory that ran from the late 1980s. The VINEX policy was a bundling policy – the central concept is the ‘compact city’ – that had to provide for the growing spatial needs of the population in terms of housing, employment and facilities. VINEX locations included infill, brownfield, as well as greenfield developments. See: https://odissei-data.nl/en/2021/05/ the-effects-of-spatial-planning-policy-the-case-of-vinex/

12 Towns and Cities: Partners in Urban Renaissance – Project Report. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 2002. http://urbed.coop/sites/default/files/Project%20 Report.pdf

13 ‘Sheffield Garden City? Options for long-term growth’. Webpage. URBED, 19 Aug. 2018. http://urbed.coop/ projects/sheffield-garden-city-options-long-term-urbangrowth

14 M Batty, W Yang: A Digital Future for Planning: Spatial Planning Reimagined. Digital Task Force for Planning, Feb. 2022. https://digital4planning.com/wp-content/ uploads/2022/02/A-Digital-Future-for-Planning-FullReport-Web.pdf

15 N Falk: ‘Location, location and location’. Town & Country Planning, 2017, Vol. 86(5), May, 193-201

16 Greater Cambridge Net Zero Carbon Evidence Base Non-technical summary (revision 1). Bioregional,

Etude, Currie & Brown, Mode for Greater Cambridge Shared Planning, Aug. 2021. https://www.bioregional. com/projects-and-services/case-studies/helping-localauthorities-model-emissions-from-proposed-growth

17 Towards an Urban Renaissance: Final Report of the Urban Task Force Chaired by Lord Rogers of Riverside. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, © Queen’ Printer and Controller of HMSO, 1999, 2002. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203497746

18 Delivering Quality Places: Urban Design Compendium 2. English Partnerships and The Housing Corporation, 2007. https://www.academia.edu/6016087/DELIVERING_ QUALITY_PLACES_URBAN_DESIGN_ COMPENDIUM_2_SECOND_EDITION_HOMES_AND_ COMMUNITIES_AGENCY_studio_REAL_CONTENTS ; and

Urban Design Compendium. English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation, Aug. 2000. https://discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11429847

19 M Carmona, A Alwarea, V Giordano, A Gusseinova, F Olaleye: A Housing Design Audit for England, Place Alliance, 2020. https://indd.adobe.com/view/23366ae18f97-455d-896a-1a9934689cd8

20 See: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ ukgwa/20110118095359/http://www.cabe.org.uk/

21 World Class Places: The government’s strategy for improving quality of place. Department of Communities and Local Government, © Crown Copyright, May 2009. https://webarchive. nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20120919161225mp_/ http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/ planningandbuilding/pdf/1229344.pdf

22 Living with Beauty: Promoting health, well-being and sustainable growth – The report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. Jan. 2020. https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/5e3191a9ed915d0938933263/Living_with_ beauty_BBBBC_report.pdf ; and National Design Guide: Planning practice guidance for beautiful, enduring and successful places. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jan. 2021. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/602cef1d8fa8f5038595091b/National_design_ guide.pdf ; and National Model Design Code: Part 1 The Coding Process. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jun. 2021. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/1009793/NMDC_Part_1_The_ Coding_Process.pdf ; and National Planning Policy Framework. Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, Dec. 2023. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/65a11af7e8f5ec000f1f8c46/NPPF_ December_2023.pdf

23 A Breach: ‘A plan to fix public transport in Birmingham’. Blog. Centre for Cities, 25 Mar. 2022. https://www.centreforcities.org/ blog/a-plan-to-fix-public-transport-in-birmingham/

24 B Flyvbjerg, D Gardner: How Big Things Get Done. Random House, 2023

25 ‘City Conversations – Only Connect: How can we join up Transport and Development to avoid Urban Sprawl’. Webpage. Happold Foundation, 5 Oct. 2023. https:// www.happoldfoundation.org/blog/only-connect-howcan-we-join-up-transport-and-development-to-avoidurban-sprawl/

26 ‘ConnectedCities’. Webpage. ConnectedCities, 31 Aug 2022. https://www.connectedcities.org

27 ‘South Wales Metro’. Webpage. Transport for Wales Ltd, 2024. https://tfw.wales/projects/metro/south-wales-metro

28 Manual for streets. Department for Transport and Department for Communities and Local Government. © Queen’s Printer and Controller of HMSO, 2007. https:// www.gov.uk/government/publications/manual-forstreets ; and Manual for streets 2 – wider application of the principles. Chartered Institute of Highways & Transportation, 29 Sep. 2010. https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/manual-for-streets-2

29 M Carmona, A Alwarea, V Giordano, A Gusseinova, F Olaleye: A Housing Design Audit for England, Place Alliance, 2020, p. 17. https://indd.adobe.com/ view/23366ae1-8f97-455d-896a-1a9934689cd8

30 Stepping off the road to nowhere – How changing transport modelling can create green growth, sustainable transport and beautiful streets and homes. Create streets and Sustrans, Feb. 2024. https://www. sustrans.org.uk/media/13413/stepping-off-the-road-tonowhere.pdf

31 R Moore: Property: The Myth that built the World. Faber, 2023

32 D Rudlin, N Falk: Uxcester Garden City – Submission for the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize. URBED. http://urbed.coop/sites/default/files/URBED%20 Wolfson%20Submission.pdf

33 Sharing the Uplift in Land Values. Town & Country Planning Tomorrow Series Paper 20. TCPA and The URBED Trust, Sep. 2019. Sharing-the-uplift-in-landvalues-TCPA-policy-paper-EXECUTIVE-SUMMARY.pdf (uk2070.org.uk)

34 ‘Metroisation of the Railways’. Webpage. ConnectedCities. https://www.metroisation.co.uk/home

35 N Falk: Capital Gains: a better land assembly model for London. Greater London Authority, Feb. 2018. https:// www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/gla_capital_ gains_report_.pdf

36 J McCabe: ‘The man building homes near the Tube’. Inside Housing, 9 Feb. 2024. https://www. insidehousing.co.uk/insight/the-man-building-homesnear-the-tube-84835

37 ‘New research shows potential for 278,000 more community led homes’. Webpage. Community Land Trust Network, 2024. https://www.communitylandtrusts. org.uk/news-and-events/new-research-shows-potentialfor-278000-more-community-led-homes/

38 N Falk: Applying Land Value Capture Tools: lessons from Copenhagen and Freiburg. Urban Maestro, 2020. https://urbanmaestro.org/resources/

39 Britain’s growing regional divides. Webpage. Harvard University, 2024. https://sites.harvard.edu/uk-regionalgrowth/

40 P Hall, N Falk: Good Cites Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism. Routledge, 2014. See also https://www.theaou.org/

planning provocations: the green belt

Janice Morphet asks whether it is now time to recognise that the Green Belt is not an area of hope value for future housing development but rather an area to be managed and utilised for the pleasure and health of all

Green Belt – what purpose does it serve today?

As both main political parties in England have stated their support to retain the Green Belt,¹ is it time to think about another way of defining its role and managing what now appears to be a secure future for it? Whilst these recent affirmations of the long term retention of the Green Belt are unlikely to relieve development pressure generally² and the release of specific sites in particular, the voices arguing for this have been muted by the findings of

the Housebuilding market study Final report, published by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)³ and its announcement of an investigation into sharing pricing information between eight volume housebuilders. Housing developers have long argued that government targets for housebuilding, constantly held at 300,000 per year without any underpinning evidence,⁴ will not be met unless parts of the Green

Belt are developed⁵ and the principle of its planning and political protection is removed or limited in its application.

Taking a wider view of the provision of housing, the CMA, whilst not commenting on the number of homes required annually, has stated unequivocally that the provision of new homes in a system that is reliant upon the output of speculative developers, will never meet this target. The report states that they will not build more homes if there is more housing land available through sites provided within the planning permission or site allocations, as stated by Barker.⁶ Nor will they subsequently build more homes on this consented land and thus reduce the price of homes, even though local plan housing site allocations are unrestricted in their tenure and are, in effect, primarily for the use of the private sector. Housing developers act with a profit motive, as all businesses with shareholders must – they build enough homes to meet market demand, whilst also maintaining prices at a level sufficient to meet their profit target. They are developers who gain an income and profits from sales – not builders, who will be paid for completed homes. The CMA states clearly that, whilst the planning system could be improved, providing the homes needed each year requires a combined effort between speculative and non-speculative housing development – the latter being provided by registered providers and local authorities. Following this line of argument, without considering the number of unimplemented planning consents for housing⁷ and sites allocated in local plans,⁸ it appears that the arguments for Green Belt land

release based upon numbers alone are unlikely to be successful.

There are also questions about the way in which the political target, or ambition to provide 300,000 homes per year is derived and whether it is still valid, given falling birth rates. There are several reasons to question these targets as a standalone policy. Firstly, there are no government policies to guide the provision and management of housing across the country as a whole. The failure to reform tenancy laws, with no-fault evictions still possible;⁹ lack of tenant protection against poor housing conditions and rent regulation have combined to cause a surge in homelessness and a consequent ballooning of temporary accommodation costs for local authorities. As a recent Shelter report has shown,10 the costs of this system to the national economy are considerable and detrimental. The apparent failure to recognise the inter-relationships between good housing, health and education in supporting the economy since 2010 has had widespread ramifications. Considered alongside other major economic challenges, such as Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and the mini budget of 2022, the effects of this growing pressure for local authorities to provide rented accommodation has highlighted other problems within the current system of housing provision.11

There is also a widening gulf between housing requirements identified though the standard method required by the government for Local Plan preparation and site allocations12 with the direct experience of assessments of need undertaken by local authorities from a housing perspective. Since

the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 increased the responsibilities of local authorities to tackle homelessness, whether or not they retain any of their own housing stock, the complexity of assessments of housing need has also increased.

There is now an awareness that the demand for affordable homes required by a local authority can never be met through planning obligations or developer contributions.13 This is for a range of reasons.

‘demand for affordable homes...

can never be met through planning obligations or developer contributions’

Firstly, the type of housing included within the government’s definition of affordable housing has focused principally upon shared ownership as the preferred tenure. However, rising housing costs means that, in some areas, average household income is insufficient to make even shared ownership affordable.

Secondly, the pressures of construction costs and economic recession means that viability assessments for new housing yields fewer affordable homes and that those previously agreed are being re-negotiated.

Thirdly, there are many more draws upon the developer contributions in addition to the provision of affordable homes, including for flood prevention. Whilst still attempting to negotiate affordable homes through planning obligations and developer contributions, local authorities are seeking other – more direct – means of achieving housing provision outside the planning system. Some 93% of English local authorities are engaging in some form of housing delivery and 68% have strategies to provide affordable housing outside the use of planning obligations.14 These strategies include development, acquisition and the management of property owned by others.

Those in favour of Green Belt development might argue that all of these attempts to provide more housing are a clear signal indicating that Green Belt release is necessary for this purpose. However, there are other interventions that need to be explored first. These involve using land and the existing housing stock more effectively.

Firstly, there is a need for government intervention and funding to provide for nonspeculative homes, including the £1.6 billion paid to private landlords for non-decent homes.15 If the local housing allowance paid to private landlords, including that for temporary accommodation, which now costs £3 million per day in London,16 were used to support estate regeneration and the

implementation of existing permissions, this would make a significant positive contribution to housing delivery. Many opportunities for re-using land with an existing residential use are being delayed while public funds held by Homes England are being frozen by the Treasury.17

Secondly, the revocation of no-fault evictions would prevent many households from becoming homeless. Introducing these reforms may lead to more landlords moving out of the private rented sector, creating an opportunity for more homes to be purchased by households or councils. This could work in the same way as the new incentives for second homes owners and those with holiday lets to return these properties to permanent single family occupation.18 There can also be positive policies and support for conversion of existing housing into more or larger homes, working with housing providers to achieve these ends.

Under the provisions of the North West of England Plan Regional Spatial Strategy to 2021, there was a de facto moratorium on residential development outside the North West of England metropolitan area, which safeguarded the Green Belt from major residential development.19 The contemporary equivalent of this policy is perhaps the ‘brownfield first’ approach, which has led to the welcome proliferation of large scale town centre regeneration initiatives, as part of a wider regeneration strategy. These initiatives can include a more focused and systematic programme for the reuse of upper floors in retail premises, as well as the repurposing of department stores and other town centre buildings, such as former post offices, libraries, colleges and buildings of local historic interest.20 Many small towns have a vacant or underused Victorian town hall – a legacy from the pre-1974 system of local government.

Outside city centres, is it time to consider the purchase and redevelopment of some of those interwar, low density suburbs, the ribbon development that led to policies of containment in the first place? In these lower density areas, retail sites, either for mixed or single use, are a poor use of valuable land. Many retailers are realising that their business can continue to be viable with less car parking whilst the remainder of the site can be redeveloped with housing.21 Also occupying large tracts of suburban land are car showrooms – do we need them in an increasingly sustainable world?

Finally, greater consideration must be given to the ways in which housing can be implemented where sites have already been identified or permission has been granted. Where sites have planning permission, what incentives can be provided to allow development to commence? The introduction of commencement and progress orders as set out in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 could be further strengthened by a requirement for sites to be sold to willing builders – a suggestion

proposed by the Planning Officers’ Society.22 Local Plans and development management policies need to identify more precisely the mix of tenure on allocated sites, moving away from a generalised presumption in favour of market homes with some affordable housing mixed in as a quasi- and ineffective land tax. This implies a complete overhaul of the standard method of calculating housing need. When adopted in 2018, there was an assumption that most households would purchase a home within their lifetime, but this is no longer the case.

Local Plans need to provide for mixed tenure on allocated housing sites. Of those sites made available through greater incentivisation, there must be more homes for rent to provide for those households who will never now be able to buy a home or even a share in one. Where public bodies, including Homes England, the NHS and the MoD, sell sites for development, they should include a legal requirement for development to be completed within a set timescale.

At the same time as reforming the provision of housing, there can be a new approach to thinking about the options for the future of the Green Belt. The first is to leave it as it is. This might result in some visual improvements, as those landowners failing to manage their sites or using them to store unsightly items, might no longer use strategies that encourage complaints from their neighbours which might then support their case for development. If there is to be no development or hope value, then there is no point to these tactics. A second approach is a light management strategy to identify locations where there might be some filling in or where some interventions might provide visual improvement.

A third option is to introduce comprehensive proactive management through the creation of non-statutory Green Belt management action plans. These could identify where historic landscapes could be enhanced and where there would be positive planning policies for the whole of the Green Belt area. This could include some public access and the potential to create more parks as a complement to more densified cities and urban areas. Historic houses, often associated with golf courses, and historic landscapes could be acquired and be open for public access.

A fourth approach is statutory proactive management of Green Belt, similar to that in a National Park authority or the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority, which was created by a specific Act of Parliament. These Green Belt authorities would have budgets to acquire and manage land and landscapes and ensure that it is used in ways that benefit the community. Here there would be a presumption in favour of public access, with additional footpaths, car parks and visitor centres opening up Green Belt land. This suggests a new

planning regime – where a Green Belt designation would mean a public space rather than private land.

A fifth option is management by a combined authority, where one exists, so that the Green Belt becomes a nature, landscape and leisure asset for the region. Here, the development and implementation of a management plan could include the creation of a Green Belt joint committee under §101(5) of the Local Government Act 1972,23 comprising all local authorities with designated Green Belt land within (and possibly outside) the combined authority boundary.

‘there was an assumption that most households would purchase a home within their lifetime, but this is no longer the case’

In 1973, Professor Sir Peter Hall assessed the progress and use of the Green Belt up to that point.24 This was at the instigation of the Secretary of State at that time, Peter Walker, who expressed his faith in the Green Belt and announced a 15% expansion of the Green Belt around London. As Peter Hall commented, this faith has been shared by governments since 1945 and has continued since 1973. Peter Hall reported that there was a government intention to give the Green Belt legal protection rather than continuing its status as a national policy. That permanent protection has not, as yet, been conferred and may not be needed unless the political consensus changes.

New build green belt housing in England, UK

As Hall points out, Green Belts represent a major tract of England’s land, but he asks, ‘what are green belts for?’ and that question remains today. Hall suggested that there are two divergent views in answer to this question. The first is that the Green Belt is for the protection and containment of the conurbations. The second is a more positive approach where they are used for agricultural production, recreation and the ‘education of the townspeople in the ways of the country’. It is this latter idea that Hall associated with the legislation obtained by the London County Council (LCC) in 1938 to buy up land in London’s Green Belt to create parks in the same way that Robert Moses was doing in New York to create State Parks. The LCC bought much green belt land only to sell it after 1945. As Hall states:

‘The irony is that here, as in the national parks system, the country that professed rampant free enterprise was the country that practiced effective state socialism, while Britain progressed planning for the people and did too little to secure it in practice’.

While Sir Patrick Abercrombie reinforced the Green Belt in his Greater London Plan 1944, 25 with an assumption that it would be used for wartime agricultural production, he also included a recreational purpose. However, following the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, Hall stated that the Green Belt took on its protective rather than productive purpose. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, which created the National Parks did not include the Green Belt and there has never been any such suggestion. Recreational use of the Green Belt has been left as minimal. Yet as Hall states, the London Green Belt comprises a number of major National Landscape assets, now recognised as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with protected characteristics that must be taken into account in planning decision making.

Hall concludes by saying that while the protection purpose has remained dominant, Green Belts ‘have lost their old point and have not gained a new one’. Their protection today is less a matter of planning policy than of planning politics.

In his conclusion, Hall welcomed that the question of the future of the Green Belts remained open. Fifty years later perhaps we can be more certain that they are here to stay, despite both planning and political attacks. Hall states that we failed to do:

‘the really bold thing and create a green belt for the townsman: a continuous rural park. But that probably would have demanded more imagination than anyone in England possessed’

So, the purposes of including land within a Green Belt remain largely unaltered* and its land area has

been expanded to now encompass 12.6% of England’s land area. After 50 more years of protective policy, is it now time to recognise that the Green Belt is not an area of hope value for future housing development but an area to be managed and utilised for the pleasure and health of all?

• Prof. Janice Morphet is a Visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. She has been the Head of a Planning School, local authority chief executive and an adviser to government. She has been a trustee of the TCPA and the RTPI. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 ‘Build on brownfield now, Gove tells underperforming councils’. Press release. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 13 Feb. 2024. https://www. gov.uk/government/news/build-on-brownfield-nowgove-tells-underperforming-councils;

and T Scotson: ‘Housing Leaders Praise Labour’s Bold But “Pragmatic” Plans For Green Belt Homes’. Webpage. PoliticsHome, 11 Oct. 2023. https://www. politicshome.com/news/article/labour-partyconference-housing-pledge-green-bent-keir-starmer

2 H Quartermain: ‘Building on the Green Belt data – how could this impact housing?’. Blog. LandTech, 14 Nov. 2023. https://land.tech/blog/building-on-the-green-beltdata-how-could-this-impact-housing

3 ‘CMA finds fundamental concerns in housebuilding market’. Press release. Competition and Markets Authority, 26 Feb. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/ government/news/cma-finds-fundamental-concerns-inhousebuilding-market

4 Planning for new homes. Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government and National Audit Office. HC 1923 Session 2017-2019, 08 Feb. 2019. https:// www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ Planning-for-new-homes.pdf

5 F Rankl, C Barton, H Carthew: Green Belt. Research Briefing Number 00934. House of Commons Library, 15 Dec. 2023. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/ documents/SN00934/SN00934.pdf

6 K Barker: The Barker Review of Housing Supply – Final Report. HM Treasury and Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 17 Mar. 2004

7 ‘Over 1.1 million homes with planning permission waiting to be built - new LGA analysis’. Webpage. Local Government Association, 8 May 2021. https://www. local.gov.uk/about/news/over-1-million-homesplanning-permission-waiting-be-built-new-lga-analysis

8 ‘Local Plan Housing Allocations Survey - research report’. Webpage. Local Government Association, 10 Dec. 2020. https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/ local-plan-housing-allocations-survey-researchreport#:~:text=Across%20England%20there%20are%20 over,through%20the%20local%20plan%20process

9 B Morton: ‘No-fault eviction ban by next election, Michael Gove promises’. Webpage. BBC News, 11 Feb. 2024. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68267106

10 The economic impact of building social housing – A Cebr report for Shelter and the National Housing Federation. Centre for Economics and Business Research, Feb. 2024. https://england.shelter.org.uk/ professional_resources/policy_and_research/policy_ library/economic_impact_social_housing

11 E Jessel: ‘Temporary accommodation bill rises again to £1.7bn’. Webpage. Inside Housing, 12 Oct. 2023. https:// www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/temporaryaccommodation-bill-rises-again-to-17bn-83497

12 L Heath: ‘Councils hit out at government’s ‘unrealistic’ new planning formula’. Webpage. Inside Housing, 24 Feb. 2021. https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/ councils-hit-out-at-governments-unrealistic-newplanning-formula-69616

13 J Morphet, B Clifford: Local authority Direct Provision of Housing: Fourth Research Report. The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, Jan. 2024, p. 70. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/planning/sites/ bartlett_planning/files/local_authority_direct_provision_ of_housing_iv_report.pdf

14 Ibid., pp. 94-95

15 S Delahunty: ‘£1.6bn in housing benefit paid to private landlords for non-decent homes, research reveals’. Webpage. Inside Housing, 18 Apr. 2023. https://www. insidehousing.co.uk/news/16bn-in-housing-benefitpaid-to-private-landlords-for-non-decent-homesresearch-reveals-81194

16 E Ames: ‘London boroughs spend £3m a day on temporary accommodation’. Webpage. LocalGov, 28 Feb. 2024. https://www.localgov.co.uk/Londonboroughs-spend-3m-a-day-on-temporaryaccommodation/58958

17 A Adu: ‘Treasury reins in levelling up spending amid Gove’s plan for more grants’. Webpage. The Guardian, 8 Feb. 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/ politics/2023/feb/08/treasury-levelling-up-spendingmichael-gove-grants

18 F Ivens, R Hinchliffe: ‘Taxes on second homes surge up to 600pc under the Tories – Cost of buying and owning holiday property jumps £13,000 as Government cracks down’. Webpage. The Telegraph, 24 Feb. 2024 https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/second-homes/ second-home-tax-increase-conservativegove/#:~:text=Last%20week%2C%20Michael%20 Gove%2C%20the,planning%20permission%20from%20 this%20summer

19 North West of England Plan Regional Spatial Strategy to 2021. Government Office for the North West, Sep. 2008, p. 64, par. 7.18 f. to j.. See also: Regional Planning Guidance for the North West – Housing Land Supply in Wirral. Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, 8 Dec. 2003, p. 6, par. 7.6. https://democracy.wirral.gov.uk/Data/ Cabinet/20031217/Agenda/econped031208rep06_11172. pdf

20 J Morphet, B Clifford: Local Authority Direct Provision of Housing: Fourth Research Report. The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, Jan. 2024, p. 102. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/planning/sites/ bartlett_planning/files/local_authority_direct_provision_ of_housing_iv_report.pdf

21 C Berkin: ‘Barratt to redevelop £450m Sainsbury’s Nine Elms scheme’. Webpage. Construction News, 8 Feb. 2023. https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/sections/ news/barratt-to-redevelop-450m-sainsburys-nine-elmsscheme-08-02-2013/ ; and ‘Work Begins Redeveloping Fulham Wharf’. Website. FulhamSW6.com, 20 Jul. 2012. https://www.fulhamsw6. com/#!pages/fulhamsw6:info:fulhamwharf001; Astir and ‘Tesco to Deliver Lewisham BTR Scheme’. Press release. Astir. https://astir.co.uk/astir-and-tesco-todeliver-lewisham-btr-scheme/; and

C Burnett: ‘Morrisons plans to break into property by building 700 homes’. Webpage. TheBusinessDesk.com, 8 Dec. 2016. https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/ yorkshire/news/743569-morrisons-plans-to-break-intoproperty-building-700-homes; and Waitrose West Ealing Summary of Proposals. John Lewis Partnership, 2023. https://www. waitrosewestealing.com/archive

22 Planning for a better future: Our planning manifesto for the government – Manifesto Background Paper 7 –Compulsory purchase: three essential improvements Planning Officers Society, Feb. 2017, pp. 8-9. https:// www.planningofficers.org.uk/uploads/POS%20 MBP7%20CPO.pdf

23 See https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1972/70/ section/101

24 P Hall: Anatomy of the green belts. New Society, 4 Jan. 2023, pp. 9-12

25 P Abercrombie: Greater London Plan 1944 – A Report prepared on behalf of the Standing Conference on London Regional Planning by PROFESSOR ABERCROMBIE at the request of the Minister of Town and Country Planning. Digitised by Google from the University of Michigan Libraries. HMSO, 1945, pp. 207-208. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ pt?id=mdp.39015020942150&seq=8

Editor’s Note:

*Paragraph 1.5 of Planning Policy Guidance 2: Green Belts, published January 1995 (cancelled 2012), lists five purposes of including land within a Green Belt. These are:

• to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas;

• to prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another;

• to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment;

• to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns, and

• to assist in urban regeneration by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land. There is no material difference between these purposes and those listed in paragraph 143 of the National Planning Policy Framework (20 December 2023).

codes and communities

The National Model Design Code requires engagement with communities. Jeff Bishop looks at experience to date, suggests some reasons why engagement may be difficult and outlines potentially better ways to do it

This article considers the requirement in the National Model Design Code (NMDC) to involve local communities in the development of codes (or guides) for whole authority areas, neighbourhoods and masterplan areas, perhaps also for specific sites. We start with a look at evidence to date about progress from the NMDC Pilot Programme projects, then reflect on aspects of the NMDC that may make engagement (or even some codes as a whole) difficult if not impossible, and finish with a series of suggestions for all parties that are almost certain to result in better codes being produced more cost-effectively and with genuine involvement and eventual community support.

The NMDC Pilot Programme

The first round of projects in the NMDC Pilot Programme were set up and funded by the Ministry for Housing, Communities, and Local Government in April 2021. Submissions were sought from English authorities and 15 teams¹ were selected to test out the process and guidance in the NMDC (Part 1 The Coding Process, Part 2 Guidance Notes). The selected teams represented a good spread of local authority areas, both geographically and in size. Some already had guides and some engagement experience and some had in-house skills, while some were almost totally new to it all. Not all set out to produce area or site codes. Each team produced its own report, and then Prof. Matthew Carmona and his colleagues at University College London (UCL) produced an executive summary report on all the case studies.² A second round of projects, now including some for coding for Neighbourhood Development Plans, started in March 2022 but reports on these were not available at the time of writing.

Some reports said little or nothing about engagement, leaving perhaps 12 reports informative for this article, and all reports were summaries, so did not go into any real detail. Five projects focused on testing methods rather than reaching towards any specific code. Five focused on codes for large areas (the masterplanning scale), one other focused on a specific site and one focused on an overall authority-wide code. Much of the engagement took place around and during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period, which placed severe limitations on people attending real world workshops or exhibitions.

Approaches used

All reports mention the use of digital methods, including for surveys and mapping, and all teams set up project websites. Some used their platforms for webinars, one produced an app. In one case, mention was made of also using paper-based methods to avoid missing those unable to access resources digitally.

Other methods used (in four or fewer places) included workshops and exhibitions, one-to-one sessions with specific local groups (including the ‘seldom heard’), walkabouts, interviews, site visits and arts workshops. Three teams used some form of stakeholder-based steering group (e.g. a ‘community review panel’). Two teams conducted much or all of the work ‘at distance’. This involved producing material to be used by, in one case, a parish council and, in the other case, by an established community trust. In general, most teams combined digital work with one – perhaps two or three – other methods, such as workshops. Only one team used a wider range of methods. This may seem to be a result of lockdown issues but it

is, from experience, becoming the norm to focus mainly on inevitably individualised digital methods with just one or two other more public, interactive or collaborative workshops or exhibitions added. Most teams, not just the smaller ones, used consultants to help them. Sometimes just one but occasionally up to three different companies. Consultants typically added urban design expertise. Three contributed digital methods expertise, one was a land and property agency. No mention was made of bringing in community engagement expertise; it appeared to be the case that the lead authority or the other consultants were expected to have all the necessary engagement skills and experience.

Team comments

All but two reports included team comments on the process of engagement (one team appeared to undertake no engagement). Most notably, nine of the teams indicated that the time commitment necessary to undertake engagement properly –

both the overall time it takes and the consequent call on their limited resources – was a significant challenge. This probably also relates to a few comments on the lack of available skills, both in-house and (more expensively) from outside.

Several comments were made on the need to not only launch straight in but also to prepare people with initial training because knowledge of design within communities was judged to be limited. It was suggested that this would also help to address concerns that codes might not make any real difference. Also important in terms of maximising effectiveness were comments about being sure to start the actual engagement early and having a clear strategy involving a range of different methods to be used all the way through. Much of this may relate to what was stated to be, overall, a generally low level of response from local people.

In terms of specific methods, there was positive feedback about the use of forms of stakeholder steering group. Some stated that these, and other methods, should also reach beyond ‘the usual

Engaging people about design coding can be difficult

Freepik

suspects’. Not all teams found it easy and quick to develop digital tools but, once in place, they were judged to be effective. Working on area characterisation was seen to be particularly important and a couple of teams commented on the need to consider the more social aspects of design (for example, community safety) as well as its visual aspects.

Some teams chose to work fully or partly in partnership with local groups or bodies such as parish councils, and it was suggested that this boosted response rates.

UCL summary points

The UCL team produced an overall summary from all the above reports.³ In terms of engagement specifically, the UCL report picked up on points above about the ‘time consuming process’, the need to go, ‘beyond simply asking what people like or dislike’, clarifying ‘whether codes would have teeth’, ‘over-reliance on single forms of passive engagement’, the need to combine, ‘traditional and technological means of interactive engagement’, ‘the value of existing local networks as a means to tap into local knowledge’, and the need to, ‘balance local knowledge and professional support’.

Very interestingly, the UCL report included a number of comments about other aspects of coding work, which also have important implications for engagement. In particular it noted that ‘local authorities were not set up to deliver design coding in-house’. Key skills gaps were considered to include urban design, graphic communication, viability assessment and digital engagement, but again not engagement.

A number of comments were made about characterisation work, for example, that ‘local character is a fundamental concern for local communities’, so ‘an analysis of existing character will always be appropriate’. This led on to concerns about the whole principle so central to the NMDC of using ‘area types’, for example, stating that ‘this needs to capture the fine-grained complexity, variation and constraints that characterise many urban areas’, so ‘should be related to the scale at which design codes are to operate’. They also added that ‘pilots struggled with area types and most did not apply this aspect of the NMDC’.

Two final comments are also important. One was that individual sites, not only areas, ‘should be subject to character analysis and community engagement prior to development proposals being made’ – an unfulfilled element of §122 of the Localism Act 2011 about pre-application engagement. The other was about the role of development managers, that they ‘will need the skills to administer the new codes and to take on a more proactive role’.

Ways forward

As a regular commentator on engagement both generally and about design specifically, as well as on the NMDC⁴ in this journal, none of the above comes as a surprise. Given over 50 years of history of attempts to make engagement in planning standard practice rather than the exception, will it actually happen at all now for the notoriously challenging issue of design, let alone generate effective codes or guides? The auguries are not good. One design guide just published for final and formal consultation by a large county planning authority had no engagement at all during its preparation. Is engagement really ‘required’ or not?’

This must be made clear and ways must be found to ensure that any such requirement is enforced.

The principal point to make goes to the very heart of things. The NMDC mentions ‘consultation’ 20 times and ‘engagement’ 15 times. Reading the text, it appears that the authors see these two terms as interchangeable. They are not. At its simplest, consultation is an extremely limited and professionally determined process whilst engagement is very different, getting closer to forms of collaborative working. It is informative that the UCL report mentioned lack of skills only in relation to digital engagement and did not comment on the fact that none of the pilot teams had chosen to engage specialist consultants in engagement more generally. This may explain the very amateurish conflation of terms and it remains a worryingly typical response from planners, urban designers and architects who seem to believe that anybody can do engagement. Wrong. All coding work needs skilled engagement input.

‘One design guide just published for final and formal consultation by a large county planning authority had no engagement at all during its preparation. Is engagement really ‘required’ or not?’

The next key point is about the stages at which the NMDC suggests that engagement should take place (the preferred term and approach). NMDC Part 1 focuses upon engagement in the stages termed ‘Strategy’ and ‘Vision’⁵ with just a very brief mention of ‘input from the community’ for the baseline characterisation stage; though, rather oddly, NMDC Part 2 includes an ‘Area Type Worksheet’.⁶ There is also no mention of engagement in code drafting, presumably on the assumption that this is seen as a strictly

professional task. Once again, that is wrong – good methods exist to engage people in drafting. Engagement should be a continuing process from the very start to the last stages, including drafting.

The point about the lack of emphasis on characterisation is critical for three main reasons.

Firstly, for most ‘ordinary’ people, design and character are about what buildings look like. However, the scope of the NMDC (and the National Design Guide) is rightly much wider, including issues around movement, mix of uses, and so on. It is an urban design agenda. This should be explained to people at the outset. If that is done, discussion can be steered away from distractions relating to competing design styles. It must also be noted (although this cannot be elaborated here) that professionals and communities do not necessarily agree about what constitutes good design, even after ‘training’.

Secondly, for most people, the key focus in relation to character is not its wider geographic attributes. Instead, it is about truly local distinctiveness and the value they attribute to it. This conflict may well make it impossible to meet NMDC aspirations. Just as an example, the author’s home locality would probably be considered no more than part of a large ‘Urban Neighbourhood Area Type’, as defined in the NMDC.⁷ It would therefore contain around 40 of the city’s 80 or so neighbourhoods and most, like the author’s, would comprise – as determined by the local community – around four or five distinct character areas. So, that is perhaps 150 distinct character areas in just one area type. According to the NMDC, the ‘areas of character’ in the whole of this ‘Urban Neighbourhood’ area type should have ‘common parameters’, i.e. a single code.⁸

This is ludicrous; a point emphasised by the one example of area type characterisation in the NMDC, which is for an area of around just a dozen or so streets.⁹ A single code for such fundamentally varied and large areas would, quite rightly, never be supported by communities, and is also utterly wrong in professional terms. It would homogenise places at the expense of local distinctiveness and serve to disengage communities. Defining single

codes with communities for smaller areas –neighbourhood, masterplan area or even site – is practically possible if still very challenging. It simply cannot be done genuinely with communities for any whole authority area or even any area type.

Thirdly, there is a serious lack of attention given by the NMDC to the initial ‘baseline’ stage and the suggestion that an overall ‘scoping’ plan can be completed before characterisation is extremely worrying. As the UCL report also argues, characterisation is the absolute bedrock upon which any code is then built and it needs to be done before any form of ‘scoping’ plan can possibly be produced. This key point now leads to a radical and too often overlooked way of working that could address the key problem raised earlier of limited local authority resources and, almost certainly, help towards securing genuine community support from start to finish and on into the future once agreed codes come into use.

‘All coding work needs skilled engagement input.’

Interestingly, that other way of working is hinted at in the reports on the pilot projects. Two of these, both appearing to have been more effective at engaging people, worked through local groups, in one case a parish council and in the other a community trust. They focused upon carefully guiding people through the ‘baseline’ stage of characterisation. This approach builds on work in the 1990s, entirely about design, by the author and a colleague when we invented, for the then Countryside Commission, the concept of a Village Design Statement (VDS) to be developed by local people.

Research by Defra (now lost) suggested that each VDS generated around 4,500 hours of volunteer time. In one authority,10 a VDS has been produced for 34 places. So, at today's minimum wage (£11.44 per hour), this would have amounted to a staggering £1,750,320 of in-kind contributions to that authority’s budget, at very minimal cost. And, of course, a good VDS (not all were good) can provide an authority with an invaluable base of thorough characterisation – a ‘baseline’ in NMDC terminology. To carry this on, if other authorities did something similar, they would be getting into the more challenging ‘scoping’, ‘strategy’ and ‘vision’ stages of coding quickly, cheaply and with communities already on board. This may be challenging for the traditional professional ‘we know best, only we can do this’ attitude, but it is surely an unmissable opportunity. Furthermore, the NMDC and other guidance encourages communities to do such work in their (grant-funded) Neighbourhood Development Plans – a further unmissable opportunity.

Finally, three more points can be made about the pilot projects. Firstly, that there are methods to engage people in the later stage of code drafting and that this in itself further assists in securing eventual community support. Secondly, it is about time that the government took the necessary action on the UCL comment that sites ‘should be subject to character analysis and community engagement prior to development proposals being made’ – that thorny old issue of pre-application community engagement. Thirdly, securing genuine buy-in from other teams such as highways is critical, as is the need to bring development management teams up to speed to ensure that they actually make positive use of any agreed code.

Final comments

Very fundamentally, are we going to see what has happened several times before on other aspects of planning, as an apparent requirement for community engagement slowly gets ignored and is then quietly put aside? After all, as most codes look like becoming Supplementary Planning Documents, authorities will in effect be ‘marking their own homework’. So don’t hold your breath because, through no fault of their own, few authorities have the necessary skills to plan, manage and enforce engagement that actually makes a difference. As for any actual wish on their part to do so, readers can probably make up their own minds on that!

The NMDC is a bold attempt to grab the ‘bar of soap’ of design standards, and the ambition to see things happen at a coherent, authority-wide scale rather than in a reactive, area-by-area or site-by-site (and developer-led) way is at least understandable. Unfortunately, the pilot projects to date strongly suggest that authority-wide codes, and certainly the use of area types, are inappropriate and unachievable if they must – as is currently expected – be prepared with the type of good quality community engagement that can generate eventual community support when any code is put into practice. With that in mind, one large city authority has already decided not to develop a city-wide code but to go back to the older model of a design guide, albeit one with a lot in it about encouraging local level characterisation and maybe even codes.

So, does it matter if engagement does not happen as the NMDC intends? Public perceptions of planning as a whole may well be at an all-time low and criticism of designs that are permitted in the face of community opposition constitute a major reason for that. This only reinforces the feeling that planning is a top-down, almost elitist, system leading to the bizarre conclusion that people see not planners but private developers as offering what they want in terms of design. Delivering genuine community engagement on design issues that is shown to make a difference, be that on codes or guides, has the potential to bring people

back on board and in the relatively short term. Unfortunately, there are structural weaknesses in the NMDC, notably the idea of area types, and in terms of what it suggests about what is just ‘consultation’, that is all very unlikely to lead to designs that communities can support. There is much more on many of the issues addressed above, as well as a whole medley of practical methods, in Codes and Communities: Guidance for Professionals, available to download free at https://placestudio.com/guidance-forengaging-communities-in-preparing-design-codes/

• Jeff Bishop is Associate Director with the Place Studio urban design and place-shaping consultancy. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 ‘National Model Design Code (NMDC) Pilot Programme Phase 1: Monitoring & evaluation - executive summary’. Webpage. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 20 Jun. 2022. https://www. gov.uk/government/publications/national-modeldesign-code-pilot-programme-phase-1-lessonslearned/national-model-design-code-nmdc-pilotprogramme-phase-1-monitoring-evaluation-executivesummary

2 ‘National Model Design Code Pilot Case Studies’. Website. Local Government Association, Planning Advisory Service, 2021. https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/ topics/design-codes/national-model-design-code-pilotcase-studies

3 M Carmona, W Clarke, B Quinn, V Giordano: National Model Design Code (NMDC) Pilot Programme Phase One, Monitoring & Evaluation – final research report UCL, The Bartlett School of Planning, Mar. 2022. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/62adf9a3d3bf7f0afd0f8c9f/NMDC_M_E_final_ report_v5.pdf

4 National Model Design Code: Part 1 The Coding Process. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jun. 2021. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/1009793/NMDC_Part_1_The_ Coding_Process.pdf ; and National Model Design Code: Part 2 – Guidance Notes. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jun. 2021. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/1009795/NMDC_Part_2_Guidance_ Notes.pdf

5 Ibid., Part 1, pp. 11-15

6 Ibid., Part 2, pp. 94-95

7 Ibid., Part 1, p. 13

8 Ibid., Part 1 p. 11

9 Ibid., Part 1, p. 12

10 ‘Village and Neighbourhood Design Statements’. Webpage. Winchester City Council, 13 Sep. 2023. https://www.winchester.gov.uk/planning-policy/ monitoring-and-other-planning-documents/village-andneighbourhood-design-statements

the expansion of permitted development rights will result in more poor-quality homes

The latest regulatory changes entirely ignore the evidence about the poor quality of homes produced through permitted development rights, according to a review of policy and regulations in England by Sally Roscoe, Rosalie Callway and Julia Thrift

The latest government announcement to further reduce planning safeguards on converting commercial buildings to housing through a permitted development right (PDR) in February risks creating a new generation of poor-quality homes. Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, stated:

‘we have now amended the existing permitted development right for conversion to residential such that commercial buildings of any size will have the freedom to be converted into new homes, resulting in thousands of new homes by 2030’.¹

The rule change removes the floorspace limit (1,500 square metres) for commercial buildings (Use Class E) that can be converted to residential use (Use Class C3) without the need to make an application for planning permission, under the provisions of Class MA of Part 3 of Schedule 2 to The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. It also removes the (already short) three-month time

period during which a property must have been vacant before a conversion to residential use can be requested.

These changes apply to buildings in any location, including industrial estates and out of town retail areas – areas devoid of services and amenities such as schools, shops and medical facilities. And they include buildings in town centres, threatening already vulnerable high streets and local jobs.

Although local authorities can adopt an Article 4 Direction² to restrict where this PDR can be exercised, this power is constrained by the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which indicates that the use of an Article 4 Direction requires ‘robust evidence’ and can only be applied to the smallest area necessary.³ Furthermore, the Secretary of State has the power to modify the area of land that local authorities include within the scope of an Article 4 Direction, based upon their interpretation of the NPPF.⁴

These latest changes were made despite a growing body of evidence of the poor quality of homes that are produced through this route. This

includes a government-commissioned report, which found that larger buildings converted to residential use under PDR tend to be of lower quality.⁵ Some examples of large conversions are shown in the TCPA’s These are Homes photobook⁶ which depicts some of the dire conditions that many people must endure in former office blocks and industrial estates.

PDR homes are not subject to national and local planning policies or guidance that apply in the full planning application process. The TCPA report No Place for Place-making⁷ found that by removing buildings and areas from the influence of local strategic planning, PDR has directly impacted authorities’ capacity to ensure that such conversions are safe and sustainable. In addition, PDR conversion deprives local authorities of the muchneeded funding for amenities, such as greenspaces, community facilities, infrastructure and affordable housing, which would usually be obtained through developer contributions or planning obligations. The quality of these PDR homes depends almost entirely upon Building Regulations and a highly constrained set of ‘prior approval’ conditions.

Over 100,000 homes have been created by PDR conversion since 2013, although this number is likely to be an underestimate.⁸ The TCPA estimates that 120,500 people are living in conversions with only one window and 130,500 people are living in converted flats that do not meet national minimum space standards. Additionally, many of these sites have limited public amenity space provision.

The scope of the problems caused by deregulation of the planning system through PDR are gargantuan and wide-ranging. PDR directly undermines the discretionary and democratic local planning system. It weakens the ability of local authorities to plan strategically and safeguard land to ensure that development is safe, sustainable and healthy. By further removing these protections, the government has entirely ignored the evidence about the consequences of deregulation for residents and community health and wellbeing.

The following section summarises some of the major concerns identified in our latest review about the potential health impacts of PDR changes.

Terminus House, Harlow

© Rob Clayton

Review of the potential health effects of PDR residential conversions

An extensive new review⁹ has been published by the TCPA, as part of a three-year research project led by the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London (UCL) and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).10 The review has revealed several weaknesses and loopholes in the regulation of PDR homes.

It found that the current regime is hugely complex and lacks clarity regarding which rules and Building Regulations apply to the various different types of permitted development conversion to residential use. The lack of clear and specific requirements regarding the quality of PDR homes creates a risk that regulators and developers might not ensure vital health-related requirements are adequately addressed.

Four key concerns found in the review are:

• Strategic national and local planning policies and optional guidance that relate to promoting housing quality do not apply under PDR. Changes to PDR from 2015 onwards were adopted to expedite the process of development and contribute to an increase in housing completions. The changes were not about ensuring the quality of those homes.

• Building Regulations are inconsistently applied to buildings undergoing a ‘material change of use’ (MCU) where existing buildings are converted into houses or flats, according to the government's manual to the Building Regulations.11 This includes loopholes in the Regulations regarding: structural safety; risk of falling or collision; accessibility of the buildings; overheating; and resistance to moisture. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the definition of MCU applies to buildings changed through PDR.

• The limited extent of local levers and enforcement to shape the quality of PDR homes. There is limited evidence about the use and efficacy of the regulatory levers available to a local planning authority (LPA) or a planning inspector, such as attaching conditions to ‘prior approval’ notices, Section 257 requirements for houses in multiple occupation,12 and Article 4 Directions. Alongside the general underresourcing of local government, this is impacting upon the effective enforcement of these minimum Regulations. It also creates potential opportunities for unscrupulous developers to cut corners, which in turn increases the risk of poor-quality housing being created.

• The current planning and regulatory system for PDR homes fails to adequately protect and support people’s health. Even before the latest changes came into force in March 2024, the current PDR regime failed to clearly address 11 out of 12 Healthy Homes Principles13 (see table opposite).

The disconnect between and within Regulations may relate to the deviation from the original purpose of PDR, which was principally about allowing minor domestic extensions for single households, and small building conversions, without requiring a full planning application. Since 2013 the government has made a series of piecemeal changes which extended the range of non-residential buildings that can be converted into homes using PDR. Extending PDR in this way was never about creating homes that would support the health of residents: it was motivated by a desire to cut through so-called ‘red tape’. Through these measures the government appears to have lost sight of the strategic role of planning in trying to shape and enhance the quality of places to enable communities to thrive.

Recommendations

The TCPA supports the principle of converting empty properties as a means of increasing the availability and mix of housing. However, we argue that all new residential development, including that involving the conversion of existing buildings, requires proper scrutiny through the democratic and strategic planning process. For as long as PDR continue to be available for such conversions, we recommend that the following measures be adopted with urgency:

Healthy Homes principle

1. Mandatory quality standards for all new homes

The government needs to ensure much greater clarity and consistency in the application of Building Regulations and policies that apply to the quality of PDR homes. A comprehensive and mandatory Healthy Homes standard must be adopted, along with the proper resources and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that those standards are delivered and maintained. This would ensure that all new homes and their surroundings are of good quality, whether created through PDR or by means of a grant of full planning permission.

2. Permitted development rights should not be further expanded

This research provides clear evidence that the way that PDR currently works inadequately protects people from poor quality living conditions. No further extension of PDR should take place unless and until mandatory Healthy Homes standards and clear Building Regulations for all new homes have been introduced or can be secured on a unilateral basis by the developer.

3. Apply Building Regulations consistently to all new homes, including existing buildings converted to residential use

Do policies and regulations clearly address PD homes regarding delivery of the principle?

Unclear Partially addressed Clearly addressed

Fire safety

Liveable space

Inclusive, accessible, adaptable

Access to natural light

Access to amenities, transport and nature

Reductions in carbon emissions

Safety from crime

Climate resilient

Prevent air pollution

Limit light pollution

Limit noise pollution

Thermal comfort

Affordable, tenure secure housing

The Healthy Homes principles and PDR policy

Source: Permitted development, housing and health: a review of national policy and regulations. TCPA, Feb. 2024, p. 7

The government should address the loopholes that exist in minimum Building Regulations when buildings undergo a ‘material change of use’ to residential. The definition of ‘material change of use’ should explicitly include all homes, including flats created by means of PDR. Building Regulations should be applied consistently to all existing buildings changed to residential use. The following Building Regulations should explicitly apply to a change of use to a house or flat, in particular:

• Structural safety (Approved Documents A1-A3);

• Resistance to moisture (Approved Document C2);

• Protection from falling, collision and impact (Approved Document K6);

• Access to building (Approved Document M1), and

• Overheating (Approved Document O).

‘Through these measures the government appears to have lost sight of the strategic role of planning in trying to shape and enhance the quality of places’

Next steps

This latest research has highlighted several national policy and regulatory gaps, as well as the limited range of policy levers available to local authorities in managing the quality of homes produced through permitted development. We will be examining these issues further in the next phase of research. This will include a series of roundtables with local authorities and relevant bodies to discuss the perceived health impacts of conversion to residential use through PDR, and how they are seeking to manage the quality and siting of PDR homes in their areas.

If you are interested in attending a roundtable, please get in touch at Rosalie.Callway@TCPA.org.uk

• Sally Roscoe is Projects and Policy Officer; Dr Rosalie Callway is Projects and Policy Manager and Julia Thrift is Director of Healthy Placemaking at the TCPA. All views expressed are personal and are not necessarily shared by the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Notes

1 M Gove: ‘Long-Term Plan for Housing Update’. Statement UIN HCWS264, 19 Feb. 2024. https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/writtenstatements/detail/2024-02-19/HCWS264

2 Article 4(1) of The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015: https:// www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/596/article/4/made

3 NPPF paragraph 53 states that the use of Article 4 Directions should:

• where they relate to change from non-residential use to residential use, be limited to situations where an Article 4 direction is necessary to avoid wholly unacceptable adverse impacts (e.g. the loss of the essential core of a primary shopping area which would seriously undermine its vitality and viability, but would be very unlikely to extend to the whole of a town centre);

• in other cases, be limited to situations where an Article 4 direction is necessary to protect local amenity or the well-being of the area (this could include the use of Article 4 directions to require planning permission for the demolition of local facilities);

• in all cases, be based on robust evidence, and apply to the smallest geographical area possible.

4 As evidenced in relation to the London Borough of Brent. See: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/65ca2f1a14b83c000ea716e7/Brent_Class_M_ MA_Town_Centres_modification_notice.pdf

5 B Clifford, P Canelas, J Ferm, N Livingstone, A Lord, R Dunning: Research into the quality standard of homes delivered through change of use permitted development rights. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jul. 2020, p. 41. https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/902220/Research_report_ quality_PDR_homes.pdf

6 These are Homes. Photobook. TCPA, Feb. 2023. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/resources/these-are-homesphotobook/

7 no place for place-making – the impacts of permitted development rights on place-making, and what they tell us about the government’s planning reforms. TCPA, Sep. 2020 https://www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2024/02/No_place_for_placemaking_final.pdf

8 ‘Investigating Potential Health Impacts Of Planning Deregulation: The Case Of Permitted Development In England’. Webpage. The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, 26 Oct. 2023. https://www. ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/planning/research-projects/2023/nov/ ucl-permitted-development-housing-study

9 Permitted development, housing and health: a review of national policy and regulations. TCPA, Feb. 2024. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/ PD-HousingHealth_National-policy-review-FINAL-1-1. pdf

10 See: https://www.uclpdhousing.co.uk/

11 Manual to the Building Regulations – A code of practice for use in England. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Jul. 2020. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/64a59267c531eb000c64ff12/Manual_to_ building_regs_-_July_2020.pdf

12 ‘Section 257 House in multiple occupation (S257 HMO) definition’. Webpage. Salford City Council, 2024. https:// www.salford.gov.uk/housing/information-for-landlords/ s257-hmo-definition/#:~:text=All%20S257%20 HMOs%20must%20have%20regards%2C%20but%20 not,6%20The%20Regulatory%20Reform%20 %28Fire%20Safety%29%20Order%202005

13 Healthy Homes Principles – what’s the evidence?. TCPA, Mar. 2024. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2024/03/HH-principles-and-evidence-V2.pdf

diagnosing delay in planning: Dobry at 50

Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson discuss the perennial issue of time taken in decision making in planning, placing the current debate within its historical context. Is some delay beneficial and necessary? Just how effective are league tables in driving improvement and what effect is ‘gaming the system’ having upon how the system works?

George Dobry QC, April 1969

Government administrations in the UK have expressed a recurrent concern to target ‘delay’ in planning. Few would disagree that timely decisions and plan-making, which underpin sustainable outcomes and produce relevant and up-to-date policy, are desirable. Yet the narrative of delay most often presented in planning seems oddly simplistic and depicts variances in time taken as in some way intolerable. The former is part of the political theatre of which planning has become a part, while the latter exhibits a curious lack of basic deconstruction of why time is taken1. Both seem rather unhelpful and, in our view, they need to be challenged if a serious conversation about the necessary characteristics and needs of a ‘fit for purpose’ planning system is to result.

The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, has most recently affirmed governmental concern over delay in England, announcing the publication of:

‘league tables revealing the real performance of local planning authorities, the speed with which they respond, the level of approvals and delivery against targets’.2

We provide a reminder that problematising planning in the UK as producing ‘delay’ is not new, while also calling for a more helpful assessment of why time is taken; both in terms of where hold-ups occur, as well as reasserting tolerance for the necessary time for good planning to flourish. In doing so, it is an opportune moment to reflect upon and contrast the views of the 1975 Dobry report3 with its targeting of delay, and given that the concerns expressed have continued, with recurring themes and somewhat familiar efforts to address them.

Governmental rhetoric has repeatedly returned to questions of time ‘delay’ and planning as a ‘burden’. This forms an element of a consistent narrative used to justify reform since the 1960s and, if anything, recent years have witnessed an intensification of such comments. The rhetoric accompanying the 2020 planning reform proposals for England prompted the then Secretary of State, Robert Jenrick, to emphasise how local plans and decisions:

‘…take on average 7 years to agree in the form of lengthy and absurdly complex documents and accompanying policies - understandable only to the lawyers who feast upon every word. Under the current system, it takes an average of 5 years for a standard housing development to go through the planning system - before a spade is even in the ground. Seven years to make a plan, 5 years to get permission to build the houses and slow delivery of vital infrastructure.’ 4

This narrative, and similar pronouncements that have accompanied reform agendas, has enabled a suite of actions oriented to reform the English

planning system. Through these it is observable that delay has been taken to task but efforts also exist to accommodate and otherwise manipulate or mask delay. For example, the 30-month timeframe for local plan production, unveiled as part of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 (LURA) in England, and continued pressure on local planning authority decision times is indicative here; but equally so have been options to negotiate ‘extensions of time’ set against any attempts to ‘game’ the system.5

Interestingly the LURA and its accompanying text, issued in Michael Gove’s name, mixes questions of both local authority and developers needing to operate at speed, and claims that the Act will enable:

‘A faster and less bureaucratic planning system with developers held to account… Encourage developers to get building – giving communities updates on the progress of development and giving councils the chance to consider slow build-out rates when approving planning.’ 6

Looking back, we can see that the trope of delay in planning has a long antecedence that continues in the latest attempts at diagnosing delay and presenting solutions.’

Dobry at 50

Fifty years ago, George Dobry QC was commissioned by the government of the day to report on the system of development control. Early expression of the ‘delay’ question had already appeared in debate of the 1968 Town and Country Planning Bill, with increasing planning delay claimed in reaching decisions and administrative burdens at that time.7 Deemed to be high, these concerns prompted a government review. Dobry’s interim report was completed on New Year’s Eve 1973,8 with the final report published in February 1975, entitled Review of the Development Control System. The Heath government, elected in 1970, had just produced Circular 142/73 Streamlining the Planning Machine9 and it was envisaged that ‘a targeted reduction of planning delay’ was to be pursued.10 Commissioned at a time when planning applications and appeals had risen markedly during a property boom, this also coincided with the 1972 Local Government Act, which reorganised local government and had caused a degree of ‘dislocation’ as administrative change was then absorbed in the following years.11 This mix of factors had added to the difficulties in determining decisions speedily and making up-to-date plans.

The first paragraph of Dobry’s final report posits 'delays' as the main reason for the review to be undertaken. Despite this the interim report had argued that ‘not all delay is unacceptable: it is the price we must pay for the democratic planning of the environment’.12 The final report also pointed out

that the early 1970s resourcing levels for planning had meant that many LPAs had a staff shortage and this hampered efficient operation of the system. Dobry argued that ‘there are not enough qualified planners to fill the vacancies’.13

‘Looking back, we can see that the trope of delay in planning has a long antecedence’

While the Dobry review was ostensibly to assess development control, it did also discuss the policy framework, appeals, enforcement and public involvement in planning. The period which led to Dobry had precipitated a concern over timeliness, beyond any temporary governmental delays or questions of inefficiency. The property boom had prompted a large increase in planning applications and consequent ‘delay’ i.e. lengthening of time periods to process planning applications and determine appeals.14 Wilkinson15 comments that Dobry recognised how ‘the quality of decisions is more important than speed’, while a reflection on the final Dobry report provides a sardonic insight, which seems still resonant now:

‘Diagnosis of the condition depends in large part upon one’s perspective and interests. A developer would say that delay is the prime problem... Others concern themselves with the way decisions about development are made… A third group is concerned not with delay or decisionmaking procedures but with the substance of decisions… The three main criticisms of development control are mutually contradictory; more participation inevitably causes more delay, more predictability means less flexibility and less tailoring of decisions to suit a particular local situation.’16

Despite such comprehensions, delay has remained firmly in the sights of government and as a political and policy focal point to this day. Clearly there has also been a long run recognition that delay is produced or caused by many factors, and moreover, there may be legitimate reasons for time taken. In certain instances, some ‘delay’ may even be beneficial. Therefore, what has happened is an unhelpful selectivity which equates or conflates time with delay,with little critical inquiry into the reasons why planning and development takes (and requires) time.

The fretfulness about delay appears to derive and maintain its energy from two main sources: mistrust of local government by central government and pressure from the development industry. Temptation to be seen to be doing something in planning has created a sense of perma-reform, or

constant change and churn. The situation, even in the time of Dobry, was accompanied by resource contraction for planning, as well as a more gradual increase in scope and complexity of issues for the planning system in England to contend with. This provides a milieu in which ‘delay’ can be levelled without a great deal of pushback. Decisions and Local Plans are clearly taking time – in some places there may even be deliberate spoiling tactics adopted for political reasons, which speaks to a greater malaise in considering the whole system and the conflicts that bedevil it. Surely the discussion needs to be fixed on firstly, the causes and secondly how to alleviate or respond best to factors of delay. In short, we need to remember Dobry.

Where does delay come from?

Systems of bureaucracy require some time. It is quite typical that multiple parties need to look at proposals or be consulted. Assumptions need to be checked, alternatives considered, and the acceptability of a decision confirmed. Systems of planning are no different – perhaps more complex given the mutability of operating conditions. Efforts to manage workload and expectations in a discretionary system has seen, since the inception of modern planning in the UK, deadlines for determination of planning applications being put in place. Simply put, these are intended to provide a degree of certainty for the applicant and help planners organise resources to meet deadlines. When we step into plan-making, as a somewhat separate concern, then a much greater degree of complexity becomes apparent and adherence to imposed clock time even more challenging.   While Dobry focused on development control, he identified or made links to numerous factors which together created perceived delay. The core concern over process included possible wasted officer time spent on ‘predictable’ outcomes – a point which effectively promoted more use of permitted development and delegated decision powers. Dobry also highlighted the infrequency of committee meetings as a blocker, although he reported that most applications which were not determined in the required period were actually due to non-response from consultees or incomplete applications. Furthermore, he also noted that only 15-20% of planning applications were refused in the early 1970s. Viewed in 2024 there is a familiar feel to such findings.

It is noticeable that the more recent attitude from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, as indicated in the rhetoric quoted above coming from Michael Gove since 2022, has tempered previous accusations which were levelled mainly at local authorities, and now includes a recognition that delay can lie across the development process and the constellation of planning actors, from local politicians, statutory

bodies, the local planning authority (LPA), the Planning Inspectorate and developers – let alone central government itself.

Why should we worry about delay?

So, if delay has been a long run feature in British planning, and its causes can be attributed to many actors with numerous reasons that explain it, should we still be concerned? Maybe it is just a cost of doing business or a function of a complex system? We argue yes; we should be concerned, but the way forward surely is to properly understand the dynamics of delay, rather than uncritically pointing to, labelling, and condemning time taken without understanding the specific situation and contexts in which it is manifest. One start point is to break down the factors that impact on time taken to arrive at decisions. Beyond the impact of the behaviour of national government in creating instability, we draw attention to four main factors: resources, imposed deadlines, LPA dynamics, and the performance of other actors. In the ‘other actors’ category we should include not only statutory bodies but developers or applicants themselves. The question of resources was picked up by Dobry, including the lack of qualified staff and a chronic lack of funding resources. This is highly resonant given recent work by the Royal Town Planning Institute, which indicates that around 25% of local authority planners had left the profession in the period 2013-2020, while budget cuts meant that between 2009-2022 expenditure on planning services fell by a third.17

In terms of deadlines, it is widely understood that there are standard and long-established determination periods – in England eight weeks for minor applications, 13 weeks for major applications and 16 weeks in the case of applications requiring Environmental Impact Assessment. Some claim that these are routinely missed, but when it comes to recent performance by LPAs in determining planning applications the average for all district level ‘on time’ decisions for 2022 sat at 85%.18 Overall time averages officially sit at 10 weeks for minor applications, with a number of mechanisms such as extensions of time acting to obscure the actual average times taken.2 Delays in validation also provide a source of frustration for all. In work undertaken around 15 years ago19 it was argued that a major problem in the debate over planning delay has been the paucity of empirical information currently available that measures it or which identifies causes. The same study claims that for the sample of larger residential development sites reviewed, the total planning time for those sites generated an average of around 11 months. Such developments typically involve multiple planning applications (and the complexity and attenuation issue prompted the use of Planning Performance Agreements established in 2008), yet

little was said about why the time was taken.  Overall demand on the planning system was recognised as a factor by Dobry, and the early 1970s spikes in planning applications was seen to create blockages back then. This has been a factor that has impacted on the system following the COVID-19 era in England too, and also prior to the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2008. Notably, over the past 50 years the ‘decision on time’ statistic has stayed remarkably stable around the 85% mark. This dipped to 82% in 2006-2007, when planning application levels for England had risen to almost 600,000 during that immense property boom period preceding the GFC. Although difficult to sift ‘England versus UK’ and ‘applications versus decisions’, the number of determinations made in England in 2022 was 412,000, while in 1972 there was a peak figure of 615,000 across the UK as a whole, dropping back to 470,000 in 1974. The level seems high for the early 1970s. Perhaps many applications made then would today be unnecessary because of permitted development freedoms. Many others would today be dealt with using delegated powers.20

Despite the practical challenges involved in comparing data for the UK against the now devolved nations, and the opacity of previously recorded statistics that do not explicitly state whether such figures refer to overall applications or decisions made, it appears that the overall level of determination has remained remarkably similar over the past half century. More work is needed to enable better comparison, including drawing in other variables such as staffing levels over time.

There has also been significant attention paid to Local Plan coverage and delay in plan completion in recent years. Lichfields claim that, in England, plan production has been held up due to confusion over national policy, where: 'one of the key reasons for plan delay has been the impending changes to plan-making’.21 It was acknowledged that by summer 2023 only 40% of LPAs had an up-to-date Local Plan in place. This paints a picture which suggests that delay is symptomatic of change rather than deliberate tardiness, although suspicions abound about how some may game the system against local political considerations. When coupled with resource limitations and an expansion in planning system scope, a challenging mixture of factors is evident which, taken together, appear to provide multiple explanations for ‘delay’.

Conclusion

Pressure to ensure timeliness is not a problem of itself; it is what is provoked that begins to manifest issues. Dissatisfaction and calls for more process change seems to have been the default response. What has not been forthcoming is adequate resources or a proper debate over time to plan well. When we take a moment to reflect on Dobry, it

seems axiomatic that delay is a cost, but how much and why? Who needs to change practice? These are all still matters that need to be understood and communicated much better between all parties. This approach is part of the solution, but it is also about wider communication as well as private sector accountability to the public, as much as pressure for system speed measured by clock time. Thus, we take the view that a whole system perspective is needed on this question and that, despite apparent recognition of 'gaming' in the system, there are still lessons to be learnt 50 years on from Dobry. Re-reading Dobry isn't a bad place to start, given that his report claimed that the problem with the British planning system was of itself ‘not so much the system that was wrong but the way in which it is used’.22 The next step is to address what can be remedied: the ways and means – which of course includes adequate resourcing and a more stable system – this can surely assist the way that time in and for planning is used and understood.

• Prof. Gavin Parker and Dr Mark Dobson are both based at the University of Reading. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 G Parker, M Dobson: ‘Planning in time, time for planning, and time to plan – ‘timescaping’ and its implications for practice’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Jul.-Aug., 243–247

2 M Gove: ‘Falling back in love with the future’. Speech to Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 19 Dec. 2023. Transcript at: https://www.gov.uk/government/ speeches/falling-back-in-love-with-the-future

3 G Dobry: Review of the Development Control System: Final Report. Department of the Environment, Feb. 1975.

4 R Jenrick: ‘Planning for the future’. Speech to Creating Communities Conference, London, 21 Sep. 2020. Transcript at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ robert-jenricks-speech-on-planning-for-the-future

5 ‘Extension of time agreements – Good practice in the use of extension of time agreements’. Webpage. Planning Advisory Service. Local Government Association. 2024. https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/ development-mgmt/managing-performance/extensiontime-agreements

6 M Gove: ‘New laws to speed up planning, build homes and level up’. Press release. 26 Oct. 2023. Transcript at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-tospeed-up-planning-build-homes-and-level-up

7 Town and Country Planning Bill. HL Deb 15 Oct. 1968, vol. 296, col. 1335. https://api.parliament.uk/historichansard/lords/1968/oct/15/town-and-country-planningbill#S5LV0296P0_19681015_HOL_690

8 G Dobry: Review of the Development Control System: interim report Department of the Environment, 31 Dec. 1973. Held by: The National Archives, Kew, Ref: BL 2/1447 https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ details/r/C3081294

9 Streamlining the Planning Machine. Department of the Environment Circular 142/73, 1973.

10 Planning Applications. HC Deb 10 Dec. 1973, vol. 866, col. 43. https://hansard.parliament.uk/

commons/1973-12-10/debates/76280a75-3bd4-4247adee-106e9e64daa8/PlanningApplications

11 G Dobry: Review of the Development Control System: Final Report. Department of the Environment, Feb. 1975, para. 1.20

12 G Dobry: Review of the Development Control System: interim report. Department of the Environment, 31 Dec. 1973. Held by: The National Archives, Kew, Ref: BL 2/1447, p. 3. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ details/r/C3081294

13 G Dobry: Review of the Development Control System: Final Report. Department of the Environment, Feb. 1975, para 1.18

14 P Booth: Controlling Development. Certainty, Discretion and Accountability. Routledge, 1996, p.27; and BH Flowers: Town and Country Planning Nuffield Foundation. Nuffield, 1986, p. 43

15 HW Wilkinson: ‘The ‘Sharp End’ of Planning. Review of the Development Control System’. The Modern Law Review, Vol. 37(5), Sep. 1974, 561

16 Jowell: ‘A Two-Class System: Dobry on Development Control’. The Modern Law Review, Vol. 38(5), Sep. 1975, 543-544

17 G Csontas: State of the Profession 2023 – The UK planning profession in numbers. Royal Town Planning Institute, Nov. 2023. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/ media/16015/state-of-the-profession-2023-final.pdf

18 Live tables on planning application statistics, tables P151, P153 and P154. Webpage. Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities. 2024. https:// www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/livetables-on-planning-application-statistics

19 M Ball, P Allmendinger, and C Hughes. ‘Housing supply and planning delay in the South of England’. Journal of European Real Estate Research, Vol. 2(2), 17 Jul. 2009, 151-169. https://doi.org/10.1108/17539260910978463

20 See Government live tables: for more stats and performance levels across UK systems, see https:// www.gov.scot/collections/planning-statistics/ where it is worth noting that the Scotland application figures have been fairly stable at just under 30,000 per annum in the past decade. For Wales, see: https://gov.wales/ planning-services-performance, and Northern Ireland: https://www.infrastructure-ni.gov.uk/articles/planningactivity-statistics

21 I Tidswell: ‘Start me up – but then you stopped: the continuing cost of local plan delays’. Blog. 30 Jan. 2023. https://lichfields.uk/blog/2023/january/30/ start-me-up-but-then-you-stopped-the-continuing-costof-local-plan-delays/

22 G Dobry: Review of the Development Control System: Final Report. Department of the Environment, Feb. 1975, para 1.33

Bob Pritchard asks: 'Is an end to the piecemeal reform of compulsory acquisition finally in sight'?

compulsory purchase –reports and reforms revisited

Law Commission reports

Two decades ago, the Law Commission published two reports on the law of compulsory purchase (CPO), one dedicated to CPO compensation, the other dealing with procedure. Twenty years on the Law Commission is revisiting the same territory and the fundamental problems remain the same.

In 2004 CPO law was described as ‘…difficult to locate, complicated to decipher and elusive to apply’.1 In 2024 the system is still ‘fragmented, hard to access and in need of modernisation’.2 There is also a consistent message when it comes to the importance of compulsory acquisition in securing wider public benefits.

In 2004 it was described as:

‘…of vital social and economic importance. If large-scale capital projects improving local and national infrastructures are to be implemented, if inner cities are to be regenerated, if land is to be logically and efficiently assembled for the advancement of public purposes, the role of compulsory purchase is absolutely crucial’.1

In 2024 compulsory acquisition remains ‘…essential to the implementation of large-scale projects to improve both local and national infrastructure’2 and is ‘…required to assemble land for muchneeded regeneration of towns and cities, and for the provision of housing’.3

Powers and purposes

In introducing the latest review, the Law Commission highlights an additional purpose for compulsory acquisition which was not a priority 20

years ago, namely contributing to the UK’s net zero climate targets. The nature of the projects delivered using CPO has also evolved since 2004. Back then a typical town centre scheme was almost invariably retail led, often anchored by a large department store. In 2024 the focus is still on town centre regeneration, but the approach is very different. For example, the Bradford City Village proposals are predicated on repurposing retail areas to accommodate residential-led, mixed-use schemes.4 Looking ahead, compulsory acquisition may also have an important role when it comes to securing the land interests needed to achieve nature recovery through biodiversity net gain (BNG) and the implementation of local nature recovery strategies. Given the close relationship between BNG and development management, planning CPO powers may be the first choice to deliver biodiversity gain sites. There are two main planning powers contained in §226 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (TCPA). The first enables local planning authorities to make CPOs to facilitate the carrying out of development, redevelopment or improvement of land where it will promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of the area. The second provides for the compulsory acquisition of land in the interests of the proper planning of the area. The latter power (which in my experience is rarely used), could prove particularly useful when it comes to securing BNG sites where no works requiring planning permission are involved. However, just as the government legislated to dispel any doubts that the planning powers are available to deliver regeneration through amendments in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 (LURA), a specific reference to the availability of the planning powers to deliver nature recovery in legislation would be beneficial.

Acquiring authorities: now and then

The last 20 years has witnessed a change in the bodies who have the power to pursue CPOs. In 2004 a regional development agency (RDA) was

Is comprehensive reform of compulsory acquisition law in sight?

able to employ their CPO powers for schemes which had a significance beyond local authority boundaries. However, the RDAs were a casualty of the ‘bonfire of the quangos’ that took place following the 2010 general election. In the future, combined authorities may be best placed to promote CPOs to deliver ‘larger than local’ schemes – although the exercise of their CPO powers is often constrained and may be contingent upon securing the agreement of the local authority where the acquisition is to take place.5

At a national level, at the turn of the millennium, English Partnerships (EP) were also prepared to use their powers where appropriate, for example to deliver the Lime Street Gateway scheme which had economic benefits that extended well beyond Liverpool city centre. In 2024, Homes England is the national regeneration agency. However, it has a relatively narrower remit and may be less well placed to promote the breadth of schemes championed by EP – and has yet to use the CPO powers given to it in 2017.

An end to piecemeal reforms?

As the introduction to the latest Law Commission review highlights, in the years following the publication of the earlier reports there have been incremental changes to CPO law. LURA has continued this piecemeal approach to reform. On powers and process, in addition to adding ‘regeneration’ to the definition of ‘improvement’ under TCPA §226, acquiring authorities are now able to apply to exercise CPO powers for a longer period than the standard three years. From 31 January 2025, there is also the possibility of authorities being able to confirm a CPO subject to conditions before it can be exercised (for example the confirmation of funding). On compensation, the

most significant change is to allow acquiring authorities to include direction in a CPO for the non-payment of ‘hope value’ (i.e. an element of compensation reflecting the prospect of some future planning permission). This power will only be available in limited circumstances, namely for schemes delivering affordable and social housing, or education or health-related development and where there is a compelling justification in the public interest.

‘Compulsory acquisition may also have an important role when it comes to securing the land interests needed to achieve nature recovery through biodiversity net gain’

Whilst these adjustments to the existing regime are welcome, they are no substitute for the introduction of a comprehensive modern code for compulsory acquisition. Just what this could look like will be the focus of the Law Commission activity over the coming months as one of its aims is to produce a draft Bill to consolidate the law. Hopefully, whatever emerges from the review will not remain on the shelf for another 20 years.

• Bob Pritchard is Head of Knowledge in the Shoosmiths Planning Team. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 See: https://cloud-platforme218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f.s3.amazonaws. com/uploads/sites/30/2015/03/lc291_Towards_a_ compulsory_Purchase_Code_2_Procedure_Final_ Report_SUMMARY.pdf

2 ‘Law Commission to review outdated compulsory purchase laws’. Website. Law Commission, 6 Feb. 2023. https://lawcom.gov.uk/compulsory-purchase-review-toensure-laws-are-fit-for-future-development-projects/

3 ‘Compulsory purchase: Reviewing outdated compulsory purchase laws to support a faster, simpler and more modern land acquisition process’. Website. Law Commission, 2024. https://lawcom.gov.uk/project/ compulsory-purchase/

4 Bradford City Village aims to deliver up to 1,000 homes in the ‘Top of Town’ and Darley Street areas and is being brought forward by Bradford Council and the English Cities Fund. See https://www. bradfordcityvillage.com/

5 See, for example: West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021. https:// www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/112/contents/made

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going local

Cultivating enlightened local self-interest may be the best way to get houses built, suggests David Boyle

space in the middle –localism for the regions?

Rather to my own surprise, I have found myself involved with the latest housing commission, organised by one of two think-tanks I helped to found a decade ago, Radix UK. The commission is to be chaired by Kate Barker, who famously chaired a government review on a related subject and advised Gordon Brown during his relatively short tenure as prime minister.

I’m not a commissioner myself, you understand – I’m sure that won’t come as any surprise to regular readers. Instead, I’m half of a team writing briefing notes for the commissioners.

I’m a little nervous about this, partly because this is the last formal task I will have to undertake before I withdraw to become a pensioner – a life of writing and publishing. Partly also because I have a decided opinion on the subject, and I will feel a little stupid if I fail to impress it on anyone at all in the next few weeks.

The problem is that almost nobody in public life, certainly nobody in Westminster, appears to have any doubts at all – they assume that everyone agrees that it is building too few houses that has inflated house prices so disastrously over the past 35 years.

It didn’t help, of course, but that was all. The way we have kept our most competitive housing markets open to every investor in the world means the problem could never be solved by building a few more.

So where does the responsibility lie? It is mortgage money flooding into the housing market. That is what

going local

I argued in the first chapter of my book, Broke –about the plight of the middle classes.1

Until 1979 and the decision to deregulate global currency flows, the UK government used to have a mechanism called ‘the corset', which balanced the amount of money going into housing against the rise of house prices.2

Margaret Thatcher’s government forgot all about it, and so has everyone else. Nor is it easy to reinvent because people don’t take kindly to having to queue for mortgages – especially when they know they can just go abroad, in the safety of their own computers, to borrow the money.

I have heard it said that mortgages represent the source of about 60% of the money in circulation in the UK. If that was so 20 years ago, it must be all the more so today. It also raises the question of what will happen when the mortgage pumps are finally shut down – as they inevitably will be’

Then, at a meeting of Radix Fellows chaired by the economist Vicky Pryce, I was surprised and delighted to hear them say things quite close to what I’ve said above and in Broke

‘What will happen when the mortgage pumps are finally shut down?’

However, one thing still disturbed me about polite centrist opinion in the UK. This is not due to blaming planners for the mess that is UK housing – because generally speaking they don’t – it is due to them thinking that the current devolution of planning decision-making to communities was not a terribly good idea.

There are probably many readers of this journal who would agree with that, and who are even now yearning for the heady days of regional planning.

Even so, we might reasonably expect readers of this august journal – now on only its fourth editor since the 1970s – to be a little less accommodating in their opinions. Of course decisions are best taken as close as possible to the people most directly and acutely affected by them.

It is true that the government’s obsession with localist planning decisions has left out the regional element completely, thereby eschewing any sense of a government hierarchy. It means that people must wait a long time before they get compensated because someone has built harmful development next to where they live.

The whole logic of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is that these decisions are made by local people – with the help of officials, decision trees and guidance – and that, as the years go by, they will get better at it.

I may be a voice crying in the wilderness as I seem to defend the NPPF – and the next government seems very unlikely to be nearly as kind to local people. In fact, I expect them to vent their frustrations primarily on the poor old misunderstood nimbys.3

Yet, I believe it is still worth reminding people why local decision-making is better than distant decision-making. It is because those taking the decisions are, as a group, representing nobody but themselves.

Certainly, they will have to balance competing uses for a given piece of land, but it is so much better in the long run when decisions are made by locals who know every inch of the territory, rather than by a faceless committee 50 miles away at least, who search for a tickbox formula which will allow them to get it all over with by lunchtime.

• David Boyle is a former editor of Town & Country Planning and is now co-director of the New Weather thinktank and policy director of Radix Big Tent. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 D Boyle: Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes? Fourth Estate, 2013

2 JCR Dow, ID Saville: A Critique of Monetary Policy: Theory and British Experience. Oxford University Press, 24 May 1990, pp.153-168. https://doi.org/10.1093/019828

3199.003.0010

3 Those who do, of course, support development but ‘not in my back yard’.

For sale signs on display as prices and sales in the housing market pick up, London, England, 21 July 2018

green leaves

Despite 120 years of justification in this Journal, advocating for public greenspace remains vital, explains Danielle Sinnett

from garden cities to green infrastructure

Looking back at 125 years of the TCPA reveals how far we have come in terms of urban greening, but also how little has changed over this period. Here, I provide a few examples of common themes that can been seen in articles taken from The Garden City; Garden Cities and Town Planning and Town & Country Planning, focusing on how much the discussions around green infrastructure have changed (or not). This is by no means a comprehensive review, simply some observations from reading a snapshot of articles.

A park by any other name

Over the past 120 years the terminology has moved on. In early editions, parks, open spaces, playgrounds, green girdles and recreation grounds are in relatively common usage, and village greens and recreation grounds were clearly marked on early plans of Garden Cities. By the 1950s, although these features are still seen as important, the most common use of the word ‘park’ is in relation to car parks and these were also now present in many of the development plans discussed in articles from the 1950s to the 1970s. Also, green girdles have been replaced with green belts. In the 1980s we start to see retail and business parks as well as more frequent articles highlighting the issues with car-dependent developments. Around this time sustainable development becomes more prevalent – both the need for sustainable places and how they might be achieved. Although ‘green’ is used

green leaves

synonymously with ‘eco’ to denote development focused upon environmental outcomes, the role of green infrastructure in achieving this is back on the agenda. By the early 2000s terms such as ‘green space’ and ‘green infrastructure’ become more common.

Green infrastructure as a public good

As one might expect, given its origins as the Garden Cities Association, the importance of what we might now term ‘green infrastructure’ has been a common feature. In line with Ebenezer Howard’s

vision for Garden Cities, articles at the beginning of the 20th century make it clear that parks, allotments, village greens, open spaces and trees are integral to healthy places and creating a connection to nature. In the first edition, W Murray Morrison writes that Foyer’s industrial village, with its green at the centre of the development, was ‘in harmony with surrounding nature’ and in the early 1900s articles call for allotments, small holdings and fruit trees – consistent with a focus upon food growing in Garden Cities.

Green infrastructure was seen as crucial for

Early illustration of Letchworth Garden City

Detail of one type of road layout for Harborne-Quinton, Birmingham

green leaves

healthy places and a way to reduce overcrowding in industrial towns and cities. Indeed, in 1908 people were leaving central London ‘at the rate of 13,000 a year, because there was insufficient greenspace, and the people wished to get away from the public-house and the gambling den’.1 In the same year, the Housing, Town Planning, etc Bill included provisions for parks, recreation and open space.2 Commentary on the proposed land value tax in Scotland the same year highlighted the perceived conflicts that we still see today:

‘…far from diminishing the evils of overcrowding, [the proposals] would tend very greatly to increase those evils. Observe that your proposal is to penalise the man who does not cover every square foot of his property with bricks and mortar. What a comment that is on the movement now in force for providing public parks, open spaces, garden cities, and so forth.’ 3

‘Let us build up conditions of Society which shall make slum life an impossibility’

The backdrop to the Garden Cities movement was that new developments were not delivering for people, with authors regularly decrying the lack of trees and parks in modern housing estates. This quote from 1908, could have been written today:

‘the continual disfigurement of the surroundings of large towns by the cutting down of old trees can never be compensated for by the planting of the few sickly saplings that are supposed to adorn many a suburban road’ 4

Throughout the 20th century, the mismatch between people’s needs and what is delivered is a common thread. For example, writing in 1950, FJ Osborn, a key person in the history of the TCPA and the post-war New Towns, wrote of his frustration with planners’ focus upon development types that people do not want when there was: ‘a clear desire on the part of the city millions for family houses with ground floors, gardens, and green surroundings. No demand was ever more unmistakably evidenced’ 5

Fast forward to recent issues of Town & Country Planning and we see articles by Matthew Carmona6 and others lamenting the poor quality of many of our modern developments, their lack of green infrastructure and inattention to the needs of future.

Benefits of green infrastructure

Although many editions of Town & Country Planning and its predecessor publications advocate for the inclusion of greenspace and trees, very few explain why. A notable exception is Lady Florence Dixie who writes in The Coming Cities (1906) about what she sees as the importance of Garden Cities, and contact with nature, and health:

‘Let our coming cities then be all Garden ones and, let us build up conditions of Society which shall make slum life an impossibility. Instead of living in a rookery and paying exorbitant rent for the privilege of doing so, let those who toil have homes where Nature gives out her health-dealing favours and which they can call their own. Let pure air and beautiful surroundings be man’s companions and healthy ennobling sports the recreative forces which shall build up his physical well-being and strengthen his mind.’7

Indeed, most of the commentary surrounding parks and open spaces talks of their aesthetic importance in terms of beauty and much less about their benefits beyond this. Trees however are frequently mentioned in terms of the functions (or ecosystem services) they provide, for example, for shade and shelter, as well as their beauty. This pattern continues for most of the 20th century. However, in the 1990s we start to see far more articles demonstrating the benefits of green infrastructure, starting with parks and allotments, perhaps as a response to their loss, degradation or exclusion in cities in the post-war period. One early example is an article in 1990 which reported on an allotment scheme in Oxford that was supporting those recovering from mental ill-health. This relationship between green infrastructure and both physical and mental health becomes an increasingly common focus for Town & Country Planning throughout the 2000s.

Similarly, throughout the 2000s we see terms such as 'ecosystem services' and 'nature-based solutions' being used to demonstrate the benefits of green infrastructure. Increasingly, this evidence is making the financial case as well as the environmental or social case.

Guidance and tools

In keeping with its practitioner audience there is a strong focus on guidance from the inception of The Garden City and its successor publications. Early regular columns on How to make a garden and A garden city in the making, as well as exemplars from around the world including the USA (parkways

green leaves

Green infrastructure: as important today as it was 125 years ago

and networks), Vienna (green girdle), Germany, France, Canada, Sweden and Russia. Those of you familiar with the phrase ‘right tree, right place’ may be interested in a 1907 reference to the Annual Report of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, which included a list of the trees and shrubs suitable for planting in London.8

In more recent years the challenges we have seen in the delivery of high quality green infrastructure has continued this tradition with articles on new tools and standards including Building with Nature, Biodiversity Net Gain and the Environmental Justice Tool, as well as the TCPA's own research in the PERFECT project.10

A return to garden cities?

The corollary of this increase in evidence, best practice and tools is that green infrastructure is now embedded in national and local government policy and guidance. It is perhaps frustrating that the case for the importance of greenspace and contact with nature needed to be made, when it seemed so obvious to the champions of the original Garden Cities. However, this has allowed for the value of these features to be fully recognised and appreciated. For 125 years, the TCPA has played a

crucial role in advocating for this, so that we might see places that offer many of the benefits of the Garden City. We now need to ensure that this knowledge is put to good use in the delivery of green, healthy places where people want to live.

• Prof. Danielle Sinnett is a Professor in Sustainable Built Environments, and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments at the University of the West of England, Bristol. All views expressed are personal.

Notes

1 ‘Mr John Burns at Ealing’. Garden Cities and Town Planning, 1908, Vol. 3(29), 112

2 ‘When the open spaces, public and private, to be provided under the scheme have been decided upon the areas will have to be defined and specified on the maps accompanying the scheme and the bye-laws (if any) in force in the area included in the scheme relating to the control and management of open spaces will require to be carefully considered and provisions made for suspending or supplementing them should any alteration appear necessary or desirable.’ – §40, Chapter IX, Housing, Town Planning, etc. Act 1909

3 See also: Land Values (Scotland) Bill. HL Deb 02 July 1908, vol. 191, cols. 902-928. https://api.parliament.uk/ historic-hansard/lords/1908/jul/02/land-values-scotlandbill

4 EG Cuplin: ‘The Town Planning Bill from the Garden City standpoint’. Garden Cities and Town Planning, 1908, Vol. 3(29), 89-92

5 FJ Osborn: ‘The aims of planning’. Town & Country Planning, 1950, Vol. 18(70), Feb., 13-15

6 M Carmona: ‘Housing design – the local political perspective’. Town & Country Planning, 2019, Vol. 88, Jun., 254-258 and M Carmona: ‘The ladder of place quality’. Town & Country Planning, 2019, Vol. 88, Aug., 327-331

7 F Dixie: ‘The coming cities’. The Garden City. 1906, Vol. 1(7), 143-145

8 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association for the year 1897. Hutchings and Crowsley, London, 1898, Appendix G, pp. 94-95 [electronic]. Book digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University and uploaded at: https://archive. org/details/annualreportmet00britgoog/page/n93/ mode/2up

9 H Sultan, N Grayson, S Jones, D Pike, S Greenham, D Needle, J Sadler, E Frew: ‘Greenspace and environmental justice – a new metric to guide resource allocation. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Nov./Dec., 410-418

10 Planning for Environment and Resource eFficiency in European Cities and Towns (PERFECT). See: https:// www.tcpa.org.uk/collection/perfect/

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personal provocations

When thinking about how best to celebrate the Association’s 125th anniversary, and the 120th anniversary of Town & Country Planning, I thought it would be appropriate to ask those who have made the TCPA Journal what it is over the years – its loyal contributors – to look both backwards and forwards in time and share their personal reflections about what the coming 25 years (or longer) are likely to hold for society as a whole, the planning profession and the TCPA.

I was surprised by the incredibly enthusiastic response to this plea and sufficient responses were received to allow space in successive issues of Town & Country Planning in 2024 to be devoted to these sometime whimsical, sometime strident, but always intensely personal provocations.

I have given free rein to contributors to say whatever they feel needs to be said. I hope all readers will find at least one of these personal provocations that chimes with their own views but also at least one that challenges their world view.

• Philip Barton is the current editor of Town & Country Planning

don’t pull up the plant to check the roots

Baroness Sally Hamwee is a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords. She was President of the TCPA a little over 25 years ago. All views expressed are personal.

Looking ahead 25 years, is the TCPA planning to review its vision and values? This is an appropriate periodic exercise, yes, but let’s not too often pull up the plant to check the roots. The mission forms the roots and – though someone else in this issue may be arguing for change – I won’t do so. What seems to cover the ground for me is:

‘To challenge, inspire and support people to create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone.’

People creating places is certainly apt for local government, and without its revival – restoration even – how can land use planning achieve its goals? It wasn’t a golden age for local government 25 years ago, in the TCPA’s centenary year, but I believe it is now at a point where democracy is in jeopardy. Budgets are so divorced from local tax-raising that taxation and representation have also become largely detached.

This must have a knock-on effect upon who wants to take on the task of representation. Councillors need to be ambitious for their communities, and that must require increasing ingenuity and personal resilience; there is no job satisfaction in explaining that there is no money; continually hearing this must reduce the individual council tax payer’s confidence in their council.

So, people who would make good councillors are deterred. Where too are those who already have a role locally, particularly in business but also in other parts of society, who would be effective personal links? How far are people who would make good council officers deterred too? In the planning world, local government has been losing out to the private sector for well over 25 years.

When I chaired a planning committee, I thought that it was important, as it is now, to discuss both the detail and the big picture. I was grateful at a street meeting where a resident persuaded his

neighbours to accept a small development because housing was needed – a tiny example of where councillors have to frame the discussion.

Discussion needs leadership, and I admire the councillors who take that on. I swing between fury and despair at national politicians who should lead a thoughtful and humane debate about an issue that will remain relevant over the next 25 years: the movement of people as a result of conflict, climate change and individual persecution, and our response to that movement.

How dare the government suggest that taking ‘our fair share’ means casting refugees and asylum seekers as the enemy, and pulling up the drawbridge? Creating immigration policies that make it impossible for families to live together in this country (the past 25 years has consolidated society as being global). Acknowledging, sort of, that we are short of people with a variety of skills and aptitudes but putting barriers in their way. And, and… And, above all, encouraging suspicion and hostility to those who would come and contribute to our society. After all, few of us are ancient Britons.

How dangerous it is to imply, or say explicitly, that it is ‘others’ who take up housing and services, and that without them all would be rosy. All power to the elbow of the planners who advocate, not of course for housing alone, but for all the infrastructure that must go with it – which is what the TCPA does and should go on doing.

love life and liberty at the TCPA

Kate Henderson is Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation and was Chief Executive of the TCPA from 2010 to 2018. All views expressed are personal.

As the TCPA celebrates its 125th anniversary, it’s a good opportunity to take stock of where we are and where we want to be by the time the TCPA celebrates its 150th anniversary.

Before looking forward please indulge me in a brief moment to reminisce about my time at the TCPA. I joined the team in 2007 and was Chief Executive from 2010 to 2018. This is just a small chapter in the history of the TCPA, but a huge part of my career.

There is nowhere else quite like the TCPA! The Association is fired by idealism and enthusiasm; with the ability to bring planning policy to life in creative ways, and with a brave and bold approach to campaigning.

A career highlight is performing Love, Life and Liberty at the Hay Festival in 2013 alongside Hugh Ellis, Peter Ellis, Derek Hooper, David Lock, Fiona Mannion and Diane Smith with music performed by the amazing Chris Ellis and Rosie Toll. For those of you reading this who haven’t heard of Love, Life and Liberty, it’s a journey through Britain’s radical tradition of utopian art and politics. The performance included music and readings spanning 350 years, from The Diggers to Bruce Springsteen, and captured the spirit of hope and vision that once transformed the nation – basically the Desert Island Discs of the planning movement.

Today, we still face the primary challenges confronted by early Garden City pioneers 125 years ago: meeting our housing shortage; generating jobs, and creating beautiful, inclusive places. Something that unites the TCPA and my current role as Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation (NHF) is a shared belief that decent homes that people can afford are the foundations for a good life and strong economy.

A decent, affordable home is as essential as having clean air to breathe, and should be a right for us all, wherever we live across the country. Housing

also plays a critical role in a strong national and local economy.

But for many decades now in England we have had no clear, long-term strategy for housing and we are now living through an acute housing emergency. There are millions of people in England who cannot access the housing they need. This includes two million children in England living in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable homes.

With a long-term plan, we could end the housing crisis. Without one, NHF research¹ shows that by the time the TCPA hits 150 years old, things could be far worse: the number of children living in temporary accommodation will rise; social housing waiting lists will grow; homelessness will accelerate, and affordability will worsen.

But I’m an optimist and we know that the housing crisis is one that can be solved. Countries around the world are tackling similar crises with long-term national strategies – so can we. By implementing a long-term plan that delivers real change for the people who need it most, the next government can transform the housing system and create lasting solutions that serve people, the planet and our economy.

So, by the time the TCPA celebrates its 150th anniversary, my hope is that we will have ended homelessness; given millions more people the security of a social home; ensured all our existing social homes are warm and decent; improved affordability, and boosted productivity because every region has the homes it needs to grow.

Whatever happens over the next 25 years, I’m grateful for the TCPA’s spirit of hope and vision which is needed now more than ever.

Note

1 ‘The housing crisis: what will happen if we don’t act?’. Webpage. National Housing Federation, 11 Sep. 2023. https://www.housing.org.uk/resources/the-housingcrisis-what-will-happen-if-we-dont-act/

things can only get better

Prof. Ian Wray is the author of Great British Plans and an honorary professor at Liverpool’s Heseltine Institute and Manchester University’s Planning School. All views expressed are personal.

Roberta Flack’s song Tryin’ Times is an overlooked jazz/blues classic from 1969.¹ Against an acoustic bass hook, Flack plays sparse piano and delivers a moving vocal full of gospel nuances. But it’s the lyrics that really pull. She sings about trying times, a society racked with confusion, people who don’t care about each other, brothers and sisters set against one another (US race riots had only recently ended). The tone may be downbeat but there is a resigned dignity – and a determination.

It’s a testament for our times. Depression, gloom and the threat of war seems everywhere. Living standards have fallen badly. Many are reliant on charity at the food banks to survive, if not avoid starvation. After more than a decade of austerity economics, public services are under strain, from councils to the health service and even the police. Public investment has been pitifully low, not least in council housing, privatised by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and never, despite the valiant efforts of Michael Heseltine, replaced.² Social cohesion could break down as politicians foolishly fan the flames of division. There is not much belief in planning as a solution to problems.

We’ve been here before. Town planning and the TCPA languished in effectiveness between the two world wars. In the national housing drive of the 1920s and 1930s, local authorities opted en masse for garden suburbs and edge of town housing, rather than new towns. The TCPA bent with the wind, supporting Hampstead Garden Suburb, merely as a tactical decision.

Two government committees gave the Association a foothold in policy making. The first was the 1920 Committee on Unhealthy Areas, with Neville Chamberlain as its chairman. It recommended restrictions on factory building in London, along with movement towards Garden Cities. When he became Prime Minister in 1938, Chamberlain appointed a Royal Commission under

Sir Anderson Montague Barlow to examine the distribution of industrial population. So, when the Second World War ended, the proponents of planning had their ammunition ready.

It's time to repeat that grit and determination. In terms of politics and economics we are at the bottom of a trough. The Office for Budget Responsibility expects an upturn, with an average of 1.4% annual growth in gross domestic product between 2023 and 2028.³

We need to have the ammunition ready again, with clear policies, not just for new towns, but for expanded settlements, land value capture, revived regional planning and above all long-term policies to continue the revival of our big cities, whilst rescuing the poorest urban places. Contrary to popular belief, Brexit, Trussonomics and David Cameron’s Austerity did not destroy the UK economy. But they appear to have hit the Conservatives below the waterline. As Labour moves to the centre ground the opportunities will be immense: who knows, the UK might yet emerge as a sensibly run progressive European state with public investment, social services and planning to match.

Notes

1 D Hathaway, L Hutson: Tryin’ Times. Label: Atlantic Records, Producer: J Dorn, Artist: R Flack. 20 Jun. 1969. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=La8_flXOTrI

2 A Beckett: ‘The right to buy: the housing crisis that Thatcher built’. The Guardian, 26 Aug. 2015. https:// www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/26/right-tobuy-margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-housing-crisis

3 ‘Economic and fiscal outlook – March 2024’. Website. Office for Budget Responsibility, 6 Mar. 2024. https:// obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march2024/#annex-a

in the future to come

Dr Richard Simmons is a Visiting Professor in the Bartlett

School of Planning, University College London

and was the last Chief Executive of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, following a long career in urban policy and regeneration. All views expressed are personal.

Ben relaxed into the vegan leather comfort of his Landrobo Autonome.* ‘City Hall’, he commanded.

‘Recharging lane or fast lane?’ the car asked. ‘Recharging, if you can get me there by 10:30.’ ‘Sure. Let’s go!’ As they glided silently onto the guided expressway, Ben had time to enjoy the view. To think this had once been Green Belt, with vast, barren fields depleted of nature. The policy switch to promote biodiversity and defend the city from the worst ravages of climate change had resulted in a more beautiful and productive landscape. Ben was one of the first planners to advocate a fully researched, scientific approach to managing Green Belts for nature and green infrastructure. It had paid off. The city was cooler, better protected against floods, and surrounded by smallholdings producing local food sustainably. Penetrating ‘green fingers’ into town meant people could escape urban heat islands easily on foot or by bike.

They were passing the old edge city now. Online shopping had put paid to retail warehouses. AI had enabled big corporations to automate manufacturing in the most profitable places. That hadn’t included Ben’s city. The only big robotic factory left was the other side of town. Of course, misguided government housing targets back in the day led to some soulless estates replacing IKEA and Homebase, but something much more interesting had happened elsewhere. The influx of climate migrants had been controversial, especially when the prime minister pointed out, rashly or bravely, depending on your viewpoint, that our profligacy with carbon and methane caused the climate emergency, so we had a moral duty to help its victims. However, demographics told. Collapsing birth rates meant the home population needed

reinforcements, so the migrants came. With little support on arrival, they colonised edge city wastelands and built homes and vibrant, entrepreneurial businesses in the abandoned sites and buildings. Ben would usually stop off for a mursik at a roadside stall, but he had to get to the planning committee meeting.

Normally, of course, the committee met virtually. Today, they had asked for an in-person discussion. They were worried by decisions taken by the AI development management system, and they didn’t want the AI listening in. Over the last 50 years, AI had grown increasingly capable and largely replaced human planners. It applied rules-based policies and codes to make the most scientifically rational, climate-friendly land-use allocations and design decisions. The city was beautiful in a classical, formal way. Yet there was a growing feeling that AI fostered sterility and a lack of innovation, especially compared with the informality and buzz of the edge city, where controls were minimal. Somehow, despite all AI’s technical advances, uniformity stalked the algorithms. As one Member put it, ‘I don’t know where I am any more. Everything is looking so samey.’ Ben was secretly pleased. AI saved a lot of money, but he was old enough to have worked in a human team and craved its creativity. But he was worried. Would the AI let it happen?

Note

1 J Tempest: In the Future to Come. Label: Epic Records, Producer: Europe, Artist: Europe. 14 Mar. 1983. https:// www.bing.com/videos/search?q=europe%20-%20 the%20future%20to%20come%20videos&FORM=VIRE0&mid=B152E42F3026AF6FB64FB152E42F3026AF6FB64F&view=detail&ru=%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Deurope%20-%20the%20future%20 to%20come

Editor’s Note: * ‘Autonome’ is a contraction of the German word ‘autonomemobielerobot’. Autonomous mobile robots are robotic vehicles that operate without the need for human control or intervention and are heralded as the transport solution of the future. They typically move dynamically around any obstacles they encounter and should not be confused with automated guided vehicles. See: https://www. antdriven.com/autonomous-mobile-robots

‘The city was beautiful in a classical, formal way’ (AI generated image)

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putting human flourishing back at the core of the planning system

Charlotte Llewellyn is Osborn Research Assistant at the TCPA. All views expressed are personal.

This year marks the 125th anniversary of the TCPA. During this time, there has been profound societal change. Yet we still face many of the same challenges, including a shortage of good quality, affordable homes in places that enhance our health and well-being. As we reflect on the history of the TCPA, it is also worth looking forward and imagining what role the TCPA will have in the coming decades.

The TCPA and the Garden City movement are intrinsically linked. Our recent Tomorrow125 project1 made it clear that the Garden City idea and principles are more relevant than ever. At its core, the Garden City idea is about enabling human flourishing by creating healthy and sustainable communities. The Garden City principles provide a holistic model that enables a robust and practical response to the various challenges we are facing, including energy provision and food security. The ideals of the TCPA and Garden City movement are rooted in a belief that society is better off when we all inhabit places that allow us to thrive. It is hard to imagine a future where these ideals are not relevant.

We are currently facing a plethora of concurrent crises, from climate change and biodiversity to housing and energy. These are complex and interwoven challenges that extend beyond the boundaries of the UK and will have ramifications in the coming decades. Moreover, we know that these challenges disproportionately affect already marginalised communities. I believe that it is

imperative for our work in mitigating these crises to be co-produced with and centred in the most impacted and vulnerable communities.

From the start, Howard’s vision for the Garden Cities was never just theoretical but rooted in a sense of practical idealism that could be tested in reality. The Garden City movement speaks to a pioneering spirit that still exists in communities up and down the British Isles. Through Tomorrow125, the TCPA has been working to highlight and support amazing work already being carried out in communities to improve their localities. Moreover, we have been supporting local authorities across the country to implement best practices and enact ambitious targets in their planning and housing policies. Over the last 125 years, the TCPA has built up a wealth of organisational knowledge and best practices. I believe the TCPA can and will play a pivotal role in the coming decades by sharing knowledge, robustly holding government and other stakeholders to account, and by creating guidance and policy that enables human flourishing by addressing the root causes of the crises as well as tackling the inequalities that they perpetuate.

What next for the TCPA? It must surely continue to help reimagine and reinvigorate places in an innovative, holistic and inclusive way - allowing everyone, not just the few, to thrive - not just survive.

Note 1 See https://www.tomorrow125.org.uk/

making better places by making places better

Peter

Hetherington is

a former

regional affairs editor of

The

Guardian

. He is a vice president and past chair of the TCPA. All views expressed are personal.

More than a mere slogan, 'making better places' is a broad mission statement, embracing both new communities and the equally important task of renewing worn-out neighbourhoods, towns and villages.

The TCPA has a proud record in setting the pace for housing a post-war generation in 32 New Towns; an ‘essay in civilisation’, according to Lord Reith, who led a government commission to fast-track delivery. An equally vital task - the flip side of the 'better places' coin - is addressing the challenges in communities labelled ‘left-behind’, ‘forgotten’ or perhaps more accurately ‘held-back’.

If towns and villages in post-industrial Britain have never recovered from the privations of strike action 40 years ago, then once-solid suburbia is fast deteriorating too, as are some of the older New Towns. We once had institutions to partner councils in, say, land assembly as a prelude to redevelopment. They’ve disappeared. Local government, hardest hit by austerity, has lost at least 25% of its spending power and disposed of assets worth £15 billion - an eye-watering scale of decline.

Forget 'levelling up' and remember that 14 years ago a deconstructionist Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government abolished eight regional development agencies. ‘Stalinist’ Eric Pickles called them. Alongside them went government offices in the regions, regional spatial strategies and all. Pickles attacked the very foundations of local government behind a smokescreen of ‘Localism’. The legacy? Multibillion pound cuts, partly, or perhaps largely responsible for eight English councils going bust, 10 more facing insolvency, and half of all councils likely to become insolvent within 10 years.²

Burdened by statutory responsibilities, principally children’s and adult social services which consume about 75% of budgets, addressing homelessness compounds the situation. Many councils are barely functioning, let alone being capable of addressing community renewal.

So, the reconstruction work must start with rebuilding an active state – nationally, regionally and locally – from scratch. Let's revive Churchill's rallying cry: 'never let a good crisis go to waste' and accept that, whilst the challenge of rebuilding Britain is considerable, the opportunities for bodies such as the TCPA in partnering, campaigning and leading by practical example are huge.

Let's get better at making better places, primarily by building more and higher quality housing in the right places. This has never been more vital since the government cut funding for affordable homes by a staggering 63% in 2010. Let’s press for a national public-private sector regeneration agency –a reborn English Partnerships – to partner with local councils. And let’s campaign for a genuine renewal of local democracy, laying out a ‘duty to devolve’ from Whitehall to town halls, with place-shaping at the heart – delivering hope, not despair, over the next decades. In short, ‘making better places’.

Notes

1 W Eichler: ‘Cash-strapped councils forced to sell £15bn of assets’. Webpage. LocalGov, 21 Sep. 2023. Cashstrapped councils forced to sell £15bn of assets | LocalGov

2 P Butler: ‘Nearly one in 10 English councils expect to go bust in next year, survey finds’. Webpage. The Guardian, 28 Feb. 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/ society/2024/feb/28/nearly-one-in-10-english-councilsexpect-to-go-bust-in-next-year-survey-finds

Special issue: 125 years of the TCPA – ‘personal provocations’

the rise of the cyborg planner?

Prof. Iain White has been Professor of Environmental Planning at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, since 2013. Prior to this he was the Director of the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology at the University of Manchester. All views expressed are personal.

Planning is inherently future-oriented, but the future is inherently uncertain. I give a lecture to first year students that shows various long-term future predictions from the 1960s onwards and there are recurring themes. Firstly, an optimism that the future will be ‘better’ than the past. Secondly, futurists predict new technology relatively well and outline how they think this could change aspects, such as how we communicate. Thirdly, they tend to understate societal changes and how entrenched power and capitalism exerts forces to produce an uneven distribution of benefits.

As such, I am writing this with a fear that some future planning lecturer may similarly critique these insights but am taking inspiration from the brief to be provocative. So, here is my prediction of three interlinked trends that could unfold and deepen and which I think will shape the context within which planning operates, the nature of the profession, and provide a future agenda for the TCPA.

1. Increasing pressure on planning to be faster and more enabling

While significant change may be a common motif of many future visions, I think the first trend will be a deepening of the current criticism of the profession experienced globally. Part of the backdrop for this is economic and structural. In the UK and beyond we see increasing national debt, low resources for local government, demands to speed up infrastructure investment, and calls for more housing, which are all current trends that I suspect are more likely to worsen than improve. This is a long-standing critique that we are familiar with and is typically accompanied by political and private sector pressure to reform planning to be faster and more enabling. Put differently, I think this

will move from an occasional impulse to be a core permanent feature.

2. The use of AI to automate planning tasks

In response, and allied to rapid technological development, I think in the surprisingly near term we will see planning authorities experimenting with AI capabilities and increased automation will become a cornerstone of future planning reforms. We are familiar with decision support tools, but the ‘intelligence’ capabilities of AI are a step change from that. Just as we saw mechanisation take over routine manual tasks, we will see the same with routine intellectual tasks soon. I think the more technical or processual aspects of planning are particularly vulnerable to technological disruption, and aspects such as managing applications or collating and analysing consultation responses will soon be semi- or fully automated.

3. The existential crisis?

In this changing context it will be important to foreground the perennial questions of what is good planning, why, and who decides? An optimistic view would be AI gives planners more time and space to conduct tasks that are more ‘human’ or contested, such as relating to communities, values, justice, or navigating different priorities and groups. An alternative could be the rise of the ‘cyborg planner’, where AI would provide initial data and analysis, but with judgement reserved for humans. A less optimistic take would be a diminishing of the scope of planning where even the power and values of planning become opaque and incorporated within the programming of AI.

In positing that over the next 25 years the planning profession will be characterised by

Special issue: 125 years of the TCPA – ‘personal provocations’

fundamental technological disruption I acknowledge I could be repeating the common refrain of those futurists I discuss in lectures, but I would emphasise it is the social and political factors that are key to how this plays out. This also reinforces the continued importance of the TCPA in helping lead and shape important public and professional debates. Whether about the limits or biases of technology, the justice implications of utilisation, or assisting the profession to continually reflect and recast itself to help create healthy, sustainable and resilient places that are fair for everyone.

Today – designing in three dimensions

Tomorrow - the ethics of AI decision making

Freepik

Freepik

imagining a brighter future for planning

Dr Olivier Sykes is Senior Lecturer in European Spatial Planning at the University of Liverpool. His research and teaching interests include international planning studies, urban regeneration and planning for heritage conservation.

Prof. John Sturzaker is Ebenezer Howard Professor of Planning at the University of Hertfordshire. His research and teaching interests include community planning, rural planning and planning for housing. All views expressed are personal.

The 125th anniversary of the TCPA provides an opportunity to reflect on the past and the future prospects of planning. As well as taking a long view of the period it is also instructive to consider the more recent past, specifically the ‘long 2010s’ of planning reform and activity under the Conservativeled governments who have held power during that time. Our recently published Planning in a Failing State¹ is a damning indictment of the failures of those governments, and their attempts to blame the planning system, and by extension planners, for those failures. We are all familiar with the consequences of some of the most significant policy missteps of these years, from ‘austerity’ through a disastrous referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU to the equally disastrous result of ‘getting Brexit done’.

History is also driven by the actions of individuals. For example, the fact that the TCPA is celebrating a century and a quarter of activity, and that we are even penning these lines is a testament to the enduring legacy of Ebenezer Howard. A recent exposé in The Guardian newspaper about the Rt Hon. Michael Gove MP reminds us that individual influence is not always so positive.² As readers of this Journal are more likely than the general population to be aware, Gove has been a cabinet

minister for almost the entire period since 2010, including as the Secretary of State in charge of planning from September 2021 to July 2022 and October 2022 to the time of writing; and Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs from June 2017 to July 2019.

The Guardian concludes that his: ‘brand of Toryism will probably be remembered for two things: fanaticism and misplaced confidence. To adapt a quote from his hero, Winston Churchill: never in the field of British politics was so much damage done to so many by so few’

Though the policy failures that have ensued have affected society at large, it is professionals in different sectors who have often borne the brunt of their impacts, initially teachers³ and latterly planners. Former Chief Planner of England Steve Quartermain’s recent planning parody of the song Reviewing the Situation from the musical Oliver! wryly alludes to the approach taken to developing policy under such political leadership:

‘So, who shall I ask, somebody? Not the professionals, certainly! All my closest advisers have always delivered blue sky. Their ideas never work, and I constantly ask myself why?’⁴

In whose advice should politicians trust: professionals or blue sky thinkers?

A combination of ‘fanaticism and misplaced confidence’ is, we argue, behind many of the problems faced by the planning system in England today. Examples of misplaced confidence include that localism would lead to an upsurge in popular support for housebuilding, whereas the opposite appears to be the case. Then, it is hard to find reasons other than fanaticism for the ongoing enthusiasm for continuing deregulation, in the form of expanded permitted development rights, and the conversion of manifestly inappropriate buildings into poor quality new homes for the worst off in society.

Thomas Jefferson famously observed that ‘the government you elect is the government you deserve’. The evidence in our book clearly indicates that, for planning to be effective, it needs to be properly resourced and supported and that governments need to listen to rather than sideline professional opinion. It is only under these conditions, we believe, that we can look forward with optimism to 25 years from now and hope that planning is once more recognised as the transformative and inspiring tool that we know it can be.

Notes

1 O Sykes, J Sturzaker (Eds.): Planning in a Failing State: Reforming Spatial Governance in England. Policy Press, Bristol, 2023.

2 A Beckett: ‘Anderson and Braverman shout loudest, but one man has led the toxification of the Tories: Michael Gove’. The Guardian, 2 Mar. 2024. https://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/02/ lee-anderson-suella-braverman-michael-govetoxification-tories

3 During his tenure as Education Secretary, schoolteachers became the first profession to experience Gove’s misplaced confidence in the ability of his pet theories to affect positive change. Professor Sir Richard Evans, historian, president of Wolfson College, Cambridge thus notes: ‘Gove presided over the disintegration of our school system’ and his ‘contempt for professional educationalists’. Whilst Tom Sherrington, headteacher, King Edward VI grammar school, Chelmsford comments: ‘When you met him he was always affable, but it was a veneer – he wasn't really listening to the profession, or taking any notice of people who thought differently’.’ Cited in L Tickle, R Ratcliffe: ‘Michael Gove: 'bogeyman' or 'the greatest education secretary ever'?’. The Guardian, 22 Jul. 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/22/ michael-gove-legacy-education-secretary

4 S Quartermain: ‘I am reviewing the situation: A minister’s lament’. Blog. Redactive Publishing Limited, 25 Mar. 2024. https://www.theplanner.co. uk/2024/03/20/i-am-reviewing-situation-ministerslament

Anticipations

Dr Nick Green is a lecturer in the School of Environment, Education and Development at the University of Manchester. Prior to entering academia, he worked as a surveyor specialising in the restoration of historic buildings. He was Policy and Projects Officer at the TCPA in 1999-2000 and has also served on the TCPA Policy Council, when he led its Regional Task Team. All views expressed are personal.

In 1940 the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association rechristened itself a second time. Founded as the Garden Cities Association, it now became the Town and Country Planning Association, signalling a shift to a broader campaigning base under Ebenezer Howard’s faithful lieutenant and model of perseverance, Frederic Osborn.

The name has stuck for more than eight decades, and the world has moved on. Britain is no longer an industrial nation as it was in the mid-twentieth century, and town and country are no longer distinct functional categories. This distinction between town and country persists, an insistent, nagging hangover from the industrial revolution. Pre-industrial Britain’s economic activity was to be found as much in the villages and hamlets, the fields and farms as in the towns and cities.

That changed with the onset of industrialisation when both people and money flowed into the rapidly growing cities. So, meanings were assigned: rural meant agriculture, urban meant factories and offices. For many people industrialisation presented an existential choice: starvation in the fresh country air; or subsistence in the soot-laden city. This cruel choice lay behind Ebenezer Howard’s ‘Three Magnets’ diagram; his invention of the Garden City, and the creation, in 1899, of the Garden Cities Association. And it was the condition of industrial Britain that ignited the creation of town and country planning as a professional discipline.

The question of town versus country nags more quietly now. For we are no longer an industrial society, and patterns of settlement are reverting to their pre-industrial type. A car-borne population finds that once remote villages are now accessible suburbs, almost fulfilling the early 20th century

prediction of HG Wells that by 2000 a worker in London would have as a suburb much of southern England.1 The realities of working from home, of being able to travel at will to most places in safety and comfort, bridge much of the urban-rural divide. Any differences between urban and rural are as much about quality of services as economic models. Few people live a stereotypically ‘rural’ lifestyle guided by the sunrise and seasons. Perhaps we are almost all suburbanites now, choosing merely the length of commute.

Yet, Britain’s highly uneven economic geography persists and the only force powerful enough to bring in a new order is probably climate change. In the coming decades London will become less liveable due to floods and droughts, the northernmost seaports will be reinvigorated by new pan-Arctic trade routes, and Britain’s distended profile will, for once, work in its favour as its economic centre of gravity drifts inexorably north. Britain’s towns and cities, villages and farms are part of the same giant network of settlements, still uneven but more connected than they ever have been, a complex human web blanketing the natural environment. What planners do will remain crucial, but ‘town and country planning’ perpetuates a narrow, outdated dichotomy. So, it is time for another update, to carry the Association through to the end of the century. I suggest the ‘Urban and Environmental Planning Association’.

Note

1 HG Wells: Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought Transcribed electronically by Project Gutenberg, 9 Sep. 2006. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19229/19229h/19229-h.htm

Tomorrow 125: Rediscovering the roots of a new society

This report from the TCPA reflects on how the Garden City idea remains a powerful and hopeful blueprint for creating thriving communities

In 2021, the TCPA’s ‘Tomorrow 125’ project began with the aim of understanding how the Garden City idea could help the nation construct a pathway to a hopeful future based on a fairer society.

Using the 125th anniversary of Ebenezer Howard’s book To-morrow a peaceful path to real reform as a catalyst, the Association commenced a three-year project exploring the background and practical application of the Garden City idea today.

‘Tomorrow 125’ allowed us to better understand the thoughts of the Garden City pioneers, confront the myths and misuse of the idea over time, and understand better how the Garden City idea fits within the wider ecosystem of organisations and activities in the pursuit of social and environmental justice.

The project has left the Association with a renewed sense of urgency and confidence in the role of the Garden City idea in addressing modern challenges and a new way of organising the way we create and nurture our homes and communities. Most importantly, it has enabled us to apply these ideas in real places in the spirit of practical idealism.

This final report provides a summary of activities and outputs from ‘Tomorrow 125’ and sets out opportunities and next steps for the ideas and concepts explored through the project. It forms part of a suite of project outputs which is available on the TCPA’s website.

tcpa.org.uk/areas-of-work/garden-cities-and-newtowns/tomorrow-1

Hear a reading of the poem commissioned for the Tomorrow 125 project 'Housing with a heart' by Eileen Gbagbo: https://www.tcpa.org.uk/resources/housing-with-a-heart/