Town & Country Planning Journal – September-October 2024
The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association September–October 2024
• Planning change and its purpose
• Tackling the housing crisis in England
• What does it take to build to TCPA Healthy Homes Principles?
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.
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Town & Country Planning
The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association
ISSN 0040-9960 Published bi-monthly September-October 2024 • Volume 93 • Number 5
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Town & Country Planning
September–October 2024 • Volume 93 • Number 5
regulars features
267 On the Agenda
Fiona Howie: The age old issue of quality, not just quantity
269 Time and Tide
Celia Davis: Changing the political climate
272 Created Equal
Caroline Keep: Lost in the maze: navigating neurodiversity in the built environment
316 Snakes and Ladders
Sue Brownill: Participation in planning is an essential part of the solution
322 Off The Rails
Robin Hickman: When you come to a fork in the road, take it?
325 Legal Eye
Bob Pritchard: Well disposed?
275 Planning change and its purpose
Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson on Labour’s initial planning reform agenda
281 Pre-paration is everything
Adam Sheppard, Frances Summers, Matthew Bowers, Olivia Griffin and Chris Jones on realising the potential of pre-application engagement and planning performance agreements
288 The growth delusion
Bob Colenutt on the deliverability of Labour’s promise of genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy
290 What does it take to build to TCPA
Healthy Homes Principles?
Kate de Selincourt on building to Passivhaus and EnerPHit standards
296 How we became effective tax gatherers
Tony Crook on whether it is time to look again at the direct taxation of land value uplift
299 Freeports and investment zones: future prospects and implications for planning
Tim Marshall on the future of these instruments under Labour
306 Policy considerations for site allocations
Robert Hayward on how national policy and guidance should provide a clearer steer about how to make development plan allocations
311 Tackling the housing crisis in England
Ian Campbell offers an alternative manifesto for housing
327 125 years of the TCPA: Personal Provocations
James Derounian
Yvonne Rydin
Marcus Enoch
Alister Scott
Peter Jones
on the agenda
Fiona Howie
emphasises the importance of good governance in establishing and maintaining sustainable communities
the age old issue of quality, not just quantity
I spoke as part of a panel at a national housing conference a few months ago. The theme was around putting health into place and alongside me on the panel were representatives from housing associations and other policy advocates. I realised fairly early on in the run up to the event that we would all be in wild agreement. Because, of course, who could disagree that we should be creating homes and places that support people’s mental and physical health? Rather than focus my comments therefore on the important work we are undertaking, supported by Sport England, to help create healthy and active environments, I showed some of the photographs we commissioned Rob Clayton to take as part of our Healthy Homes campaign.
I highlighted Greenway House, where the housing units have been converted from what was an office using permitted development rights. And I use the term ‘housing units’ because that is what
they are, rather than homes. These units are in the middle of a business centre and families are using part of the car park as a children’s play area.
I also showed a photograph of Vantage House, explaining that like many similar conversions, the building was previously an open plan office. Consequently, it had not been designed to be sub-divided and relied upon building-wide air conditioning. We have heard from residents about flats that are almost uninhabitable over the summer due to overheating.
‘Governance considerations need to be integrated into the planning and delivery processes from the earliest stage’
It felt important to continue to make the point that while there seems to be broad consensus on the importance of links between homes, placemaking and health, there is a risk that this consensus exists in a bubble. And, whilst there are mentions of health and wellbeing in national policy that provide important hooks for those who want to use them, there are clearly still people who want to prioritise profit over creating safe and healthy places.
At times it feels that we have been talking about the Healthy Homes campaign for a long time and perhaps people might be bored of it! However, the Association will continue to campaign for high quality homes that help people stay well. We will continue to work to secure change at the national level, but we are also pleased to have published guidance aimed at local government in England to encourage and enable them to adopt the Healthy Homes Principles locally. Securing Healthy Homes at the local level1 highlights the potential role of corporate plans, council motions and design codes, as well as local plans. Crucially, it sets out a range of case studies to highlight what important steps
Greenway House
Rob Clayton
several local authorities have already taken.
A critically important part of delivering high quality homes is thinking about how they and the environment around them will be managed and maintained in the long term. The Association continues to develop its long-term stewardship toolkit,2 with the most recent publication being a briefing note on Governance for long-term stewardship 3 As a core part of the Garden City model this is once again something the Association has been highlighting for a long time. But, when I speak at events that reach beyond the TCPA’s core supporters, I frequently find that people are unaware of the wealth of expertise and resources we make available on this issue.4
While governance might not seem like the most exciting topic to some of us, hopefully we can all agree that it is important to get right. As the note sets out, governance considerations need to be integrated into the planning and delivery processes from the earliest stage. Giving both existing and future residents a voice and influence over the management of the community is an important aspect of creating healthy, resilient and thriving places.
‘The Association will continue to campaign for high quality homes that help people stay well’
In new communities embedding this thinking from the start is important, but we are also acutely aware that in both new and existing communities there are many instances where stewardship may need to be retrofitted to existing arrangements. This is
something the Association has been giving thought to and we published From patchwork to tapestry 5 earlier this year, which looks to draw common lessons from a number of case studies and highlights that even where arrangements are sub-optimal there are opportunities to improve outcomes.
‘Who could disagree that we should be creating homes and places that support people’s mental and physical health?’
Securing high quality homes is central to supporting people’s health and wellbeing. It is not always simple, but it is achievable and there is plenty of good practice out there to show how people are tackling some complicated issues. Creating high quality homes and communities was a core part of Ebenezer Howard’s vision and, 125 years on, it continues to drive our work today.
•
Fiona Howie is
Chief Executive
of the TCPA
Notes
1 Securing Healthy Homes at the local level: A guide for local government in England on adopting the Healthy Homes Principles. TCPA, Jun. 2024. https://www.tcpa. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Healthy-Homestechnical-guide-for-local-implementation.pdf
3 Governance for long-term stewardship: A TCPA Stewardship Toolkit Briefing Note. TCPA, Jun. 2024. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ TCPA-Stewardship-Briefing-Note_Governance_24.06.10. pdf
4 The briefing on governance was developed with support from Pinsent Masons and the Lady Margaret Paterson Osborn Trust, and informed thanks to input from a range of experts.
5 From patchwork to tapestry: Overcoming barriers to planning for long-term stewardship in existing communities. TCPA, Jan. 2024. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Retrofitting-StewardshipReport-FINAL-for-website-2.pdf
Vantage House
Rob Clayton
time & tide
The climate crisis demands radical policy prioritisation. Celia Davis asks: will the new government deliver?
changing the political climate
The chronic housing crisis in the UK is so deepseated that it touches the lives of the vast majority of the electorate. So, it was no surprise that planning and housing were so high on the agenda during the general election campaign. Perhaps slightly more surprising has been the speed with which the incoming Labour government has taken decisive action on planning reform – a ‘day one’ priority, reflecting primarily the power of planning as a foundation for economic growth.
Aside from a rapidly announced policy statement on onshore wind, at the time of writing, the extent of the new government’s ambition in prioritising climate action through reforms to the planning system remains unclear.
The TCPA has always been a vocal advocate for the positive role that planning can play in addressing the challenges of our time, and there is no greater challenge than the urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The need to restore nature; reduce pollution; build to net zero standards; transition the transport network away from fossil fuels and create healthy and resilient homes and places – these solutions are all reliant upon the careful management and use of land. Our hope is that the new government recognises and harnesses the potential that planning offers to transition communities to net zero, resilient places that support prosperity for future generations. Below, we set out some key priorities for the incoming government that we believe would accelerate action on climate change through planning.
Net zero homes
We have expressed in previous Time & Tide columns our concern at how national policy is frustrating the attempts of local authorities to set net zero policies for new buildings, even where they have demonstrated they are deliverable.1 The
written ministerial statement (WMS) of 13 December 20232 is an unnecessary constraint on local ambition, and a quick win for the new government would be to revoke this WMS, allowing accelerated delivery of net zero buildings where authorities can demonstrate that this is deliverable and viable. This is especially important as the Future Homes Standard3 does not go far enough in supporting carbon reduction to meet our binding emissions targets.
Carbon accounting
Any review of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) must give long overdue prioritisation to climate change mitigation. This should include a requirement for local plan evidence to include carbon accounting so that spatial strategies and policies robustly demonstrate a reduction in carbon emissions and compliance with national carbon budgets.*
The issue of accounting for carbon emissions may be given more precedence across the sector following the Supreme Court’s judgement in Finch v Surrey County Council,4 which overturned planning permission for onshore oil drilling on the grounds that the emissions arising from the burning of the extracted fossil fuel were not assessed. Whilst the detail of the case may be specific to the development in question, the judgement reveals that planning permissions are routinely granted without consideration of the carbon impacts of
development. This is also true of plan making, where at examination climate change is often treated as little more than a ‘check box’ exercise, and local authorities that invest in understanding carbon impacts and evidencing the need for policies to reduce carbon perversely face more risk and challenge than those that don’t. This inconsistency must be addressed through planning policy and guidance to ensure that plan making follows an effective methodology for the carbon impact of spatial strategies and for policies to be fully measured and evidenced.
Renewable energy
The Labour manifesto was clear in its intent to create a more enabling framework for renewable energy and sees this as vital to secure investment in the green economy. This is of course welcomed, although the early policy statement on onshore wind was published without consultation. A renewed push for renewables will only be successful if communities play a central role in the planning process and can see local benefits from the development of renewables in their communities. NPPF chapter 17 also requires an urgent rewrite to limit new or expanded sites for oil, gas and coal extraction.**
Resilience and adaptation
On climate adaptation, there is perhaps a longer road to travel. This is because climate adaptation receives less focus in terms of proactive planning policy responses (at national and local levels), despite the fact that we are already living through severe climate impacts. Another reason is that the institutional frameworks to manage key adaptation issues are not keeping pace with the scale of the challenge, and there is often a disconnect between governmental departments, meaning that interventions that could support climate resilience and adaptation (for example nature recovery strategies and shoreline management plans) are often poorly supported in planning policy.
In our last column5 we also argued that the long-term risk to communities such as Lowestoft, where a retraction of planned flood defence infrastructure has left the town facing an existential threat of sea level rise, demonstrates that the framework for managing flood risk put in place after the Pitt Review is no longer fit for purpose.
The new government will need to seriously consider how climate preparedness can be facilitated at local, regional and national scales, and
Onshore oil production: Singleton oilfield, West Sussex
spatial planning will be fundamental to any successful approach. The complex task of building climate resilience will need to bring together currently fragmented strategies that address, for example, flood defences, green infrastructure and coastal management.
Climate justice and community participation
Underpinning all of the above must be an understanding that some communities are more at risk than others to the impacts of climate change, and that these vulnerabilities are often exacerbated by other social and economic inequalities. Whether inner city communities at risk of heat stress and with limited access to green space, or coastal communities facing existential threats from rising sea levels, the planning system needs to grapple with climate justice through facilitating meaningful engagement with communities to enhance their voice in shaping the future of their places.
‘The new government will need to seriously consider how climate preparedness can be facilitated at local, regional and national scales’
Delivering the change we need
Many of these changes could be achieved through revisions to the NPPF and planning practice guidance, although to be effective this would amount to a wholesale review in order to achieve the prioritisation of climate change as a fundamental concern of the planning system.
It is likely that other tools will also be necessary to achieve the scale of transformation required. Labour has expressed an interest in and commitment to strategic planning and development corporations. Although this interest has been focused on their capacity to support housing delivery, the potential for these tools to facilitate action at the scale at which climate preparedness will inevitably need to be planned for would leave planners better equipped to face these challenges.
With a change in direction as seismic as this election result, there is much reason for optimism. However, we would also air a word of warning, as the drive to deliver the new homes so necessary to address the housing crisis must not be at the expense of the social and environmental benefits that development has the capacity to deliver. Whilst there is uncertainty about how the new government
will tackle planning reform, some of the antiplanning rhetoric seems underpinned by a concerningly narrow view of the purpose and potential of the discipline. Any government that views planning purely as a barrier or a problem, or perceives its role in the narrow terms of permitting high numbers of new homes, is in danger of pursuing an agenda primarily focused on deregulation.
The new government is clearly serious about planning reform and housing delivery, but one clear lesson from the last 14 years is that reliance upon the housebuilding industry to lead the way on climate action has failed. Deregulation and reliance on the private sector alone to deliver the needs of communities and nature is bound to fail. The major challenge of how to deliver the homes we need in resilient, net zero communities without crashing through our legally binding carbon budgets is urgent. It can only be achieved through careful and considered management, and this means we need the planning system to do more, not less.
• Celia Davis is Senior Projects & Policy Manager at the TCPA.
Notes
1 H Ellis, C Davis: ‘absolute zero’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93(2), Mar.-Apr., 78-80
2 H Ellis, C Davis: ‘postcards from the edge’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93(1), Jan.-Feb., 4-5
3 ‘The Future Homes and Buildings Standards: 2023 consultation’. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 13 Dec. 2023. https://www.gov.uk/ government/consultations/the-future-homes-andbuildings-standards-2023-consultation#full-publicationupdate-history
4 R (on the application of Finch on behalf of the Weald Action Group) v Surrey County Council and others (Respondents) [2024] UKSC 20 – on appeal from [2022] EWCA Civ 187. The Supreme Court, 20 Jun. 2024. https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2022-0064. html
5 H Ellis, C Davis: ‘the forgotten 500’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93(4), Jul.-Aug., 204-206
Editor’s Notes
* NPPF revisions have been published for consultation until 23:45 on 24 September 2024. For a trackedchanges pdf version see: https://www.gov.uk/ government/consultations/proposed-reforms-to-thenational-planning-policy-framework-and-otherchanges-to-the-planning-system
** No revisions to NPPF chapter 17 are proposed.
created equal
Caroline Keep explains what ‘inclusive design’ really means for many neurodivergent people
lost in the maze: navigating neurodiversity in the built environment
Navigation and wayfinding: where am I?
I still cannot find my office. I have been doing my PhD in the engineering building at my university for two years, yet my office eludes me regularly. It is not even a new thing. Back when I was in engineering and later in teaching, I was regularly unable to find my way around. It is not that I have terrible navigation skills. Ironically, my navigation with a map is second to none, given that my early career was spent in geotechnical engineering. It is mostly navigating the maze that is neurotypical life through buildings, as I am autistic and have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In short, I am neurodivergent.
The usual response: ‘you will find it in room B35’ never really gets the point across. Hence, my office and I rarely meet. This dance is repeated in all areas of my life. I will not go into the depths of teaching you about autism or ADHD. There is plenty of ‘stuff’ out there about autism. However, if these terms are new to you, I would suggest watching some of the short films made by the National Autistic Society1 or Chris Packham’s brilliant documentary.2 But I will talk about buildings and planning.
‘A great example of making this information available is the British Museum, which has a sensory map highlighting all of the areas we might encounter (for example, bright or noisy places)’
Firstly, let us tackle the issue of communication in buildings and project management. Before the planning begins, you need to get your communication right. Creating predictable spaces and understandable navigation helps no end. I will never be able to navigate twenty rooms that all look the same with small signage on the doors in a rabbit warren of similitude. The lack of clear markers and the uniformity of the space exacerbates my disorientation, leading to heightened anxiety and frustration. So, clear signage in high contrast with plain English helps. Having consistent landmarks throughout the space aids navigation. For example, having all eating space in one colour – green, perhaps – will help.
Using simple layouts minimises complexity. The words you choose are as important as how you present them – particularly for those who use screen readers or voice-to-text. If you are unfamiliar with this aspect of design, there is a lot of detailed information on AbilityNet3 and the government’s accessibility posters.4 However, generally, there are a few rules:
• use simple colours;
• write in plain English;
• use simple sentences and bullets;
• make buttons descriptive (for example, ‘attach files here’);
• build simple and consistent layouts;
• don’t build complex and cluttered layouts;
• font size 14 is the most readable for body text;
• use BOLD or underlined to make a point, and
• use ALT TEXT and subtitles for online material: everyone can then access them.
By prioritising these design elements through carefully written conditions, or when negotiating planning obligations, planners can help to create environments that are not only more accessible but also more welcoming to many neurodivergent people, ensuring that we can navigate spaces with equal confidence and ease to everyone else. When this happens, I can finally find my way to where I
am supposed to be without having sensory overload and becoming anxious along the way. Turning to which...
Sensory problems… oh god, the light!
Our needs are very different. Even between neurodivergent individuals, no two people are alike. As we process sensory input differently, we may be sensitive to certain stimuli. This heightened sensitivity can transform everyday environments into overwhelming experiences. For example, fluorescent lighting, loud noises, and crowded spaces can become sources of significant distress. Food shopping is a particular dread – for the majority of autistic people, I would say! Apps such as Pointr5 that allow for detailed wayfinding both internally and in surrounding outdoor spaces can go a long way to helping people with different sensory needs. There are, however, a range of things you can do to make the experience better for us:
• Lighting: specify dimmable lights and avoid fluorescent lighting where possible. Maximise the use of natural light and soft, indirect lighting.
• Soundproofing: specify sound-absorbing materials and allocate quiet zones or rooms where individuals can retreat to escape the noise.
• Spatial layout: design spaces to avoid overcrowding and create clear, open pathways to reduce the chaos and stress of navigating through dense crowds. Don’t forget to do the same with outdoor spaces.
• Sensory-friendly areas: designate specific areas as sensory-friendly, featuring muted colours, soft textures, and minimal sensory distractions.
These are the ‘standard four’ that everyone should try to do because they can make a massive difference to us all. A great example of making this information available is the British Museum,6 which has a sensory map highlighting all of the areas we might encounter (for example, bright or noisy places). There is no need to make an entire building low-lit; neurodivergent people appreciate that we are not the only people in the world!
Sometimes, just giving us the information up front helps us navigate the area much better. This is especially true in workspaces designed with sensory needs in mind. Creating quiet pods, offering noise-cancelling headphones, and providing flexible lighting options all make a world of difference in the busiest of offices. Alongside this, airy outdoor spaces with wide walkways incorporating quieter side routes to move along –not having everyone crammed into limited pavement space.
‘My experiences underscore the importance of these changes to foster more inclusive spaces for everyone, ensuring no one is left navigating a world that wasn’t built for them or stuck, forever, in search of their own office’
Social interaction in public spaces: managing people
Public spaces are designed to foster social interaction, but for people like me, these environments can present unique challenges. Sensory sensitivities, social anxiety, and difficulties with unstructured interactions can make socialising in public spaces overwhelming. Also, the format of events, such as conferences (please stop running
Extract from British Museum sensory map
The Trustees of the British Museum
them all day with limited breaks), can be problematic. For example, following a conversation in a noisy café can be exhausting and disorienting, leading to feelings of isolation even in a crowd. Often, I become exhausted quickly and therefore need those quiet spots to recharge my social battery. There are a few things you can do to create a more inclusive event along with implementing my previous tips for the building itself:
• Flexible spaces: create areas easily adapted for different uses, accommodating both large gatherings and intimate interactions.
• Inclusive events: organise inclusive events and activities, such as sensory-friendly hours or quiet events.
• Structured social opportunities: provide structured social opportunities, such as guided tours or workshops, where the expectations for interaction are lower.
• Diverse seating arrangements: offer various seating options, from individual spots to group settings, allowing people to choose their level of social interaction.
When approving the design of public spaces, consider using these tips to make them as accessible as possible. The British Standards Institute defines inclusive design as: ‘the design of mainstream products and/or services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible... without the need for special adaptation or specialised design’.7
There are useful resources provided by Neurodiversity In Planning,8 including links to good practice both internationally9 and nationally.10, 11 Current policies for neurodiversity and the built environment often fail to address the unique needs of neurodivergent individuals and require significant changes. Inclusive design must become a priority for architects, planners, and policymakers. This makes economic sense because, at 2021 prices, the English ‘purple pound’ (the spending power of disabled people) was worth £2.2 billion every month.12 My experiences underscore the importance of fostering more inclusive spaces for everyone, ensuring no one is left navigating a world that was not built for them or stuck, forever, in search of their own office.
• Caroline Keep is a doctoral researcher in Digitalisation in Education at the University of Central Lancashire. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 National Autistic Society: Diverted. You Tube. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=GflKHWfnH-Y
4 K Pun: ‘Accessibility in government: Dos and don’ts on designing for accessibility’. Blog. GOV.UK, 2 Sep. 2016. https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/02/dos-anddonts-on-designing-for-accessibility/
6 The British Museum: Sensory map. The Trustees of the British Museum, Sep. 2019. https://www. britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/ British-Museum-Sensory-Map_2023.pdf
9 Good Practices of Accessible Urban Development: Making urban environments inclusive and fully accessible to ALL. ST/ESA/364, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. https://www.un.org/ disabilities/documents/desa/good_practices_in_ accessible_urban_development_october2016.pdf
10 ‘Neurodiversity – Autism-friendly environments and good practice in planning’. Webpage. Royal Town Planning Institute, 2021. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/ find-your-rtpi/rtpi-english-regions/rtpi-london/ neurodiversity-autism-friendly-environments-andgood-practice-in-planning/neurodiversity
11 M Harmsworth: ‘How planners can add value through neurodiversity’. Blog. Royal Town Planning Institute. 25 Jan. 2024. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/blog/2024/ january/matthew-harmsworth-how-planners-can-addvalue-through-neurodiversity/
12 E Davis: ‘The Bottom Line: The Purple Pound’. Podcast, BBC, 28 Aug. 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ m000x6wk
Editor’s Note: ‘Design for the mind. Neurodiversity and the built environment’ is available as a free digital download from: https://knowledge.bsigroup.com/ products/design-for-the-mind-neurodiversity-and-the-builtenvironment-guide?version=standard
planning change and its purpose: the planning system as a modern ‘ship of theseus’
Gavin Parker and Mark Dobson consider Labour’s initial planning reform agenda and reflect on how it fits with the changing identity and purpose of planning
Introduction
Our starting point is in a seemingly simple question: ‘is the planning system in England the same today as it was in the past?’ And with a follow-up, ‘if it is deemed to have changed then why does this matter?’ Whilst these might appear to be merely philosophical questions (which indeed they are, as we discuss below), we see that how those questions are understood and answered hold important consequences for how the planning system is reformed and positioned in political and media discourse.
Firstly, what are we actually seeking to ‘reform’ and why? What do we really want from planning and what is needed to achieve it? We write this just days after the Labour Party was elected to form the new UK government, and the advent of a new administration of a different hue seems as good a time as any to ponder such matters.
Formal statutory planning in the UK is often said to have started in 1909 via an Act of Parliament with a rather perplexing title: ‘Housing, Town Planning, etc.’. Whilst that origin point is disputable, it is also open to question whether much of what it means to plan in the here and now lies in the ‘etc.’ – an increasingly long list that reflects widening system objectives and associated processes. A question of breadth, of emphasis and of definition remains an ongoing problem for planning. While some see things widely, others do not; some have particular priorities and others see planning as simply performing a regulatory function, or more recently and primarily a means to deliver housing, or indeed ‘growth’.
Others prefer to say that 1 July 1948 – the coming into force of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 – is the more significant date to pinpoint. Tracing a beginning is tricky and indeed, scattered
before, between and after 1909 and 1948 are numerous other statutes, amendments, common law precedents, policy changes and minor adjustments. Such alterations of scope, direction and priority have transformed formal planning in England, not to mention the UK. The impact of adjacent policy and structures which shape the way that land is used, and development is shaped, has also added to the transformation of the operational milieu of planning. After such serial tinkering and a changing environment ever more reform has been provoked in what seems a never-ending quest. This gives us leave to pose the question: ‘what is left of this Ship of Theseus?’
The ancient tale and philosophical conundrum, commonly referred to as the Ship of Theseus, or Theseus’s Paradox, originates in the story of an ancient ship laid up as a trophy or memorial to a past glory.1 In order that the vessel remains as a display, the ship’s parts are gradually replaced by new ones over time, until there is nothing left of the original. So, is it still the same ship? Does it matter? Well, as a metaphor for the planning system it provides a useful hook to consider where we have been and where we are going – are we replacing parts to reform the same ship or repurposing it?
Old parts for new, or, new purposes needing new parts?
Identifying planning as a problem is a tactic deployed by many administrations (often without providing any clear specification of a particular part or role / aim of the system) and this necessarily
involves distancing governmental action from planning outcomes. This situation is all too often aided by ambiguity or compartmentalisation. Instead, government needs to own planning, believe in it, and use it, rather than deny or dissemble it. So, let’s begin with questions of definition first. When ‘planning’ is discussed publicly very often what we are actually being asked to consider remains obscure – what part of the ‘ship’ is in question? In most instances, only one part of it and, all too commonly, considering one function or issue at a time – housing being the clearest example. Such selectivity sits very uneasily with the fundamentally synoptic nature of planning.
‘What are we actually seeking to ‘reform’ and why?’
A wider debate over sustaining multiple priorities and their reconciliation is part of a mature and necessary public discourse. This speaks to the question of emphasis, and points to how to use past and present tools and mechanisms found in and around planning since at least 1947. Moreover, it is to establish what the priorities are. Yet, simultaneously, questions of breadth need to be kept in view. There is little doubt that the scope of planning has broadened to include growing concerns over climate change, net zero, biodiversity loss, nutrient neutrality, water neutrality, ‘etc’. These new parts are being bolted on to already broad
matters and highlight that more is being asked of the ‘ship’ as social and political awareness progresses about the need to deliver a sustainable future via planning policy.
Taking all this into account, the politician’s business rests largely on identifying problems and claiming they have fixes. A really nice example was made clear during the planning reform debate of 2020-21. In his foreword to the Planning for the Future White Paper, the then prime minister Boris Johnson attempted to characterise the English planning system as something constructed in the past and for the past:
‘… a relic from the middle of the 20th [century] – our outdated and ineffective planning system. Designed and built in 1947 it has, like any building of that age, been patched up here and there over the decades. Extensions have been added on, knocked down and rebuilt according to the whims of whoever’s name is on the deeds at the time. Eight years ago, a new landlord stripped most of the asbestos from the roof. But make-do-andmend can only last for so long and, in 2020, it is no longer fit for human habitation.’3
This of course was part of the opening of an attempt to ‘radically’ alter planning, which ultimately foundered. Rather than add to the words written about that formulation and why it didn’t come into being, this essay looks forward to the changes likely to be pursued under the Labour administration and from the perspective of what and how we want planning to perform. Firstly, a philosophical excursion about the identity, if not the soul of planning; pausing along the way to observe that change is constant – it is also necessarily part of a continuity. If we want to really change planning, then maybe it’s the purpose rather than the structure that needs attention first.
We might expect a centre-left government to seek a progressive approach towards what at least might be termed as good, fair or ‘just’ growth’
The
Ship of Theseus and the planning system Before rehearsing current mores any further, we should remind ourselves that the purpose of the ancient ship and not only its parts changed in the eyes of the Athenians. In the ancient tale, it was no longer to sail and adventure. It became a memorial and a static display, preserved to remind the Athenians of past glory – much as HMS Victory at Portsmouth is. This is important because although the ship was physically altered, more importantly ‘
the function of the ship changed. It was to prompt memory, and it became even more important to preserve the ship because of its past rather than because of any thought about practical function.
There have been competing philosophical positions rehearsed about the Ship of Theseus. These we apply in relation to what matters in the here and now, and as applicable to the future of the planning system. This is in terms of the identity and materiality or make-up of the system and which are linked to its purpose. Some would argue that an object can stay the same as long as it continuously exists under the same identity. If we take the Boris Johnson analogy in the quote above for our own, a property that has a new extension, then later a wall rendered, then later still an internal remodelling to open plan, and so on, until every part of the place has been altered; can still be understood as the same property. However, if a house is totally demolished and rebuilt at the same time, it will be seen as a new house. Thus, the identity afforded it by society relies to some degree upon continuity, but more importantly it rests upon a more enduring idea.
The material constitution of a thing is not the same as its identity which lies in what we conceive as the ship, not only its materiality. Again, identity has a relationship with function. Another significant strand of theory further considers the ship not as a ‘thing’, nor even a collection of objectively existing parts (think individual policies), but rather as a structure that has perceptual continuity. We can see that it (the planning system) remains recognisable and broadly functional – in this sense at least Boris was right – we can perceive a continuity of the system even if it has changed in many ways and is too often misrepresented.
Given these viewpoints we could attempt to argue that the planning system is still the ‘same’ planning system despite alteration, because it has a continuity and serial change has been gradual, and also to some extent the public understanding of the system has been maintained. Cognitive scientists warn however of externalism; the assumption that what is true in our minds is also true in the world. Chomsky has effectively argued that this assumption can be challenged, given that human intuition is often mistaken.4 This point gives rise to several interesting points of connection to planning as an endeavour and the politics that surrounds it. For one thing, notions of object and its existence have a multitude of different meanings rather than one absolute meaning. Different meanings can be held simultaneously by individuals or groups in society – one might, if rather facetiously, say that this interpretivism is precisely what planning lawyers feast upon.5 Knowledge and evidence play a critical role and of course the point resonates in an era of conviction politics and a post-truth political environment.
Planning change, changing planning and the purpose of planning
Much of the political rhetoric that has been used to justify planning reform in England over the past few decades has been heavily based upon, if not centred around, claims that it is ‘no longer fit for purpose’ or adds little or no value. Such arguments have been advanced by governments, professional / industry groups and think tanks by drawing implicitly or explicitly on its age; that it is an antiquated relic of past people and achievements. In such a discourse the answer is to create a ‘modern’ system that is fit for purpose Modernisation and progress being defined according to numerous tropes associated to growth, as we have discussed elsewhere; speed, efficiency, certainty, delivery are the favourites.6
‘If we want to really change planning, then maybe it’s the purpose rather than the structure that needs attention first’
Immediate indications regarding planning reform announced by the incoming Labour government appear to align that agenda again in a worrying loop, putting growth at the centre of our planning system, a focus on making more land available and pressing for decision-making speed to ‘unlock’ significant housing and infrastructure development. Indeed, it is striking how similar the Starmer administration’s first signals about planning are to that of the Johnson government quoted above:
‘Growth is now our national mission. There is no time to waste… Nowhere is decisive reform needed more urgently than in the case of our planning system… Our antiquated planning system leaves too many important projects getting tied up in years and years of red tape before shovels ever get into the ground… I am taking immediate action to deliver this government’s mission to kickstart economic growth; And to take the urgent steps necessary to build the infrastructure that we need, including one and a half million homes over the next five years. The system needs a new signal. This is that signal.’7
The known commitments or promises announced at the time of writing, were to reform the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and consult on a new ‘growth-focused’ approach to the planning system – including restoring mandatory housing targets. As well as to:
• End the ban on new onshore wind in England and
bring it back into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime.
• Give priority to energy projects and to other infrastructure sectors as part of planning system reform.
• Create a new taskforce to accelerate stalled housing sites.
• Support local authorities with more (additional) planning officers.
• Put growth at the centre of the planning system via changes, not only to the system itself, but to the way that ministers use their powers of direct intervention.
• Make the benefit of development a central consideration if the secretary of state intervenes;
• Facilitate universal coverage of local plans, and mandate regular reviews of Green Belt boundaries.
• Prioritise brownfield and ‘Grey Belt’ land for development to meet housing targets.
• Embed ‘golden rules’ to make sure development will deliver affordable homes, including more for social rent.
In this scenario the Labour government has proffered ‘repairing’ the ship using old parts. This would include, for example, New Towns; a return to spatial planning, and reverting to previous versions of the NPPF. It would also need some new additions (for example, ‘the golden rules’), but the destination for this ship, thus far outlined, does not break with the depiction of the ‘outdated’ and ‘slow’ planning promoted by the Conservative-led governments of the past 14 years.8 This is unfortunate and, in our view, misses some significant opportunities. Indeed, the current formula presents an ongoing challenge to the wider identity, future and purpose of planning.
Whilst the reform discourse presents planning as being stuck in the past, planning has continually changed over time. It is surely obvious to even the most casual observer that the system has not remained static and attempts to present it as such mask an agenda that boxes planning into a narrow growth orientation – with an accompanying view that the planning system has not changed enough to fit this particular agenda. The selective memory at work here often omits that it is government itself that has been responsible both for the multiple changes over time and with the overburdening of the system – and all this while questions of true purpose, of identity and of the communication of its value to the public have been neglected.
Planning as an idea and vehicle for change
For some the true identity of planning is enduring, stretching back to the visions and approaches championed by thinkers such as Ebenezer Howard, Patrick Geddes, and Lewis Mumford, to name a few. Even while the tools, mechanisms or policies
change with different governments and issues, the role of planning is to apply the needs of society to spaces and places. Of course, change is at the heart of it, and whilst those prominent figures would scarcely recognise aspects of the intricacies and complexities of the modern planning system today, they may still discern the intent, even though it has been damaged and undervalued. Surely planning as an idea or project is not purely or even primarily about servicing a narrow economic agenda. The story of Theseus’ ship reminds us of the importance of maintaining and looking after those things we value, even if their original materiality morphs over time. What counts more is the essence and purpose, and the identity that the public respond to – are they being presented with a relic or a functioning object?
Given such change and recourse to previous ‘materials’, we return to our analogy of Theseus’ ship and are left to conclude that it is the purpose, or the identity of planning, that needs to endure; and it is this question first and foremost that requires prioritisation: ‘what is the ship for?’. Then attention can be paid to the specific parts – new or used – which can be usefully reassembled and organised as part of a rehabilitation. It occurs to us that maybe the new government needs to re-read the vision set out in the Raynsford report. In particular the recommendation for a more considered and principled approach to planning:
‘any review of planning in England must explore the founding principles of the system and test whether they have relevance for the problems we face today… it is not beyond our country’s means
to introduce new and improved guiding principles, structures, relationships and processes to the planning system with the potential to deliver real economic, social and environmental advances.’ 9
If radical change is to be contemplated then setting the course is fundamental, but this requires knowing where we are going. What is the destination and why? The means can always be adjusted, but it is pretty clear that this purpose –the ends – must be oriented towards sustainable transition, and to do this land has to be used wisely and with long term thought. The TCPA has recently made a renewed call for ‘a new statutory purpose for planning based on UN Sustainable Development Goals’.10 Whilst a positive step, this call still remains quite vague and indeed reflects the problem that planning appears to have many purposes and its role in reconciling many objectives is actually an identifying characteristic. Moreover, this is also why the NPPF guiding principle of balancing social, environmental and economic objectives through the (ostensible) presumption of sustainable development has been ineffective, because it has been interpreted, applied, and basically twisted to suit the growth agenda. Hence the need to rethink and reassert sustainability, not least to ensure that social goals are met.
Based on this reading, we make two principal inter-related points by way of conclusion. Firstly, that it is beholden on government to elaborate the purpose of planning, and secondly that they do so in a way that carries the population with it. On the first point, we hope that a Labour government can
take on this task, rather than continuing with the familiar repetition of the trope of planning servicing and/or obstructing growth. In particular, we regard the way the system has been set-up and operated since 2010, has allowed a neglect of the social sustainability dimension and instead relied upon a trickle-down economics approach to secure sustainable development. We might expect a centre-left government to seek a progressive approach towards what at least might be termed as good, fair or ‘just’ growth.
Perhaps a bigger challenge, and our second concluding point, is that the new administration has claimed they want to see an end to the culture wars.11 However, the rhetoric that the planning system is only there to serve growth plays a gross disservice to its role and potential and only plays to one audience. The apparent stance being struck is quite likely to perpetuate division rather than address it. Moreover, this approach fails to tackle the deeper mistrust of the system (and of developers) that has grown up over the past 14 years. To overcome the toxic culture wars, as it relates to planning and land use matters, one part of the solution is that the wider purposes and principles of good planning must be asserted and communicated effectively to the public.
In opening the first session of the new parliament, the King’s speech announced a new planning and infrastructure bill, with the familiar intention to ‘speed up and streamline the planning process to build more homes of all tenures and accelerate the delivery of major infrastructure projects’.12 We remain ever hopeful that a renewed agenda for planning can be developed by the new government, but based on initial announcements we express our concern that more of the same and the same as before will dominate. That the Ship of Theseus had been remade many times over did not matter because its identity and purpose remained the same. Our concern for planning under (successive) reform agendas is that if we focus too much on the changing component parts only, then this obscures how the overall purpose of the system is either maintained or possibly undermined by such new tools, processes and emphases. That is, in contrast to our ship, that the new parts change the whole overall, and planning is piece-bypiece remade towards a new purpose of delivering growth. These are early days and there are still opportunities for Labour to reflect and reorient.
• Prof. Gavin Parker is Professor of Planning Studies, and Dr Mark Dobson is Lecturer in Planning and Development at the University of Reading. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 According to Plutarch’s Lives, the Ship of Theseus was the very one used by the eponymous founder of ancient Athens. See: M Mesku: ‘Restoring the Ship of Theseus: Is a paradox still the same after its parts have been replaced?’. Webpage. Lapham’s Quarterly, 21 Oct. 2019. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/ restoring-ship-theseus
2 School of Ferrara: Theseus and Ariadne. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Alte Pinakothek, München, Germany, c. 1540. https://www.sammlung. pinakothek.de/de/artwork/jWLpaY0GKY
3 B Johnson: Planning for the Future White Paper Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Aug. 2020, p. 6. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/media/601bce418fa8f53fc149bc7d/ MHCLG-Planning-Consultation.pdf
4 J Franck, J Bricmont (Eds.): Chomsky Notebook Columbia University Press, New York, 2010
5 The contrast between an increasing number of planning lawyers and a decreasing number of practising public sector planners is pointed out here: S Ricketts: ‘10 Reasons Why Planning Lawyers Are So Busy (And Maybe Shouldn’t Be)’. Blog. Simonicity, 15 Jun. 2024. https://simonicity.com/2024/06/15/10reasons-why-planning-lawyers-are-so-busy-and-maybeshouldnt-be/
See also reference by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) to a ‘precipitous rise of the private sector… in planning’ at: G Csontas: State of The Profession 2023: The UK planning profession in numbers. RTPI, 2023, p. 17. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/media/16015/state-of-theprofession-2023-final.pdf
6 See, for example: M Dobson, G Parker: Slow Planning? Timescapes, Power and Democracy. Policy Press, Bristol, 2024
7 R Reeves: ‘Chancellor Rachel Reeves is taking immediate action to fix the foundations of our economy’. HM Treasury. Speech given at 1 Horse Guards Road, London, 8 Jul. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/ government/speeches/chancellor-rachel-reeves-istaking-immediate-action-to-fix-the-foundations-of-oureconomy
8 Planning 2020: Raynsford Review of Planning in England – Final Report. TCPA, Nov. 2018, p. 7. https:// www.tcpa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ Planning-2020-Raynsford-Review-of-Planning-inEngland-Final-Report.pdf
9 Ibid., p. 3
10 100 Days to Rebuild Britain: The TCPA’s vision for the next Government. Town and Country Planning Association, Jan. 2024, p. 2. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2024/01/100-Days-to-RebuildBritain-Jan-2024-1.pdf
11 The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy reportedly in her welcome address to DCMS staff. See also: G Parker, M Dobson: ‘Do the right thing’: planning at the intersection of the ‘culture wars’’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92(6), Nov.-Dec., 381-386
12 ‘King’s Speech to unlock growth and “take the brakes off Britain”’. Press release. Prime Minister’s Office, 17 Jul. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ kings-speech-to-unlock-growth-and-take-the-brakes-offbritain
pre-paration is everything
Adam
Sheppard, Frances
Summers, Matthew Bowers, Olivia Griffin, and Chris Jones summarise how harnessing the potential of preapplication engagement and planning performance agreements could improve planning outcomes
Successful urban planning within a local planning authority (LPA) requires certain prerequisites. This includes effective systems, processes, approaches, policy, regulatory constructs, and decision making. It also demands adequate capacity, resources, skills, and knowledge within the profession, and strong and positive relationships between stakeholders. These latter points have been in sharp focus recently, with the RTPI State of the Profession 2023 report1 identifying that:
• Total public expenditure on planning services in England, when adjusted for inflation, contracted by 16% from £1.4 billion in the 2009-10 financial year to £1.17 billion in 2022-23.
• Between 2009-10 financial year and 2022-23, income from planning services increased by 14% from £507 million to £577 million.
• In 2022 a Local Government Association workforce survey of LPAs in England showed that 58% were unable to hire the number of planners they wanted to.
• A freedom of information request sent by the Local Government Chronicle to LPAs in England (with a response rate of 80%) found that: ‘only one in 10 council planning departments fully staffed, and more than half the councils surveyed were at less than 90% capacity, with 13% having fewer than three-quarters of posts filled in their planning department between 1 January and 31 December 2022.’2
The capacity and resources challenges facing LPAs have now been present for an extended period of time. The planning fees uplift of 6 December 2023 was a response to this. However, the inability of LPAs to ring-fence this income means that it may make little immediate difference
to planning-related services.
With a new government now in place, and further change ahead, it is now as important as ever to realise the value of existing systems, processes, and approaches that are aimed at maximising the effectiveness of planning praxis in these difficult times.
Project
A recent project commissioned by the Planning Advisory Service (PAS)3 explored opportunities for just such a positive impact upon the effectiveness of planning in England, concentrating upon areas where there is potential for enhancement and improvement within existing service provisions and approaches. The focus of the research was the use, value, and potential of pre-application engagement (PAE) and planning performance agreement (PPA) services, both of which represent identified areas of opportunity to underpin enhanced planning service delivery.
The value of front loading is well established within development management, and the importance of effective project management is widely recognised across all aspects of planning praxis. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) strongly encourages LPAs to front load engagement on development proposals through good quality PAE, and project management via PPAs. At paragraph 46, it states:
‘Applicants and local planning authorities should consider the potential for voluntary planning performance agreements, where this might achieve a faster and more effective application process. Planning performance agreements are likely to be needed for applications that are particularly large or complex to determine.’
Notwithstanding this, prior to the recent general election, the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) found guidance for LPAs about providing meaningful PAE and PPAs to be out of date, which may result in inconsistent approaches. The project explored this and provided recommendations for aid in response.
The appointed project team was drawn from across academia, local government, and consultancy, and commissioned to deliver a package of work focused around:
• reviewing existing approaches to pre-application fees and associated service formats;
• researching current views (multi-stakeholder) and evidence concerning pre-application and PPA service provisions and impacts;
• identifying current examples of good practice in
pre-application and PPA provision / engagement;
• identifying opportunities for service provision, stakeholder partnership and outcome enhancement, and
• creating guidance and materials to support their use.
The research separated the PAE fees element from wider considerations of PAE and PPA usage and approach.
Methodology
With regards to PAE fee provisions, the key focus was upon identifying current arrangements across a diverse selection of LPAs, in order to understand the current landscape. Following an initial trawl, a final list of LPAs was agreed, mindful of their
Map 1: LPAs identified for analysis
approaches to PAE (i.e. fees, scale and resourcing), their context, geography, and governance structures. They were then reviewed in detail via desktop research. A total of 87 LPAs were identified for study, representing just over one quarter (26.1%) of all types of LPA (shared and/or joint service provision was not included). A fees analysis was then completed by interrogating the websites of each LPA to establish PAE fee levels and service approaches, as well as the communication of content via website design.
The other aspects of the project were explored via a mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) approach, involving primary and secondary research techniques. Data collection was undertaken during the autumn of 2022, with analysis, outcome discussion, and dissemination taking place through a series of events (professional and academic) throughout 2023.4
Initially, a desktop research exercise reviewed existing LPA PAE and PPA materials available online. A review of current literature and guidance more widely (local and national government, academic, and other professional outputs) about PAE and PPAs was also completed.
Primary research was then undertaken via a multi-sector online survey with planning professionals, followed by a series of related interviews and focus groups. In parallel, a survey and discussion exercise was undertaken by PAS themselves with councillors. The project aimed to generate a robust evidence base to allow for effective analysis and response.
Pre-application engagement
With regards to PAE, the research findings paint a clear picture of a well-used service with potential,
but also one where that potential is not necessarily being fully realised. It was recognised that engaging in PAE can lubricate the application process and can help to improve and/or build relationships. It was also identified that fees associated with PAE can be an important resourcing tool for service delivery when designed with this in mind. A particularly positive outcome is that the findings point to an appreciation that effective PAE provision promotes early engagement and that a successful PAE phase can lead to better quality development outcomes and a better quality of application to work with.
‘There is a clear and broadly shared understanding of what good practice looks like, but LPA resource and capacity limitations are evidently particularly impactful’
That said, the findings concerning PAE challenges gravitated around the existence of geographic variations in service provision. It was identified that:
• LPA website materials vary in availability, accessibility, clarity, and detail.
• Fee rates (amount) vary significantly, including a minority of LPAs that still provide PAE services without charge.
• Fee models (scaling) vary significantly.
• Fees vary between hourly and fixed; the latter being the more common.
• Fees are not always modelled on cost recovery or set at a level that reaches cost recovery.
Graph 1: Benefits of pre-application discussions
• In terms of format and value, response outputs vary, both between and within LPAs.
• The duration and timeliness of PAE service delivery is variable and differs by the scale of development proposed and/or the format of interaction (desk-based only or face-to-face meeting).
• The involvement of specialist advisors is variable, and their availability is not always clear.
• Further PAE services may attract additional fees.
A specific area of concern flagged by the research was the timeliness of statutory consultee input, as well as the extent of their involvement in PAE. Delays were highlighted as impacting upon overall PAE service delivery. This points to a wider challenge in resourcing and capacity beyond the planning teams in local and national government. Allowing statutory consultees to charge for a wider range of advice, and to withhold that advice if fees remain unpaid, may help with this problem.5
Interestingly, the research did not identify any clear pattern between LPA type, or indeed between second tier LPAs associated with the same upper tier authority. Additionally, no strong geographical pattern appears to be present in fee levels, models, and service approaches.
The significant variation in fees and PAE service experienced was further reflected upon in the range of views about PAE service quality. Although the potential value of PAE outcomes was widely recognised, the realised value is inconsistent.
Very positive stories of support, guidance, effective relationships, and impactful interactions are juxtaposed with those about PAE service limitations. The differences experienced relate to cost, timeliness, and availability of services, but importantly also relate to perceptions of the quality of service delivered, linked to views on the impact of the service provided. Points were made in relation to variability in the quality and/or impact and/or value of PAE service outcomes.
Key to this point is the added value of professional officer comments. A clear differentiation in value can be identified between policy-focused advice (‘policies state that’), and professional judgement and opinion; the latter being seen as the added value that gives validity, justification, and impact to the service and its associated costs. The point was made that planning professionals in the private sector are able and capable of identifying and reading the policy context for a given proposal. Thus, the real value of PAE comes from the informed and valuable judgementbased comment, advice, and guidance provided by LPA officers. It is these elements that are identified as adding a critical dimension to value and impact, but it is not always present in PAE service provision.
In some cases, it was evident that selected PAE services remain free to use (typically for
householder and very minor development proposals), but particularly significant is the fact that a small number of LPAs provide all core PAE services free of charge. When this was explored, the key narrative present was the importance of effective relationships between the LPA and external partners. Charging a fee for PAE services was seen as a potential barrier to positive engagement, such that it could even dissuade engagement and create issues further into the process where opportunities to negotiate and secure positive change are more difficult.
‘Fees are not always modelled on cost recovery or set at a level that reaches cost recovery ’
The viability of this model is challenging of course, but the clear emphasis here upon the significance of fostering effective relationships is notable and is an important factor evident across the full scope of the research findings. The research also identified a wider trend within the private sector of some willingness to pay a higher PAE fee, if this would result in a better quality PAE service and better development outcomes (i.e. if it delivers value for money when the development management process is viewed holistically).
The research identified (and shared) some very good practice, which was genuinely appreciated and valued by all stakeholders, being recognised as impactful and supportive of the realisation of successful planning aspirations. This good practice included effective proforma which create a structured approach to meaningful comment (inclusive officer judgement); approaches which support effective relationships and direct contact between LPA officers and agents; clarity in approach, consistency in approach; consistency in outputs and/or outcomes; timeliness, and value for money derived from all these factors.
Discussions with interviewees established that there is a clear and broadly shared understanding of what good practice looks like, but LPA resource and capacity limitations are evidently particularly impactful. Clear opportunities exist to enhance PAE service delivery where limitations are present, but to realise this would require adequate resources, which currently appear unavailable or inaccessible.
Work around fees for PAE services could support this resourcing challenge, but the prioritisation of statutory functions and other preoccupations means that opportunities for response are constrained. The research identified concerns within LPAs with regards to the health and wellbeing impacts upon staff due to workload demands and the under-resourcing of planning services.
Planning performance agreements
PPAs provide a framework, agreed between the LPA and the applicant or potential applicant, for the development management process to be followed with a major proposal. It is, fundamentally, a project management tool. PPAs are not new, but their use is known to be relatively limited. The research explored their use and sought to provide advice and support to increase their uptake.
As with PAE, the research identified a clear appreciation of the potential value of PPAs, but also identified barriers to their use and to effective service delivery. The research identified several opportunities associated with the use of PPAs on major development proposals:
• reducing planning application timescales;
• enabling and/or resourcing a dedicated officer and/or team;
• facilitating enhanced relationships;
• enabling opportunities for better development outcomes;
• reducing risk and uncertainty;
• a resourcing tool to ensure required skills and capacity are present, and
• promoting a collaborative approach.
The use of PPAs is, however, clearly limited by a lack of skills and knowledge about how to put them in place and then how to operationalise them. There are concerns about the impact of resource limitations upon the ability to establish and deliver against the PPA, and a perception that they can take a long time to put in place. The concerns identified extend beyond the planning team, including legal, professional, administrative, and senior leadership teams. The research specifically
identified the following challenges to PPA use and impact:
• limited experience of their use in some cases creates challenges around skills, knowledge, understanding, and confidence;
• limited LPA resources and capacity act as barriers to provision;
• their potential role in directly creating the required capacity and resources to support delivery, through an associated funding agreement, is not always recognised or utilised;
• there is an inconsistency of approach between LPAs in the service offered, and
• there is inconsistency in relation to the cost and/ or fees associated with PPAs and how these are calculated.
‘The resourcing, skills, and capacity limitations can prevent their use in the first instance, and the lack of evaluation results limits the wider uptake ’
As with PAE service experiences, the idea of added value was present in the research evidence and identified as important. In the context of PPAs, it was confirmed by the research that there are opportunities for them to improve processes; time and project management; certainty; working relationships; partner involvement, and development outcomes through their use. A key
limitation is, simply, their lack of availability in some instances, for the reasons already identified. The findings seem to broadly suggest that, where they are used, PPAs are well received and deliver positive impacts.
A final concern relates to the evaluation of impacts. The research identified that only a minority of LPAs have a robust evaluation process in place for monitoring PPA outcomes, thereby limiting the potential learning from their use in current praxis and thus opportunities to enhance and expand their use.
The research identified good practice and found that PPAs are genuinely valued and impactful. There was evident positivity concerning the further potential value of PPAs, but the critical issue again revolved around capacity, skills, and resources.
Although PPAs themselves can provide some response to this by including a resourcing dimension, the wider LPA resourcing and capacity challenges that potentially inhibit their availability and use, are more difficult issues to resolve.
Outcomes
The research informed an understanding of existing circumstances but also elicited responses designed to support positive change. In relation to the latter, the project created:
• a set of 10 lessons for having a successful PAE service;6
• a set of 10 principles for having a successful PPA service;7
• a PPA guidance document;
• a PPA template, and
• an insight report, with supporting appendix, including good practice.
The research contributed to the creation of a new suite of materials, published by PAS. The ten principles provide a stepping off point, representing a summary of the project outcomes. These are reproduced in Box 1 (right).
For each of these ten principles, PAS sets out examples of best practice from councils and provides strategic suggestions for successful service and outcome delivery. Further detail concerning PPAs is provided via the guidance document and template; both of which offer clear support and detailing, as well as a framework to support the use of PPAs.8 Finally, the insights report presents a summary of the research, the finding, and the best practice identified by the project team throughout this study. These are all freely available, and it is hoped that they will support LPAs in maximising the potential and impact of their PAE and PPA services.
Box 1
Principle 1 – a good pre-application engagement or Planning Performance Agreement service relies upon having the right staff with the right skills to deliver a quality service
Principle 2 – set appropriate charges that meet the cost of the council’s input and enables the council to provide the service that applicants need
Principle 3 – understand and communicate the benefits of pre-application engagement and Planning Performance Agreements
Principle 4 – consider using Planning Performance Agreements throughout the planning process
Principle 5 – create and promote a clear and reliable pre-application service offer
Principle 6 – provide sufficient flexibility in your pre-application service offer
Principle 7 – adopt a truly collaborative approach with statutory consultees
Principle 8 – pre-application engagement and Planning Performance Agreements can be greatly improved by effective community engagement
Principle 9 – staff working in pre-application engagement and with Planning Performance Agreements need great project management skills so that they really add value to the engagement with an applicant
Principle 10 – regularly review and monitor your pre-application service
As far as current circumstances are concerned, the research identified a clear tension and disconnect between the awareness of the potential of both PAE and PPA services on the one hand, and the ability to actually operationalise and realise these benefits on the other. In relation to PAE services, the resourcing and capacity challenge is creating inconsistencies in all respects, with outcomes impacted as a result. For PPAs, the resourcing, skills, and capacity limitations can prevent their use in the first instance, and the lack of evaluation results limits the wider uptake of PAE and PPAs.
Conclusion
The positivity, potential, and very good practice observed and shared via this project’s outputs can help LPAs to identify opportunities for progress and enhancement in relation to both PAE and PPA moving forward. Realising the full potential of these services will, however, be dependent upon a diversity of demand, resource, and context factors, including:
• further planning fee increases, without ring fencing;
• wider local government resourcing;
• the future extent of prior approval;
• implications of the removal of the ‘free go’;
• biodiversity net gain (BNG) practice implications;
• policy and plan making changes/requirements, and
• future use of the planning guarantee.
These factors, together with the implications of any further wider reforms by the 2024 Labour administration, will pose questions for LPAs to answer in addition to the challenges they are already facing. The ongoing local government resourcing and capacity challenges suggests that there are no easy answers or quick solutions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s autumn 2023 statement included an intention to introduce higher ‘premium planning services’ fee rates,9 which was an interesting proposition for a number of reasons. The July 2024 letter from the deputy prime minister, ‘Playing your part in building the homes we need’10, included confirmation of consultation on further fee increases for some application types. But do we need to take a step back and review matters more holistically? Interestingly, some interviewees involved in research questioned more fundamentally the fee-incentive approach to planning services more widely, which some may see as creating a twin track application process, with an associated argument that consistency, impactful PAE, and effective project management provisions should always be present and available to all applicants for planning permission – scaled appropriately to each proposal – and provided for in a single planning fee sufficient to enable resourcing and capacity.
The argument continues, therefore, that costs should be reconceptualised as a single fee, which reflects the genuine end to end nature of the planning process and the cost of supporting the delivery of a comprehensive approach to PAE, the process of determination, and tying up postdecision matters in a fully inclusive project management package.
• Adam Sheppard is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Birmingham. Frances Summers is a Senior Planning Officer at BCP Council and a lecturer in
urban planning at Bournemouth University. Matthew Bowers is an Associate Director, and Olivia Griffin a Consultant Planner, at Hyas Consulting Ltd. Chris Jones is a Project Support Officer and Researcher in the Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 G Csontas: State of the Profession 2023 – The UK planning profession in numbers. Royal Town Planning Institute, Nov. 2023. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/ research/2023/november/state-of-the-profession-2023/#_ Toc149742838
2 M Kenyon: ‘Revealed: capacity and churn issues facing planning teams’. Webpage. Local Government Chronicle. 16 May 2023. https://www.lgcplus.com/services/ regeneration-and-planning/revealed-capacity-and-churnissues-facing-planning-teams-16-052023/#:~:text=Only%20one%20in%2010%20 council,20%25%20or%20more%20in%202022
3 A Sheppard, F Summers, M Bowers, O Griffin: Evidence based research on national best practice in Local Authority approaches to pre-application discussions and Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs). Planning Advisory Service. Mar. 2023. https://www.local.gov.uk/ pas/development-mgmt/pre-application-advice-andplanning-performance-agreements-ppas
4 Evidence based research on national best practice in Local Authority approaches to pre-application discussions and Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs) – Research Findings. Local Government Association, Planning Advisory Service, Mar. 2023. https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view. aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.local.gov.uk%2Fsites% 2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocuments%2FAppendix%252 0B%2520-%2520research%2520findings%2520Web%252 0version.docx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK
5 To these ends, §134 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 inserts §303ZB(1) and (7) into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. https://www.legislation.gov. uk/ukpga/2023/55/pdfs/ukpga_20230055_en.pdf
6 ‘Ten lessons for a successful pre-application service’. Webpage. Local Government Association, Planning Advisory Service, 2024. https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/ development-mgmt/pre-application-advice-andplanning-performance-agreements-ppas/ten-lessons
7 ‘Ten principles for successful pre-applications and PPAs’. Webpage. Local Government Association, Planning Advisory Service, 2024. https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/ development-mgmt/pre-application-advice-andplanning-performance-agreements-ppas/ten-principles
8 ‘Planning Performance Agreement (PPA) guidance and framework’. Webpage. Local Government Association, Planning Advisory Service, 2024. https://www.local.gov. uk/pas/development-mgmt/pre-application-advice-andplanning-performance-agreements-ppas/planning
9 T Lowe: ‘Developers to be offered ‘premium planning service’ to speed up council decisions’. Webpage. Building Design. 22 Nov. 2023 https://www.bdonline.co. uk/news/developers-to-be-offered-premium-planningservice-to-speed-up-council-decisions/5126498.article
10 Raynor, A: Playing your part in building the homes we need. Ministerial letter. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 30 Jul. 2024. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/66aa4849ab418ab055593105/Letter_from_DPM_ to_local_authorities_-_Playing_your_part_in_building_ the_homes_we_need.pdf
the growth delusion
Bob Colenutt discusses whether the new UK government’s approach to delivering genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy will measure up to the pre-election rhetoric
How many times since the general election have you heard government ministers say: ‘we will reform the planning system: this will lead to more house building and more growth’; ‘planning is a major restraint on growth’. End of story. This needs to be challenged, so here goes.
The idea that ‘planners’ hold back housebuilding or growth is a delusion. It is clutching at straws and enables the age-old developer mantra about planning holding back housing delivery. It is an idea that, if left unchallenged, will wreck the Labour government’s claim to economic credibility.
Let’s look at the facts:
Firstly, since 2010 government has delivered all of the deregulation of planning and increased subsidies that the developer lobbies and investors have demanded. The planning rules have been repeatedly loosened to give developers and landowners more advantages and to lower their costs and risks. Viability assessment was brought in with the National Planning Policy Framework (2012) to relieve developers of obligations to build affordable housing if they could argue that their
scheme would be made unviable by planning gain policies.1 ‘Permitted development rights’ have been loosened so more building can take place without the need to apply for planning permission. Planning officers permit over 80% of all planning applications. Most developer planning appeals are allowed.
Secondly, despite these concessions, delivery has failed. The amount of new housing produced by the private sector since the 1980s has barely changed, flatlining at around 150,000 per annum. Since 2010 planning permission has been granted for 2,782,300 homes. Of this number 1,627,730 were completed by May 2021. This means that 1.1 million permitted homes had not been built.2 The housebuilders have huge and increasing undeveloped land banks, with report in June 2023 found that the top 10 housebuilders listed on the London Stock Exchange are sitting on 700,000 plots, many of which have planning permission.3 Furthermore, it is estimated that the housebuilding industry as a whole is sitting on more than one million plots of usable land that could provide more homes.4 The major housebuilders are currently being investigated for
Freepik
Government must stop the fire sale of public land
price fixing. The Competition and Markets Authority reports that it is investigating information sharing, which might be influencing build-out rates and prices.5 The housebuilders demand a minimum profit of 20%, pushing up prices still more. It has long been established that they ‘drip feed’ units onto the market to keep prices high.6 They have swallowed huge subsidies in Help to Buy and infrastructure grants and have made record corporate profits over the last decade.7
Thirdly, landowners have scooped up huge unearned profits from holding out for the highest prices. Up to half the price of a house in south east England is the cost of land. Delivery has been slowed down by landowner bargaining and prices have gone up and up. Meanwhile, government has forced local authorities and public bodies to sell off their land to fund services, thereby reducing the amount of land that can be built on more cheaply.
The biggest shortage of homes is genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy. Yet the public housebuilding sector has been deliberately shrunk by huge cuts in grants and loans, and by selling off council stock. Only about 10,000 new social homes are built each year, whilst Crisis, the housing charity, estimates demand at 90,000 each year. Social housing has been demonised, with providers forced into land trading and building for sale to stay in business.
Why won’t the big builders build more? Number one: they are doing very nicely with their subsidies and profits. Number two: the biggest factor for housebuilders and potential homeowners is the economy and interest rates, not planning rules. Planning is a scapegoat for a refusal to acknowledge that the underlying housing market is broken, and that the housebuilding sector and landowners have played a major part in breaking it. No amount of planning deregulation can change this state of affairs.
What can Labour do instead? It can stop bashing planning and face the facts about housing delivery. The housebuilders cannot deliver a national housing policy. That is the job of government. There is no new deal with the developers that will produce more housing, least of all more affordable or social housing. It must also face the fact that no amount of target setting or reliance upon cross subsidy will bring down prices or meet the need for genuinely affordable housing. Prices reflect interest rates; the state of the national economy, and developer business practices – not the volume of planning permissions granted.
Labour must start talking about public investment in social and affordable housing; roll back the Conservative planning ‘reforms’; stop the fire sale of public land, and – crucially – switch subsidies for development and refurbishment from the housebuilders and landowners to the public and social sectors. That’s where the initial funding for
social housing can be found.
Shelter and the National Housing Federation in a recent report estimate that if 90,000 new social housing units were built per year, £37.8 billion would be saved in three years from reductions in spending on homelessness, the NHS and housing benefit.8
To get growth and meet housing need, the top priority is taking land out of the market to help local authorities, housing associations and the community housing sector to get building again at scale. Sweet talking the housebuilders won’t do the trick.
• Bob Colenutt is an associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 R Grayston: Slipping Through the Loophole – How viability assessments are reducing affordable housing supply in England. Shelter, Nov. 2017. https://assets. ctfassets.net/6sxvmndnpn0s/4CzQDIXrSQXLFGlIGZeSVl/634340e83ce2cb1e2dec9879d19a5db3/2017.11.01_ Slipping_through_the_loophole.pdf
2 ‘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
3 V Spratt, D Parsley: ‘Gove slams housebuilders hoarding almost a million plots of land as ‘completely unacceptable’. Webpage. i, 23 Jun. 2023. https://inews. co.uk/news/gove-slams-housebuilders-hoardingalmost-a-million-plots-of-land-as-completelyunacceptable-2432202
4 ‘Housebuilding market study – Local concentration and land banks working paper’. Competition & Markets Authority, 15 Nov. 2023, p. 14, par. 2.14. https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/65548ec2c684c4000db64d6b/A._Local_ concentration_and_land_banks_working_paper.pdf
5 ‘Housebuilding Market Study Final report’. Competition and Markets Authority, 26 Feb. 2024, p. 87, par. 4.123. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/65d8baed6efa83001ddcc5cd/Housebuilding_ market_study_final_report.pdf
6 D Adams, C Leishman, C Moore: ‘Why Not Build Faster? Explaining the Speed at Which British House-Builders Develop New Homes for Owner Occupation’. Town Planning Review, 2009, Vol. 80(3), 291-314. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27715104
7 C Foye, E Shepherd: Why have the volume housebuilders been so profitable?. UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, Sep. 2023, pp. 29-32. https:// housingevidence.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ CaCHE-housebuilding-report-v9-25.09.pdf
8 Centre for Economics and Business Research: The economic impact of building social housing: A Cebr report for Shelter and the National Housing Federation Feb. 2024. https://assets.ctfassets.net/6sxvmndnpn0s/5nQCiTlJiqFDyFCWkvZSYP/9700aa188cc52c49212f0b0c0af23668/Cebr_report.pdf
what does it take to build to the TCPA healthy homes principles?
Kate de Selincourt discusses the health, environmental and social benefits of building to Passivhaus and EnerPHit standards
Substandard housing makes people ill. It undermines their education and employment prospects and can deprive people of their ability to live independently. At worst, poor housing even shortens people’s lives. British homes – even some of our newer ones – are notoriously cold and poorly ventilated. They suffer from damp, noise, and indoor air pollution. Even homes that are cold in winter can become unbearably hot in summer – often because of the same design and construction flaws.
The direct costs to the NHS of just the worst housing in England has been costed at over one billion pounds per year.1 The overall societal costs are more like £12 or £13 billion. Research2 has also found that people in poor housing may need social care eight years sooner than those with better homes – another huge cost and a financial strain on a badly overstretched system. And a lot of people are affected by these issues. According to polling for the charity National Energy Action,3 59% of British adults rationed their heating last winter. Underheating in turn exacerbates the widespread issues of underventilation, damp and mould. UK Health Security Agency research4 estimates that around 2 million people live with mould severe enough to pose a health risk. New and old homes in the UK also regularly face issues with noise, air pollution and drafts.
All of these issues can impact people’s health and wellbeing. Yet we know how to build and retrofit homes, so they support occupants’ wellbeing,
helping them to lead healthy, productive lives. We can dramatically reduce running costs yet still provide interiors that are warm, well-ventilated, free from damp, quiet and reliably comfortable. One way to achieve this is to build to the Passivhaus standard.5 This standard pays close attention to energy use, but equally close attention to air quality, comfort and freedom from cold spots or noise. In a certified Passivhaus building, both the design and the construction are independently checked. As a
Mark Siddall
result, unlike much mainstream construction, Passivhaus buildings deliver the performance they are aiming for.
Home retrofit can also save carbon and enhance health – with the right approach, they go together very naturally. The Passivhaus EnerPHit7 retrofit standard pays the same close attention to energy use, cold spots, airtightness, and ventilation as does the newbuild standard. In homes like this, people’s health can be transformed. The Passivhaus standard incorporates many of the TCPA’s Healthy Homes principles8 as a matter of course. Passivhaus homes are carefully designed to use very little energy. This means that, not only are they very gentle on the planet, but they are also cheap to run. And they do a lot more besides. Central to the Passivhaus standard is comfortable, effective ventilation, even surface temperatures with no cold spots to attract damp, and very high airtightness. This leads to buildings that are warm, mould-free, and remarkably quiet.
People fear that Passivhaus is costly, but experience shows that a lot of the extra cost of Passivhaus is due to unfamiliarity – therefore, as more and more are built to the standard, and the supply chain grows in confidence, the price differential narrows.9
The UK now has nearly 3,000 Passivhaus homes already completed (the largest number by social landlords) – and over 8,500 estimated to be in the pipeline.
What are the health benefits of Passivhaus?
Warmth
The biggest single threat to people’s health from their homes is being unable to keep comfortably warm. Widening inequality and rising fuel prices have led to a rise in the number of people unable to
heat and ventilate their homes adequately, rather than the reduction that government policy set out to achieve.10 And energy costs are expected to remain more than double the historic average, for the foreseeable future.11
When we are cold, our blood pressure rises and our blood clots more easily, putting us at risk of heart disease or stroke. Respiratory illnesses get worse in the cold, as do painful conditions like arthritis and sickle-cell disease. Disabled people, particularly wheelchair users, need more warmth than others to stay healthy – yet ironically, they are less likely to have the money to pay for it. People with dementia struggle, too, particularly when they are cold. Unfortunately, the construction industry is not doing all it could to keep people warm and healthy. Mainstream construction too often leaves gaps – sometimes, literal gaps – where insulation has been missed, where cold air gets through the eaves, or leaks around electricity sockets. This leads to an estimated average of 60% more heat being needed to keep a new dwelling warm than may be indicated on its energy performance certificate.
Existing homes can be even harder to heat. Many existing homes have had some improvement measures, such as loft and cavity insulation, to try to improve their ability to retain warmth. But a combination of poor workmanship and a piecemeal approach too often means a gap between the intention, and the reality on the ground. But this ‘performance gap’ can be avoided if care is taken with the design and build, and the construction is checked. This is what is done in Passivhaus.
The ambition for Passivhaus is a lot higher than standard new build too. A study of home designs from recent years suggests a typical expected heating demand (before the performance gap) of around three times that of a Passivhaus the same
BSRIA
Thermographic images showing typical defects in standard new build – missing insulation or poor airtightness leading to a cold area (dark line) at the skirting (left); suspected missing insulation leading to excess heat loss (bright patches) on gable wall (right)12
size. When the performance gap is added on top, this means that a typical Passivhaus family home might cost only 20% of what it costs to keep warm in a typical UK new build. A Passivhaus retrofit (or, EnerPHit) also outperforms an average new build of the same size – on energy use, and on comfort. If a household cannot afford to heat (a sad reality for many, unfortunately), a Passivhaus home will maintain safe temperatures for far, far longer than even a typical newbuild, as the graphic below demonstrates.
In February 2021, Shepherd’s Barn was one of several Passivhaus and EnerPHit buildings that took part in a ‘Passivhaus challenge’ where homeowners turned off their heating to find out how long they would be happy without it.13 Shepherd’s Barn’s occupants were comfortable for more than a week, when a nearby house that had not been retrofitted survived just 14 hours.
Ventilation
As well as being directly harmful to occupants, cold is one of the prime drivers for damp – and thereby, mould and other biological threats to health. Mould, as we sadly learned with the awful death of Awaab Ishak, can kill, and it greatly worsens conditions like asthma and COPD (chronic lung disease) too. Mouldy homes are also
devastating for people’s mental health. A cold home is more likely to have cold indoor surfaces, particularly where structures passing through the thickness of the wall (for example, lintels) are uninsulated. These surfaces are then vulnerable to condensation and mould. Passivhaus takes care to insulate these possible cold spots. But to prevent the build up of the moisture and pollution from our everyday activities, we also need outside air to move through the home to carry the moisture away.
Unfortunately, in many homes outside air also brings in pollution, noise, and cold.
The colder you are, the harder it is to tolerate cold ventilation air. Cold drafts lead many people to disable their ventilation by switching off fans and blocking vents. This also happens if the fans are noisy, or noise from outside is coming in. This then means moisture is not properly removed, and the risk of damp and mould goes up.
To make matters worse, even when people use the ventilation as intended, specification and installation is often so poor that the system fails to move the amount of air it should – making it very difficult to maintain good indoor air quality.
Good mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) systems, fitted as standard in Passivhaus, can overcome many of these problems. Instead of delivering outside air directly into living spaces, it
The leakier, less well-designed fabric of a typical UK home – even a new build one – loses heat far faster than a Passivhaus if the heating is turned off. Over five days of typical January weather, the typical house (blue line) is predicted to cool to a brutal 8°C. The Passivhaus (orange line) also cools down – but conditions are nothing like as dangerous.
comes through a heat exchanger first. Here it passes alongside the stale air being extracted. The stale air passes its heat to the incoming air, so when the fresh air arrives in the living spaces, it is almost at room temperature. Not only is this more comfortable, but in a well-set up system it can save most of the energy that would otherwise be spent heating up cold air to bring it to room temperature. In a 90 square metre dwelling, for example, an 85% efficient MVHR can save as much as 1800 Kilowatt Hours (kWh) per year for the heating system. Running the ventilation will probably use only 200kWh for a full year, day-in, day-out, thereby creating a clear energy profit.
‘Passivhaus buildings deliver the performance they are aiming for’
While the energy saving abilities of a MVHR system are impressive, perhaps even more impressive is the way a well-designed system contributes to a comfortable, healthy living space. The incoming air is warm, so there’s less temptation to shut it off. The air is delivered from the fan unit via ducts to the living spaces, so there is no need for window vents. This means not only is there no cold draft from the windows, outside noise and pollution are kept out too. Incoming air is filtered, removing some pollutants. It is also possible to select the least polluted location for the air intake (such as on the roof, or facing a garden), again, minimising the pollution coming in from outside.
Good fabric and ventilation design are never a substitute for reducing pollution at source with planting, traffic reduction and good urban design. These are the fundamental tools to prevent the lung, heart and brain disease that pollution causes. However, good building design can certainly take advantage of any lower-pollution spots there might be. A ventilation system is only as good as its design and installation. A poor MVHR installation can lead to inadequate ventilation – as with any ventilation system. With Passivhaus and EnerPHit certification, each design is independently checked to ensure that air flows will be balanced, and the fresh air is kept warm on its journey from fan to living space. Research over many years has shown that MVHR when designed, installed, and certified to Passivhaus standard, provides consistently good air quality with levels of CO2 and moisture at or close to guidance levels.14
Ventilation noise is also carefully controlled in Passivhaus – levels of noise in each room are carefully calculated and checked, with mandatory maximum levels sets for living and sleeping spaces.
By contrast, building regulations in the UK only ‘advise’ on noise levels, with no checking required. And these advisory levels are higher than those required in Passivhaus.
Noise
An under-valued quality of healthy homes is quiet. A noisy environment stresses us even when we are used to it – think of the physical wash of relaxation you feel when the neighbour finally finishes mowing their grass. Quiet is essential for good quality sleep.15 And we need sleep to maintain both physical and mental good health. If aeroplane noise intrudes in the night for example, our blood pressure responds by increasing, even if we don’t wake. Sadly, an accumulation of years of disturbed nights can even land us in hospital with premature heart problems.
Some people are particularly vulnerable to excess noise. For example, people with cognitive issues find it especially hard to remember and complete essential tasks (such as eating) if distracted by noise. Some autistic people find external noise overwhelming – they can benefit tremendously from housing that protects them.16
Passivhaus minimises noise from the ventilation system. And building and retrofitting with the Passivhaus approach blocks out external noise, in the same way it blocks out cold. Closely packed insulation dampens sound very effectively. The building envelope is free from cracks and gaps. The air from outside enters via the fan and silencers, so outside noise is pretty much excluded: contrast this with a permanently open vent straight into the room. Triple glazing is standard in Passivhaus and EnerPHit in the UK. They not only keep in warmth, but also keep out noise – windows like this are popular near airports and busy roads for this reason.17, 18 Exeter City Council even found that antisocial behaviour is low in Passivhaus developments, an effect they suspect may be linked to reduction in exposure to unwanted neighbour noise.19
Comfort
It is not just noise that can interfere dangerously with our sleep – excess heat does too. Excess heat in the daytime also stresses our bodies and increases our risk of cardiovascular issues in particular. With recent heatwaves across the globe, we are seeing the dangers of overheating, particularly for babies and older people. Given that the trend in global temperatures is steadily upwards this is something we all need to take seriously. As with outdoor pollution, one of the crucial defences against summer overheating is city design to maximise green spaces and vegetation cover. Buildings do have a very important role to play though. They can certainly make overheating a lot worse than it needs to be.
Keeping building occupants comfortable and safe in summer has three elements:
• limiting the amount amount of heat entering a space;
• ensuring that unwanted heat can be removed easily, and
• ensuring that cooler conditions achieved overnight and/or using active cooling are conserved, to maximise comfort and minimise energy use.
How do we limit the amount of heat entering a space? First of all, keep out the sun. How many people have built glazed extensions onto their homes, or bought apartments with floor to ceiling windows, only to discover they live in a solar oven?
Part O of the building regulations has introduced the requirement to check for excess glazing, and not before time.20 However, it is not yet clear if this regulation delivers what is needed. The Passivhaus design approach checks for the risk of solar overheating right from when the first decisions about windows and orientation are made. It allows the designer to test and select small changes –such as deepening a reveal or raising a windowsill to reduce solar gain – while they have the freedom to alter the design.
Ill-judged building services, in particular the
circulation of hot water in communal heat and hot water systems, can also be a very unwelcome source of summer heat gain. This is one of the metrics checked and minimised in any Passivhaus design. If heat has nonetheless built up during the day, sometimes only flinging the windows wide open in the evening is enough to purge it away and restore comfort. But it might be difficult to leave everything open all night. What if it’s noisy outside? What if there are young children who might climb out – or cats or burglars who might sneak in? Along with careful design of glazing and services, constant ventilation is another way to reduce the build up of heat while outdoor temperatures are lower than indoors. A MVHR system provides this securely – as long as it is fitted with a bypass to the heat exchanger, as a good system will be. However, when the daytime temperatures climb really high, ventilation air no longer brings any relief. Nevertheless, a well-designed building can hang on to night-time comfort. An airtight building will stop hot air leaking in, just as it stops cold. A MVHR system can then allow essential air flow to continue – but it uses the heat exchanger to expel the unwanted heat – in other words, to hang on to the precious indoor cool, just as it hangs onto the warmth we want in winter, as the chart below illustrates:
This chart is from a domestic MVHR system, recorded during a heat wave. Outside temperatures rose above 30° Celsius during the day, but the interior remained pleasantly in the low 20°s. Overnight, the system automatically by-passed the heat exchanger. Supply air (green line) entered the house at outside temperatures (blue line). This cooled the house (yellow line) from about 22° to about 19° by morning. The heat exchanger kicked in during the day, so intake heat (green line) was transferred direct to the exhaust (red line) allowing supply air (blue line) to enter the living spaces close to the comfortable indoor temperatures (yellow line), thereby maintaining day-long comfort.
In most UK locations for most of the year, nights are cool enough to ensure that we can remove the day’s heat at night, so with the right building design and ventilation, temperatures need not climb too high overall. If nights do eventually become too warm as well (this is already becoming an issue in London), then we will need to consider active cooling – especially for the most vulnerable residents. At this point, the ability of Passivhaus to keep out heat and to ‘recycle’ cool will become an asset that saves energy and money too.
The way we build homes determines whether they are expensive to run, cold, damp, draughty, polluted and prone to overheating in summer – or whether they are affordably warm, dry and comfortable, with ample clean air, and an ability to remain comfortable in heatwaves. Building and retrofitting to Passivhaus is a proven way to achieve these goals. While Passivhaus may be sought because of the way it saves energy, saves carbon, and eases the load in the grid, it can do a whole lot more for us besides. For more information and resources on the links between good building and good health, and how Passivhaus buildings support the well-being of their occupants, see the background briefing paper from the Passivhaus Trust.15
• Kate de Selincourt writes about building performance and occupant wellbeing for the UK Passivhaus Trust and other sustainable building organisations. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 K Newman: ‘Poor Housing Costs £135.5bn Over 30 Years’. Webpage. BRE, 4 Jul. 2023. https://bregroup. com/news/poor-housing-will-cost-over-135.5bn-overthe-next-30-years-without-urgent-action
2 J Cartagena Farias, N Brimblecombe, B Hu: ‘Early onset of care needs in the older population: The protective role of housing conditions’. Health & Place, Vol. 81, May 2023, 103007. https://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S1353829223000448?via%3Dihub
3 ‘Warm, Safe and Healthy at Home’. Webpage. National Energy Action, 2024. https://www.nea.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2024/06/NEA-Manifesto-2024-FINAL. pdf
4 SN Clark, HCY Lam, EJ Goode, EL Marczylo, KS Exley, S Dimitroulopoulou: ‘The Burden of Respiratory Disease from Formaldehyde, Damp and Mould in English Housing’. Environments, Vol. 10(8), 2 Aug. 2023, 136. https://researchportal.ukhsa.gov.uk/en/publications/ the-burden-of-respiratory-disease-from-formaldehydedamp-and-moul
5 ‘What is Passivhaus?’. Webpage. Passivhaus Trust, 2024. https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/what_is_ passivhaus.php
10 ‘New official statistics highlight fuel poverty crisis deepening – as half of British adults turn their heating off, even when it’s cold inside’. Webpage. National Energy Action, 15 Feb. 2024. https://www.nea.org.uk/ news/fuel-poverty-england-2024/
11 T Edwards: ‘Energy prices to remain significantly above average up to 2030 and beyond’. Webpage. Cornwall Insight, 20 Apr. 2022. https://www.cornwallinsight.com/press/energy-prices-to-remain-significantlyabove-average-up-to-2030-and-beyond/
12 Thermal imaging report guide: How to interpret the results of a thermal imaging survey. NF86. BSRIA for NHBC Foundation, Jan. 2020. https://www.nhbc.co.uk/ binaries/content/assets/nhbc/foundation/thermalimaging-report-guide.pdf
13 L Alter: ‘Passivhaus Challenge Shows How Well Passive House Buildings Hold the Heat’. Webpage. Treehugger, 22 Feb. 2021. https://www.treehugger.com/ passivhaus-challenge-passive-house-buildings-holdheat-5113627
14 S Lewis: ‘How well-designed buildings are both airtight and breathable’. Webpage. RIBA Journal, 4 Jun. 2024. https://www.ribaj.com/intelligence/indoor-air-qualityairtight-breathable-buildings-passivhaus-design-mvhr
15 K de Selincourt, J Palmer: Health, wellbeing and people performance: Passivhaus benefits supplementary paper. Passivhaus Trust, version 1.1, Aug. 2023. https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/ UserFiles/File/research%20papers/Benefits%20technical/ Health%20wellbeing%20and%20people%20 performance%20v1.1%20230810.pdf
16 M Jiron: Sensory Overload (Interacting with Autism Project). Video. Vimeo, 2012. https://vimeo. com/52193530
17 G Sherriff, P Martin, B Roberts: Erneley Close Passive House Retrofit: Resident experiences and building performance in retrofit to passive house standard University of Salford, Feb. 2018. https://salfordrepository.worktribe.com/output/1383480/erneley-closepassive-house-retrofit-resident-experiences-andbuilding-performance-in-retrofit-to-passive-housestandard
18 J Cradden: ‘South Dublin passive house rises out of the ordinary’. Passive House + Sustainable Building, issue 25 [online], 15 Aug. 2018. https:// passivehouseplus.co.uk/magazine/new-build/southdublin-passive-house-rises-out-of-the-ordinary
19 J Palmer, K de Selincourt: Passivhaus Benefits Passivhaus Trust, Dec. 2021, p. 43. https://www. dropbox.com/s/84l15sdb7h8ryk4/PHT_PH%20 Benefits%20Summary_Full%20report_5.0_Double%20 Page.pdf?e=2&dl=0_5.0_Double+Page.pdf%3Fdl%3D0
20 The Building Regulations 2010: Overheating, Approved Document O, 2021 edition – for use in England. HM Government, 15 Jun. 2022. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/media/6218c5aad3bf7f4f0b29b624/ADO. pdf
how we became effective tax gatherers
Tony Crook examines the ways in which increases in land value generated by development have been captured over the years and asks whether a return to direct taxation or adopting a hybrid approach will be more effective than planning obligations alone
Spatial planning is fundamentally about correcting market failures, including dealing with externalities and the provision of public benefits. Inevitably it has economic consequences that impact upon both prices and distribution and affect both income and wealth. In particular, planning decisions impact land values.
Right at the start of planning a key issue therefore was whether those obtaining permission should keep all, some, or none of the development value arising from planning permission and if those whose land was not selected should receive compensation. These debates are well known to readers of Town & Country Planning and have raged throughout our planning history.
A crucial feature has been the switch from the formal national taxation of development value to planning obligations. There have been four not very successful and short-lived, attempts to introduce taxation:
• Development Charge (1948-1951).
• Betterment Levy (1968-1970).
• Development Gains Tax (1973-1976).
• Development Land Tax (1976-1985).
None of these taxes raised very much and the revenue was largely un-hypothecated for local spending, so did little to benefit the localities where the relevant development took place. Instead, we have seen a huge growth in the use of planning obligations to secure negotiated costs-based contributions from developers towards the
infrastructure and new affordable homes needed to make developments acceptable in planning terms. Notwithstanding the fact that negotiations can be long and difficult, the most recent evidence for England (2018-19) shows that significant sums have been agreed: £7 billion, of which £4.7 billion was for affordable homes. Crucially this is all used for local spending, so it benefits the localities where development takes place. The table below shows the amounts raised in previous years by obligations in comparison with the much smaller amounts raised by earlier national taxation measures both in nominal and in 2018-19 prices. It also shows the value of tax/obligations raised per new home completed by the private developers who built the homes and paid the taxes and obligations.
Moreover, these costs fall largely on landowners who get paid less for their land, with the funding provided representing some 30% of the development value created by planning (with another 20% being paid as transactions taxes). By comparison, in 1983-84 across the entire UK only £185 million (in 2018-19 prices) was collected in development land tax.
So, we planners have become de facto tax gatherers. Moreover, we have been more effective at doing this than the four previous attempts at national taxation.
What of the future? In England, we are at a critical juncture as the Westminster government has enacted legislation allowing a sales tax to largely replace our long standing and well understood
costs-based approach to capturing development value via negotiated planning obligations. The sales tax will be a local authority determined levy charged on the final sales revenue (less construction etc. costs) from completed development and available for spending on a wide range of local authority services, as well as on infrastructure and affordable homes (but retaining planning obligations for large and complex sites).
It is a moot point whether this is likely to work as intended and the incoming Labour government may modify or even abandon it.* Apart from anything else, it will take years to implement and maximise uncertainty for all involved. Local authorities will need to decide site specific levy rates and thresholds above which levies will not be exacted
(i.e. allowances for construction costs and some land value). They will need to borrow to fund infrastructure in advance of receipts from completed development and at the same time run obligations on large and complex sites.
Far better, as some of us have argued in this publication in relation to both Scotland and England,4 to adopt a site specific approach to capturing land value. On small to medium size sites, create a tariff approach to obligations; on larger sites, keep negotiated contributions; and on major developments (quasi new towns, villages and urban extensions) adopt a partnership model of public bodies, landowners, developers, and infrastructure providers sharing in the costs of land acquisition and investment and reaping the benefits of
development value to reinvest in the projects, using the new compensation provisions of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 to help capture more of the development value that the proposed investment will create.
‘Planners have become de facto tax gatherers. Moreover, we have been more effective at doing this than the four previous attempts at national taxation’
In all these ways planners can be effective ‘tax gatherers’ – doing it better than national government and using the revenue raised to promote efficient and equitable developments.
• Prof. Tony Crook CBE FAcSS FRTPI is Emeritus Professor of Town & Regional Planning at The University of Sheffield. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 T Crook, J Henneberry, C Whitehead: Planning Gain: Providing Infrastructure and Affordable Housing. Blackwell, Jan. 2016.
2 A Lord, T Crook, R Dunning, M Buck, S Cantillon, G Burgess, C Watkins, C Whitehead: The Incidence, Value and Delivery of Planning Obligations and Community Infrastructure Levy in England in 2018-19. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, HMSO, Aug. 2020, p. 143. https://assets.publishing.service.gov. uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/907203/The_Value_and_Incidence_of_ Developer_Contributions_in_England_201819.pdf
3 A Lord, T Crook, R Dunning, B Dockerill, A Carro, G Burgess, C Watkins, C Whitehead: The Incidence, Value and Delivery of Planning Obligations and Community Infrastructure Levy in England in 2016-17, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, HMSO, Mar. 2018, p. 140. https://assets.publishing.service.gov. uk/media/5a9d158440f0b67aa5087e54/Section_106_ and_CIL_research_report.pdf
4 J Boyle, T Crook, S Smith, C Whitehead: ‘Developer contributions for affordable homes and infrastructure – Anglo-Scottish comparisons and lessons, part two: Scotland and England compared – a three-stage story?’. Town & Country Planning, 2022, Vol. 91, Mar-Apr., 104-109
Editor’s Note
* The incoming Labour government has since confirmed its decision not to bring forward Conservative Party proposals for an infrastructure levy. Instead, it will focus upon ‘improving the existing system’ of developer contributions.
freeports and investment zones: future prospects and implications for planning
Tim Marshall surveys the evolving landscape of freeports and investment zones, as inherited by the new government, and considers their future and possible improvements, if retained
In 2022 I wrote introducing readers to freeports.1 Here I return to this topic, weaving the new policy instrument, investment zones2 (IZs), into the story. IZs are partnerships of central and local government together with businesses and other partners. They are located in areas with existing local strengths and untapped economic potential and are focused on at least one of the following priority sectors:
• advanced manufacturing
• creative industries
• digital and technology
• green industries
• life sciences
Small area initiatives have a long history in British public policy making. The sub-category of special economic zones also goes back several decades, with the regional programmes of the 1930s to 2010 constituting the most serious case of governmentled spatial economic intervention. Since the Thatcher governments of the 1980s, tax breaks in localised zones have been a popular instrument in the Conservative toolbox to either regenerate areas lagging behind or stimulate areas with potential for
economic success. Since 2010, regional scale interventions have been abandoned; replaced by assorted measures focused on localities, sometimes via combined authority (CA) devolution agreements. Freeports and IZs have joined other instruments introduced since 2010, such as enterprise zones and other ‘deals’.3 Given their overlapping characteristics, freeports and IZs can now be considered together, even though there are significant differences between them. The key question for policy makers starting from the present landscape of instruments is whether this is the best we can do: whether these programmes can be useful to the big challenges facing the country, or at least whether with suitable reform, they can be made so? If the answer to both questions were no, then logically they should be scrapped. However, at present that outcome appears unlikely.
Freeports and investment zones, the landscape in mid-2024
The map below shows the geography of freeports around the UK. There has been talk of more freeports in 2026, but this seems unnecessary. For
1 East Midlands Freeport
2 Freeport East
3 Humber Freeport
4 Liverpool City Region Freeport
5 Plymouth and South Devon Freeport
6 Solent Freeport
7 Teesside Freeport
8 Thames Freeport
9 Forth Green Freeport
10 Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport
11 Anglesey Freeport
12 Celtic Freeport
the moment we can assume that this constitutes the extent of the policy, although Northern Ireland will have an enhanced investment zone. Currently, there are 24 designations: 12 of each type, with eight in England and two each in Scotland and Wales. The language of the Scottish and Welsh freeports reflects the co-design with these administrations, referring to green and just transition, fair work, and net zero.
Some differences between freeports and IZs are obvious. With the exception of the ‘inland port’ at East Midlands Airport, the freeports are coastal. The IZs are all in CA areas (an incipient CA in the East Midlands), mostly inland. The geographic overlaps are on Merseyside, where the CA treats both as instruments of its economic strategy, guided by one committee. On Teesside, a favourite of the previous Conservative government, and in the East Midlands, the freeports and IZs sit uncomfortably in a chaotic governance landscape of non-overlapping institutions.
Whatever else it achieved, this makes it look like planning matters’
The two instruments originate from somewhat different ideas of economic intervention. Freeports, as envisioned in 2016 by the then back-bench MP, Rishi Sunak, are a trade policy tool to attract global investment, as part of the Brexit agenda. However, Sunak was not being very original. The Canadian historian, Quinn Slobodian has traced the history of the passion for zonal liberalisation which has gripped neoliberal ideologists since at least the 1970s, with the American economist and
statistician, Milton Friedman, his son and his grandson in the lead.5 Neither freeports nor enterprise zones are innocent elements of any regeneration package: they are part of the antidemocracy drive at the heart of key neoliberal thinking. Any progressive government would do well to start with a default position of challenging their logic.
Experts of various kinds have concluded that the customs part of the freeports package, as it stands at present, is unlikely to have significance. The parts that matter are the tax breaks and the retention of business rates uplift, plus the chance of attracting government attention, particularly in terms of infrastructure spending and bending of policies (such as securing electricity connections).
IZs resemble enterprise zones in terms of their tax and rates exemptions, but with the extra explicit link to research and development and universities, seeking a more planned conception of industrial policy, as opposed to the free trade and deregulation ambience at first evident in freeports. But given the evolution of each, the differences between the two are now less obvious and in several regions, including Merseyside, Wales and Scotland, both are seen simply as convenient ways to obtain additional resources and focus potential investment. Most of the CAs managing IZs are thinking in the same way, indicating a need for a regional economic strategy to frame the work of IZs. With the exception of Teesside, this approach is reinforced because the mayors are Labour. Freeports are less solidly dominated by local Labour politics (Merseyside excepted), with Liberal Democrat control of Hull, and an important Conservative and Liberal Democrat presence in most other cases (plus Greens in East and Mid Suffolk).
IZs vary because candidates had the option of a
financial package with a mix of tax breaks and government spending. Three CAs (Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire) opted not to designate tax break sites, no doubt considering that this could prejudice areas outside the chosen sites, as well as maybe reflecting some ideological aversion within Labour to such ‘beggar your neighbour’ fiscal localism.
Governance patterns of freeports vary, but some indication of practice is summed up by the composition of the Thames Freeport board:
• an independent chair;
• three council leaders;
• a member of the Thames Estuary Growth Board;
• an executive of the Port of London Authority;
• three non-executive directors from business;
• DP World who run London Gateway (239 hectares);
• Forth Ports who run Tilbury (161 hectares), and
• Ford (103 hectares).
The last three in the list above are the three businesses at the core of the project with the tax and customs sites located on their land.
The estimated cost for each IZ is presently £160 million (£1,920 million over 10 years). There is no equivalent budget envelope for freeports, and this may reflect, in part, uncertainty about the uptake of tax relief as the programme develops. For local councils, a major attractor is the potential to retain 100% of business rates uplift over the following years, with guesses of £300 or £400 million over 20 years offered in freeport business cases. Once divided up amongst constituent councils, this optimistic estimate may not amount to a vast sum each year, but any additional finance would be welcomed by most councils.
‘Freeports, as envisioned in 2016 by the then back-bench MP, Rishi Sunak, are a trade policy tool to attract global investment’
The place of planning in freeports and IZs
Both policy instruments are managed by HM Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG – formerly DLUHC) – the latter chairing the cross-departmental board. The initial dominance by the Treasury on the implementation of freeports waned in the latter days of the previous government, with signs that, over the past 18 months, former DLUHC secretary of state, Michael Gove’s strong position and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt’s collaborative approach at the Treasury allowed for genuinely co-produced policy development and
execution. This was marked by the publication of a Freeports Delivery Road Map4 in December 2023 – a significant attempt to mobilise cross-government support for freeports, with the business and infrastructure departments very present. The planning section claims that:
‘The current planning system in England gives local authorities a powerful set of tools for creating an environment that can support appropriate development on Freeport sites. The government will take steps to ensure those tools are used as effectively as possible and to minimise friction at key stages in the planning process.’
These tools relate to a range of fast tracking measures (planning permissions and development consent orders (DCOs)); support for priority development via a ‘planning super squad’, and regulatory measures such as the infrastructure levy and compulsory purchase orders. Also, agencies within Defra and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) are expected to reduce regulatory friction. The planning ‘to do list’ is long, with 15 separate work streams out of a total of 50 in the road map – spread between MHCLG, Department for Transport, Defra and DCMS. Whatever else it achieved, this makes it look like planning matters.
The question though is what sort of planning? The House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee (the select committee) report of 23 April 2024 is typical of current sloppy thinking about planning. It states that initiatives ‘require a supportive planning regime to use seed funding provided by government to redevelop freeport and investment zone sites’. However, with no further argument, it jumps to recommending that one of the challenges to be addressed for zones to achieve their full potential is ‘extended planning freedoms’.6 This is unexplained and could mean many things – more local development orders (LDOs), extended permitted development rights, or even more ‘streamlined’ planning permissions and DCOs – but illustrates well the knee-jerk thinking so common in recent decades, that less public control is better.
Removing the ‘frictions’ of planning is a concern echoed in several freeport bodies, whose websites stress an apparent need to remove what are seen
East Midlands Freeport
as planning obstacles. Examples are:
• Freeport East pressing on with the long inert project at Bathside Bay.
• Solent Freeport trying to open up development on the Solent waterfront down to Fawley, in New Forest District, and on other sites seen as needing road investment.
• Plymouth and South Devon Freeport claiming that planning obstacles will be overcome quickly.
Two examples convey the relationship between freeports and planning. The Solent Freeport Full Business Case document says:
‘New Forest District Council (NFDC) is committed to ensuring that development at all sites in the Southampton Waterfront Cluster can move through the planning process as quickly and efficiently as possible and is open to all routes, including Local Development Orders [LDO]. To enable Freeport development, NFDC will draft a Development Framework to look at the overall package of measures needed to deliver development in and around the Southampton Waterfront Cluster, recognising the complex and sensitive nature of the area, and set out a plan for delivery. To resource this work, the local authority will create a dedicated multi-disciplined team to assist in delivery of LDO/NSIP [Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project] and to deliver some of the mitigation projects identified in the Development Framework, and drawing upon established partnership working in the area.’ 7
The Thames Freeport Full Business Case has the same flavour of planning in the service of corporate investors:
‘Freeport planning arrangements will lay the foundations for port operators to rapidly establish and operationalise tax and customs sites at the Ford Dagenham Estate, the Port of Tilbury Estate, London Gateway Port and Logistics Park and Thames Enterprise Park (customs only). Site operators will utilise all available planning regimes best suited to individual projects including Local Development Order (LDO), Development Consent Order (DCO) and general planning approaches. London Gateway will look to renew its existing Local Development Order (LDO). The Thames Freeport is closely aligned with local plans and regeneration objectives of the Freeport policy and includes more than 250 hectares of consented land and major port and energy infrastructure projects across the proposed sites. The right planning environment exists to make the Thames Freeport a success. Freeport development plans are supported by local authorities who have an excellent record of collaboration with site operators – with Thurrock regularly one of the top performing local authorities over the last decade for the speed and quality of its planning service delivery. Barking and Dagenham’s planning services are now delivered through its wholly owned subsidiary, BeFirst, which has transformed planning into a fast and agile function of the authority.’ 8
So, the crux of freeport designation – its core driver – is to attract global investment. IZs have the same goal, but aligned with endogenously generated development, stemming particularly from home grown high tech and innovation institutions and businesses. In these cases, there is likely to be
Bathside Bay, Harwich in Freeport East
more emphasis upon planning being a supportive framework for managing development, rather than as a blockage. In a DLUHC document from March 2024,9 the only planning input was about providing a single point of contact for IZ investors. This rather modest proposal is one that many authorities would have been implementing for years. Also, compared with the budgets attached to similar actions in the metropolitan county period (1974-1986) which preceded many of the CA areas, or in the regional development agency (RDA) era (1997-2010), the resources available today for investor contact will be puny.
All of this has its logics in boosting certain kinds of economic development, particularly the more planned end of emerging IZ practice, but it disregards the central importance of what many have been arguing for some years: the foundational economy, much based on public funding and creating local and regional circuits of jobs and economic energy.10 An example could be promoting public district energy networks, making areas less dependent on global forces. As Professor Yvonne Rydin, Chair of Planning, Environment and Public Policy at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, has been arguing for some time, this locally generated dynamic is more likely to be appropriate in those areas beyond the scattered hotspots of globalised rentierism11 in parts of London, Manchester and other ‘boom islands’ around Britain, and is more likely to carry the values of a ‘post growth’ world.12
Perspectives on these programmes
There are, unsurprisingly, differing views on the value of these programmes. The reports around potentially corrupt practices in the management of major derelict sites on Teesside go wider than the issue of the freeport but have served to highlight the enormous risks that such non-transparent governance processes may hold.13 The select committee began a review of the
performance of IZs and freeports in June 2023. Its final report, published April 2024, largely pulled its punches, essentially finding that these initiatives should continue, though with recommendations for more open governing processes, including for a National Audit Office inquiry on Teesside.14
A 2023 report on freeports by the Centre for Local Economic Studies (CLES) took a surprisingly sunny and uncritical view of the initiative, identifying scope to support the social economy.15 Given that Labour appears to be accepting of both freeports and IZs, roughly in their present forms, CLES may have felt that, as they are the only game in town for many of these areas, the only option is to try to bend them in progressive directions, compatible with foundational economy precepts. A reading of freeport webpages and of evidence given to the select committee by CA leaders, points to the same conclusion: that local authority leaders will grasp any chance to secure extra resources for their areas and were especially keen on the more dialogue-friendly approach of Jeremy Hunt in conversations about IZ design. Finally, a study of emerging freeport practice in Merseyside and Teesside, whilst critical of many features, noted that the programmes may send effective policy signals, acting as coordination focal points in localities, perhaps as the core of future, more effective, regeneration efforts.16
‘It will be an exceptionally long climb back to a framework based upon publicly understood electoral democratic legitimacy’
Will freeports and IZs help the selected areas to flourish?
As Michael Gove emphasised in talking to the select committee inquiry and in a subsequent letter,17 these policies were only a quite small part of the previous government’s levelling-up ‘toolbox’, with a long list of initiatives being seen as related and complementary. The question for planners; those involved in localities, and advisors to the incoming Labour government, is whether they are a useful element in the wider toolset. The select committee pointed out that there is no comprehensive picture of the quantum of public resources directed to particular parts of the country (an aspiration of public policy makers going at least as far back as the 1970s). This is one reason why it remains guesswork as to whether this level of resource, delivered in these particular forms, are likely to make a difference to the economic destinies of these areas, whether in the short or long term. This is a live ideological experiment (with varying
Liverpool City Region Freeport
ideological ingredients in the two instruments), but one with no possibility of achieving clear scientific results – there are too many factors that cannot be held constant, from the range of local economic and political conditions to the application of multiple public policy instruments and finance.
A careful analysis would very likely show that far fewer government resources are going into these areas now than in pre-Brexit times; and certainly, since the RDA era prior to 2010. But I have seen no such recent analysis. It is perfectly possible that spending hundreds of millions of pounds (in tax and other breaks and helping with infrastructure) principally to subsidise the operations of large corporations represents an ineffective and inefficient use of government funds if the aim is to secure economic development.
It is equally possible that, if the same level of resource made available to freeports and IZs over the next decade were allocated and governed within a much more socially and environmentally driven model, based in part upon genuinely locally generated projects, long term wellbeing in all freeport and IZ areas would improve.
Scrapping freeports and reconsidering all small area initiatives against equity and environmental objectives may give best value for the not insignificant amounts of public money involved.
However, I have doubts that Labour is thinking in these wider terms, more critical of Conservative practice. Perhaps some of the new round of council and CA leaders will start pushing the party in these more imaginative directions?
‘
A study of emerging freeport practice in Merseyside and Teesside, whilst critical of many features, noted that the programmes may send effective policy signals’
If retained, what should be altered in these programmes?
A key issue remains the weak governance arrangements in England. With power overwhelmingly in the hands of central government, a pared back and demoralised local and regional governance landscape is overshadowed. Endless talk of ‘devolution’ and directly elected mayors does little, in my view, to support initiatives tied to the current local and regional structures. The select committee’s assumption that ‘all parts of England should have a tier of government between local and national government, such as Metro Mayors’17 is unargued, betraying a common lack of interest in public understanding of government and democratic legitimacy. If the incoming Labour government gives more resources to CAs, and thereby to the authorities managing IZs and some of the freeports, this may help, but it will be an exceptionally long climb back to a framework based upon publicly understood electoral democratic legitimacy. There is a risk that the energy sapping and wasteful tendency towards government dominated deals and competitive bidding will continue, infecting governance overall, including IZs and freeports.
Nevertheless, there ought to be scope for new democratic arrangements in all of the affected areas, so that these two initiatives (if allowed to continue) can sit within planned strategies that have been publicly debated and agreed. This would go against the grain of some freeports, where private sector dominated governance dominates – allowing the likes of DP World, Hutchinson and other global port operators to steer these public programmes to their own advantage. They are after all the appointed policing agents of the customs sites element of the programmes – an extraordinary example of potential clashes of interest. A reassertion of public control of the public money spent would at least bring the programmes out into the open, where social and environmental options can be discussed in the public sphere. It will also be
Teesside Freeport
important to integrate the instruments into a new environmental policy framework; linked to employment and regeneration policies. Even the link to trade policy will matter, if the customs element is continued.
From a planning perspective, such changes to the governance and resourcing context would help to counter the narrative of planning as a barrier, raising the possibility of public plan-making which looks to the long term and beyond any political or commercial desire for short term investment at any cost. This approach is already gaining ground in some places – Merseyside, for example. However, reconstruction of local government and planning capacity will be essential for this approach to succeed. It is likely to matter more than the continued hot air pumped out about metro (or non-metro) mayors.
On the ports side, a new version of the old and very unfit National Policy Statement for Ports18 is needed, with full public deliberation. Core goals should make port operations less polluting, and switch freight from road to rail, as proposed decades ago but never resourced. To quote my 2022 article:
‘far from becoming privatised enclaves, port zones need to be integrated into wider ecological and social economies.’
• Prof. Tim Marshall is Emeritus Professor in the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 T Marshall: ‘Freeports – the current English landscape’, Town & Country Planning, 2022, Vol. 91(6), Nov.-Dec., 384-390
3 J Morphet: ‘Deals and devolution: The role of local authority deals in undermining devolved decision making’. Local Economy, 2022, Vol. 37(7), 622-638. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ full/10.1177/02690942231172170
4 ‘Freeports delivery roadmap’. Online guidance. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 19 Dec. 2023. https://www.gov.uk/ guidance/freeports-delivery-roadmap
6 Performance of investment zones and freeports in England: Fourth Report of Session 2023-24. HC 272. House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, 26 Apr. 2024, pars. 30, 36. https://committees.parliament. uk/publications/44455/documents/221158/default/
7 Solent Freeport Bid: Full Business Case. Solent Freeport and Portsmouth City Council, 6 Sep. 2022. https://solentfreeport.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ Sept-2022_Solent-FBC-Resubmisssion_vsent-4_ Redacted.pdf
8 Thames Freeport: Full Business Case Consolidated – Submitted to the Department for Levelling Up,
Housing and Communities. Thames Freeport and Thurrock Council, Jun. 2023. https://thamesfreeport. com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/ThamesFreeport_ FullBusinessCaseConsolidated_PublishedFeb2024.pdf
9 ‘Investment Zones in England’. Online guidance. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 26 Apr. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/ guidance/investment-zones-in-england
10 The Foundational Economy Collective: The Foundational Economy. The Infrastructure of Everyday Life. Manchester University Press, 2022
11 See: B Christopher: Rentier Capitalism. Who owns the economy and who pays for it?. Verso, 2022, and I Rose: The Rentier City. Manchester and the Making of the Neoliberal Metropolis. Repeater Books, 2024.
12 Y Rydin: Planning without Growth. Policy Press, Bristol [yet to be published]
13 See written evidence submitted by Richard Brooks (PIZ0016) to the inquiry into the performance of investment zones and freeports in England: https:// committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/126890/pdf/, and the quietly damning report on Teesworks at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ independent-review-report-south-tees-developmentcorporation-and-teesworks-joint-venture/independentreview-report-south-tees-development-corporationand-teesworks-joint-venture-executive-summary-andrecommendations, and articles by Jennifer Williams in the Financial Times dated 8 Jan. 2024, 29 Jan. 2024, 2 Feb. 2024 and 4 Feb. 2024, available with subscription at: https://www.ft.com/jennifer-williams?page=3
14 Performance of investment zones and freeports in England: Fourth Report of Session 2023-24. HC 272. House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, 26 Apr. 2024, p. 28, pars. 66-68. https://committees. parliament.uk/publications/44455/documents/221158/ default/
15 S Benstead: Future freeports. Centre for Local Economic Strategies, 2023. https://cles.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Future-freeports-FINAL.pdf
16 M Cotton, D Tyfield, N Gray, A Yuille: ‘The politics of freeports – a place-based analysis of regional economic regeneration in the United Kingdom’. Local Economy, 2023, Vol. 38(6), 562-581. https://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/10.1177/02690942241239014
17 Michael Gove to Liam Byrne, Chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee, 7 Feb. 2024. https://committees.parliament.uk/ publications/43356/documents/215854/default/
18 Performance of investment zones and freeports in England: Fourth Report of Session 2023-24. HC 272. House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, 26 Apr. 2024, par. 41. https://committees.parliament.uk/ publications/44455/documents/221158/default/
19 National Policy Statement for Ports: Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 5(9) of the Planning Act 2008. Department for Transport, HMSO, Jan. 2012. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/5a78c20ae5274a277e68f3b1/national-policystatement-ports.pdf
policy considerations for site allocations
Robert Hayward examines the suitability of English national planning policy and guidance in assessing Local Plan site allocations
Introduction
It is striking how confusing the 2023 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and its supporting guidance is when you approach it from a site allocation perspective. We know that site allocations are used in Local Plans to identify housing sites for development and form part of the land supply trajectory. But what is there in national policy and guidance to help authorities and practitioners with this process – from identifying sites, assessing sites and selecting sites for allocation?
This article reviews policy and guidance to understand more about the site allocation process, but with a focus upon the assessment of sites. It starts by summarising the considerations in national planning policy and guidance that are relevant for assessing sites, particularly in relation to their suitability. It then reviews the policy and guidance to understand how it forms a framework for assessing sites for allocation, and then provides recommendations on how it could be improved in future policy and guidance.
Background
NPPF provides the context for allocating land in a Local Plan. Paragraph 11 says that plans are required to apply the presumption in favour of sustainable development1 and provide for objectively assessed needs unless NPPF policies as a whole provide strong reason to restrict the scale, type, or distribution of development in the plan area, or any adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits.
In other words, you have to meet needs (e.g. housing needs taken from housing need assessment - standard method) but NPPF policies may provide strong reason to restrict the scale, type and/or distribution of development, or adverse impacts would significantly and demonstrably outweigh benefits. These policies include natural environment constraints (for example, European Sites, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, areas of flood risk), built environment constraints (heritage assets) and policy constraints (for example, Green Belt, Local Green Space). The latter can be changed through the plan-making process, but environmental constraints are also protected through other policy and legislation.
Set out below are the NPPF policy considerations – by chapter – currently designed to help assess and then select potential allocations to meet development needs.
National policy
Housing
Paragraph 69 refers to the preparation of a strategic housing land availability assessment (SHLAA) and the expectation that this assessment (involving availability, suitability and economic viability) should help to identify a sufficient supply and mix of specific, deliverable sites for years one to five from adoption (with a 20% buffer where necessary) and specific, deliverable sites or broad locations for growth for years six to 10 and, where possible, years 11 to 15 from adoption. Paragraph 74 adds that authorities should identify suitable locations for new settlements or significant
extensions where they can meet needs in a sustainable way. These should be of a size and location to support a sustainable community (without expecting an unrealistic level of selfcontainment) or have good access to a larger town where the community and employment are available.
Transport
There are two relevant parts in the transport chapter. The first is paragraph 109 which states:
‘Significant development should be focused on locations which are or can be made sustainable, through limiting the need to travel and offering a genuine choice of transport modes.’
However, there is no definition of ‘significant’. The paragraph goes on to say:
‘Opportunities to maximise sustainable transport solutions will vary between urban and rural areas, and this should be taken into account in both plan-making and decision-making.’
The second part is paragraph 114, which focuses on development proposals and the criteria that should be covered when assessing sites for allocation in plans or applications for development:
• appropriate opportunities to promote sustainable transport modes can be – or have been – taken up, given the type of development and its location;
• safe and suitable access to the site can be achieved for all users;
• the design of streets, parking areas, other transport elements and the content of associated standards reflects current national guidance, including the National Design Guide and the National Model Design Code, and
• any significant impacts from the development on the transport network (in terms of capacity and congestion), or on highway safety, can be cost effectively mitigated to an acceptable degree.
Open Space
Paragraph 103 says that open space should not be developed for housing unless it is surplus to requirements, or it can be replaced elsewhere at a similar standard or better.
Green Belt
There are five purposes of the Green Belt in national policy but there is no policy to direct plan-makers as to how these areas should be considered when identifying and selecting potential sites for allocation:
• to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas;
• to prevent neighbouring towns 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.
Paragraph 147, however, does provide guidance once it has been concluded that exceptional circumstances exist to justify changes to Green Belt boundaries. This calls for authorities to consider the consequences for sustainable development of channelling development towards:
• urban areas inside the Green Belt boundary;
• towns and villages inset within the Green Belt, or
• locations beyond the outer Green Belt boundary.
Paragraph 147 then advises that plans should give first consideration to previously developed land and/ or land that is well-served by public transport.
Flood risk*
NPPF requires a sequential, risk-based approach to locating development, as explained in paragraph 167. A sequential test should be applied first and, if this is passed, an exception test too. Paragraph 168 says that the aim of the sequential test is to steer new development to areas with the lowest risk of flooding from any source and that development should not be allocated or permitted if there are reasonably available sites appropriate for the proposed development in areas with a lower risk of flooding.
Landscape
There is no policy relating specifically to landscape considerations when identifying and selecting site allocations. However, paragraph 135 expects planning policies to ensure that development is:
‘sympathetic to local character and history, including the surrounding built environment and landscape setting, while not preventing or discouraging appropriate innovation or change (such as increased densities).’
How the NPPF strategically sifts proposals
David Lock Associates
Paragraph 180 adds that valued landscapes should be protected and enhanced through planning policies.
Agricultural land
There is no NPPF section relating to agricultural land but paragraph 181 states that plans should ‘allocate land with the least environmental or amenity value, where consistent with other policies in this Framework’. This is backed with a footnote, which adds:
‘Where significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, areas of poorer quality land should be preferred to those of a higher quality… The availability of agricultural land used for food production should be considered… when deciding what sites are most appropriate for development.’
The glossary states that the ‘Best and most versatile agricultural land’ is that falling within Grades 1, 2 and 3a of the Agricultural Land Classification.2
Ecology
Paragraph 185 requires plans to safeguard components of local wildlife-rich habitats and wider ecological networks, including the hierarchy of international, national and locally designated sites of importance for biodiversity; wildlife corridors and stepping stones that connect them; and areas identified by national and local partnerships for habitat management, enhancement, restoration or creation. Paragraph 181, referred to above, also applies here as it says that plans should allocate land with the least environmental value. There has been no revision of NPPF since biodiversity gain requirements came into force but criterion d) of paragraph 180 requires policies and decisions to minimise impacts upon and provide net gains for biodiversity.
Environmental health
For air/noise pollution and ground conditions, paragraph 191 states that policies and decisions should:
‘ensure that new development is appropriate for its location taking into account the likely effects (including cumulative effects) of pollution on health, living conditions and the natural environment, as well as the potential sensitivity of the site or the wider area to impacts that could arise from the development.’
Heritage
Heritage guidance for dealing with planning applications but not site allocations is detailed in NPPF chapter 16.
National guidance
There is no bespoke guidance relating to assessing sites for allocation in the planning practice guidance (PPG) although there is guidance on housing and economic land availability assessment (HELAA),3 which has some similarities. The purpose of the SHLAA and HELAA is to help identify a future supply of land that is suitable, available and achievable for housing over the plan period. They list factors that should be considered when assessing the suitability of sites:
• national policy;
• appropriateness and likely market attractiveness for the type of development proposed;
• contribution to regeneration priority areas, and
• potential impacts including the effect upon landscapes, landscape features, nature and heritage conservation.
PPG Reference ID: 3-001-20190722 advises that: ‘the assessment does not in itself determine whether a site should be allocated for development… it is for the development plan itself to determine which of those sites are the most suitable for allocation.’
The flood risk and coastal change planning practice guidance4 elaborates on national policy. In considering matters under all the chapters set out above, this is the only guidance that applies to the process of site allocation. In summary, it includes a diagram to illustrate how to apply the sequential test in the preparation of strategic policies. It defines what a ‘reasonably available site’ is, and it explains what the exception test is and how it should be applied in preparing plan policies.
Analysis
When considering the suitability factors together there are two broad categories: ‘location’ and ‘development’. The location criteria are those that are applicable on an authority-wide area with a sequential focus (such as flood risk and the aim to allocate sites with least flood risk first). The development criteria focus upon site specific development issues, such as addressing heritage or environmental health impacts, or achieving vehicular access to a site.
Development factors can sometimes be locational, too, although this is not explicit when reading some of the policy. For example, there may be noise issues that affect several roads across a plan area that would be a constraint on the location of new development. But there is no sequential point made in the policy, therefore they are considered as a site-specific issue.
Ultimately, there are several aspects of national planning policy covering a range of disciplines, and in terms of the site allocation process they all
compete with each other, with no clear policy steer at the national level as to which ones deserve priority or whether they should all be attributed equal weight.
Starting with transport (such as site access and street design), NPPF paragraph 114 is the most useful because it includes criteria that should be considered for assessing sites for allocation and planning applications. However, these are more relevant to the detailed stage of the site allocation process such as when site access and street design are considered. NPPF paragraph 109 is more useful on an authority-wide basis because it directs significant development to locations that are or can be made sustainable. However, the word ‘significant’ does not have a definition. That said, the ‘are or can be’ point is useful because it gives direction to assessing the existing status of a site and how development can include improvements to aid sustainability, such as new transport links or facilities that help to reduce road usage.
Policy for allocations in the Green Belt is unclear but is relatively detailed in comparison with other parts of national policy. National policy starts with defining the purposes of including land within a Green Belt, but there is no policy to say that those areas that do not meet these purposes should be preferred first or released in a sequential way in the same way as land at risk of flooding. Instead, at paragraph 147 the focus is upon promoting sustainable patterns of development when revising Green Belt boundaries, and once it has been concluded that it is necessary to release Green Belt then plans should give first consideration to previously developed land (PDL) and/or land that is well-served by public transport. So, you have a choice: you could ignore land that is well-served by public transport and focus on PDL, and vice versa,
or do both. There are practical problems with this approach in that PDL sites are not always in sustainable locations and land well served by public transport may not necessarily be well connected to facilities.
In comparison with Green Belt and transport, the sequential test for flood risk makes sense and has a clear logic to it. It is also backed up by supporting practice guidance.
Agricultural land has a similar sequential focus with the aim of allocating land with the least environmental or amenity value at paragraph 181 and backed up by a footnote. Despite its sub-status, the footnote does give a sequential steer about how to allocate but it is framed only for ‘significant development’, which again appears without a definition as it does in the transport chapter. It also says that poorer quality land should be preferred over higher quality land. Grades of agricultural land are specified but they are not referred to as ‘poorer’ and ‘higher quality’, so there is a disconnect here.
Landscape has no policy direction in relation to allocating land – only the generic policy referring to planning policies. Paragraph 180 however does add that valued landscapes should be protected. In the absence of neither the NPPF nor planning guidance defining ‘valued landscape’, the Landscape Institute has stepped in to answer this.5
For environmental health (air/noise pollution and ground conditions), there is no reference relating to allocating sites, but it does say that new development should be appropriate for its location whilst considering the likely effects upon health, living conditions and the natural environment.
And for heritage, although paragraph 200 provides guidance for assessing planning applications there is no specific policy relating to heritage for allocations, albeit paragraph 201 requires authorities to assess
NPPF locational constraints and detailed site considerations
David Lock Associates
significance of heritage assets, which could be applied to site assessment.
Finally, there is the HELAA guidance which is useful to help assess sites for their suitability, availability, and achievability, but not in the sense of assessing sites for allocation. For example, it includes a generic list of criteria for assessing site suitability but goes no further than this. The guidance also acknowledges that the development plan is the place to determine those sites that are most suitable for allocation rather than the HELAA.
Conclusions
Allocating sites is a complex process involving the consideration of a number of different and competing elements governed by a wide variety of disciplines. The lack of guidance has led to statutory bodies and institutes stepping in and filling the gaps but should be brought together by government through the NPPF. This review of the current national policy position highlights the importance of having a national policy framework which provides clear direction to aid the site allocation process so that the Local Plan can allocate development in the right places.
So, what should Labour’s review of the NPPF deliver? The first aim should be to achieve a consistent national policy. As shown above, the policy is useful in some places but not in others. Some include phrases like ‘allocating sites’ so there is direction, but some do not and are more generic and use phrases like ‘plans and programmes should consider’. If one topic has a line about what to do with allocating sites (see transport) then all disciplines that have a role in development should do so too.
Some of the NPPF chapters, such as Green Belt, need restructuring and the site allocation process needs to be kept in mind when doing so. This could partly reflect the transition from planning policy statements to the NPPF and updates to the NPPF since its introduction in 2012.
Lastly, there is an absence of policy direction for the allocation of residential sites close to employment land allocations, as well as climate change considerations.
In respect of PPG, the first aim should be to provide consistent advice geared towards the assessment part of the site allocation process. If there is a national policy that provides direction, then it will likely need guidance to aid its implementation. There is some guidance that helps with housing and employment availability, and flood risk, but it is not focused on the process of identifying, assessing and allocating sites. Supporting guidance for all topics should provide an equivalent level of guidance on:
• The process of applying national policy to site assessment, such as locational and development factors, and the relevance of these at different
stages of the site allocation process.
• The amount of detail and information needed as you go from the high-level to the site-specific detail usually associated with the planning application stage.
• the difference in application of assessment when considering site size (small, medium, large scale), groups of sites, typologies of development (new settlement, urban extension), broad locations, as well as at the local authority and sub-regional/ regional scales.
More fundamentally, as currently written, the NPPF merely refers to policies as a whole that may constitute a ‘strong reason’ to restrict the scale, type and/or distribution of development, or where adverse impacts would significantly and demonstrably outweigh benefits. Somewhere in the NPPF and its guidance, advice about the relative weight to be applied to each criterion for site assessment purposes should be provided – should flood risk outweigh transport considerations? Does agricultural land quality outweigh landscape value? And further, whether this should be determined at a national or local level?
It would be heartening to see more clarity and consistency in relation to the site assessment process, given that it is such a fundamental element of the plan-making process. This is something that hopefully will be addressed through the incoming Labour government’s current review of the NPPF.6
• Robert Hayward is Senior Associate at David Lock Associates. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 National Planning Policy Framework. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 19 Dec. 2023. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-planning-policyframework
2 See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ agricultural-land-assess-proposals-for-development/ guide-to-assessing-development-proposals-onagricultural-land#about-alc-grades and https:// publications.naturalengland.org.uk/ category/5954148537204736
6 The government’s NPPF consultation closes at 23:45 on 24 September 2024. See: https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/media/66acffddce1fd0da7b593274/ NPPF_with_footnotes.pdf
Editor’s Note
* The TCPA offers free online courses on planning for flood risk. For more details, visit https://learning.tcpa. org.uk/
tackling the housing crisis in england: housing manifesto 2024
A solution to England’s housing supply deficit has eluded Westminster’s political leaders for decades. The panacea advocated for here by Ian Campbell needs time, cross-party alignment and local leaders to take back spatial control
Launch
A general election took place in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2024, resulting in a landslide victory for the Labour Party. Despite several decades of housing policy failure in England the outlook for providing lots of desperately needed new homes remains grim. To be blunt, housing policy has inflicted defeat on our political elite. On its own, the government cannot deliver. Frustration with decades of broken promises abounds. But evidence of politicians coming together as a team, with a credible, deliverable solution – the allimportant first step – is vanishingly scarce. There is a way forward. It requires two radical changes. With good faith, both changes are achievable. Firstly, forging a political cross-party generational based alignment in Westminster and seeding this shift into thinking locally. Secondly, directing local councils to begin building (at little or no cost over a one- or two-decade cycle). This step cannot be avoided. Councils must recover functional control of land uses at local level. Spanning a generation, they are the culprits of calamitous land use policy errors. Past planning performance is feeble.
Time for change
It is time for local authorities to step up and take
the leadership role they claim in their areas. It must be a proactive responsibility. Reactionary spatial policy has failed. A council’s long-term social, spatial and economic agenda must replace the opportunistic, commercially based spatial agenda of landowners and builders. The steps needed to create a ‘civic team’ approach are explained below. Firstly, the components on which the policy steps will rely are explained.
Conflict
Local opposition to spatial change is widespread. There is a deep rooted fracture in our planning system. Whose authority is paramount? Central government, whose legitimacy is that they act in the national interest? Or local councillors who believe they retain the final say about what happens in their areas? They say local sovereignty is the essence of devolution. After all, they represent the wishes of local residents, who live with the outcomes. And none of the Westminster parties disagree. All the same, there is a basic problem. How does a government win local support for new homes, new jobs and new infrastructure if local residents do not want these changes?
If we want once again to make new homes affordable, then new towns or urban extensions are
essential. But who wants their town to be forced to become a host location for another council’s overspill housing needs? Chaos will break out when the local media publishes the maps. But local opponents will be wrong. There are good reasons to become host locations. And new private sector investment can be turned into a wonderful opportunity which adds value to local residents and their community. Sadly, no-one explains these upsides to local residents.
Experience
With a 60+ year career, most of it as a chartered surveyor in estate management; commercial and residential property investment policies, and professional market analysis I put forward this housing supply manifesto to overcome housing policy conflict in England.
Housing Manifesto 2024 (HM24)
HM24 sets out the five steps (S1 to S5) needed for the incoming government to mend the broken planning system and invigorate market-led economic growth throughout England by funding necessary infrastructure with land value capture. HM24 also demonstrates how to deliver these changes with local support. Five steps are needed to address these fundamental weaknesses within our existing system:
• fairness: young families shamefully denied an affordable and secure home;
• lack of long-term national, regional and local spatial plans for England;
• inability of local councils to control land for both planning and delivery;
• short term economic and political cycles do not encourage long-term investment;
• failure to pursue proven models of public stewardship that worked in the past;
• civic pride must replace ideological divides, and
• no political consensus nationally.
‘It is time for local authorities to step up and take the leadership role they claim in their areas’
Five Steps To Delivery (S1 To S5)
Way ahead
Achieving a mind-set change at local level is the objective. But a local and enduring consensus in support of an area becoming a significant host location for new housebuilding will not be created unless there is first a political consensus in place in Westminster. How can this first, but fundamentally
necessary enabling mind-set switch in Westminster to achieve cross-party policy realignment be created? There are five steps.
‘To be blunt, housing policy has inflicted defeat on our political elite’
Step 1
A manifesto statement, announcing that central government must initially step back. Time to think radical thoughts is needed. To build a lot of new homes in the places needed and to eventually make house prices and rents affordable with local support requires inter-generational spatial policy decisions. Briefly, where will the new homes go and where must they not go? So, S1 requires a commitment to a new, politically aligned approach. It means the creation and adoption by government, supported by opposition parties, of a national spatial plan. To hold water in the eyes of investors, the national plan must eventually be accepted as bipartisan. Creating a national spatial plan is a desktop initiative. New information is not required. It proposes import (host) and export (and payment) locations. Yes, these steps will be contentious. They are the means of breaking decades of policy failure. Now is the time. Frustration with housing policy failure and weak growth is widespread. For inspiration, look at West Germany between the 1950s and 1970s and what it achieved after the Second World War.1
S1 Create a national spatial plan with crossparty support. It becomes the catalyst for local spatial debate. It will be radical. It will be contentious. But it will work.
Commentary
on S1
Is this possible? We know where not to build. This is easy. Areas with statutory protection and other special areas of value locally must be preserved. It follows that all locations without statutory protection will be possible building locations in the future. Foundations for the new national spatial plan must be built upon shared party policy aims and the aims of regional devolution led by metro mayors and combined authorities. There is some common ground here and that is why it is the starting point. A new national spatial plan will recognise that beside identification of ‘growth’ and ‘no growth’ locations, some other areas will be placed in the ‘possible’ growth category. The ‘possible’ category will be sub-divided later as the future use options of these unprotected areas are debated and decided
locally. Government and opposition policy focus within Whitehall must be at national level. Westminster will identify the major growth regions far ahead. To promote and enable growth built on realistic delivery foundations, the national focus will be on the needs of the next generation of employers. Where will they want to go? Meeting their priorities is fundamental for long term national prosperity. Step 1 is therefore creating a long term national spatial plan with cross-party support in Westminster.
‘Aligning local visions for the long term with national growth objectives must be translated into long term spatial decisions for the selected growth locations’
Step 2
The second step is equally crucial - obtaining local support. Unlike Westminster based MPs, local residents live with the results of local change, both good and bad. Local support from councils across England for a national spatial plan is therefore pivotal. Without it, local change on the scale needed will not happen regardless of governments claims. Step 2 is therefore creating regional spatial plans to
identify change locations necessary to support the new national plan with cross-party long term support in Westminster and locally as well.
S2 Local support for a regional or local spatial plan built on the spatial outcomes of the national spatial plan.
Commentary on S2
Aligning local visions for the long term with national growth objectives must be translated into long term spatial decisions for the selected growth locations. The precise locations will be chosen in two ways. Identifying future long term employment trends in all urban areas is the start point. Firstly, spatial boundaries will be defined by travel to work catchment zones. Secondly, by engaging local property experts on the ground who know precisely where employers will want to go. Examining and predicting demand for commercial space one or two generations ahead within an unregulated market is their expertise. Experienced commercial letting agents understand and can foresee future employment markets in their areas. This helpful, market power driven, but spatially constrained expertise is often overlooked. For these practitioners it is not difficult. The names of those who know the employment answers in their areas will already be linked with the leading speculative employment projects locally. This is the way to
identify, measure and predict with confidence tomorrow’s economic growth locations. It follows that they will also become tomorrow’s housing demand locations.
Major infrastructure suppliers will also need to design the future supply service networks required in the growth locations, whether transport, power, water or communications. These infrastructure elements and their visible outcomes - pylons for example - will be agreed with local support (and perhaps micro-incentives) within a statutory timetable.
Step 3
Because the current planning system does not work, it is not trusted. Housing policy failure over several decades is proof that change is necessary. The failure is that local residents do not like the planning outcomes they see. Houses in the wrong places, deemed to be ugly; congested roads; overcrowded local services: in short local change without local benefit is often the local perception. Planning regulation, however many layers are added, does not win local pride. Leaving spatial choices to local landowners and their building partners has failed. Step 3 means that these spatial and timing powers must be transferred to local councils with their much wider, community-based agenda looking generations ahead. Local plans will be replaced by long term regional plans. Local plans will then follow. Local councils will become owners and sellers of future building land. The ‘call for sites’ system will then end.
S3 Current local plans are not replaced. Local councils become owners of the next generation of housebuilding land. They take back spatial responsibility for their area’s future when current local plans end. In the meantime, they become owners of building land for the next generations.
‘The failure is that local residents do not like the planning outcomes they see’
Commentary on S3
A crucial change in the responsibility for the assembly of building land will be introduced. It cannot happen overnight. Local councils or their development corporation partners will, at a fixed date in the future (10 or 20 years ahead, perhaps sooner), become the sellers of all large scale building plots. Private landowners will sell to
councils all at scale building land identified by councils at the open market current use value, including hope value if any exists, using their compulsory acquisition (CPO) powers to assemble and deliver their local spatial plan. The sooner local councils start to take control of all their potential future building land the better, long before it is needed to capture all of the uplift in value which their own planning policies will create. Doing so overcomes accusations of land requisition.
‘Local councils will become the sole source of large scale building plots for sale in their areas ’
Before the intermediate and long term periods arrive (20 to 60 years ahead) local plans must therefore be replaced with regional spatial plans. The new regional plans will enable councils, or their development corporation partners, to control the release of building land in terms of timing, location and price because they will be the building land owners. Spatial control through land ownership will ensure that the expectations of local communities are delivered. Development control powers and short lived local plans (looking up to 15 years ahead) are insufficient to identify and deliver local community wish lists. Following this new timetable, the new plans will also be the means of capturing 100% of land value and transferring it to the local community in a fair and equitable timescale according to open market custom and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Red Book guidelines.
In the short term, (i.e. until the end of the current local plan cycle, or the 10 to 20 year timeframe ahead) the existing system of private sector spatial control will remain in force. Step 3 is therefore the mechanism and timetable for replacing the existing local plan with the new regional spatial plan and guidelines for local councils to become building land owners or controllers with options and conditional contracts. The date change will be decided locally to reflect the local plan expiry date.
Step 4
After the fixed local change over date, local councils will become the sole source of at scale building land for sale in their areas (defining ‘at scale’ will be a local council decision). How is this transformation to happen? Local councils and where available their development corporation partners will decide their own land acquisition spatial policy and associated timetable. They will also decide the funding sources. As councils will be buying the land or acquiring options (using CPO
powers where appropriate) 10 to 20 years ahead of need, they will have spatial and time leverage control of prices. This is necessary because the future use and timing of change would be uncertain. If timing is canny at the moment of purchase, then hope value will be negligible because hope value is extinguished by uncertainty. These powers should be used because owners will receive open market value including hope value, if it exists. This matters because landowners must be given a fair financial settlement and treated with generosity. By becoming the building land owners and remaining the body with development control powers, councils or their development partners will be in a unique position to manage their buying policy for the benefit of their communities. Their decisions will create or extinguish hope value. Each council will therefore face decisions based upon how they want their local areas to change in decades ahead. Shrewd, far-sighted and enterprising councils will do better than councils who continue with the myopic, growth resistant policies of the past decades. Step 4 will therefore require all local councils to decide their building land control policy and the timetable far in advance. Their local plan expiry date will be the start date of the new regional spatial plan.
S4 New regional spatial plans will eventually replace local plans. Dialogue on timing and spatial distribution of the changeover between the Westminster led national spatial plan and a local council’s regional spatial plan takes place and will build on the foundations of the national spatial plan and the local plan expiry date.
Step 5
These policy changes are radical. Mindsets amongst local councillors and their officials will have to change as councils themselves take full responsibility for deciding long term spatial policies in their area. This may sound unrealistic after decades of spatial leadership initiated by private landowners. It may even sound daunting. The spatial expertise exists within the landed estates, in the property industry and once existed in the now defunct Commission for New Towns. Such expertise is substantial and needs to be utilised. The incentive for local councils to become spatial leaders will grow as their residents appreciate the menu of advantages the new roles will offer their areas. Established combined authorities and mayors will start with advantages. Other areas lacking a regional or cross border tradition of co-operation will see that if they do not quickly acquire spatial leadership skills, their residents will replace them with other political leaders who see and understand
the community opportunities that their new spatial and timing powers offer. Step 5 therefore encapsulates the governance, funding and resourcing initiatives that local councils must adopt in order to introduce the new long term regional or local spatial ‘at scale’ plan needed to deliver their part of the new national spatial plan.
S5 According to an agreed fixed date programme, local councils publish their local or regional spatial plan, and programme for adoption of their long term land control programme guidelines.
Summary
HM24 recognises that the existing planning system is broken; is not trusted and is holding back economic growth; new homes supply, and long term prosperity. To guarantee housing delivery, HM24 also recognises that a replacement system must have lasting cross-party support in Westminster and must also have enduring local support. To achieve the changes needed it proposes a national spatial plan for two generations; regional spatial plans below this tier and local allocation and delivery plans at council level. It also proposes that local authorities, after a transition period of 10 to 20 years will become the sole suppliers of ‘at scale’ building land, with the funding coming through up to 100% community land value capture. HM24 says delivery of these far-reaching changes, once they are understood, is possible as their benefits will gain local support. Adoption of these new policies will eventually deliver affordable homes, with local support and enable the foundations for employer driven growth to happen.
• Ian Campbell was formerly senior partner at chartered surveyors Campbell Gordon, Reading. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 F Trentmann: Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022. Allen Lane, 2023, p. 169
Editor’s Note
Space constraints prevent Town & Country Planning from publishing the complete version of this manifesto, which can be accessed here: https://makehousesaffordablein2084.com/ housing-manifesto-2024/
snakes & ladders
Sue Brownill warns that the new government’s rush for planning reform must not sideline public participation
participation in planning is an essential part of the solution
In outlining the TCPA manifesto for planning earlier this year, Fiona Howie rightly argued that planning is part of the solution to the problems any new government is trying to solve.1 That manifesto also included many positive ideas for increasing participation in planning. In this column, now that the election has been decided, I want to take this as a starting point to reflect upon what a Labour government in particular and the election in general might mean for the public’s role in planning. At the time of writing, we are only a few days after the election and there is a distinct possibility that these reflections will have been overtaken by events. Nevertheless, there is nothing to suggest from initial statements that Labour’s outline planning agenda will change substantially. This is worrying because, whilst no one can deny that change was needed, my concern is that participation and community planning initiatives could be marginalised in this agenda and turned into part of the ‘problem’ rather than being seen as part of the solution.
In developing this argument and in showing how participation can be seen as part of the solution, it is not just Labour policies that are interesting to explore. If the election result itself was unsurprising, then some of the underlying trends and issues certainly were. The increase in seats won by the Liberal Democrats; the geographical spread of Labour seats; the rise in support for the Greens and Reform UK, and the changing nature of politics in the devolved nations all hold implications for planning and communities. I don’t know if the editor of this journal put a bet on it* (I hope not), but
some months back columnists were asked to write in anticipation of an autumn election. My halfwritten piece had begun to look at the different party manifestos, to get a sense of what they were or were not saying about participation in planning and community-led development. Luckily this was not wasted effort because, firstly, in the lead up to the election housing and planning were higher up the agenda than in most previous elections that I can remember; which is definitely a good thing. Secondly it is likely that, given the underlying shifts outlined above and the contradictions and potential pitfalls in its agenda (some of which I outline below), Labour is going to be held to account over housing and planning to a high degree. The ideas and demands that underlie the different manifestos will continue to be heard and presumably developed as part of this public critique and in anticipation of the next election. Many of them suggest ways in which participation can be part of the solution and Labour would do well to respond to some of these. So, in what follows, I will look at the debates and suggested policies, explore some of the implications of the election and conclude with some additional recommendations for Labour’s first 100 days.
Turning firstly to the Labour Party. Last October, at the Labour Conference in Liverpool, Sir Keir Starmer (leader of the Labour Party and now prime minister) famously referred to ‘a future hidden by our restricted planning system, and we must bulldoze through it’.2 While the language was toned down in the manifesto, arguably the sentiment has not.3 Two things from the manifesto proposals are key for participation. Firstly, the wrapping up of planning into the growth agenda. It appears in the section entitled ‘kickstart economic growth’ and HM Treasury looks set to continue to dominate planning policy, despite Angela Rayner’s appointment as Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Linked to this is the pledge to
reform planning to build 1.5 million homes in the current parliament (i.e. 300,000 per year – pretty well double last year’s numbers). The implications of this are that the purposes of planning remain primarily to support economic growth, continuing Conservative trends, rather than grasping the opportunity to reset planning to deliver outcomes and demands that many are calling for in terms of fairer, healthier, greener and more caring places. I shall return to this later because it is the implications for participation and the role of the public in planning that I want to focus upon.
The key danger is that, with such ambitious targets, speed becomes of the essence and participation is seen as slowing down or even stopping development and therefore something to be marginalised. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, is already reportedly repeating pre-election pledges to ‘rip up the planning system’.4 The re-introduction of strategic planning through combined authorities and the strengthening of local authority powers over compulsory purchase orders and planning obligations are key delivery mechanisms in this revised planning system, according to the manifesto. Whilst these are to be welcomed, there is no mention of the public having a voice in the new arrangements. Devolution of power appears to stop at the regional or local
authority level – an omission interestingly repeated in the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) ‘Planifesto’, which talks only of empowering the local planning authority (LPA).
By way of contrast, in its manifesto, the TCPA called for a ‘ministerial statement that draws on the Scottish Government’s policy statement on public participation to signal of new approach to building genuine public trust’.5 This in turn endorses an Open Government commitment, which states: ‘We value public participation of all people, equally and without discrimination, in decision making and policy formulation’.6
The Liberal Democrat manifesto in contrast pledges to: ‘build the homes people desperately need, with meaningful community engagement’ and also proposes to extend neighbourhood planning in England.7 In Northern Ireland, the Alliance Party in its manifesto for the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly elections went even further, committing to ‘a qualified third-party right of appeal in planning decisions, so that local communities will have a right to object to planning decisions’.8 Only Reform UK seems to fully echo Labour’s calls for ‘fast-track’ and ‘loose-fit’ planning.
But while most of the parties call for more resources to planning departments, none of them, including those supporting extended involvement in
Should delivering growth be the sole purpose of planning?
Freepik
planning, set out proposals to properly fund participation and help build back the network of technical and planning support for involvement that has been eroded over the past decades.
In addressing the participation deficit in its policies, Labour in 2024 would do well to draw upon New Labour’s 2004 planning reforms and the lessons learnt from them. Prescott’s reforms recognised that ‘planning shapes the places where people live and work. So, it is right that people should be enabled and empowered to take an active part in the process’.9
‘It was easy to paint the regional housing targets and Labour’s planning system as top-down and non-democratic, paving the way for their abolition and the localism agenda’
Recommendations and requirements followed. Amongst other things, these included the ‘frontloading’ of consultation and statements of community involvement. Significantly, Planning Aid also received substantial funding at a regional level to support participation by under-represented groups and places.
But in practice the commitment to participation came up against other priorities, including regional housing targets; speedy delivery, and plan preparation. The lack of a statutory requirement to go beyond a basic minimum led, in the words of one practitioner, to ‘good practice, bad practice and no practice’, depending upon the LPA concerned and often resulted only in tick box exercises.10 The outcome was that it was easy to paint the regional housing targets and Labour’s planning system as top-down and non-democratic, paving the way for their abolition and the localism agenda that followed in 2011. This suggests Labour’s current commitment to ‘planning at larger than the local scale’ without including positive proposals for participation could be fraught with danger and potential contradictions. Balancing democracy and delivery, therefore, is one of the key challenges of the planning system and, from what we have seen, Labour is currently running the risk of favouring the latter over the former. Unlike Blair, with his ideological commitment to communitarianism and the Third Way, Starmer is focused primarily upon delivery, in this case delivering housing numbers. As a result, it is easier
for the new government to see participation as an obstacle rather than being important in its own right. The danger is that they could throw out the key role that participation plays in creating better places with the ‘localism’ bathwater.
The fate of the neighbourhood development plan (NDP) will be interesting here. There are suggestions that they will be replaced by the scaled-back neighbourhood priority statements (NPS) previously set out as an alternative option to a full NDP by the Conservatives. The limitations of NDPs, particularly in terms of their concentration in largely rural and affluent areas, are well rehearsed. Interestingly, it is only the Liberal Democrats who explicitly supported their extension (although they don’t set out how they would have done that). Nevertheless, it could be unpopular to be seen to be removing community rights, further fuelling accusations of being top-down. A cynic would say: ‘why not follow the Conservative line of gradually curtailing the scope and powers of NDPs, rather than risking a community back-lash through abolishing them’. More worryingly, creating a vacuum at the community level could also open up new forms of ‘populist localism’. For example, Reform UK is calling for social housing to be allocated only to local people. And, as we have seen with the conflict over the idea of the 15-minute city, it is easy for planning to be drawn into culture wars and to be seen as part of a narrative of conspiracy and control.
‘Labour may well need to be more imaginative in resolving the contradictions between the local and the strategic in planning’
One person who has some experience of trying to resolve the democracy/delivery dilemma is Nick Boles, former Conservative planning minister and, if the intriguing speculation is to be believed, soon to be a Labour planning tsar. Boles, if you remember, was Conservative planning minister from 2012-14 and Minister for Decentralisation from 2014-16, during which time he championed localism, including neighbourhood planning. However, he also introduced the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ and was a founder of Policy Exchange, the think tank that has been persistently arguing for deregulation of the planning system. Having left the Conservative Party in 2019, he
began advising the Labour Party from 2022 onwards. The suggestion is that he will now be charged with a major review of planning, which could include resurrecting the proposals for zoning dropped by Secretary of State, Michael Gove, in response to Conservative backbench pressure. But with many Labour MPs now in those same seats and others in areas with NDPs, Labour may well need to be more imaginative in resolving the contradictions between the local and the strategic in planning. As we saw only three days after the election, the right wing press was already setting out alarmist headlines about building on the green belt. In addition, given the rise of other parties who support greater participation and who could potentially threaten Labour seats, for example the Green Party in some urban areas, Labour may need to be pragmatic. Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, has already said he doesn’t mind if the new government steals some of their ideas.11 Maybe Labour will have to take him and the other parties up on this offer.
They may, for example, want to look at Plaid Cymru’s manifesto. Whilst it appears as if Labour
has implicitly accepted the argument that participation and, by default, ‘the public’ equals a barrier to growth, in contrast Plaid Cymru gives a different perspective on community responses to development and a different route to reform:
‘The planning system is out-dated and needs an overhaul. Far too often communities are at the mercy of large developers who build executive homes for profit rather than build the required homes to answer the need. We know that there is huge demand for one and two bed properties in Wales, as well as bungalows for an ageing population, yet developers fail to build houses that answer community needs. We will reform the planning system so that it is consistent with local needs and aspirations, rather than reflecting the interests of developers.’12
Rather than painting communities as NIMBYs (‘not in my back yard’), this suggests that the issue is the type of development being put forward and the extent to which community demands are listened to and enacted. This returns us to the arguments made earlier about the purposes of
planning, suggesting that there are alternative outcomes to a blanket commitment to growth defined by numbers alone. There is a danger that the boost to housebuilder shares which happened immediately post-election will be translated into the types of imposed development referred to by Plaid Cymru. Yes, Labour is talking about New Towns, ensuring affordable homes and delivering the necessary social, economic and green infrastructure in developments. But without adequate checks, balances and mechanisms in the planning system this may not happen.
‘As many types and sources of delivery will need to be supported if Labour is to have a chance of meeting its targets’
It is important for Labour to take a more nuanced approach to the ‘growth’ it wants to deliver, and other planning purposes need to be given equal weight. The Green Party commits itself to ‘push[ing] for local decisions about planning to be informed by a land use planning policy framework that seeks to balance various needs’13 and for a fairer planning system which delivers the right homes in the right place at the right time. There are also alternative ideas for growth around community wealth building that are already being implemented by Labour authorities. The Preston model of anchor institutions and ensuring wealth is retained in communities is one example and Greater London Council’s commitment to ‘good’, inclusive growth, as enshrined in the London Plan, is another. Such ideas should be central to the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), rather than being left to the ‘discretion’ of individual local authorities to champion. With the crisis in health and social care, the role of planning in supporting healthy places and the potential in the late Professor Patsy Healey’s ideas on how planning should be about ‘caring for place’ demand greater priority, or they risk being sidelined, as we saw in 2004.
With its large majority Labour could be bold on the mechanisms to deliver this. Both the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats put forward many positive ideas, including buying land at use, not hope, value and trialling initiatives such as community land auctions. There is ample scope in Boles’ review for more effective land value capture mechanisms to be seriously considered and for legislative backing to be given to the aspirations of local authorities to acquire
the land that will be so crucial to delivery. Labour could well find itself a hostage to fortune if it focuses only on making planning about delivering housing numbers. Not only could it fail to meet its own targets, but it could also risk alienating communities in the process and failing to create the places that people want. Recognition of these wider purposes of planning is therefore vital.
Finally, there is the issue of support for community-led initiatives and planning. Just focusing on the pragmatic issue of delivery, it is clear that as many types and sources of delivery will need to be supported if Labour is to have a chance of meeting its targets. In a previous column, I showed how community land trusts can unlock sites and access different forms of funding. But they merit no mention in the list of potential deliverers of social and affordable housing set out in the Labour manifesto.
The RTPI Planifesto sets out the case for encouraging consent for community-owned infrastructure development rather than short-term financial rewards. Both the Liberal Democrats and Greens call for support for community ownership of assets and enhanced powers for local authorities to protect existing community assets. Political parties should allow councils to take into account the governance structure of infrastructure providers in planning decisions, in order to incentivise long-term community ownership and stewardship over shorter term financial rewards or bill discount schemes.14
So, from what we know so far about the implications of Labour’s ideas for planning, there is an obvious need to ensure that participation is not marginalised or subsumed within the growth agenda. Here are some ideas that Labour could implement within the first 100 days to ensure that this does not happen:
• Issue a ministerial statement on a commitment to participation policy, as called for by TCPA.
• Make sure this policy is included within the NPPF and require LPAs to enable participation.
• Consider introducing a third party right of appeal.
• Rebalance the purposes of planning in the NPPF to include more than growth by numbers.
• Redistribute the financial support currently going only to NDP groups (over £50 million since 2018 alone) to enable participation in underrepresented areas, and to rebuild a network of community planning support and advice.
• Retain NDPs and NPSs in England as options for communities (but see above re: support).
• Retain and strengthen the commitment to community-led development and community housing in the NPPF.
• Ensure community-led development is eligible to apply for funding for infrastructure, new communities and housing (for example, underoccupied homes).
• Look at more effective measures for land value capture.
• Reform legislation to enable charities and public authorities to release land to community groups at use value.
A week is, famously, a long time in politics and no doubt more will be known about the new planning agenda by the time you read this. You never know, some of these demands may even have been met! But it is likely that we will need to keep making the case and lobbying for participation to be seen as an essential part of the solution and that planning outcomes are there not just to promote some vague notion of ‘growth’ but to deliver change that genuinely benefits local communities.
• Professor Sue Brownill is at Oxford Brookes University.
Notes
1 F Howie: ‘Planning – An Essential Part of the Solution’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93(2), Mar.-Apr., 76-77
2 T Lowe: ‘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-andbulldoze-path-through-planning-system/5125692.article
3 ‘Change. Labour Party Manifesto 2024’. Webpage. Labour, 2024. https://labour.org.uk/change/
4 J Groves: ‘Rachel Reeves: ‘I’ll rip up rules on planning within days’ – Labour’s new Chancellor announces ‘growth mission’ which could see thousands of homes built on Green Belt land’. Daily Mail, 7 Jul. 2024. https:// www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13609801/RachelReeves-Labours-new-Chancellor-announces-growthmission-thousands-homes-Green-Belt-land.html
5 Participation Handbook. The Scottish Government, Mar. 2024. https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/ documents/govscot/publications/advice-andguidance/2024/03/participation-handbook/documents/ participation-handbook/participation-handbook/ govscot%3Adocument/participation-handbook.pdf
6 ‘Open Government Declaration’. Webpage. Open Government Partnership, 2024. https://www. opengovpartnership.org/process/joining-ogp/opengovernment-declaration/#:~:text=We%20value%20 public%20participation%20of%20all%20people%2C%20 equally,people%E2%80%99s%20knowledge%2C%20 ideas%20and%20ability%20to%20provide%20 oversight.
7 ‘For a Fair Deal: Manifesto 2024’. Webpage. Liberal Democrats, 2024. https://www.libdems.org.uk/ manifesto
8 Together We Can: Alliance Party Assembly Manifesto 2022. The Alliance Party, Sharon Lowry, 2022. https://assets.nationbuilder.com/allianceparty/ pages/8261/attachments/original/1650982037/ AllianceManifestoAE22.pdf?1650982037
9 Community involvement in planning: the Government’s objectives. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, HMSO, London, 2004.
10 J Carpenter, S Brownill: ‘Approaches to Democratic Involvement; Widening Community Engagement in the English Planning System’. Planning Theory and Practice, 2008, Vol. 9(2), 227-248. https://www. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649350802041589
11 C Geiger: ‘Steal our ideas, Lib Dem leader urges government’. Webpage. BBC, 7 Jul. 2024. https://www. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gr8ql7rxlo
12 For Fairness, for Ambition, for Wales: Plaid Cymru Manifesto for the Westminster General Election 2024. Plaid Cymru, 2024, p. 33. https://assets.nationbuilder. com/plaid2016/pages/10962/attachments/ original/1718214059/Plaid_Cymru_Maniffesto_2024_ ENGLISH.pdf?1718214059
13 Real Hope. Real Change: Manifesto for a Fairer, Greener Country. Green Party, Chris Williams, 2024, p. 9. https://greenparty.org.uk/about/our-manifesto/2024manifesto-downloads/
14 ‘RTPI Planifesto 2024’. Webpage. Royal Town Planning Institute, 2024. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/new/ourcampaigns/rtpi-planifesto-2024/
Editor’s Note
* He did not.
off the rails
Robin Hickman examines transport planning in Portland, Oregon – including the historic routing of the I-5 highway through Albina and its proposed expansion
when you come to a fork in the road, take it?
I like amusing metaphors, and this one is attributed to Yogi Berra, the well-known baseball player and coach from the United States of America (USA). When faced with a decision or choice between pathways in sport, or perhaps life, he suggests it doesn’t really matter which direction you choose. The important thing is to make an authoritative decision and confidently move forward – most pathways are fine, and all is likely to end well. Unfortunately, transport planning is not always so simple: it is usually very important to take a particular trajectory in planning new transport systems, including the investment given to some modes relative to others.
Portland, Oregon, USA is an interesting case study for us to consider, with important lessons for elsewhere. The city has grown in population over decades, to an urban population of 650,000 and wider metropolitan area of 2.5 million in 2020.1
Sometimes described as the ‘poster child’ of urban planning in the USA; urban growth has been managed, with a dense, compact urban centre and application of a growth boundary to restrict urban sprawl. There is a light rail system and relatively good cycle network; traffic is managed and does not overwhelm the city centre, and it is easy and comfortable to walk and cycle around. There are many pleasant neighbourhoods to live in, with easy commutes into the city centre. There is even a tradition of traffic management through freeway removal projects, with the first significant freeway removal project in the USA at Harbor Drive, where the freeway was removed in 1974 and replaced with a riverfront park in 1978, which was extended south towards South Bond Avenue in the early 2000s.
So far, so good – this looks like an example of sustainable city development. Yet, alongside this, there is a fascinating backstory of institutionally racist urban planning and highway development
practices, of the type perhaps most acutely found in the USA. In the 1950s and 1960s, Albina – a neighbourhood to the north of the central railway station – emerged as a low-income housing area, with a predominantly black population. The planning and development practices of the time were to disinvest in the housing stock, refuse access to mortgage lending (through ‘redlining’ of parts of the neighbourhood), and to underprovide schools and community facilities. Low property values followed, alongside continued disinvestment in the housing stock, and, subsequently, neighbourhood decline and social problems.2 Further, the Interstate-5 highway (I-5) was routed through Albina in 1962, leading to the demolition of nearly 300 homes along the highway corridor. This was accentuated by later ‘urban renewal’ projects, such as the Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Moda Center sports arena, which also involved housing demolition and population displacement. The southern neighbourhoods in Albina lost almost two thirds of their population by 1970, with about 8,000 residents being displaced, mostly to East Portland.3, 4
The ‘Portland model’ of urban development has produced a compact urban centre and attractive city on the banks of the Willamette River – with a light rapid transport system and cycle network
Robin Hickman
The I-5 was justified, by the state and city authorities, as facilitating the redevelopment of the so-called ‘blighted’ low-income neighbourhood. The highway also provided a connection into the city centre for the higher-income outer suburbanites, usually of white ethnic origin, who had moved away from the inner urban areas as part of the ‘white flight’ of earlier decades. This was a story replicated in many cities across the USA, with interstate highways and urban renewal justified as important to maintaining the failing tax bases and economies of cities, whilst the social problems of demolition, highway severance and displacement were overlooked.
The current proposals for Albina seem to be taking a further problematic turn. There are plans from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) for increased highway capacity on the I-5, including through Albina.5 The proposals are for at least one extra highway lane in each direction – and there is space for much more. The project is justified in terms of reducing congestion and removing a traffic ‘bottleneck’ yet overlooks the increased traffic volumes that will use the highway, with all the associated adverse environmental and social impacts. Certainly, the project is inconsistent with climate change goals and requirements to reduce transport CO2 emissions – and it is being
challenged on these grounds by local community groups, such as No More Freeways. There is a short section of highway decking proposed through Albina, which offers some development potential over the highway, but appears to be offered only to placate local residents.
ODOT, it seems, is still unduly influenced by an obsolete highway planning agenda, and, presumably, the motor manufacturers and roadbuilding lobby. It is aware that there are climate change goals and social equity goals, yet still puts forward increased highway capacity as being important to Portland and more widely across Oregon. The promise of electric vehicles (EVs) is unlikely to resolve these problems – as the source power will only be partially renewable – and, of course, EVs lead to congestion and social inequity in similar ways to conventionally-fuelled vehicles. Again, we have an example of a fuzzy definition of sustainability and transport, with much postulation about sustainability, yet further highway building is still proposed. Yogi Berra, of course, was not so concerned about the powerful actors influencing one governmental choice over another. But this seems to be happening in many contexts, where the road-building lobby coalesces behind the highway agencies and pushes highway investments forward. The governmental bodies are too weak to
Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Portland, spanned by the I-5
Philip Barton
resist and become captured – defending the highway building plans as part of a self-described ‘sustainable transport’ strategy. Transport planners often fail to adequately problematise the context with which they are faced: in this case, the problematic history of severance and displacement in Albina, and a contemporary requirement to reduce traffic volumes in the Portland Metropolitan Area on environmental and social grounds. Building any large transport project is not sufficient – project prioritisation needs to fund only the projects that address environmental and social goals.
• Professor Robin Hickman is at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. He is Director of the MSc in Transport & City Planning. Thanks to Jennifer Dill, Aaron Golub, Aaron Brown and Chris Smith for discussions on the Portland approach to transport planning. This article draws on material from ‘Discourses on Sustainable Urban Mobility’ (UCL Press, forthcoming, 2025). All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 United States Census Bureau. Webpage. https://data. census.gov/table/DECENNIALDHC2020. P1?q=portland%20oregon
2 KJ Gibson: ‘Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940-2000’. Transforming Anthropology, 2007, Vol. 15(1), 3-25. For full text, see here: https:// pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1289&context=usp_fac
3 J Cortright: ‘How ODOT destroyed Albina: The I-5 Meat Axe’. Webpage. City Commentary, City Observatory, 30 Mar. 2021. https://cityobservatory.org/how_odot_ destroyed_albina_par2/
4 R Davis: ‘Whitewashing Albina’s destruction’. Webpage. The Oregonian, Publishing Prejudice, Oregonian Media Group, 30 May 2023. https://projects.oregonlive.com/ publishing-prejudice/whitewashing-destruction
5 ‘I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project: Bringing Change to the Quarter’. Website. Oregon Department of Transportation, 2023. https://www.i5rosequarter.org/
The regime of motorisation is still pervasive, with a very wide corridor of land adversely impacted by the I-5. Yet, current proposals increase highway capacity, only leading to increased traffic volumes and CO2 emissions.
Robin Hickman
legal eye
Bob Pritchard sounds a note of warning to public authorities when divesting themselves of public assets
well disposed?
Local authorities are increasingly turning to their powers to dispose of land in order to address the financial challenges they face and also in the cause of promoting growth in their areas. Birmingham City Council provides a high profile example of an authority relying on asset disposals to plug a major hole in its budget. The city council, which is responsible for the largest land estate of any UK local authority, is in the process of identifying and selling £500 million worth of assets from its property portfolio which includes the Central Library, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Aston Hall. When it comes to growth promotion, the remit of the next generation of locally led development corporations will include acquiring land (either voluntarily or using compulsory powers) for onward disposal to developer partners.
Whilst local authorities benefit from wide powers to dispose of land, as they are trustees of the assets they hold on behalf of their council tax payers, they need to pay close attention to the legal and procedural requirements that govern disposals. Fundamentally authorities are subject to the duty in §123(2) Local Government Act 1972 (LGA 1972) to
ensure, so far as reasonably possible, that public assets are not sold at an undervalue unless authorised to do so by the Secretary of State. This is an area where authorities have considerable latitude, the question of what represents the best consideration reasonably obtainable is essentially one for the authority to come to a view on and the courts will be reluctant to intervene.
The ‘bird in the hand’ principle also applies – depending on the facts, it may be open to an authority to regard a lower offer with a substantially higher prospect of proceeding to completion as more commercially valuable than an offer for a higher sum which has a substantially lower prospect of coming to fruition. In Cilldara1 Steyn J endorsed West Northamptonshire Council’s decision to reject what appeared, on the face of it, to be a more attractive alternative bid from the claimant company because of concerns that it was ‘too good to be true’ and there were doubts that it would lead to a deal being concluded. However, authorities need to make sure that they take appropriate advice on the value of any land interest. In Whitstable Society,2 Dove J concluded that Canterbury City Council had been in breach of its §123 LGA 1972 duty in disposing of a site based on a valuation which was eight months old when the decision to dispose was taken, at which point there had been a significant and material change in planning circumstances (notably when it came to the national policy requirement for affordable housing). Dove J concluded that no reasonable local authority would have failed to re-enquire as to the position, bearing in mind the considerable impact that affordable housing requirements would have on value.
There are also particular risks associated with disposing of land which falls within the category of ‘open space’, not least because the statutory definition of open space is wide and includes any land used ‘….for the purposes of public recreation’.3 There is a process set out in §123(2A) LGA 1972 that must be followed involving advertising the proposed disposal in a local newspaper for two consecutive weeks and properly considering any representations before coming to a final decision. Last year, the Supreme Court confirmed that a failure to follow the prescribed process means that any public recreation rights associated with a statutory trust are not extinguished when that land
is subsequently sold. This means that any purchaser acquires the land subject to those public rights.4
There are governance and probity issues relating to the disposal of public assets that have been highlighted by the independent review into the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s (TVCA) oversight of the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) and the redevelopment of the former Redcar steelworks (Teesworks).5 This involved a public/private joint venture company named Teesworks Limited (TWL) which was part owned by STDC. Whilst the review found no evidence of corruption or illegality, the panel’s report criticised the paucity of detail in some reports to the TVCA and a dearth of clear explanations of the consequences arising from certain decisions. The report also highlighted shortcomings when it came to keeping STDC board members properly informed. The panel noted that much of the information shared with some board members during their investigation (including that relating to some land transactions) ‘was obviously new to them’. The report also highlighted a tension between transparency and confidentiality at TWL when it came to responding to freedom of information requests. These had been regularly refused on the basis of commercial confidentiality and in some cases a ‘weak public interest justification’ had been relied upon.
So, there is a difficult balance to be struck. When it comes to generating funds for the coffers, authorities should clearly avoid a fire sale of public assets and be circumspect when it comes to the assets they choose to divest themselves of. So far as practicable they should look to retain control of land interests that have the potential to support wealth retention for communities if they remain in public ownership. When it comes to land disposals
to promote economic well-being, local authorities and combined authorities will need to be fleet of foot, prepared to adopt an entrepreneurial approach to transactions and act as an enabler as opposed to an impediment to growth. However, as events on Teesside have illustrated, all of this needs to be achieved within a robust governance framework, with an eye to transparency and in a manner that promotes public confidence in decision making.
• Bob Pritchard is Head of Knowledge in the Shoosmiths Planning Team. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 R (Cilldara) v West Northamptonshire Council [2023] EWHC 1675 (Admin)
2 Whitstable Society v Canterbury City Council [2017] EWHC 254 (Admin). Whilst Dove J concluded that there had been a public law error in not achieving best consideration, he decided not to quash the decision because of significant factors in favour of refusing relief.
3 §336(1) Town and Country Planning Act 1990
4 R. (Day) v Shropshire Council [2023] UKSC 8
5 Independent review report: South Tees Development Corporation and Teesworks Joint Venture – executive summary and recommendations. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 29 Jan. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ independent-review-report-south-tees-developmentcorporation-and-teesworks-joint-venture/independentreview-report-south-tees-development-corporationand-teesworks-joint-venture-executive-summary-andrecommendations
Site of former Redcar steelworks
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 editor of Town & Country Planning
where will rural Britain be in 25 years?
James Derounian is a long-time community development specialist and trainer of local activists. All views expressed are personal.
Come closer. Stare into my crystal ball. It will show you what may happen; but remember that the future – as the past – is a foreign country. And whatever you now see may not in the general or the specific become reality! 125 years is a long and venerable pedigree for any body. Just look at the English rural agencies that came and went during that time: Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas; the Rural Development Commission; the Countryside Commission for England; the Countryside Agency; the Department of the Environment… the list is legion.1 But alongside the TCPA sits another survivor and community champion. Civil parishes were first designated in 1894 – exactly 130 years ago.2 Since then both bodies have sought to empower citizens to act for the betterment of their communities and localities.
Looking ahead 25 years, to the TCPA’s 150th anniversary, what will have changed? Firstly, I foresee the long thread of community-based activity persisting, growing more urgent and strengthening. The Localism Act 2011 contains several positive powers for England’s communities to use, including Neighbourhood Development Plans and listing buildings as assets of community value,3 thereby giving towns and villages the breathing space to raise money to buy them. Another legal power exists in England for communities in metropolitan wards to reparish their area and thereby qualify to use all of the powers available to the predominantly rural civil parishes.4
But I also foresee a darker force conspiring to elevate communities, their residents, clubs and organisations, forcing them to become stronger and more practically present in the daily lives of residents. Climate change. Over the next 25 years there will surely be mass displacement of people, refugees literally seeking higher and safer ground.
This displacement will be global; but also, adverse weather and climate may force an urban to rural exodus. How could you eat and heat in an inner-city high-rise block, surrounded by disintegrating services and societal breakdown? Conversely, rural communities have many advantages in pursuit of sustainable living and survival. Rural communities draw on a long history of mutualism, where farmers share machinery and where trees and fertile agricultural land support self-sufficiency in food and heating. Social capital, including practical and decision-making skills, is often abundant. Rural communities can be small enough for individuals to flourish… as individuals.
In this short piece I can only seek to dispel a little of the mist that clouds the crystal ball. Mahatma Gandhi based his ideas on self-governing and self-sustaining village communities. This links to my research about sustainable rural development and my teaching of parish sector staff. It also connects with Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th century belief that the strength of autonomous citizens sits within a local community.5 The future shines local.
Notes
1 Respectively: 1968-1988; 1988-1999; 1991-1999; 1999-2006, and 1970-1997
2 ‘Civil parish’. Webpage. Wikipedia®, 2 Mar. 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_parish
3 Locality: ‘What are Assets of Community Value (ACV)?’. Webpage. myCommunity, 18 Oct. 2023. https:// mycommunity.org.uk/what-are-assets-ofcommunityvalue-acv
4 §87(2)(a), Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/2007/28/contents
5 A de Tocqueville: Democracy in America. Translated by H Reeve. Saunders and Otley, London, 1835, Chapter V, paras. 72-74. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Democracy_ in_America/Chapter_05
looking back, looking forward: what is wrong with debates about planning?
Prof. Yvonne Rydin is Professor of Planning, Environment and Public Policy at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. All views expressed are personal.
Earlier this year, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) produced a nuanced report1 into the housebuilding industry, which touched on the housing crisis and the role of planning. Key findings about possible collusion between larger housebuilders over prices, problems with the management of public spaces in new development and issues over seeking redress for losses caused by poor quality construction all got some coverage. However, so did the story told about the planning system – that it is complex and unpredictable and largely to blame for the housing shortage. This has been a recurring theme in public debates about planning over the forty years that I have been observing them. It is a view of planning that emphasises its regulatory function. It is a view that is reinforced by the experience that most people have when they engage with the planning system – either to apply for permission to do something to their property or to object when someone else proposes development.
This view of planning as restrictive and bureaucratic is not a good look. Planners may argue that regulations enable them to protect the environment and negotiate for social benefits, but environmental regulation is presented as red tape and social benefits often disappoint or are forgotten
as the result of a planner’s efforts. So how can a more positive view of planning prevail? One problem is that past efforts at bringing planning to the fore have resulted in urban developments that have come to be seen and labelled as ‘planning disasters’: car-dependent suburbs, high rise estates, urban motorways.
‘Housing associations, community land trusts and self-build groups need to be championed by planning, not just provided with left-over scraps of land’
The planning profession has, to some extent, learned from these mistakes and long ago entered a new era of improved urban design and placemaking. But it now finds itself beholden to the private sector for promoting development and wider urban change in an era of public austerity and neo-liberal ideas. Nevertheless, the CMA report is very clear: the housing crisis cannot be solved by
reliance on private sector developers, who focus on demand, not need, and who will manage build-out rates to maintain the profits coming from higher house prices. Planning needs to put a mix of development agencies at its core, including the public sector, the third sector, social enterprises and community-based organisations. Housing associations, community land trusts and self-build groups need to be championed by planning, not just provided with left-over scraps of land.
‘The planning system must make spaces where people can call for the infrastructure they want, particularly at neighbourhood level’
Planning also needs to lift its gaze from the individual development opportunity, however large it may be. It should be actively planning the infrastructure that knits our society together and gives us the best chance of averting climate catastrophe. This encompasses several varieties of infrastructure: the social infrastructure that makes neighbourhoods, towns and cities more than just a place to work, buy and sleep; the technological infrastructure that can support a zero-carbon future; and the green infrastructure that binds us into our ecosystems. None of these can be left to the private sector or planned at the scale of the individual development. Planning authorities, professionals and commentators need to have the confidence to show how such multi-faceted infrastructure can be planned at urban, regional and national scales and how this can benefit people.
But there is a knotty problem here for planning. Since the 1960s there have been calls for more public engagement but also criticism of what results as NIMBYism (support for development in principle, but ‘not in my back yard’). Communities resisting development in their localities have been variously championed and derided. This all buys into the idea of a planning system as being essentially about either permitting or constraining development. It also creates problems for delivering the change that is needed for the future – whether this is new forms of energy generation; new means of public transport; new networks of wetlands, or new housing for all income groups, and for locals and incomers.
Therefore, the planning system must make spaces where people can call for the infrastructure they want, particularly at neighbourhood level.
However – and this is not an easilyheld view – it also needs to limit the tendency for public participation efforts to turn into negative resistance. It can only do this if the balance of proposals for new development is not entirely towards private-sector, profit-led initiatives. Widening the opportunities for development that meets national, regional and local needs, whether through public sector; social economy, or community efforts, would enable the planning system to play a fuller role in society and might take it out of the media hamster-wheel of blame and recrimination.
Note
1 Housebuilding market study: Final report. Competition and Markets Authority, 26 Feb. 2024. https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/65d8baed6efa83001ddcc5cd/Housebuilding_ market_study_final_report.pdf
Special section: 125 years of the TCPA – ‘personal provocations’
demand responsive planning and development in 2050
Prof. Marcus Enoch is a Professor in Transport Strategy and Leader of the Transport and Urban Planning Group at Loughborough University. All views expressed are personal.
Twenty-five years in a traditional planning context is not that long, so things may not in practice be very different in 2050. But I do see two positive changes that could possibly happen – demand responsive planning, and demand responsive development.
Current planning processes are cumbersome, inflexible, and are prone to become out-of-date very quickly, being based upon assumptions made at a specific point in time. They are also expensive and time consuming to develop and enforce at a time
Freepik
when local planning authorities are massively stretched due to significant spending cuts since 2010, and by a shortage of trained planners. In 2020, CPRE The Countryside Charity estimated that only one-third of English local planning authorities were operating under an up-to-date Local Plan, and since then things have likely got worse.1
‘
We need to structurally re-think how to build our communities’
So-called big data and the internet of things could radically alter this. Sensors coupled with 5G connectivity, edge computers2 and new analytical methods are already enabling planners to monitor how people are interacting with the built environment in real-time; to evaluate the impact of planning interventions and/or events on how the built environment is performing against various key performance indicators; and even to predict how well different planning intervention scenarios might meet planning goals in the future. Systematically applied, such tools could lead to a much more dynamic form of local planning that would be much more adaptable and able to cope with changing circumstances and needs. Moreover, they could potentially enable planning data to be made available to local communities, proactively involving them in decisions about how their localities might evolve in the future.
Current buildings and infrastructure are often hugely over-engineered, costing significant sums and taking many months to construct, whilst the steadily increasing demand for more (affordable) homes from young people has not been met for decades. Coupled with the need for much more ‘climate-change appropriate’ development, we need to structurally re-think how to build our communities.
One approach could be to limit granting planning permission only to developments where the impact footprint is completely reversible within a decade of its abandonment, in the same way that native American communities treated the land on which they lived. For instance, new residential neighbourhoods only really require metalled roads for occasional deliveries, and so could be surfaced with bio-degradable road mats that could be replaced regularly. The current design of often poorly-insulated, carbon-intensive, jerry-built (yet expensive) fixed-format brick boxes might instead be replaced by much cheaper factory-made timber/ bamboo/straw modular structures that are less environmentally damaging and much easier for
people to modify as their needs change – even week by week.
Such a shift in development practices would of course be highly controversial and require not only a revolution in local planning authority thinking and policy, but also fundamentally different business models for developers, and radically altered community attitudes. Ultimately though, it might just offer us all a more financially and sustainably affordable future.
Notes
1 What’s the plan? An analysis of local plan coverage across England. CPRE The Countryside Charity, 20 May 2020, p. 3. https://www.cpre.org.uk/resources/ whats-the-plan-full-report/
2 SJ Bigelow: ‘What is edge computing? Everything you need to know’. Website. Techtarget, 2021. https://www. techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/edgecomputing
whither planning?
Prof. Alister Scott is Professor of Environmental Geography and Planning at Northumbria University, Newcastle. All views expressed are personal.
I am a natural born pessimist who looks at the future through a half empty glass that is badly cracked. The future for planning given its current trajectory is not rosy. It runs the risk of being diluted into a mundane regulatory activity confirming the misleading and negative planning stereotypes that currently persist. I have had the privilege to work with several outstanding planners and built environment professionals, but they have got where they are today despite the system and not because of it.
Planning is about creative and innovative thinking to shape, create, manage and enhance places for people and nature. In my view, this has been missing from the endless treadmill of planning reforms and new legislation that have inundated the profession, thereby diluting the role and value of planning and planners. The 21st century planner urgently needs to become a key architect in helping to address the current crises in climate, biodiversity, growth and well-being, not in separate silos but collectively.
However, that brings me to my first concern; that we are currently failing to train or equip planners to work as ‘conductors’ of the built and natural environment ‘orchestra’. We need more built and natural environment educational programmes to move outside rigidly defined planning, quantity surveying, ecology, or landscape silos, which hinder a wider understanding of the connections between these areas of knowledge and across the societal challenges that we now face. Here environmental and social science, and arts and humanities, meet policy and practice. I am not sure that any existing UK higher education programmes do this.
Secondly, we need effective communicators who can champion planning, but as a key component of the built and natural environment jigsaw, where all pieces are crucial. I am not a fan of elevating one silo (planning or nature) above any other. Rather, I want to show how important they all are together in order to reveal the ‘big picture’.
The problem is that we have the built environment dominated by a housing and economic growth agenda, with everything else bolted on. Furthermore, a number of television programmes and other media, where architects and surveyors dominate, have the planner forgotten and portrayed as a bureaucratic regulator rather than a solver of problems. This matters because the planner’s voice is rarely heard, or their role understood. Moreover, they consistently become the scapegoat when government targets, such as for housebuilding, are not met.
Thirdly, we need to highlight where planners have come up with bold new ideas in policy and practice as well as learn from our mistakes. We have to move away from outdated Ebenezer Howard references to powerful new visions and visionaries; but where are they when we need them?
All of this matters. As I look gloomily through my cracked half empty glass, I see a future planning system still in firefighting mode; lacking effective strategic planning; responding to crises, but without the necessary funding and resources to do the job. Yet, lack of resources is no excuse for a lack of vision. The TCPA and others need to step forward to be more visionary and creative and highlight how planning and built environment professions can make a difference together.
Our current circumstances are crying out for new visions of the kind of UK society we want. My starting point is the school to apprentice to university to career pathways, which would embed a stronger understanding of the built and natural environment into practitioners. Following on from that re-focus, we can start to imagine and create outside our silos and take back control of the narratives that seem to damn us.
The TCPA has and will continue to play a key role as a champion of the built and natural environment – not planning alone. Let us unite the currently differentiated professional institutes under the shared banner and aegis of placemaking and place-keeping priorities.
planning and nature positive
Prof. Peter Jones is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Business, Computing and Social Sciences at the University of Gloucestershire. All views expressed are personal.
Earlier this year ‘biodiversity net gain’ became mandatory for all major development in England. This measure is being seen by some commentators as bringing new challenges for planning; heralding the start of an era of nature positive development. Here I outline the concept of nature positive and offer some thoughts on the challenges it poses for development and planning.
‘Nature positive’ emerged from a widespread recognition of the global scale at which nature is being lost and the threat consequent existential threat to humanity. Much of the interest in the concept reflects an early commitment to it by campaigning conservation organisations and more recently by international political initiatives. For example, the COP15 Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted December 2022, seeks to use nature positive approaches to achieve a world living in harmony with nature by 2050.
That said, there is little consensus in defining the concept. The Global Commons Alliance, defines ‘nature positive’ as ‘enhancing the resilience of our planet and societies to halt and reverse nature loss’. Others think that it involves interactions with nature that are restorative and regenerative rather than only extractive or that it means having more nature in the future than we do now. Perhaps more critically, the business research body, GreenBiz, seess it as disruptive – forcing us to think differently about our place in the world – and as a ‘new business model based on regeneration, resilience and recirculation, not destruction and pollution’.1
Whilst the concept of nature positive may sound attractive, realising its potential seems likely to pose a number of contested challenges for developers and local planning authorities. These challenges include measurement, greenwashing, and the need for systemic change. Developers may have the resources to commission consultants to measure nature gains, but the metrics they choose
to employ may favour their development proposals. Local planning authorities must review and check the metrics submitted by developers, but may not have the resources to effectively discharge such responsibilities.
Greenwashing, namely deceptive and/or false claims to being nature positive, must be recognised as a danger. Unless independently verified, developers may simply be ‘jumping on the nature positive bandwagon’ for their own commercial ends.
More fundamentally, there are also radical views that a nature positive future is dependent upon a shift to a new global economic model, centred on abandoning economic growth and instead prioritising nature and the welfare of the planet. Currently, this vision of the future seems unlikely to commend itself to businesses or governments, and Mace2 has questioned the viability of ‘a truly regenerative business model of nature-positive actions’.
Nevertheless, if the dire consequences predicted for biodiversity and nature loss do materialise, possibly sooner rather than later, then alternative economic systems may seem increasingly attractive.
Notes
1 DKN Waughray: ‘Why being nature positive is the key to our future’. Webpage. GreenBiz, 1 Jul. 2021. https:// www.greenbiz.com/article/why-being-nature-positivekey-our-future
2 M Mace: ‘Is nature-positive business a possibility or a paradox?’. Webpage. Edie, 15 Jun. 2023. https://www. edie.net/is-nature-positive-business-a-possibility-orparadox/
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.
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/
