Town & Country Planning Journal – November-December 2024
town & country planning
The Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association November–December 2024 Volume 93 • Number 6
• Tom Chance on sustainable stewardship for new communities
• Johannes Novy on IBA’27 as a world stage for innovation in architecture and placeshaping
• Chris Couch on strategic planning in Merseyside, 1944-2024
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 November–December 2024 • Volume 93 • Number 6
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Town & Country Planning
November–December 2024 • Volume 93 • Number 6
regulars features
336 On the Agenda
Fiona Howie: Slow progress
338 Time and Tide
Celia Davis: Climate crisis – policy crisis
380 Obituary – Geoffrey Charles Steeley obe
382 Design Matters
Matthew Carmona: To beautify, or not to beautify, that is the question
386 Letter from the Languedoc
Graeme Bell: Memories of summer
340 Habitat banks
Peter Jones on whether habitat banking will be an effective way of restoring lost habitat
346 Sustainable stewardship for new communities
Tom Chance on the role of community land trusts in delivering sustainable homes and communities
351 Finding common ground
Eleanor van der Klugt on winning community support for building the homes we need
355 Planning enforcement: the lost decade
Adam Sheppard on the preparedness of enforcement services for biodiversity net gain monitoring
360 From Weissenhof to IBA’27: international building exhibitions as (world) stages for innovation
Johannes Novy on whether IBA’27 StadtRegion Stuttgart will be as influential as previous IBAs
365 Strategic planning for the Liverpool city region, 1944 to 2024
Chris Couch explores the history of and future for regional planning on Merseyside
372 From housing targets to the grey belt
Amy Penrose unpacks the latest planning reforms
374 New villages for a sustainable countryside
Tony Woodward on the need for a radical rethink of rural housing policy and delivery
389 125 years of the TCPA: Personal Provocations
Mark Dobson and Gavin Parker
Lucy Natarajan
Graeme Sherriff
Andrew Blowers
Danny Oswell
Graham Haughton
Laurence Cummins and Ian Christie
Cover illustration by Clifford Harper.
on the agenda
Fiona Howie looks forward to the radical national policy changes needed to tackle health inequalities, climate change, and social injustice
slow progress
In the first edition of Town & Country Planning of the year,1 I wrote about the political churn seen in 2023. Due to the expected general election, we knew that was likely to continue into 2024 but this year did not pan out quite as most people had expected due to the election being called for July. Holding the election in the summer made for a very different second half of the year than would have been the case if we had to wait until November to go to the polls.
July already feels like a distant memory. But, following the outcome of the election we saw a flurry of rapid announcements and the publication of a substantial consultation on proposed planning reforms. Planning and housing announcements included more information about the New Towns taskforce2 and a New Homes Accelerator programme.3 And the ‘planning super squad’ under the previous government was re-branded as ATLAS 2.0.
From the TCPA’s perspective, elements of these initial announcements felt disjointed. But it was clear that planning reform is a priority to support the achievement of the new Government’s commitment to deliver 1.5 million new homes in its current term.
Following the consultation, we await the publication of the updated National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). But we are also mindful that further changes are expected in 2025 and, if national development management policies are to be rolled out, changes to national policy may well be substantial. While elements of the short term changes to national planning policy are welcome – such as the greater emphasis being placed upon homes for social rent, the Association is hoping that more substantial changes are still to come next year.
This is because we believe that more radical changes to national policy are required to better enable the planning system to tackle a wide range of issues including health inequalities, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and tackling social injustice. As ever, we believe that national planning policy should not fixate solely on delivering housing.
A key area we really hope to see progress on is tackling health inequalities. In its manifesto ahead of the election, the Labour Party stated that ‘arguably, nothing says more about the state of a nation than the wellbeing of its children.’ And so, at the core of its mission, it claimed, would be a ‘bold ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history’.4 It is positive that, in consulting upon the proposed planning reforms, the potential role of local planning authorities (LPAs) in supporting a healthy childhood, tackling obesity and encouraging active travel has been recognised. Disappointingly, however, the government did not take the next step by proposing detailed changes to national policy to make progress in this important area. This was especially disappointing because the consultation recognises that while LPAs are able to develop policies to support the improvement of local health and wellbeing, there is ‘considerable variation in the extent to which they do so’.5
The situation in relation to climate change is similar, where the consultation draft acknowledged the significant challenge that climate change poses to the world today, but, with the exception of renewable energy, fell short of proposing specific changes to national planning policy to ensure that stronger, more urgent action is taken.
The Association continues to argue that one of the most powerful changes to policy would be to introduce a carbon accounting regime to inform local plans and decision making. We have argued the case for this in previous consultations on the NPPF (for example our response submitted in March 2023 to the consultation published in December 2022)6 and will continue to do so, as outlined by Celia Davis in the following column.
The end of the year also means we are drawing to the end of our 125th anniversary. As a charity with limited budgets, we have been unable to
Notes
organise multiple major celebrations, but we have marked it in a number of small ways, including with contributions to the journal. One of the highlights of the year for me was a reception we held in the summer, which was made possible by the Lady Margaret Paterson Osborn Trust and kindly hosted by AECOM.
Speaking at the event, our President, the Rt Hon Nick Raynsford, stated that no organisation should celebrate its longevity for longevity’s sake. He is absolutely right and in an ideal world charities will all do themselves out of a job by each realising the vision that they set out to achieve.
Our vision is for homes, places and communities in which everyone can thrive. So, we are not quite in a position where we have achieved all we want to. Perhaps by the time of our 150th anniversary in 2049 things will be different! In the meantime, we will continue to work hard locally, nationally and internationally, to try and make a difference for people and the environment.
While this might feel a bit early, as it is the last edition of 2024, I also wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas and an impactful 2025. It will no doubt be a busy year.
• Fiona Howie is Chief Executive of the TCPA.
1 F Howie: ‘2024 – what lies ahead?’ Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93(1), Jan-Feb., 2-3
2 M Lyons: ‘Expert taskforce to spearhead a new generation of new towns: A new generation of new towns to kickstart economic growth and get Britain building again.’. Press release [online]. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 31 Jul. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/experttaskforce-to-spearhead-a-new-generation-of-new-towns
3 ‘New Homes Accelerator programme: The New Homes Accelerator aims to speed up the delivery of largescale housing developments across England’. Guidance [online]. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 29 Aug. 2024. https://www.gov. uk/guidance/new-homes-accelerator-programme
4 Change. Labour Party Manifesto 2024. Labour Party, Jun. 2024, pp. 94-95. Alternatively, view online at: https://labour.org.uk/change/
5 ‘Proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework and other changes to the planning system’. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, 2 Aug. 2024, chapter 8, par. 8. https:// www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proposedreforms-to-the-national-planning-policy-frameworkand-other-changes-to-the-planning-system/proposedreforms-to-the-national-planning-policy-frameworkand-other-changes-to-the-planning-system
6 Reforms to national planning policy: A response from the TCPA to the consultation by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Mar. 2023, section 6, pp. 10-15. https://www.tcpa.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2023/03/FINAL-TCPA-response-toLURB-national-planning-policy-consultationMarch-2023.pdf
TCPA
TCPA 125th anniversary event, Aldgate Tower, London, 11 June 2024
time & tide
Celia Davis asks: will the revised National Planning Policy Framework for England prove a missed opportunity for climate action?
climate crisis –policy crisis
Planning will undoubtedly play an increased role in addressing the climate crisis in future. This is both because climate change demands the transformation of sectors for which the planning system performs an important regulatory function (including energy, transport, and buildings), and because many of the actions necessary to address climate mitigation and adaptation are fundamentally spatial in nature. But the scale of the climate crisis is such that the current planning system in England is not fit for purpose.
With a new government in office and planning reform pitched front and centre as a vehicle to deliver its agenda of ‘change’, there was a tantalising sense of hope that the new administration may recognise the wider role of planning in delivering against a range of social and environmental priorities, as well as economic ones. However, with the notable exceptions of renewable energy and a more progressive position on sustainable transport, proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), published in July, regrettably fall far short of enabling and accelerating the action on climate change we urgently need.
In considering the climate change content of the draft NPPF revisions, it is important to recognise their focus upon increasing housing permissions. The scale of housing delivery the government hopes to achieve has the potential to blow the UK’s entire carbon budget,¹ and the potential for planning by appeal to dominate in the short term, along with pressure to allocate land in constrained authorities, will undoubtedly bring forward more development in unsustainable locations and areas with flood risk issues. Strong policy is imperative if this is to be delivered within the UK’s legal climate change commitments.
The government’s housing agenda should therefore only be considered successful if the 1.5 million promised homes contribute positively to creating healthy, inclusive, zero carbon and climate resilient communities. The consultation document has left the door open to progress on a number of issues but the proposed NPPF revisions lack the strong policy steer on climate change mitigation and adaptation that is required.
For example, the NPPF could radically transform the focus of emerging Local Plans by identifying climate change as the government’s first priority for the planning system through its definition of
sustainable development. Another urgent priority for plan making is the need for an effective carbon assessment regime for Local Plans, to ensure they are aligned with the latest carbon budget. There is nothing complex about such an approach, which some LPAs have been developing and which consultants have been supporting. It cannot be right that Local Plans and spatial strategies are routinely adopted with no understanding or consideration of their carbon impact.
There is some good news in the proposed NPPF. The new government has reversed the ‘de facto ban’ on onshore wind. Given the clear need to decarbonise energy at pace, a more enabling policy framework for renewables is much needed. The government would be wise however to consider how the accelerated deployment of renewables can better embed community participation. Building consent by supporting communities to influence and benefit from renewable energy developments in their locality will be essential to the successful deployment of renewables at scale, and to reduce potential kickback in the long run.
‘ ‘The scale of the climate crisis is such that the current planning system in England is not fit for purpose’
There are also policy areas where national policy currently acts as a hinderance rather than an enabler to local ambition. None are starker or more pressing than the policy expressed through the 13 December 2023 written ministerial statement, which inhibits the ability of LPAs to require net zero buildings through local planning policies.² Policy on this issue needs an urgent rewrite to allow the acceleration of the delivery of net zero homes. This is true of other policy areas with climate implications ranging from embodied carbon, battery storage, overheating, drought and fossil fuel exploration.
Major changes are also required for adaptation to climate change. Much greater priority needs to be given to overheating and to the growing challenges of coastal and surface water flood risk. There is a particular need to reform the sequential and exception flood risk tests in the areas of most severe coastal flood risk and to reflect the need for the wholesale relocation of some communities. Likewise, the planning system must do more to address other climate risks. These include
heatwaves, drought, resource efficiency and coastal change. Many resilience measures require us to look further ahead than typical Local Plan cycles, and this requires a fundamentally different approach to how we consider risk and resilience and accommodate long term change through spatial planning.
‘The scale of housing delivery the government hope to achieve has the potential to blow the UK’s entire carbon budget’
Whilst some of these changes may need time to develop effective delivery mechanisms, other policy changes would simply reflect current good practice and there is no reason for delay. The change in the definition of sustainable development in itself would represent a significant step change in the planning system’s capability to prioritise and accelerate climate action. All indications are, sadly, that meaningful review of the NPPF’s climate change content outside of onshore renewables will be stalled. But we must continue to raise the urgent need for these changes with the aim of securing a planning system capable of operating in the context of the greatest societal challenge that we face. This is fundamental to a hopeful vision of the future –something that the planning system is uniquely placed to deliver.
• Celia Davis is Senior Planning and Policy Manager at the TCPA.
Notes
1 SOSE zu Ermgassen, MP Drewniok, JW Bull, CM Corlet Walker, M Mancini, J Ryan-Collins, A Cabrera Serrenho: ‘A home for all within planetary boundaries: Pathways for meeting England’s housing needs without transgressing national climate and biodiversity goals’. Ecological Economics, Nov. 2022, Vol. 201, 107562. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0921800922002245
Peter Jones reviews the academic literature about habitat banking in England and offers some insights into its ability to restore lost habitat on a like-for-like basis
As of February 2024, developers in England have been required to deliver biodiversity net gain (BNG) of at least 10% on all new qualifying schemes. This requirement has thrown habitat banks into sharp relief, and they are attracting a lot of attention from a number of consultancies. Habitat banks are defined by Natural England as:
‘sites where habitat is created in advance, prior to any loss occurring. This habitat will need to be secured and managed long-term.’ ¹
‘An alternative definition is provided by RPS, part of Tetra Tech, a global consulting and engineering services company:
‘creating habitat banks is a conservation strategy designed to mitigate the negative impacts of development and land use changes on wildlife and ecosystems’. ²
Although habitat banking is attracting plenty of positive attention it also has its critics. Wensink,³ for example, argued that the development of habitat banking is largely driven by what is attractive to business. I outline here the academic literature on habitat banks in order to review habitat banking in England, as promoted by Environment Bank (one of its major players) and to offer some wider reflective conclusions.⁴
Biodiversity net gain, habitat banks and measurement
The Environment Act 2021 (the 2021 Act) made provision for plans and policies designed to improve the natural environment, and more specifically to improve air quality, water quality and biodiversity, to increase recycling, and to reduce plastic waste. More specifically, the 2021 Act introduced the delivery of mandatory BNG under planning legislation. For Natural England, BNG:
‘is an approach to development, land and marine management that leaves biodiversity in a measurably better state than before the development took place’.¹
Further, Natural England argued: ‘biodiversity net gain offers a new route for development of homes, businesses and infrastructure to play its part in enabling nature to thrive, and to deliver nature-based solutions to climate change, water and air quality, and flood risks. It can also help level up access to nature and provide accessible green space on the doorstep of new homes and further afield.’ ¹
‘Off-site habitat replacement should be ecologically equivalent to the habitat lost’
In practical terms BNG is essentially about habitat creation, which can be achieved both on- and off-site, as part of the development process. On-site habitat creation is the restoration of biodiversity on the site where development is taking place, and often provides high quality greenspaces, such as parks and playing fields, and blue spaces, such as ponds and accessible canals, for the people who live within the development. Off-site habitat creation involves habitat banking on areas of land where environmental restoration is being undertaken to compensate for habitat destruction caused by development elsewhere.
The focus is upon leaving biodiversity in a measurably better state after development than before it. This illustrates the importance of measurement. The statutory biodiversity metric⁵ is the mandatory method of measuring biodiversity for BNG in England. It uses changes in the extent and
quality of habitats as a proxy for nature. BNG is measured in standardised biodiversity units, and the statutory biodiversity metric measures the biodiversity value of habitats. The metric calculates the number of units a habitat contains before development takes place, and the number of units needed to replace the units of habitat lost and to achieve a 10% BNG, via the creation or enhancement of habitat. The calculations generally consider the habitat’s size, type, condition, strategic significance, the difficulties likely to be encountered in habitat creation or enhancement, the time scale, and distance from the habitat lost.
Literature review
The concept of habitat banking may have its origins in the 1980s, where wetland mitigation banking in the United States of America (USA) allowed developers impacting on wetlands to fund the creation or enhancement of wetlands in another location.⁶ More recently, in exploring whether habitat banking could work in the UK, it was argued that environmental policy support for habitat banking had grown rapidly, that it is an ‘incredibly flexible tool’, and that it had ‘brought disparate parties together, including landowners, biologists, consultants, planners, and developers’.⁷ More specifically, the same research outlined a wide range of advantages of habitat banking, including
offering a mechanism to integrate conservation into the investment plans of companies, providing a significant new source of finance for biodiversity and landscape conservation, and facilitating better relationships between developers, local communities, environmentalists, and other stakeholders.
‘A key issue with on-site habitat banking is the limitation it presents in terms of size’
It has further been argued that habitat banking and tradeable development rights had gained currency as a method of achieving no net loss of biodiversity, and of reconciling nature conservation with economic development goals.⁸ The authors argued that both habitat banking and tradeable development rights had the potential to contribute to biodiversity conservation objectives and attain cost effective solutions with positive social impacts on local communities and landowners. However, a number of theoretical and operational challenges, such as the equivalence of offsets, the continuance of planning regulations, monitoring, and the time lags between restoration and the resulting conservation benefits, were identified. It was
Developers can choose to replace lost habitat on-site, off-site or both
concluded that the performance of habitat banking and tradeable development rights hinged on how they were integrated into the biodiversity conservation policy mix.
In the Netherlands, the conditions under which habitat banking can help to improve biodiversity, nature conservation and sustainable development were analysed.⁹ The results revealed that habitat banking contributes to solving the problems for nature and biodiversity, as well as achieving sustainable development. That said, habitat banking was seen to be particularly effective in the domain of voluntary nature conservation, in bottom-up pilot projects, where a wide range of owners and users were involved, and in the context of participatory decision making. That said, the authors argued that in order to realise the added value of habitat banking, further research was required to collect and analyse empirical data from appropriate stakeholders.
‘The metric calculates the number of units a habitat contains before development takes place, and the number of units needed to replace the units of habitat lost and to achieve a 10% BNG’
After recognising that habitat banking had gained traction as a means to compensate for the unavoidable environmental impacts of development projects, other researchers used semi-structured interviews and participant observation to analyse the development of habitat banking policy in Spain.10 Here the authors suggested that habitat banking had been a controversial policy instrument and that it had encountered both opposition and acclaim in most places where it had been implemented. The process of habitat banking was considered opaque and non-inclusive, and to be driven by a small constituency of actors who sought to create investment opportunities for biodiversity conservation on private land, and that it was grounded on a false social consensus which concealed alternative understandings of how environmental impacts should be addressed.
Returning to the USA, other findings suggest that although habitat banking has been widely accepted and implemented, especially for the protection of freshwater ecosystems, its potential adequacy had not been formally quantified in the context of its underlying framework and policies.11 The authors used a gap analysis approach to test the current adequacy and future potential of habitat banking across over 2,500 freshwater biodiversity hotspots in the USA. The results revealed that the highest
conservation urgency was assigned to states in the South West, with high levels of species imperilment, and that federal land ownership was identified as a driver for low habitat bank density in the western states. The authors also looked to determine if priority indicators could be identified to direct future habitat banking efforts to strengthen its role in preserving freshwater habitat and diversity in the USA.
Environment Bank: a major player in the provision of habitat banks
Environment Bank, part of the Gresham House British Sustainable Infrastructure Fund portfolio, says it tries to provide real asset-based solutions to environmental and societal challenges. Environment Bank claims to have over 2,400 hectares of habitat creation underway, and describes itself as ‘England’s largest provider of off-site biodiversity units’.12
The company explains:
‘Our habitat bank model is simple; it involves leasing land, typically low-yielding, from which we co-create a habitat bank. We are looking for a minimum of 20 hectares, but in some areas of the country, we consider a minimum of 10. We raise biodiversity units for developers and take all liability for unit delivery. Our farmers and landowners retain ownership and management of the land, and receive tax-efficient annual payments, usually between £20,000 and £60,000 per year, and in some cases substantially more. Payments are secure for 30 years – providing a consistent and reliable income.’ 13
Environment Bank goes on to claim that:
‘our habitat banks are not only fulfilling BNG legislation but working alongside local planning authorities they are also supporting local nature recovery strategies, sustainable house building, economic growth, job creation, and the cultivation of thousands of acres of diverse green space for communities to enjoy’.14
The company typically looks to contract the management of the habitat bank back to the landowner.
In reviewing the respective merits of on-site and off-site habitat banking, the company argues that a key issue with on-site habitat banking is the limitation it presents in terms of size, in that such sites offer minimal value to biodiversity, because the available areas are often small and fragmented, and that genuine biodiversity is in the delivery of nature restoration at scale.15 Further, it suggests that:
‘large commercial warehouses, logistics parks and similar, have very limited space for even great landscaping, unless they acquire additional land,
which is very unlikely. To truly achieve biodiversity restoration, the sites on which habitats are created should be large.’ 15
‘The focus is upon leaving biodiversity in a measurably better state after development than before it’
In addressing funding, the company emphasises that creating a habitat bank is an expensive business, and can be ‘a risk to undertake on your own without guaranteed unit sales (especially when planning applications can take many years, often without approval)’, but claims ‘our model is different’.13
Here, Environment Bank claims that its use of demand analysis and a portfolio of development clients allows it to create habitat banks aligned to demand, and along with secured funding, enables it to have confidence in its delivery and to forward fund all its creation costs, including infrastructure, training, and legal fees. Further, Environment Bank claims that its ecologists handle habitat design and the monitoring of biodiversity enhancement, thus enabling the client to focus upon land management activities.
Habitat banks generally embrace a range of habitat types. By way of an illustration, Environment Bank provides some examples of the characteristics of its habitat bank portfolio across England.16 The Heighington Habitat Bank,17 for example, covers almost 20 hectares of arable hand and pasture some eight kilometres north of Darlington in County
Horwich Habitat Bank
Durham. The land includes lowland meadows and ponds, and Environment Bank claims to be establishing new priority habitats, including natural ponds and wildflower grasslands, and creating greater connectivity for the native wildlife.
The company claims that its proposed habitat enhancements will complement existing hedgerows, that it will support a range of bird species, including skylarks, lapwing, grey partridge and yellowhammer; that they will improve the landscape’s resilience against flooding, and improve soil health. Further, Environment Bank reported establishing an ecological baseline and claimed that the company had undertaken a thorough assessment of the site’s vegetation, wildlife, geology, hydrology, soil chemistry, management history, and landscape connectivity, in order to determine the best possible habitats to establish, and to ensure that their proposed habitat enhancements would be deliverable.
Environment Bank’s Hoscar Habitat Bank in rural West Lancashire,18 had been used for arable farming for some 70 years, but now the focus is on creating rich wildflower grassland and enhancing wet woodland and ditches. Further, the company claims that the site is in close proximity to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre at Martin Mere, and that it will provide a shelter for a range of wildlife, including both overwintering and breeding birds. At the same time, public access will be facilitated by the public footpaths along the site’s northern and western boundary, and the company claims that the local community will be able to enjoy the wildlife and the greenspace.
The Whitby Habitat Bank,19 on the urban fringe of the eponymous town, covers some 15 hectares of land around the village of Ruswarp. The site is within the floodplain of the River Esk, and the focus is upon transforming the existing grazing land to develop an area of wildflower meadows, native mixed scrub and ponds and to increase species diversity, to include otters, salmon, eels and water voles.
‘Development of habitat banking is largely driven by what is attractive to business’
The Witchampton Habitat Bank20 covers 36 hectares on a rural estate in Dorset, and is part of a section of land with floodplain grazing along the corridor of the River Allan, while the site also embraces the Dorset ecological network and the Cranbourne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Here the focus is upon creating and enhancing habitats, including the transformation of existing grasslands and arable land into a mosaic of wetter meadows to support a diverse mix of species.
Reflective conclusions
In the face of continuing development pressure, particularly for new housing, habitat banking is likely to attract increasing attention from local authority planners, developers, and communities, but three reflective conclusions merit brief attention. Firstly, whilst there are arguments about the equivalence of habitat gains and losses, and while the promoters and providers of habitat banks often argue that the creation of new off-site habitat can deliver a greater range of benefits than on-site habitat creation, this may not always be the case, and arguably needs to be justified on a case by case basis. Certainly, habitat creation must be appropriate to the ecology of the off-site location, off-site habitat replacement should be ecologically equivalent to the habitat lost, and there may be problems with what are deemed ‘quality habitats’.
At the same time, Harris and Sullivan21 argue that off-site habitat creation reinforces the idea that people and nature inhabit different spaces, and that nature inhabits a separate world, which is fragile and in need of protection. Here Harris and Sullivan claim that:
‘habitat banking will serve only to entrench this separation, further retarding the emergence of ecologically sustainable settlements’.
Secondly, habitat banking puts the commodification of nature, namely how nature is given a value and made exchangeable through market mechanisms, into the spotlight. In many ways, habitat banking can be seen to provide a politically sanctioned and institutionally legitimated mechanism which facilitates development, whilst effectively taking many planning concerns about biodiversity loss out of what in the past has often been a contested development process. Habitat banking may increase development costs, but in one way or another, these costs these will usually be passed on to the end user and will generate financial benefits for the owners of land where habitat banks are created. More generally, there are a wide range of questions, about whether nature can be effectively turned into a commodity; about the pricing mechanisms; about undermining the moral and ethical arguments for conservation, and about the consequences of commodification upon nature.
Thirdly, there are deeper and more radical arguments, rooted in Marxist political economy, that the loss of biodiversity is rooted in the workings of the capitalist system, and the only genuine solution must be grounded in systemic change and the shift to a new global economic model which looks to prioritise nature and the welfare of the planet. This clearly has radical implications that extend far beyond the realms of planning and development within England, and currently it seems very unlikely to commend itself to those holding the reins of
political and economic power. However, if the dire consequences predicted as the outcome of continuing reductions in biodiversity and the loss of nature, do materialise, possibly sooner rather than later, then alternative economic and social systems, may begin to look increasingly attractive.
• Professor Peter Jones is at the University of Gloucestershire. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 Biodiversity Net Gain: An introduction to the benefits. Natural England, 2022, https://naturalengland.blog.gov. uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/183/2022/04/BNGBrochure_Final_Compressed-002.pdf
2 ME Barker: ‘Habitat banks: What you need to know’. Webpage. RPS, 8 Jul. 2024. https://www.rpsgroup.com/ insights/consulting-uki/habitat-banks-what-you-need-toknow/
3 R Wensink: Habitat Banking: Instrument or alibi for nature conservation and its socialization?. Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Jan. 2019. https:// theses.ubn.ru.nl/server/api/core/bitstreams/db7595c5fec3-47a4-9c8d-1e21ad3ef99c/content
4 The author would like to make clear that he has no connections with Environment Bank or other conflicts of interest.’
5 ‘Calculate biodiversity value with the statutory biodiversity metric’. Online guidance. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 27 Feb. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/biodiversity-metriccalculate-the-biodiversity-net-gain-of-a-project-ordevelopment#:~:text=The%20statutory%20 biodiversity%20metric%20measures,contains%20 before%20development%20takes%20place
6 ‘Growing Interest in Habitat Banking’. Webpage. British Ecological Society, 9 Mar. 2010. https://www. britishecologicalsociety.org/growing-interest-in-habitatbanking/#:~:text=This%20concept%20hs%20been%20 in,with%20economic%20growth%20and%20 development
7 BDJ Briggs, DA Hill, R Gillespie: ‘Habitat banking - How it could work in the UK’. Journal for Nature Conservation, May 2009, Vol. 17(2), 112-122. https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/222226856_Habitat_ banking-how_it_could_work_in_the_UK
8 R Santos, C Schröter-Schlaak, P Antunes, I Ring, P Clemente: ‘Reviewing the role of habitat banking and tradeable development rights in the conservation policy mix’. Environmental Conservation, 30 Apr. 2015, Vol. 42(4), 294-305. https://www.cambridge.org/core/ journals/environmental-conservation/article/abs/ reviewing-the-role-of-habitat-banking-and-tradabledevelopment-rights-in-the-conservation-policy-mix/ A308BA1640055E3179EFFE88D7221A04#
9 MMJ Gorissen, CM van Der Heide, JHM Schaminée: ‘Habitat Banking and Its Challenges in a Densely Populated Country: The Case of The Netherlands’. Sustainability, 2020, Vol. 12(9), 3756. https://www.mdpi. com/2071-1050/12/9/3756
10 S Maestre-Andres, E Corbera, M Robertson, R Lave: ‘Habitat banking at a standstill: The case of Spain’. Environmental Science and Policy, Jul. 2020, Vol. 109(1), 54-63. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/abs/pii/S1462901119306872?via%3Dihub
11 S Theis, D Castellanos-Acuña, A Hamann, M Poesch:
‘Exploring the potential of habitat banking in preserving freshwater biodiversity and imperiled species’. Biological Conservation, Sep. 2022, Vol. 273, 109700 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ abs/pii/S0006320722002531?casa_token=hKV_ RMqISoAAAAAA:-NPaxKNk3M7g98ePbdmYjtJCyGc4qBW-FTw-2o2zUTxYygfXeCZKcrnWXuO3wFm B1_4hEyk2QM
12 ‘Explore Our Expanding Habitat Bank Network’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https:// environmentbank.com/biodiversity-units/habitat-bankbng-network
13 ‘Habitat Bank Creation: Diversify Your Business’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https:// environmentbank.com/habitat-bank-creation
14 ‘Our Biodiversity Net Gain Units’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https://environmentbank.com/ biodiversity-units
15 ‘On-site vs Off-site Habitat Creation: Which is Best for Nature?’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https:// environmentbank.com/blog/posts/on-site-vs-off-sitehabitat-creation-which-is-best-for-nature
16 ‘Explore Our Expanding Habitat Bank Network’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https:// environmentbank.com/biodiversity-units/habitat-bankbng-network/
17 ‘Heighington Habitat Bank, County Durham’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https://environmentbank.com/ habitat-bank-network/habitat-bank-heighington/
18 ‘Hoscar Habitat Bank, West Lancashire’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https://environmentbank.com/ habitat-bank-network/habitat-bank-hoscar/
19 ‘Whitby Habitat Bank, North Yorkshire’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https://environmentbank.com/ habitat-bank-network/habitat-bank-whitby/
20 ‘Witchampton Habitat Bank, Dorset’. Webpage. Environment Bank, 2024. https://environmentbank.com/ habitat-bank-network/habitat-bank-witchampton/
21 M Harris, S Sullivan: Offsetting Nature? Habitat Banking and Biodiversity Offsets in the English Land Use Planning System. Green House, Weymouth, Jan. 2012. Full text available to view here: https://www. researchgate.net/publication/294876022_Offsetting_ Nature_Habitat_Banking_and_Biodiversity_Offsets_in_ the_English_Land_Use_Planning_System
Editor’s Note
The author would like to make clear that he has no connection with Environment Bank, nor any other conflict of interest in relation to the content of this article.
sustainable stewardship for new communities
Tom Chance advocates for ‘writing Garden City principles into the heart of the national housebuilding strategy’, with community land trusts spearheading delivery ‘The principal barriers are built into the
Prior to the recent general election, there was much debate about whether we should be building more homes in Britain, and if so, how we should deliver them. Likewise, around climate change and the need for more onshore wind. But local people – communities – were almost entirely absent from these debates, except when characterised as NIMBY (‘not in my back yard’) impediments to be overcome by stronger top-down planning.
What an impoverished view of communities, and the planning system!
The question now is where, not if, new homes should be built, with 1.5 million being the target for the first Labour administration. What if the new government were to revive the spirit of the Garden City movement and position co-partnership and co-production with communities as an answer to these challenges, rather than as a barrier to sweep away?
’
structure of the system
When the first edition of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of To-morrow was published, in 1898, the co-operative and co-partnership housing societies that inspired much of his thinking were a very marginal part of the British housing system.
The first new-build co-operative homes had been completed less than a decade before – in Penge, London, where ‘tenant co-operators’ built an attractive terrace of 48 cottages. In the ensuing decade, a scrappy movement – with support
amongst well-placed MPs and some parts of the labour movement – was taking off across the country, buying and building properties to pursue co-operative principles of ownership alongside new thinking on design and town planning.¹ At the time of Howard’s publication, the notions of copartnership, co-operation and community ownership could easily have been dismissed as naïve and outlandish. Suitable for the odd small scheme, but not a serious answer to the nation’s housing needs.
But the vision of Howard and other pioneers led to the creation of substantial Garden Cities and suburbs. These shaped and inspired New Towns and town planning more generally for several decades. These experiments demonstrated that such principles can be applied at scale and can produce better results for society.
Sadly, ideas of co-partnership and co-production were eclipsed by market-led, municipalist and statist approaches to planning, provision and stewardship. The idea of communities and cooperators playing an equal role in partnership with councils and the private sector was consigned to the fringes by the 1920s. There have been resurgences of interest – co-operative housing societies had their moment in the sun in the 1970s with Housing Corporation support – but they never lasted, unlike in other European countries and around the world.
Similar proven-but-niche concepts to Garden Cities and co-partnership societies, like the Gramdan movement in India,² and the Moshavim Movement in Israel,³ remain fringe. But they were
all drawn upon by civil rights and community activists in the United States of America (USA) when they created the community land trust (CLT) model in the 1960s.⁴
‘At the time of Howard’s publication, the notions of copartnership, co-operation and community ownership could easily have been dismissed as naïve and outlandish’
The CLT concept is neither new nor unusual for British planners. It is there in the TCPA’s own Garden City principles – community ownership of land, long-term community stewardship of assets, and land value capture for the benefit of the community. If the CLT movement added anything, it was a stronger emphasis upon community participation, and the creation of a dynamic movement ‘from below’, agitating and working to get things moving rather than waiting for the market or state.
The CLT movement has also lobbied for, and achieved, a recognition in law and policy which should be of greater interest to advocates of Garden City principles.
CLTs are now exempt from the ban on residential ground rents. Furthermore, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, in amending Schedule 10 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, exempts
CLTs from leasehold enfranchisement. They are also exempted from the voluntary Right to Buy and the Right to Shared Ownership, and in certain configurations can protect homes from the Right to Acquire.
In other words, a CLT is uniquely capable of stewarding residential assets and realising their land value through ground rent. Anyone wishing to establish a stewardship vehicle capable of doing this should seriously consider incorporating it as a CLT. In doing so, this enshrines the principles of democratic community control and a duty to further local wellbeing into the stewardship body. We have created a simple legal and financial incentive to adopt Garden City principles.
Following our lobbying, the December 2023 revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) also introduced, for the first time, some recognition of community-led development (CLD). The changes include a definition of CLD, encouragement to provide opportunities through small sites, and a new ‘community-led exception site’, which permits CLTs and other democratic community organisations to develop unallocated sites adjacent to settlements, subject to certain safeguards. The new government has proposed some welcome, if minor, upgrades to these policies in its recent consultation. It has also asked for views about why so few small sites are allocated generally, and what more could be done to promote rural social housing. Time will tell if this results in substantial reform or more minor tweaks.
This policy is inspired directly by a highly successful Local Plan policy in East Cambridgeshire.
Pengepast
Lucas Road, Penge – England’s first co-operative housing scheme (1889)
The policy has enabled CLTs to bring forward schemes of between two and 500 homes on land bought at less-than-residential value, capturing the difference to fund affordable housing and community amenities.
‘This is an agenda to write the Garden City principles into the heart of the national housebuilding strategy’
The 500-home scheme is a garden village, in which the local authority exchanged contracts on the land, codesigned the masterplan with the CLT and landowners, and then brought in a private developer to build it out. The CLT will own half of the affordable homes; all of the open space, and community amenities on completion, acting as the stewardship and management body. The CLT covers the whole parish, not only the development’s red line, enabling integration within and between the new and existing settlements.
The ‘community-led exception site’ policy is by no means the only, or the best, way for these outcomes to be achieved. We would welcome a call from the TCPA for ‘more planning’ – proactive local authorities able to allocate and acquire sites at close to existing use value, capturing the uplift, and then partnering with CLTs (and if necessary, creating them with the local community) so that local people can codesign, develop and steward the development.
Absent this sort of proactive agenda, the idea of CLD and community stewardship remain stubbornly suppressed by a system that refuses to acknowledge the agency of communities, except as consultees or objectors.
Last March, we published our state of the sector report on CLTs.⁵ At the time there were 350 CLTs that owned 1,711 affordable homes, 75% of which were for social or affordable rent (if national grants policy allowed it, all 75% would probably be offered at social rent). CLTs also own around 100 other assets including community centres, greenspace, workspace, farmland, shops, pubs, energy systems and miscellaneous others. Most of this has been developed in partnership with developers, housing associations and local authorities; this is not generally about communities becoming amateur developers.
In our 2023 state of the sector report, we referenced a growing body of evidence that this form of CLD is no slower than conventional development;⁶ is more likely to provide genuinely affordable homes;⁷ is more likely to meet or exceed local planning policies for energy efficiency;⁸ supports healthy ageing, social inclusion, improved physical health, tackling multiple disadvantages and
meeting additional support needs;⁹ reduces loneliness through design and participation;10 and represents medium-to-high value for public money;11 amongst other benefits.
Anecdotally, we have also seen a lot of interest from communities interested in providing specialist housing, for example for wheelchair users, autistic people and other people with a shared identity, such as LGBTQI+. In some cases, this is about the physical form of the housing – stemming from a frustration that, for example, new purpose-built wheelchair user housing (falling within category M4(3)(2)(b) of the Building Regulations) remains vanishingly rare. But it is also often motivated by a desire to find new forms of mutual support and community living, blending ideas from CLTs, cohousing and co-operatives.
Given that there is no meaningful role offered to citizens in the mainstream system – no power for the ‘demand’ side of the equation – they are seeking community-led alternatives, only then finding out how incredibly difficult the system makes it for them.
The principal barriers are built into the structure of the system: it requires a lot of technical expertise; acquiring land requires a lot of nous and money; obtaining a planning consent is time-consuming, risky and expensive, and may be made riskier by design choices that break the mould (such as no car parking); and raising development finance is costly, with only a tiny pool of specialist lenders open to it. So, pioneers have depended upon grants (where they are providing affordable housing) or their own equity (resulting in a very lopsided, middle class cohousing sector, for example).
The system has gradually evolved into one that only really works for volume builders, with a small slice of equity-rich self-builders and a diminishing band of small and medium sized enterprises.
But there are also less explicit barriers. In countries where community-led housing is much more normal, there is a market infrastructure, a set of stakeholders and relationships geared up to support delivery. Groups are not expected to become experts and do all the heavy lifting; they commission enablers or are brought in and coached to play a role in a development initiated by the local council or landowner. In Britain, power dynamics and a culture of patronising patrician paternalism weigh against communities who seek partnership with the private, public and social housing sectors. For communities that have managed to overcome these barriers, their small schemes have had an outsized impact. But, as with the pioneers who inspired Ebenezer Howard, their contribution to the overall supply of housing has been little more than a rounding error.
It could be different.
In our 2023 state of the sector report, we set out a vision for CLTs developing or buying 278,000 homes by taking replicable project types to scale across the country. CLTs have demonstrated an ability to build an average of 15 new homes every decade in rural parishes in partnership with housing associations. If this could be achieved in a third of parishes, it would lead to 30,000 homes in community ownership. A similar logic was applied to partnerships with developers on larger schemes of 75 homes; with CLTs taking 5% of the capacity of large, allocated sites (those with more than 1,500 homes), along with the ownership and stewardship of non-housing assets; CLTs developing sensitive suburban infill in low density inter-war estates; and a small cadre of developing CLTs, mostly in larger towns and cities, expanding their own development portfolio.
‘Anecdotally, we have also seen a lot of interest from communities interested in providing specialist housing, for example for wheelchair users, autistic people and other people with a shared identity’
Taken together, this might amount to CLTs accounting for something like 5% of housebuilding. I recently ran the numbers for the housing charity, Shelter, estimating what this might mean in terms of social housing provision. Our most ambitious scenario, requiring the full implementation of our manifesto, could see CLTs providing in the region of 7,600 additional social rented homes each year, or 8.5% of Shelter’s annual target.12
Is this an outlandish vision?
The former Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Rt Hon. Michael Gove, who spoke at the launch event for our 2023 state of the sector report, thought not. He later referenced the vision (if not the number) in his speech about a long-term plan for housing13 and asked the sector to consider a long-term strategy that could achieve that transformation in scale. I developed this strategy with colleagues from the UK Cohousing Network and Confederation of Co-operative Housing over the summer, and it was discussed with the housing minister in September 2023. The December 2023 NPPF revisions did pick up some of the long-term strategy’s recommendations, albeit in a weaker form than we had recommended. In the spring of 2024, we published our manifesto for the general election. It is both a set of specific policies, and a call to reframe the debate about the role of community.
Whether all of this progress will survive the recent change in government and translates into meaningful policy reform commensurate with the transformation required remains to be seen.
The Localism Act 2011 stands out as an example of an approach to CLD that adopts a niche framing. The Act bypassed and ignored the main levers in the system, such as planning policy, Homes England’s funds and powers, and HM Treasury and Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors guidance for disposals at less than best consideration. It created a set of toothless rights, and tools like the Community Right to Build Order that circumvents the normal planning process at greater cost and effort than a normal planning application.
Instead of building up these shaky superstructures to try and support a niche of community activity, we want to wire community agency and ownership into the system. To incentivise, or require, that councils and developers
and housing associations work in partnership with communities, not just in consultation with them. To give this nation of builders a toolkit.
Let planners allocate sites for CLD, and give more incentive for landowners to sell to communities. This might include a step in the Local Plan process for communities to propose ‘priority’ sites for allocation, ringfenced for CLD to meet specified local needs. Allow local authorities to take a more proactive role in acquiring sites to be taken forward in this way.
Require that the CLT model is used to steward assets not managed by the local authority. Within these large sites, provide opportunities for housing to be stewarded by CLTs, opening up more opportunities for self- and custom-build, including group approaches that might innovate in design or purpose, such as meeting specialist housing needs.
Give communities facing regeneration the right to gain a seat at the table, by ballot. Not only to have a veto on development, as in London (a welcome innovation), but to be able to codesign, own and steward some or all of what is redeveloped.
Tweak the affordable housing budget to forwardfund the pre-development costs of CLD. This could be done by capitalising the enablers which support dozens of CLTs each. The costs are largely knocked off the subsequent capital grant, so it is close to fiscally neutral, but would open up the affordable housebuilding game to providers other than the large well-capitalised housing associations.
Then, continue the investment that various governments have made, in fits and starts, over recent years by developing the market infrastructure to facilitate this. We have proposed a £150 million endowment to develop a self-sustaining body of expertise within the development industry, akin to those we see in many other European countries.
This is an agenda to write the Garden City principles into the heart of the national housebuilding strategy. It could both improve public support for housebuilding and, working with planners, help to raise quality and improve outcomes. Whether or not this approach is embraced probably comes down to culture. Can we embrace the power of communities, or will we continue to consign it, with a sneer, to its niche?
• Tom Chance is Chief Executive of the Community Land Trust Network. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 A Bibby: These Houses Are Ours. Gritstone Press, 2023
2 P Cholkar: ‘Bhoodan-Gramdan Movement: An Overview’. Webpage. Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal & Gandhi Research Foundation, 2024. https://www. mkgandhi.org/vinoba/anasakti/overview. php#:~:text=The%20Gramdan%20movement%20 fought%20against%20the%20process%20of%20the
3 L Applebaum, M Sofer: ‘The Moshav in Israel: An Agricultural Community in a Process of Change – A Current View’. In: JO Maos, I Charney (Eds.): Themes in Israeli Geography, 2012, pp. 194-209. Full text available to view at: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/236838186_The_Moshav_in_Israel_An_ Agricultural_Community_in_a_Process_of_Change_-_A_ Current_View
4 Roots and Branches: A Gardener’s Guide to the Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust –International Precursors. Webpage. International Centre for Community Land Trusts, Nov. 2019. https:// cltroots.org/the-guide/foreign-born-pioneers-precedents
5 State of the Community Land Trust Sector 2023 Community Land Trust Network, 2023. https://www. communitylandtrusts.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2023/03/State-of-the-Sector-2023-PRESS-1.pdf
6 T Archer, L McCarthy: Community-led housing and the speed of development: Briefing Note. Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research (Sheffield Hallam University), Oct. 2021. https:// nationwidefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2021/10/Speed-of-Development-Briefing-NoteFinal.pdf
7 T Archer, I Wilson: The Affordability of Community-Led Homes: Research Summary. Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research (Sheffield Hallam University), Dec. 2023. https://nationwidefoundation. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Affordability-ofCommunity-led-Homes-FINAL.pdf
8 N Kempson: Leading to Net Zero: Evidence review of communities pioneering low carbon standards. Hoyle Dean and Community Land Trust Network, Nov. 2021. https://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2021/11/Leading_to_Net_Zero.pdf
9 K McClymont, E Griffin, L Carmichael, R Marsh: Community-led housing and health: a comprehensive literature review. Research Institute Report No. 23, Power to Change, Oct. 2019. https://eprints.icstudies. org.uk/id/eprint/219/1/RI-23-Community-led%20 housing%20and%20health.pdf
10 K Scanlon, J Hudson, M Fernández Arrigoitia, M Ferreri, K West, C Udagawa: ‘Those little connections’: Community-led housing and loneliness. Report for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Nov. 2021. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk/media/619b67c98fa8f503764ed391/ Loneliness_research_-__Those_little_connections_.pdf
11 G Colquhoun: Housing by the community, for the community: An assessment of the value for money of community led housing in England. Capital Economics, 15 Sep. 2020. https://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2021/08/999-final-report-capitaleconomics-housing-by-the-community-for-thecommunity-sept-2020-2.pdf
12 T Chance: ‘How much social housing could CLTs build?’. Webpage. Community Land Trust Network, 2024. https://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/ news-and-events/how-much-social-housing-could-cltsbuild/
13 M Gove: ‘Long-term plan for housing: Secretary of State’s speech’. Webpage. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 24 Jul. 2023. https://www. gov.uk/government/speeches/long-term-plan-forhousing-secretary-of-states-speech
finding common ground
Eleanor van der Klugt investigates what it will take to build sufficient suitable homes with community support
In An Equal Music,¹ the protagonist pins the start of his father’s depression on the loss of the family home – the receptacle of collective family memory – to a compulsory purchase order for a new motorway. Although fictional, and only a passing reference to a partial family history in a book about music and love, this story is an important reminder of the deep emotional impact of changing people’s environments.*
Since winning the election in July, the new Labour government has set out ambitious targets for the delivery of new housing across England, with associated changes to planning policy being consulted on via a new consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). Housing targets have gone up and every local planning authority (LPA) is under increasing pressure to release land for housing. In particular, focus has been put on the possible release of ‘Grey Belt’ land, proposed in the
revised NPPF to be defined as previously developed land or any other parcel or area of the Green Belt that makes a limited contribution to the five Green Belt purposes.²
In many ways these are very positive changes; the housing crisis is on-going and there are certainly areas of the Green Belt which provide less biodiversity or visual landscape value than areas outside the Green Belt currently being considered for development.** In fact, there have been calls for a national review of the Green Belt for several years now (alongside a national plan); something the Conservatives avoided, possibly due to the number of their constituents who live within the Green Belt. That said, there is concern that these policy changes, if not carefully handled and strategically funded by central government, may result in an increase in poor quality development over the upcoming years that fails to address, and in fact
Freepik
Concerns about hazardous cladding persist
worsens, the affordability, climate and ecological crises. A recent article by sustainability consultancy, Bioregional, suggests that, for Labour’s policy to work in the long run, it is vital that net zero standards for housing are tightened and that truly sustainable development, which both improves building standards but also reduces the number of car-reliant dormitory towns, becomes a nonnegotiable feature of the planning process.³ And, given that these policy changes will one day lead to real world changes, what will the implications be for local communities?
A recent poll commissioned by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) showed that:
‘half of people who object to new housing in their local area would support them if the homes were affordable to people on average local incomes.’ ⁴
Likewise, a recent survey undertaken by the Office for National Statistics, using data from the opinions and lifestyle survey collected between September and October 2022, showed that 74% of adults in Great Britain aged 16 years and over said they were (very or somewhat) worried about climate change.⁵ Indeed, this was the second biggest concern facing adults behind the cost of living crisis, which in itself has significantly impacted upon the rental and homeownership housing markets.
Individuals and communities, whom we so often end up talking about in the abstract in the built environment sector, are alert to the issues facing, and being tackled by, the development industry. They are aware to a greater or lesser extent of the climate emergency and, especially, of the lack of affordable housing which may mean that they, or a member of their family, are unable to get onto the housing ladder or even find an affordable rental property near where they work. Many are aware of our over reliance upon the private car and anyone who has tried to take a train recently is aware of the high cost of tickets and the unreliability of our railways. More than that, people care deeply about where they live and, not unreasonably, they want any change that happens to be for the better, not for the worse. While ‘nimbyism’ (not in my backyard) certainly exists, most communities are not necessarily against development, they just do not want the current types of development they see popping up around their towns, villages and cities.
There is an unsurprising lack of trust in conventional development amongst communities. It is poorly located, poorly made and poorly serviced by public transport.⁶ It provides homes, but, especially in big cities and the South East, not at particularly affordable prices and it uses finite land resources wastefully and greedily with huge amounts of land within new developments (particularly rural developments) being taken up by tarmac and car parking spaces.⁷ It has been
estimated that if we continue to build to meet the previous government’s targets of 300,000 homes a year, embodied and operational emissions from housing would consume England’s entire cumulative carbon budget (1.5%) by 2050.⁸
There are horror stories too of those saddled with poorly built new builds which have significantly fallen in value or become unsellable due to major defects found after they were bought – cracked floors, inadequate damp proofing, lack of insulation, water ingress, and damaged structural floor beams.⁹ Then there are those who have discovered that their block of flats is clad in a similar type of potentially flammable cladding to that used on Grenfell Tower, resulting in them being unable to sell or, in the worst cases, having to move out of their own property due to fire safety concerns while being asked to shoulder the financial burden of recladding.10 Within the current context of the climate, cost of living and affordable housing crises, we cannot afford to use our valuable land resources foolishly and communities are increasingly aware of this.
The government has stated that local communities will only be able to focus on the ‘how, not if’ of homes and infrastructure being built.11 This could lead to a positive approach to community engagement going forward, reframing the process and narrowing the subject of consultation to focus positively on aspects of design, amenities, public realm and transport, rather than the existential and inexhaustible question of whether a development should exist in the first place. However, for this to work, there needs to be genuine choice in the ‘how’ aspect of building homes, particularly in rural areas where there tends to be less choice within the housing market.
To provide communities with high quality, sustainable homes, the government will need to support different forms of, and approaches to, house building which provide greater choice to communities:
• More ‘gentle density’ developments, with less space given over to the car so that land is used more efficiently.
• Support for developers who are building with genuinely sustainable materials.
• Developments with innovative transport strategies that move away from private car ownership.
• Opportunities for co-housing, community land trusts and alternative developments on infill sites which, whilst small, nonetheless create new standards and models.
Many of Labour’s policies are pointing in that direction (for example, new wording in the NPPF supporting a ‘vision-led approach’*** to promoting sustainable transport in new developments). However, they cannot be achieved in reality unless
funding in place to support these forms of development and national policies are translated down quickly to the local level. Businesses work within the parameters they are given and if these are not amended quickly, Labour’s housing push may simply give the green light to the large house builders to continue to build cheap, cookie-cutter homes in places dictated by their own business models rather than the places that are most appropriate for housing, most sustainable or where housing is most needed. This is unlikely to be what communities want, nor is it a sustainable and effective way of building for anyone apart from those housebuilders.
‘Embodied and operational emissions from housing would consume England’s entire cumulative carbon budget (1.5%) by 2050’
The proposed NPPF suggests that development on Grey Belt land will only be permitted if it delivers 50% affordable housing. It seems unlikely that this will be achieved in many instances unless there is also a change in approach to how affordable housing is built and secured. Building houses is an expensive business and relying purely on volume housebuilders to provide affordable housing is unlikely to result in these targets being hit in many cases, particularly if the government also wants to encourage smaller, newer small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) into the market. This may result in ‘Grey Belt’ developments stalling or in an exacerbation of the existing chronic underprovision of affordable housing against expected figures.
A further issue is that, while the current approach towards affordable housing provision does help provide homes for those most in need (i.e. on the local housing register), it does little to reduce the price of market housing which needs to be sold at a sufficiently high price to be able to subsidise the cost of the affordable homes. Labour has stated that it intends to grow LPA capacity to acquire, create and build more affordable homes themselves, but again this needs to be implemented quickly and with sufficient funding to make a real difference. If the Government truly wants to meet affordability targets, not just on Grey Belt land but elsewhere too, it needs to return to thinking of good quality housing as an investment in the UK’s infrastructure that deserves genuine government expenditure and leadership, not as a personal investment for individuals facilitated by the market.
Even if communities can comment only on the ‘how’ and not the ‘if’, the Government will still need to take them along with it. It will need to explain
why building new housing is important, linking it clearly to the climate, affordability and cost of living crises, and there will need to be a step change in engagement – a step away from village hall exhibitions to more involved forms of engagement which explain how a development will address affordability and climate concerns. Large public exhibitions only work if the community attends them, and they are more likely to attend them positively and collaboratively if they have already had a positive, more personable interaction with the developer. In order to build connections and gain an understanding of how the existing community functions, smaller, more interative engagement can be more effective when combined with direct engagement with existing groups within an area (for example, groups of local business, charities and other special interest groups). Draft plans can be shared in smaller group meetings for comment by community groups with a particular interest – for example, to protect local business or improve local cycle networks – and a follow up meeting can show how the comments have been incorporated, or if not incorporated, a clear justification for why not. Once these connections have been made, then it is more likely that larger events will be better attended, advertised locally by core contacts who at least feel heard, if not wholly supportive, or who see where the project may already align, or be encouraged to align, with their aims. This continuous, consistent, more circular engagement helps build trust and accountability and a more cooperative way of working on plans together. There is no doubt that this approach requires more intensive engagement which, in turn, requires a larger communication and engagement team than many developers have (or are willing to pay a consultant for), but to be able to persuade communities to accept the intended 1.5 million homes, communication and engagement around development needs to change and improve. There are often misconceptions about development
(particularly around traffic and cars), which can be addressed through discussion and good quality communication, engaging people around their fears and providing evidence and reassurance. Planning will always have a tension between bottom-up and top-down processes, between local communities who want to look after their areas in multiple different ways and national and local policies which require land to be used in other ways. Planners, developers and others in the built environment sector need to be able to think big, whilst never overlooking the minutiae of people’s everyday existence – the pedestrian crossing which you have to wait too long for, or the desire line that cuts through the centre of a piece of greenspace because the metalled paths are in the wrong place.
‘Communities will only be able to focus on the ‘how, not if’ of homes and infrastructure being built’
Acknowledging the tension and dissonance between bottom-up and top-down processes – the big picture of national housing need and the delicate miniature of local issues – is important. It is a tension that doesn’t need to exist, but is nevertheless unlikely to ever be fully resolved. Good quality engagement and conversation can offer a route through. If the government is going to ask communities to accept the level of development it is proposing, its needs to give communities something worth having: imaginative, affordable and truly sustainable development.
• Eleanor van der Klugt is currently Planning and Community Engagement Manager for Human Nature, a Sussex-based developer. She has experience working as an urban planner in both the private and public sectors. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 V Seth: An Equal Music. Phoenix House, United Kingdom, 8 Apr. 1999
2 The five purposes of including land within a Green Belt are: ‘a) to check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas; b) to prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another; c) to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment; d) to preserve the setting and special character of historic towns; and e) to assist in urban regeneration, by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land.’ National Planning Policy Framework. 19 Dec. 2023, par. 143. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-planning-policyframework/13-protecting-green-belt-land
3 L Knight: ‘NPPF consultation 2024 – what’s new?’. Webpage. Bioregional, 15 Aug. 2024. https://www. bioregional.com/news-and-opinion/nppf-consultation2024-whats-new#:~:text=The%20UK%20 government’s%20proposed%20reforms,changes%20 to%20Green%20Belt%20policies.
4 K Harrison: ‘Opposition to development halves if new homes are affordable poll finds’. Webpage. CPRE The countryside charity, 10 May 2024. https://www.cpre.org. uk/news/opposition-to-development-halves-if-newhomes-are-affordable-poll-finds/
5 C Ball, K Edser, B Windsor-Shellard: ‘Worries about climate change, Great Britain: September to October 2022’. Webpage. Office for National Statistics, 28 Oct. 2022. https://www.ons.gov.uk/ peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/ worriesaboutclimatechangegreatbritain/ septembertooctober2022
6 ‘Report highlights role of car-dependency in new housing developments’. Webpage. Royal Town Planning Institute, 7 Feb. 2022. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/ news/2022/february/report-highlights-role-of-cardependency-in-new-housing-developments/
7 Building Car Dependency: The tarmac suburbs of the future. Transport for New Homes, 2022. https://www. transportfornewhomes.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2022/02/Building-Car-Dependency-2022.pdf
8 SOSE zu Ermgassen, MP Drewniok, JW Bull, CM Corlet Walker, M Mancini, J Ryan-Collins, A Cabrera Serrenho: ‘A home for all within planetary boundaries: Pathways for meeting housing needs without transgressing national climate and biodiversity goals’. Ecological Economics, Vol. 201, Nov. 2022, 107562. https://www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0921800922002245
9 D Taylor: ‘‘I feel sick’: couple say new-build home turned into disaster valued at £1’. Webpage. The Guardian, 13 Jul. 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/ money/article/2024/jul/13/new-build-home-barratt-house
10 J Meek: ‘Market Forces and Malpractice: James Meek on the housing crisis’. Webpage. London Review of Books, 4 Jul. 2024. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/ n13/james-meek/market-forces-and-malpractice;
11 J Pickard, J Oliver, P Foster: ‘UK overhauls planning rules in race to build new homes’. Financial Times, 17 Jul. 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/1cc1d7d0-a0d84fbf-9602-dd272090a140
Editor’s Notes
* For a real world example, see the notes associated with R Hickman: ‘when you come to a fork in the road, take it?’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93(5), Sep-Oct., 322-324
** It is perhaps worthy of note that none of the five purposes of including land within a Green Belt are contingent upon the environmental or aesthetic quality of the land. So, a contaminated former railway goods yard or a pot-holed car park could nevertheless make just as important a contribution to these five purposes as species-rich wildflower meadows or woodland might. In short, Green Belt is not primarily an environmental designation. Moreover, NPPF paragraph 148 (c) makes provision for the identification of ‘areas of safeguarded land between the urban area and the Green Belt, in order to meet longer-term development needs stretching well beyond the plan period’.
*** Proposed NPPF paragraph 112 criteria a) and d).
planning enforcement: the lost decade – the service that came in from the cold?
Adam
Sheppard reviews the state of planning enforcement over
the
past 10 years and assesses its current preparedness for enforcing biodiversity net gain monitoring and compliance
In 2013, Town & Country Planning published ‘Valuing a service brought in from the cold’¹ –a short article reflecting upon the difficult circumstances that appeared to beset planning enforcement services in England. The article noted that:
‘The need for enforcement within the modern planning system is therefore recognised and accepted, and yet – physically, psychologically and structurally – planning enforcement has, historically, tended to be left somewhat out in the cold, occupying a position outside the core of local authority planning services.’
The article was written mindful of the transition from ‘development control’ to ‘development management’ as part of the wider ‘spatial planning’ agenda of the time. The discussion referenced potential opportunities from this transition for planning enforcement, particularly its positioning within development management, but identified significant issues around resourcing, profile, prioritisation, and support which were of concern. The article concluded:
‘Every effort must be made to ensure that planning enforcement does not once more slide off the radar and revert into a ‘Cinderella service’
that the people and developers have lost confidence in, that is under-resourced and under-performing, and that fails to deliver the backbone the planning system – and the nation – requires to ensure economic growth and positive place management.’
Following on from this article, in 2014, a piece of research was undertaken to determine the actual condition of planning enforcement services in England. Planning Enforcement England: At the Crossroads² and the TCPA article were both written in the period following the election of a new coalition government in 2010. This was a period of significant change, and the research report presented a stark picture of challenge. The report concluded:
‘Planning enforcement is under great strain; it appears under-resourced in many cases and lacking in profile and emphasis; issues of management and organisation are also present. These factors are impacting upon the effectiveness and robustness of planning enforcement services.’ ³
The research found that planning enforcement, as a process, system, and construct, is not
fundamentally problematic; the report notes that the overwhelming opinion of the participants was that the tools are available to deliver a proactive and robust planning enforcement function. Resources were central to the narrative; problematic management, structural and organisational circumstances could be related to a drive for wider organisational efficiencies, and a lack of profile and emphasis could similarly be linked to an emphasis upon other service functions in a context of limited resources.
‘The last decade of cuts has had a tangible and damaging impact on planning enforcement’
More fundamental resource issues were identified by some, too; a simple lack of staff was a clear issue in a number of local planning authorities (LPAs). These factors limited service performance, in particular a lack of monitoring and compliance activity, and a need to prioritise enforcement actions. Conspiring to reinforce the status of enforcement as the ‘Cinderella service’⁴ within planning, the report presented enforcement as being at a crossroads; a service with the theoretical ability to be impactful and successful, but in need of support, investment, and prioritisation to enable it to turn onto the more positive future path.
Fast-forward 10 years, and planning enforcement is facing the potentially significant demands of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) monitoring, compliance, and enforcement action. As critical now as ever before, are enforcement services in a better position than they were in 2014? Are they in a position to deliver what is now being asked of them?
Austerity and challenge
Enforcement sits in a wider context of LPA challenge; resources and capacity are stretched following an extended period of austerity, and planning has suffered an almost interminable period of reform and toxic criticism. The Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) 2023 State of the Profession report notes:
‘The planning system faces challenges across the UK. The cost of living and housing crises coincide with the rise of planning backlogs, the underfunding of local authority planning departments, and persistent labour shortages of planning professionals. In England, this is compounded by political uncertainty around “planning reform” on both sides of the aisle. These issues manifest as foregone construction of homes and infrastructure. Frustration with the state of the planning system also results in
personal attacks on professionals in public and social media.’ ⁵
Planning enforcement has been far from protected during austerity. The circumstances of the service appear to be as difficult now as ever they were, according to a 2022 RTPI research report, which states:
‘The RTPI conducted a survey with responses from 133 enforcement officers representing about a third of local authorities in England. The results were striking. 80% of respondents reported that there weren’t enough officers in their team to carry out the workload, 89% that their councils are currently experiencing a backlog, 73% that their authority had struggled to recruit in the last year and 96% supported central government funding for direct action. Under 50% of authorities now have the capacity to monitor compliance of conditions once successful enforcement action has been taken… Thus, the last decade of cuts has had a tangible and damaging impact on planning enforcement.’⁶
In the 10 years since ‘Valuing a service brought in from the cold’ and Planning Enforcement England: At the Crossroads matters seem, therefore, to have only become worse for some. At a time when more than ever is being asked of planning enforcement, the enforcement service situation has the potential to be hugely impactful upon planning and placemaking more widely. In particular, the aforementioned BNG could ask much of planning enforcement at a time when it is at a low ebb and poorly placed to respond. In consideration of the preparedness of the service to meet these new demands, the early signs are not good.
BNG and enforcement
BNG is undoubtedly a significant moment for planning. Although the outcomes and effectiveness of the current approach will take time to fully determine, the introduction of a legal requirement, as opposed to a policy which can be deployed with flexibility within the discretionary planning system, is important. This requirement will demand a rigorous approach to implementation, and government guidance supporting BNG makes it clear that planning enforcement will be responsible for compliance and enforcement response requirements. Without sufficient enforcement there is the potential here, as elsewhere, for system abuse, delivery (and cost) avoidance, a loss of credibility, and, ultimately, a failure to deliver BNG requirements fully.
The responsibility for monitoring will be part of the 30-year plan for each BNG proposition, and reporting on this will be via an ecologist. The response to any compliance issues and/or non-/ under- delivery will then sit with planning
enforcement. Earlier this year a report entitled Planning Enforcement: Biodiversity Net Gain preparedness was produced by Adam Sheppard (University of Birmingham), Amelia Rose and Frances Summers (BCP Council), and Scott Britnell (South Gloucestershire Council).⁷ This small scale research project, supported by the RTPI’s National Association of Planning Enforcement (NAPE) network for planning enforcement professionals, explored the preparedness of the enforcement profession within LPAs to operationalise the compliance and enforcement aspects of BNG. The research focused upon the dates where BNG was formally introduced as a legal requirement and raised key questions again about the positioning of the enforcement profession in local government in England.
Planning enforcement: biodiversity net gain preparedness
The research led by the University of Birmingham involved an online questionnaire followed by a focus group discussion. The questionnaire was completed by 72 LPA respondents, consisting of a mix of ecologists, planners, enforcement officers and managers. 78% of respondents were enforcement officers, with 11% working in development management more widely, and a minority of ecologists and policy officers. The focus group brought together a willing sub-group of participants to discuss some of the key findings of the questionnaire.
The data collected is stark. As to resourcing, 63% of respondents considered that their service was
not adequately resourced to meet current, preBNG, service demands. When asked about the ability to meet demands with the introduction of BNG, the outcome was of even greater concern, with 82% of respondents answering ‘no’ and a worryingly low number (3%) answering ‘yes’: Further issues were identified with measures to address this concern, with 95% of respondents stating they were not confident that the resource issue would be addressed in a timely manner.
The research further identified a lack of confidence in the skills, knowledge, and understanding of enforcement professionals to manage BNG related cases, with 79% feeling there was a shortfall and 88% considering that this would not be addressed in a timely manner. And from an organisational / systems approach perspective, 71% felt they were missing the necessary processes and systems to be effective in the early stages of operationalisation.
Guidance was also felt to be lacking at the time of the research being undertaken (late 2023 / early 2024), with 94% of respondents feeling there was inadequate guidance to support enforcement specifically. Additional guidance, from government and other stakeholders, continues to be published, but there still remains only limited enforcement specific guidance in place concerning BNG. Government guidance states:
‘Local planning authorities have a range of planning enforcement powers and have responsibility for taking whatever enforcement action may be necessary, in the public interest, in their area’.⁸
Do you feel your organisation’s planning enforcement service is adequately resourced to meet expected the further service demands specifically related to BNG in 2024 in addition?
University of Birmingham
Don’t know
How comprehensively do you feel your politicians understand, and are providing for through their decision making, the organisational and delivery implications of BNG within your planning enforcement service?
This has two significant implications: firstly that no new tools are expected for BNG enforcement and, secondly, that current approaches are considered appropriate for BNG purposes. Although this implies that no further support or guidance is required, the reality is that there is a need to develop (and share) knowledge and understanding with regards to how to use these existing tools for a new and, in some ways different, purpose.
In addition, the test for taking enforcement action remains grounded in the concept of public interest. This is, of course, different to ecological interest and raises potentially interesting questions about how and what enforcement action would be undertaken in different scenarios. In the extreme, the public interest could mean BNG is not delivered completely as planned via an enforcement decision in the public interest, thereby creating a scenario where a 10% legal requirement is breached via a discretionary planning decision. This is a singular example which highlights the potential complexities which will surround BNG enforcement, making the need for enforcement specific guidance, training, and support all the more pressing.
A further concern, mindful the above, is the lack of apparent faith that exists amongst the enforcement profession in their politicians. When asked how comprehensively they felt their politicians understand, and were providing for through their decision making, the organisational and delivery implications of BNG within their planning enforcement service, the results point to an overriding lack of confidence. The research found a mixed level of confidence in LPA leadership
in this regard, but when asked the same question about their political leaders, no respondents selected four or five (most) on the Likert scale used in the question.
The report found further concerns in relation to ecology resourcing and raised questions about very practical aspects of enforcement activities, including challenges around liability, land ownership and responsibility, serving notice, and how to approach redress where action is required. This interfaced with the earlier expressed concerns about the lack of specific guidance and adequate support for planning enforcement.
Although the research did find some positivity around what the future could bring, subject to the required support and guidance, there was an overriding concern about the preparedness of planning enforcement to respond to the needs of BNG.
Still at the crossroads?
Planning Enforcement: Biodiversity Net Gain preparadness was specifically concerned with BNG, but the issues identified reinforce the recent RTPI research and substantiate the argument that planning enforcement services are simply not resourced to the level required in many cases, and lack the support and prioritisation needed.
The BNG enforcement research did find LPAs who felt that they were in a good position generally, and specifically with regards BNG. But they were a minority. The majority view presents a service that is under-resourced, with inadequate support, and lacking the profile and prioritisation required. It is
University of Birmingham
therefore, inevitably, not necessarily in a position to deliver all that is asked of it to the standards and effectiveness desired, perhaps even required.
‘
Planning enforcement is facing the potentially significant demands of Biodiversity Net Gain’
Most critical of all is the fact that the recent RTPI and University of Birmingham led enforcement research both point to a service no better placed that it was a decade ago. The lack of progress since ‘Valuing a service brought in from the cold’ and Planning Enforcement England: At the Crossroads were published is notable. However, the fact that these pieces themselves reflected upon an extended period of challenge from which there was no adequate recovery, is truly damning.
‘Valuing a service brought in from the cold’ (2013) concluded by stating:
‘A properly working and trusted planning system requires a fully supported, robust and respected enforcement regime. In many respects, a good planning system is indivisible from good enforcement… So profound is its reach into our society that ensuring the regulation of the planning system must be, not least at this crucial time, one of the most significant issues facing the profession.’
The truth in this statement remains, and the demands upon enforcement services are perhaps greater now than they were in 2013. The wider context of local government and planning, arguably, is far worse.
Given all of the above, finding cause to be optimistic feels difficult. But, at least, a new government will bring about a new opportunity. A period of austerity, perpetual reform, toxic criticism, and significant economic, social, health and environmental challenges and events has left planning at a low ebb, and with it enforcement. But a new government brings a new and different audience with which to engage. Early signs perhaps give cause for hope; the King’s Speech included the government’s intention to improve LPA capacity, for example.
Planning enforcement is the critical backbone which gives planning rigour, credibility, legitimacy, and robustness – the case for a properly resourced and supported enforcement service and profession must be made in the hope that in another 10 years, the picture will be a little brighter.
• Adam Sheppard is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Birmingham. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 S Britnell, A Sheppard: ‘Valuing a service brought in from the cold’. Town & Country Planning, 2013, Vol. 82(6), Jun., 284-288
2 A Sheppard, S Britnell, J Cooke: Planning Enforcement England: At the Crossroads. UWE, Bristol, 1 Nov. 2014. https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/808669
3 Ibid., p. 27
4 case study: a stitch in time – managing planning enforcement. Planning Advisory Service and Advisory Team for Large Applications for the Improvement and Development Agency, KLM Press, Feb. 2008. https:// www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/ stitch-time-managing-plan-49d.pdf
5 G Csontas: State of The Profession 2023: The UK planning profession in numbers. Royal Town Planning Institute, 2023, p. 17. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/ media/16015/state-of-the-profession-2023-final.pdf
6 M Bauer: Planning Enforcement Resourcing: The scale and nature of resourcing challenges faced by enforcement teams. Research Paper, Royal Town Planning Institute, Nov. 2022. https://www.rtpi.org.uk/ media/13292/planning-enforcement-resourcing-reportfinal.pdf
7 A Sheppard, F Summers, A Rose, S Britnell: Planning Enforcement: Biodiversity Net Gain preparedness. University of Birmingham, 2024. https://research. birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/planningenforcement-biodiversity-net-gain-preparedness
8 ‘Biodiversity net gain: Planning practice guidance on biodiversity net gain. Biodiversity net gain is a way of creating and improving biodiversity by requiring development to have a positive impact (‘net gain’) on biodiversity’. Online guidance. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 1 May 2024. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/biodiversity-net-gain
Monitoring and enforcing biodiversity gain will have its challenges
Freepik
from weissenhof to IBA’27: international building exhibitions as (world) stages for innovation
Although relatively unknown outside the German speaking world, some international building exhibitions (IBA) have profoundly influenced international design styles and city and regional scale regeneration. Given the need to ‘push the boundaries of both conventional thinking and action’ to adapt to climate change and move quickly towards a circular economy and the creation of circular places, what role might the forthcoming IBA’27 StadtRegion Stuttgart play in changing the way we create and use buildings and places? Johannes Novy explains.
In 2027, visitors to Stuttgart and its surroundings will step into a fascinating experiment of urban reinvention. Throughout the region, they will encounter dozens of projects, some large, some small. Several will introduce innovative urban housing models or building typologies that combine industry with other uses. Others will breathe new life into aging monofunctional housing estates from the 1960s and 1970s, or pioneer novel solutions to re-energise struggling town centres and redevelop and densify locations around transport nodes. Many will showcase cutting-edge construction methods minimising environmental impacts and several will feature urban designs aimed at reimagining the region’s identity and forging new connections
between its built-up environment and remaining open spaces.
Of these projects, some will be completed, while others will still be in various stages of construction, reflecting the multiple recent and current crises impacting the property and construction sectors. All, however, will be energised by the IBA’27 StadtRegion Stuttgart,¹ an international building exhibition (IBA, from the German internationale bauausstellung) that celebrates the centenary of the famous Weißenhofsiedlung (Weissenhof Estate),² a housing estate built for the Deutscher Werkbund (the German Association of Craftsmen) exhibition Die Wohnung (The Dwelling) held in Stuttgart in 1927.
Legacy
Often celebrated as one of the first international building exhibitions (though it was never officially called that), the 1927 exhibition was not only a pivotal event for Stuttgart, putting the city on the map of global architecture. It was also a pivotal event for architecture itself,³ bringing together some of the most prominent avantgarde architects at the time to showcase their visions for affordable, efficient, high-quality housing and playing an instrumental role in popularising what would later be termed the ‘international style’. Of the original 21 buildings that made up the Weissenhof Estate, 11 still exist, including two buildings by Le Corbusier that have been declared world heritage sites by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).⁴
As part of the IBA, work is currently underway on a new visitor centre⁵ to be built at the entrance of Weissenhof, marking the first substantial change to the listed ensemble in decades and forming a spatial connection between the new IBA and its historical inspiration.
Spearheaded by the city and region of Stuttgart, the main ambition of the IBA’27 is to echo the 1927 event. That means not to merely theorise but to bring to life practical solutions to pressing built environment challenges through the realisation of
tangible model projects, ranging from state-of-theart buildings to entire neighbourhoods. It differs, however, in the way it goes about this. Overseen by Mies van der Rohe, widely regarded a pioneer of modernist architecture, the 1927 event involved a select number of handpicked architects including JJP Oud, Walter Gropius, Bruno and Max Taut, Le Corbusier and van der Rohe himself, showcasing their visions for the future of architecture on a single site.
The IBA’27 meanwhile has adopted a decentralised and collaborative approach. It covers the entire metropolitan area and actively involves residents and stakeholders in a collective effort to ‘reinvent the urban region’⁶ and develop practical and transferable solutions to a broad array of urban challenges.
History
It is peculiar that the IBA format – despite its international ambitions and the participation of renowned architects in many of the exhibitions that have taken place over the years – remains relatively unknown outside the German-speaking world. Originating in the early 20th century with the pioneering Art Nouveau project Mathildenhöhe⁷ in Darmstadt from 1901 often regarded as its first, IBAs stand out as an internationally unique planning and development tool.⁸ Unlike policy tools such as the World Expo or the European Union’s competition for a European Capital of Culture, there is no awarding body overseeing them and there are few if any formal rules that organising cities or regions need to adhere to. In fact, it was only in 2009 following the establishment of an ‘IBA Expert Council’ by the German government that a set of guidelines was first adopted in the form of a memorandum.⁹
While IBAs have predominantly taken place in Germany, recent iterations have expanded into Switzerland (IBA Basel, 2010-2020), the Netherlands (IBA Parkstadt, 2013-2021), and Austria (IBA Wien, 2016-2022), with each exhibition adopting a different form and thematic focus, reflecting the diverse ambitions, circumstances and challenges of the cities or regions that organised them. What all IBAs have in common is that they are time-bound events. Historically, as in the case of the Weissenhof, they concentrated around a single ‘exhibition’ year. More recent versions meanwhile typically span seven to ten years,10 with the final year serving as a climax and to showcase what has been achieved. To this day, physical architectural projects are what set IBAs apart from other formats, but this is not to say that their focus rests solely upon their delivery.
‘What remains an open question is how much international interest IBA’27 will generate’
Reflecting a more general trend in architecture, urban planning, and related fields, IBAs in recent decades have become increasingly processorientated. The focus is no longer solely upon what gets built. It now extends to pioneering, testing, and showcasing innovative planning tools and methods and on effecting enduring changes in local planning practices by creating a temporary ‘state of the extraordinary (or ‘emergency’) pushing the boundaries of both conventional thinking and action’ 10 and inspiring stakeholders and civil society to come together, reflect, learn and find common ground.
As a result, the years leading up to the final exhibition year have become increasingly important, a fact that is particularly evident in Stuttgart. Even before its official launch in 2017, the IBA had already engaged extensively with stakeholders and the wider public to forge its foundational memorandum of understanding11 and the years since have been marked by countless public events and collaborative formats, reflecting the IBA’s ambition to offer ‘open, dialogue-oriented format for everyone’.12
Knowledge exchange
In addition to the IBA’27, other exhibitions such as the recently completed IBA Heidelberg13 operate under the principle that effecting change requires bringing people along; that innovation thrives on collaboration, and that changing established planning practices and cultures necessitates changing how individuals engage with their environment and one another. At the same time, today’s collaborative approach is also driven by financial realities. Unlike earlier IBAs, which often had substantial budgets, modern exhibitions
project: multigenerational living in the ‘Urban Quarter 27’, Schorndorf
typically rely upon external partners to realise projects. In Stuttgart, for instance, the IBA delivers not a single project on its own. Rather, it called upon property developers, municipalities, community organisations and other stakeholders to propose projects after identifying its key objectives and priorities and developing a list of criteria. Once these projects are accepted, they receive support through guidance and know-how, but without any direct financial contribution.
Hundreds of projects were initially proposed and, at the time of writing, about 30 have been shortlisted as official IBA projects14 and are being realised in collaboration with the IBA. Additionally, there are dozens of other projects that make up a broader ‘IBA network’.15 Although developed independently from IBA’27, they too exemplify innovation in various forms. This could be through conserving resources in the use of space and materials; achieving minimal energy consumption during construction and operation, or inventively reorganising urban mobility.
This approach has not been without its challenges. In contrast with historical IBAs like the 1927 exhibition or, say, the famous 1957 INTERBAU exhibition16 in Berlin, the organisers of the IBA’27 have limited influence over the development of ‘their’ projects. Numerous projects have been cancelled, put on hold, or delayed – hardly surprising given the current difficult climate in construction and property development – casting doubt on the ultimate line-up to be presented in 2027.
Moreover, ensuring that all projects going forward adhere to the quality benchmarks set at the time they were awarded IBA status is a challenge, especially in light of recent increases in construction costs. Ultimately, the outcomes of IBA’27 will depend largely upon those it is intended to influence. Despite Stuttgart and its surroundings being wealthy and technologically advanced, the region’s architectural ambition has traditionally lagged behind its economic success. Against this
IBA’27
IBA’27
backdrop, the IBA’27s success hinges on the readiness of developers, politicians, bureaucrats, and other stakeholders to not only break from conventional paths and adopt innovative practices and perspectives, but also to remain committed to them in the face of adversity.
‘The focus is no longer solely upon what gets built. It now extends to pioneering, testing, and showcasing innovative planning tools and methods’
How successful IBA’27 has been will become clearer once it concludes in 2027 and the public can inspect what has been achieved. However, its impact is already palpable, as evidenced by the lively discussions that it has inspired, the collaborations and relationships it has helped establish, and the enthusiasm and interest it has generated in the region. With its climax still ahead, IBA’27 has already reached thousands of people through a multitude of events, spanning small workshops to large-scale conferences, and discussions are already underway about how to maintain this momentum after the exhibition has concluded.
What remains an open question is how much international interest IBA’27 will generate. By
design, IBAs aim to be international platforms. They not only seek participation from experts from around the world but also strive to attract international audiences and influence global debates. However, with the increasing number of IBAs of late, there is growing concern that this could diminish individual IBAs’ ability to attract the kind of global interest that previous exhibitions such as the aforementioned INTERBAU in Berlin; the IBA Emscher Park (1990-1999)17 or, of course, the Weissenhof (1927) were able to generate.
With the exception of the 1920s and 1930s, when the Deutscher Werkbund organised no fewer than six exhibitions bringing together radically new forms of housing, design and construction, building exhibitions were until recently a rather rare occurrence. However, since the turn of the millennium, there has been a notable increase in their frequency, with several events occurring back-to-back and even overlapping. Most recently, in late 2023, the Metropolregion München kickstarted its own IBA,18 bringing the total to ten since 2000 and underscoring the need for a discussion on the potential dilution of their impact.
At the same time, even without the recent flurry of IBAs it would be unreasonable to expect the Stuttgart IBA to replicate the global resonance achieved by forerunners like the 1927 event. The Weissenhof, emerging from a period of immense social and technological upheaval, captivated audiences worldwide with its radical vision. IBAs today rarely boast spectacles of radical, even
revolutionary architectural innovation. They rather present spectrums of possibilities, finely tuned to their particular contexts and balancing innovative fervour with practicality. The challenge current IBAs face is to showcase this shift in ways that capture the wider public’s imagination. This is no easy feat, especially considering today’s fast-paced, (social-) media-saturated environment and the abundance of other architectural events – festivals, biennales, you name it – vying for the attention of global audiences. However, while the IBA in Stuttgart has some time left to claim its share of the spotlight, this alone should not be the yardstick by which to judge it. The quality of the architectural output and dialogue it will have produced; the extent of lasting local change it will have achieved, and the innovative solutions to current urban challenges it will have trialled and inspired – these factors, not fleeting global attention, are the kind of metrics that will define its true success.
• Dr Johannes Novy is an urban planner, researcher, and author, based in London and Berlin. He works as a senior lecturer and course leader for the MA Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Westminster in London. As a member of its curatorial board, he acts in an advisory capacity for the Internationale Bauausstellung 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart (IBA’27). All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 ‘IBA’27 on the way to the exhibition year’. Press release. Internationale Bauausstellung 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgard GmbH. https://www.iba27.de/en/ home/#!
2 ‘Weissenhof Museum Im Haus Le Corbusier’. Website. https://weissenhofmuseum.de/en/siedlung/
3 R Pommer, CF Otto: Weissenhof 1927 and the modern movement in architecture. University of Chicago Press, 1991.
4 ‘Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung’. Webpage. Fondation Le Corbusier, 2019. https://lecorbusierworldheritage.org/en/maisons-de-la-weisenhofsiedlung/
6 ‘Internationale Bauausstellung 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart: Reinvention of an urban region’. Webpage. Internationale Bauausstellung 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgard GmbH. https://www.iba27.de/en/iba27/ the-iba27/
7 ‘The Mathildenhöhe – A Total Work of Art’. Webpage. Wissenschaftsstadt Darmstadt. https://www. mathildenhoehe-darmstadt.de/en/
8 N Adams, PL Pinch: ‘The German Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) and Urban Regeneration: Lessons from the IBA Emscher Park’. In: ME Leary, J McCarthy (Eds.): The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration. Routledge, 2013, pp. 230–241
9 ‘Memorandum on the Future of International Building Exhibitions’. Webpage. Internationale Bauausstellungen. https://www.internationalebauausstellungen.de/en/ibamemorandum/#:~:text=The%20IBA%20meets%20 IBA%20Network,the%20implementation%20of%20 an%20IBA
10 T Becker, M Hesse: ‘A Temporary Space Where Development and Planning Emergencies Meet? Notes on an International Building Exhibition (IBA) in the Cross-Border Territories of France and Luxembourg’. Planning Theory & Practice, 2021, Vol. 22(1), 148-154. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649357.2 020.1842588
11 Memorandum: IBA 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart – Outcomes of the IBA Platform Process. Wirtschaftsförderung Region Stuttgart GmbH (WRS). https://www.iba27.de/wp-content/uploads/ memorandum_iba_2027_english.pdf
12 ‘Internationale Bauausstellung 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart: IBA’27 belongs to the people’. Webpage. Internationale Bauausstellung 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgard GmbH. https://www.iba27.de/en/iba27/ the-iba27/
15 ‘Project structure: IBA’27 Network and IBA’27 Projects’. Webpage. Internationale Bauausstellung 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgard GmbH. https://www.iba27.de/en/ projects/project-structure/
16 ‘Berlin Interbau (1957)’. Webpage. Architectuul, 26 Aug. 2021. https://architectuul.com/architecture/berlininterbau-1957
17 ‘International Building Exhibition’. Webpage. Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord. https://www. landschaftspark.de/en/background-knowledge/ international-building-exhibition/
18 ‘The IBA Munich Metropolitan Region’. Webpage. International Building Exhibition Metropolregion Munich GmbH. https://iba-m.de/
strategic planning for the liverpool city region, 1944 to 2024
Chris Couch explores the history and future of regional planning for Merseyside
It is 80 years since the publication of the Merseyside Plan 1944¹ (MP) provided a framework for the post-war development of the Liverpool city region. For two decades the plan influenced infrastructure investment, housing and industrial locations. But by the early 1970s an updated strategy was required. In a much-changed world, work on a new Merseyside Structure Plan ² (MSP) began in 1972. Concentrating on urban regeneration and environmental protection, this plan shaped local planning policy for the next 20 years.
Notwithstanding the 1997-2010 Labour government’s investment in regional planning, the period since 2010 has been marked by an absence of strategic thinking about the conurbation. However, a new spatial development strategy (SDS)³ is now emerging.
By comparing these three plans, it is possible to see the evolution of strategic planning in the Liverpool city region,⁴ exploring changes in theoretical approach, concerns, methods, policies and achievements. This focus upon a single city region will, I hope, shed a strong light on the similarities and differences between these plans and the evolution of British strategic planning more generally.
Merseyside Plan 1944
By the 1940s there was a well-established body of theory in British town planning. According to Patrick Abercrombie the aim of planning was to create visually attractive, healthy and efficient urban environments.⁵ The Barlow Report⁶ called for balance in the regional distribution of economic growth, while the Garden Cities movement argued
for concentrating urban growth in well-planned satellite towns.
The government recognised that cities needed strong development plans and so, in 1943, Francis Longstreth Thompson (a consultant planner) was commissioned to prepare such a plan for Merseyside (Liverpool City Region). His aim was to co-ordinate policy for the development of the conurbation, improve living conditions and expand the local economy. This would be achieved through decongestion of the inner urban areas, improving urban structure, and concentrating growth ‘in the form of urban spurs with wide wedges of open land separating them’,⁷ predating a similar concept in the famous 1948 Copenhagen ‘finger plan’ by four years.⁸
Longstreth Thompson worked in consultation with the Merseyside Advisory Joint Planning Committee, so giving each of the area’s 24 local authorities opportunity to influence emerging policy. Nevertheless, the 72-page MP was clearly dominated by Longstreth Thompson himself, written in a technical but accessible style, occasionally using the first-person singular to express his opinion on policy issues.
The MP dealt with issues on a geographic basis:
• Central Merseyside (port, city centre and conurbation core).
• Detached towns (nearby industrial, mining and country towns).
• The rural area.
The MP acknowledged that a key driver of the local economy was the Port of Liverpool and that much of the economy of the central conurbation
was related to this. But existing industries could not provide sufficient employment for the whole working population and some 100,000 additional jobs would be needed, mainly coming from new light industries, which would require 1,150 hectares of additional industrial land. Its distribution was to follow the general principles of the MP: expansion around the docks and established industrial areas and the creation of new industrial estates with complementary residential development within growth corridors (spurs) at the periphery of the conurbation.
‘The scope of policy innovation in the draft SDS is severely constrained by national policies; economic circumstances, and by the policies and allocations in the existing Local Plans adopted by LCRCA constituent authorities’
A second issue concerned living conditions. In Liverpool alone 71,000 dwellings required replacement, and 5,000 hectares of land would be needed for additional housing within these same growth corridors, with further development accommodated as overspill elsewhere. Urban growth was to be compact and avoid areas of high-grade agricultural land. The coastal fringe and many countryside sites were also to be protected. The MP proposed considerable investment in new and improved roads, development and further electrification of the suburban railway system. It was argued that implementation of the MP would need the collective endeavour of all the local authorities concerned, to be achieved through a joint advisory or executive committee. The former would have no power to compel local authority action, so Longstreth Thompson expressed his own view:
‘I suggest that the best course to follow would be for the constituent authorities to set up a Joint Executive Committee for the express purpose of making a statutory Regional Plan…’ ⁹
Anna Couch
Figure 1. The Liverpool City Region.
Liverpool had by this time expanded well beyond its existing boundary and the corporation was keen to incorporate the contiguous urban areas of Bootle, Crosby, and Huyton into the city. But this did not address the issue of cross-Mersey links and the idea of a county borough of this size was rejected by the Local Government Boundary Commission as being too unwieldly. An alternative solution, much discussed at the time, was to create a Merseyside county council covering the area of the MP. While favoured by many of the smaller authorities, the idea was rejected by Liverpool Corporation.10 In the event, the existing pattern of local government remained in place for the next 30 years.
Overall, the MP was effective in shaping the growth of the conurbation over subsequent decades. The idea of expansion along growth spurs was innovative and proved to be reasonably robust. Large industrial estates and associated residential communities (such as at Halewood, Speke and Kirkby) developed broadly in line with this strategy. Further overspill was directed to expansion schemes in detached towns, such as Widnes and Ellesmere Port, later supplemented by New Towns at Skelmersdale and Runcorn. Outside of these areas, most open land was successfully protected from development. Many of the proposed arterial roads presaged today’s regional motorway network.
Merseyside Structure Plan
Despite the calls for establishing a county council for Merseyside in the 1940s, the area had to wait until 1974 for a national reorganisation of local
government to create a metropolitan county council for Merseyside. The county council would be responsible for preparing the MSP, whilst metropolitan district councils would handle most local planning. In mid-1972, ahead of the formal establishment of the county council, a ‘structure plan team’ began work on the MSP. Their approach differed from that of Longstreth Thompson, being informed by a ‘systems planning’ approach,11 new techniques in land-use & transportation modelling and a growing concern for social and environmental problems.
Although a draft MSP was completed by 1974, the final version was not approved until November 1980 and came into force in December 1980. The new county planning officer, Audrey Lees, encouraged a more substantial investigation of environmental issues than hitherto and the county became one of the first to employ planning officers directly qualified in ecology and nature conservation.
The most noticeable feature of the MSP was its cover: a cartoon map of Merseyside illustrating its main physical features, from coastal resorts to docklands and cathedrals. The idea was to create an inviting, accessible document with easy-to-read, well-illustrated text. The 170-page MSP was divided into 19 chapters. Following a brief introduction, problems and opportunities were summarised, and the strategy explained. Subsequent chapters dealt with individual topics: the economy, housing and so forth. Final chapters dealt with implementation, financial resources, and monitoring.
The MSP identified urban deprivation and disinvestment in inner urban areas while policy had hitherto encouraged growth at the periphery and in new and expanding towns. The social and physical capital of the inner city was being underused whilst outward growth constantly required investment in new infrastructure and services: an inefficient use of economic resources, as well as socially and environmentally damaging. The strategy therefore proposed to concentrate future investment and development within the urban county and particularly in those areas with the most acute problems, while development at the periphery would be severely restricted.
This was a significant shift in policy that relied upon the idea (or hope) that substantial streams of public and private investment could somehow be redirected to the inner urban areas. This would require not only a change in land-use plans but also shifts in national government policy and the mind-set of private investors.12 Land would be provided for industry, with the re-use of derelict sites within the existing urban area being prioritised. Other policies were to protect the regional status of Liverpool city centre; to encourage development in other existing centres and not to permit out-ofcentre retail developments. Reflecting changes in
Alchetron, CC
Francis Michael Longstreth Thompson CBE FBA
societal attitudes and government policy, large-scale slum clearance was ended and replaced by housing improvement. Notwithstanding substantial housebuilding in the preceding decades, additional housing was still needed, with land for around 60,000 additional dwellings required by 1986. There was to be a particular effort to attract private housing developers into inner urban areas.
Peripheral development would be limited by the designation of a ‘Green Belt’ around the existing urban area and high-quality agricultural land protected. Local urban environments were to be enhanced, greened and better managed. Nature conservation, the control of environmental pollution and promotion of countryside recreation was a priority. In transport policy, the ambition was to improve public transport, complete the strategic highway network and minimise conflict between traffic and the environment.
It was recognised that the MSP would only be successful if the local authorities, government, statutory undertakers and the private sector worked closely together. Beyond land use planning, implementation would require increased investment in local economic development, housing and area improvement, land reclamation, the environment, and transport.
Perhaps the principal outcome of the MSP was a much stronger commitment from government to urban regeneration within Liverpool and other British cities, and a strengthening of the urban
containment strategy that had been a hallmark of British planning policy for many decades. While the Labour government of the late 1970s accepted the analysis and social concerns of Merseyside County Council and their equivalents in other conurbations, the incoming Conservative government of 1979 took a different view. Although they too strongly supported urban regeneration and invested heavily in the process, theirs was a more ‘property-led’ approach emphasising uplift in property values as a key measure of success.13
Nevertheless, subsidised derelict land reclamation (including a Merseyside Development Corporation), inner area improvements and implementation of the Merseyside Green Belt, turned the tide of new investment away from the periphery and towards the inner city. Despite the abolition of metropolitan county councils in 1986, and many adjustments to regeneration policy, government remained committed to supporting these policies well into the 2000s, by which time the county was seeing a significant shift from the disurbanisation of the 1970s to reurbanisation and growth.14
Towards a spatial development strategy for the Liverpool City Region up to 2040.
While the New Labour governments of the 2000s did little to restore a conurbation-wide scale of planning, they did develop a regional level of governance and regional spatial strategies including,
The Mersey Belt authorities in grey
in 2008, a North West of England Plan (also known as Regional Spatial Strategy 13 (RSS13)).15 RSS13 set out a broad vision for sustainable regional development, including a call to concentrate growth within the ‘Mersey Belt’. In 2010 the incoming Conservative / Liberal coalition government rejected this whole framework of regional planning, leaving only a series of business-led local enterprise partnerships to promote economic development, although legislation did provide for ‘combined authorities’ to be established in some areas to deal with this deficiency in planning at the ‘larger-thanlocal’ scale. This was a particular problem in relation to the conurbations.
The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) was established in 2014 and comprises the leaders of the five Merseyside district councils (Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, Wirral) together with Halton (formerly in Cheshire). Led by an elected mayor, it is required to produce a spatial development strategy (SDS) to provide a strategic framework for planning in the constituent authorities. Thus, the SDS is very similar to the former MSP. A consultation draft of the plan was published in late 2023. This 216-page document is divided into eight chapters:
• introduction;
• background;
• vision and objectives;
• spatial strategy;
• spatial priorities;
• development principles;
• implementation, and
• monitoring.
The ‘background’ chapter includes a brief history of the conurbation and lists strategic problems including poor environmental quality, inadequate housing, low household incomes and poor health.
Within an overall vision to create a fairer, stronger, cleaner city region, more detailed objectives include tackling climate change, reducing health inequalities, increasing economic prosperity, creating sustainable places and communities, and maximising social value from development. It is argued that these objectives will be achieved by supporting ‘transformational’ growth, expanding key sectors in the economy, industrial clusters and networks. A range of ‘sub-regionally significant’ housing sites and smaller local sites will be provided to deliver ‘high-quality’ homes. It suggests that 83,600 new homes and 521 hectares of employment land are needed. New development will be focused upon existing urban areas and the re-use of previously developed land. Previous regeneration programmes are to be built upon and expanded with targeted investment in the most deprived areas. Connectivity (both physical and digital) will be improved with investment in the strategic infrastructure required to support growth.
Green and blue infrastructure and the public realm will be protected and enhanced. Further, there is to be an emphasis on the mitigation, adaptation, and long-term resilience to the impacts of climate change, with support for low carbon and energy efficient development, sustainable travel, and environmental protection.
Following the pattern established in previous plans, the SDS divides the city region into zones:
• Liverpool city centre.
• inner urban area.
• wider urban area.
• rural city region.
Liverpool city centre’s role as a regional centre is to be protected and strengthened. In the inner urban area, the focus is upon tackling deprivation, environmental improvement, and economic regeneration. The wider urban area will play a key role in sustaining economic growth, with the development of strategic housing and employment sites and infrastructure projects. In the rural city region, there is support for rural economic development, diversification and a range of environmental and quality of life benefits for local communities.
Following the spatial strategy, a set of ‘development principles’ is proposed: theme-based policies to be applied in plan making and development management across the city region. Here more detail is provided on policies for climate change mitigation and adaptation, sustainable and inclusive communities, economic prosperity, promoting health and well-being, sustainable transport, design quality and so forth.
The draft SDS says little about implementation except to suggest the preparation of supplementary planning guidance on a number of these development principles, for example, health impact assessments, and safer placemaking. The draft SDS recognises a need to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the plan over time.
On the one hand, this is an impressive plan in terms of its engagement with the modern planning
agenda, concerned as it is with climate change, environmental and social awareness. On the other hand, the space for city-regional planning today is constrained from above by the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)16 and other government policies, and from below by the pre-existing policies of the six constituent authorities, not least in their approved Local Plans and spending programmes. As a result, much of the SDS is expressed in aspirational terms (‘supporting’, ‘encouraging’, ‘expecting’, ‘protecting’), or in broad concepts (‘high quality homes’ or ‘high quality employment’), or in the restatement of existing local policies and programmes. The document itself also seems unnecessarily long and quite repetitive in parts.
Comparisons
Have these plans been useful additions to the planning process? Is strategic planning at the city-regional scale beneficial? According to Ian Wray, Honorary Professor and Fellow at the Heseltine Institute, University of Liverpool: ‘Strategic planning... supplies a sense of direction. It promotes long-term thinking, rather than short-termism... [and]… underpins investment across many sectors.’ 17
Investments in all aspects of the built environment benefit from the security and confidence that long-term strategic planning can supply. In the view of Longstreth Thompson, the purpose of strategic planning was to coordinate policy and provide a framework for mutual agreement between local authorities and others on the future of the conurbation and to strategically direct development and growth.
Similarly, the purpose of the MSP was to provide a framework for local planning and to guide public and private investment. One of its fundamental aims was to boost private sector confidence to invest in inner urban areas. Today, the draft SDS claims to be about outlining long-term ambitions for the structure of the city region and providing a framework that will encourage and direct (mainly) private sector investment. Additionally, it might also be said to be about restoring government’s own confidence in the benefits of strategic planning at a ‘larger than local’ scale. Where the SDS goes somewhat further than previous plans is in its more explicit establishment of ‘development principles’ to be applied in subsequent planning policy and development management. Thus, at each period there have been clear reasons for, and benefits advanced for planning at the city-regional level:
• providing a long-term vision of urban structure;
• co-ordination of local planning and policy, and
• providing a framework within which public or private investment could be made with confidence.
Each plan has had a different approach to the question of urban form. The MP advocated urban containment and the control of urban sprawl, whilst concentrating growth along urban spurs with wide wedges of open land between. The MSP favoured a more restrictive policy, concentrating investment and development within existing urban areas, whilst limiting development at the periphery, including robust Green Belt boundaries. The draft SDS is more ambivalent regarding urban form. Although it calls for development to be focused in existing urban areas and maintains the Green Belt, it also proposes a range of ‘sub-regionally significant’ housing and industrial sites, some of which are likely to be on currently open land.
‘In Liverpool alone 71,000 dwellings required replacement, and 5,000 hectares of land would be needed for additional housing’
The protection of built heritage and natural environments was in its infancy in 1944, but by 1980 the MSP was at the forefront of urban policy development in environmental protection. The draft SDS takes on board contemporary thinking across these fields and adds an important policy dimension in promoting sustainable development more broadly and responding to climate change. Similarly, the MP only addressed social issues in terms of housing conditions and the provision of education, health and social facilities (in themselves, very important contributions). In contrast, social deprivation was a major policy driver behind the MSP (particularly its economic dimensions), whilst the draft SDS fully embraces contemporary debates on these issues.
The MP was commissioned in 1943 when ‘planning’ was in its conceptual and practical ascendency. There was little in the way of national planning guidance and most local authorities were yet to formulate their development plans. This gave Longstreth Thompson considerable leeway regarding the scope and content of his plan, with few constraints. The hope was to reconstruct the city and accommodate new growth in environments that were more attractive, healthier and more efficient than hitherto. This was to be achieved largely through public investment or publicly guided private investment. However, by the time of the MSP in 1980, planning had a more tarnished image and most housing, industrial and commercial investment was being delivered by the private sector. Thus, planning had by then become more about influencing private investment and less about directing public investment. Today, the political environment is more hostile to planning, and the scope of policy innovation in the draft SDS is
severely constrained by national policies; economic circumstances, and by the policies and allocations in the existing Local Plans adopted by LCRCA constituent authorities. The implementation of the SDS will need to rely heavily upon collaboration with the LCRCA constituent local authorities and, through negotiation and advocacy, its influence upon private sector investment.
Each plan has been based upon the planning theory of its time. The 1944 Merseyside Plan saw the county mainly in physical terms and responded to predicted changes by planning the location and scale of infrastructure and development. By the time of the 1980 Merseyside Structure Plan the methodology of planning had been strengthened by systems thinking, land-use transportation modelling, and public participation, while its aims were now informed by a stronger awareness of socio-economic and environmental issues. The draft SDS adds the need to respond to climate change and to create a greener, more socially equitable and sustainable city region.
Thus, there is a consistency in the aims of planning that can be seen to be growing and developing in each of these plans as new challenges emerge and new methods of planning evolve. This is good to know. Regardless of the challenges to planning from those who are unwilling to recognise the need to exercise control over the social and environmental costs of development, or are only interested in private gain, strategic planning remains an essential tool in improving the efficiency, health, and sustainability of the modern city. The theoretical aims of the founders of modern urban planning still hold good and can still be found, albeit developed and recrafted to reflect contemporary challenges and societal values, in strategic planning today.
• Prof. Chris Couch is Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at Liverpool John Moores University and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool. The author wishes to thank his colleague Steven Fowles for his comments on a draft of this article. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 FM Longstreth Thompson: The Merseyside Plan. HMSO, Jan. 1945
2 AM Lees: Merseyside Structure Plan: written statement. Merseyside County Council, 1 Jan. 1980
3 Towards a Spatial Development Strategy for the Liverpool City Region up to 2040. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, 2023. https://www. liverpoolcityregion-ca.gov.uk/sds
4 For a discussion of the recent urban history of the conurbation see O Sykes, J Brown, M Cocks, D Shaw, C Couch: A City Profile of Liverpool. Cities, 2013, Vol. 35, 299-318. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/abs/pii/S0264275113000395
5 P Abercrombie: Town and Country Planning. Oxford University Press, 1933. https://archive.org/details/ towncountryplann0000aber_e2a9/page/n5/mode/2up
6 Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population: Report. Cmnd 6153. HMSO, Jan. 1940. https://archive.org/details/b32179340/mode/2up
7 FM Longstreth Thompson: The Merseyside Plan HMSO, Jan. 1945, p. 5
8 For a description of the Copenhagen finger plan, see: P Hall, M Tewdwr-Jones: Urban and Regional Planning: Fifth edition. Routledge, 16 Nov. 2010, pp. 204-205. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/ mono/10.4324/9780203861424/urban-regional-planningpeter-hall-mark-tewdwr-jones-peter-hall
9 FM Longstreth Thompson: The Merseyside Plan HMSO, Jan. 1945, p. 52
10 ‘The Plan for a Merseyside County Council’. The Manchester Guardian, 1 Oct. 1947
11 JB Mcloughlin: Urban and regional planning: a systems approach. Faber, 1969.
12 C Couch: City of Change and Challenge: Urban Planning and Regeneration in Liverpool. Ashgate, 2003.
13 Ibid.
14 C Couch, S Fowles: ‘Metropolitan planning and the phenomenon of reurbanisation: the example of Liverpool’. Planning Practice and Research, 2018, Vol. 34(2), 184-205. https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/ eprint/10364/1/Metropolitan%20planning%20and%20 the%20phenomenon%20of%20reurbanisation%20 the%20example%20of%20Liverpool..pdf , and S Dembski, O Sykes, C Couch, X Desjardins, D Evers, F Osterhage, S Siedentop, K Zimmermann: ‘Reurbanisation and suburbia in Northwest Europe: A comparative perspective on spatial trends and policy approaches’. Progress in Planning, 2021, Vol. 150, 100462. Reurbanisation and suburbia in Northwest Europe: A comparative perspective on spatial trends and policy approaches (sciencedirectassets.com)
15 North West of England Plan – Regional Spatial Strategy to 2021. Government Office for the North West, TSO, Sep. 2008. https://archive.org/details/ northwestofengla0000unse_p9o3
16 Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities: National Planning Policy Framework 19 Dec. 2023. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/nationalplanning-policy-framework
17 I Wray: ‘The uses of strategy’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93, Jan-Feb., 17-21
from housing targets to the grey belt
Amy Penrose unpacks the latest planning reforms
Planning continues to be a hot topic for the government, which has been keen to claim that it started to reform planning within its first 100 days in office. Since June 2024, the de facto ban on new onshore wind has gone; Angela Rayner MP, secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, wants local planning authorities (LPAs) to to look at their Green Belt and perhaps most notably, a National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) consultation was launched.
Arriving just in time to become the latest holiday accessory, the draft NPPF and accompanying written ministerial statement set out the government’s ‘first step of a bigger plan’. The draft NPPF does not replace the December 2023 version until it is formally adopted. Since the consultation ended on 24 September 2024, the ‘thousands and thousands’ of responses are being considered. Headline grabbing proposed changes to the planning regime are detailed below:
A new standard (method)
The standard method governs how local housing targets are calculated. If enacted, the proposed changes would increase the UK’s overall annual housing target from 300,000 to 370,000. Only 234,400 net additional homes were built in 2022-2023.
This proposed change has already created challenges for Local Plan making. Many a Local Plan will be delayed whilst LPAs scratch their heads as to how to accommodate more homes should the new standard method come into force. This could be the case where current Local Plan proposals fully meet the projected housing need calculated
using the current standard method or where one LPA needs to absorb another LPA’s unmet need. A possible risk (as currently drafted) is that homes are pushed through the planning system in inappropriate areas with inadequate infrastructure and resources to support development. If there is no up-to-date Local Plan, then the ‘tilted balance’ applies, meaning that there is a greater prospect of unallocated land being developed.
‘Encourage LPAs to enter into public-private joint ventures with landowners or developers, thereby sharing the costs (and benefits) of development’
The government has also warned of intervention if ‘necessary to drive progress – including taking over Local Plan making directly’. LPAs may find themselves committing already stretched resources into revising a draft Local Plan or may decide to delay Local Plan production until after a final version of the revised NPPF is published.
Embracing the grey
The draft NPPF (ironically) adds colour to the government’s Grey Belt concept. Grey Belt is proposed to be defined as:
‘land in the Green Belt comprising previously developed land and any other parcels and/or areas of Green Belt land that make a limited contribution to the five Green Belt purposes (excluding areas or assets of particular importance)’
Newly identified Grey Belt sites could be released for development subject to meeting certain criteria – including at least 50% affordable housing delivery and necessary infrastructure improvements.
Foot on the accelerator
On 29 August 2024, a ‘new homes accelerator programme’ was announced, with the aim of speeding up the delivery of homes ‘stuck in the planning system or partially built’. It appears to be similar to plans announced by the Conservative government in September 2023 for a planning ‘super squad’, which aimed to deliver large-scale developments with the assistance of £13.5 million of funding.
What are the principal barriers to development?
Viability – without straying into the complex territory of benchmark land values and developer profit margins, figures in a viability appraisal are largely theoretical and may not reflect actual development costs. This is particularly relevant for material and labour costs, which have fluctuated wildly over recent years. Permissions may be shelved or abandoned due to limited (or nonexistent) financial returns.
The draft NPPF has already spooked some developers. Britain’s largest housebuilder, Barratt Developments, has already pulled four active planning applications due to the 50% affordable housing requirement rendering the schemes ‘unviable due to the unacceptably reduced (or removed) land value for the landowner’.
Proposals to boost affordable housing or to set a benchmark land value for use in viability assessments, may deter development altogether.
Proposals to remove hope value from compulsory purchase compensation for certain schemes so that no land value uplift is created once planning permission is granted compound this. Another incentive for landowners to promote schemes, including the government’s proposed New Towns, would be removed.
Developers picking up the tab – developers are commonly required to contribute to meeting public needs – social housing, health and education facilities, public transport, highways, active travel and biodiversity gain, to name but a few. This is an indirect tax on development. Such large and uncertain financial burdens create risk and can make schemes unattractive to investors and funders.
High risk with no guarantee of reward – it is not unusual for large schemes to take more than a decade to go from inception to (potentially) achieving permission. This creates a high risk position, which would be made even riskier if the
government introduces its proposed changes to compulsory purchase compensation.
Addressing barriers in a time-effective manner
Splitting the bill – the government could encourage LPAs to enter into public-private joint ventures with landowners or developers, thereby sharing the costs (and benefits) of development. One step further would be government incentives for schemes that would deliver ‘in need’ public benefits, or for the public sector to fund infrastructure need not directly created as a result of development.
Development orders – whether they be local, neighbourhood, mayoral or street vote, development orders can be used to grant planning permission for specified development in a specified area, subject to conditions. Development orders have the effect of de-risking development by providing greater certainty whilst also helping to achieve a more strategic and holistic approach to development. Local development orders in particular could be utilised to bring forward New Towns.
‘Proposed changes would increase the UK’s overall annual housing target from 300,000 to 370,000’
Stabilise supply chains – planning permissions must mature into completed development. Government must ensure that the cost and availability of materials, vital infrastructure (water and energy) and skilled workers does not cause development to be stalled or abandoned before or following commencement.
Government should not alienate the private sector. Otherwise, landowners and funders may choose to wait for greater regulatory certainty or a more favourable market under a future government. Existing mechanisms should be utilised before committing to swathes of new legislation, which could take years to come into effect.
• Amy Penrose is an associate at law firm Farrer & Co. All views expressed are personal.
new villages for a sustainable countryside
A radical rethink of our current approach to housing and development in rural areas to enable the building of carefully designed, community-focused new villages could provide much-needed affordable housing, support rural economies and help to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies, says Tony Woodward
Ebenezer Howard wrote Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform¹ in response to what he witnessed at the end of the 19th century: the severe overcrowding and dreadful slum conditions experienced by people relocating to towns and cities, and the depopulation of the countryside. He identified the economic conditions driving this shift and the way in which the rise in land values that resulted from an increasing urban population passed into the hands of a small group of private landowners, rather than to the people whose relocation actually generated this increase in value. In his proposals for creating Garden Cities, Howard recognised the need to build not just better housing but whole communities, the importance of public space and facilities, and the need to establish a viable economic system, within and beyond this new community.
Much has changed since, with towns and cities across the UK having successfully tackled many of the challenges of overcrowding, slums and poor sanitation. Several New Towns were built, following broadly the principles that Howard outlined. Planning has focused primarily on the process of change in urban areas – creating new settlements and redeveloping existing towns and cities. In contrast, planning in the countryside seems to have been focused almost entirely upon preserving the status quo – protecting the land from development. This article questions some assumptions around
rural planning policies and proposes a radically different approach, primarily in response to the climate and nature crises that we are facing, but also to address the chronic shortage of affordable housing.
The need to do things differently
Depopulation of the countryside began in the mid-18th century and was still seen as a major issue by Howard at the end of the 19th. Depopulation continued throughout the 20th century.² Progressive mechanisation and transformation of agricultural practices largely compensated for a shrinking workforce and, together with the globalisation of the food industry, an ever-increasing supply of food to wealthy nations was secured.
However, the plentiful supply of relatively cheap food has come at an enormous price that we are only just now beginning to understand. Modern agricultural practices are a major factor in the catastrophic collapse in biodiversity, soil quality decline, and waterway pollution, and also have a global impact in relation to climate change.⁴ The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that climate change and biodiversity loss are being caused by human activity, including agriculture. Unless we dramatically change how we do things, the future for humanity and for much of the life on our planet
looks very bleak.⁵
For some people these threats seem a long way off, and they instead focus on the more immediate challenges of finding an affordable place to live and keeping warm, while earning enough to pay the rent (or the mortgage if they are lucky) and put food on the table. Even for those who own their own home and enjoy a secure income, living a sustainable lifestyle in our existing urban and suburban environments is an everyday challenge. We desperately need to build not just more homes, but very different homes from those currently being built. New blocks of one- and two-bedroom flats in urban areas are an efficient use of valuable urban land, but they are often sold off as ‘investment opportunities’. Even at 80% of market value, they remain unaffordable for many people wanting to buy their first home.
Large-scale residential development is too often focused upon profiting from land value uplift, rather than upon creating the homes that people need. Although the statutory framework is very different from that of Howard’s time, the issue of who benefits from land value uplift remains. There is also an ongoing tension between providing more new homes and the need to preserve greenspaces around our towns and cities. This tension comes at exactly the point in time when the vital importance of accessible greenspace to human wellbeing is being rediscovered.⁶
Town planners and local planning authorities increasingly recognise the connection between the nature of the built environment and people’s capacity to live more sustainably, with the emergence of various initiatives to encourage ‘local living’. However, as Howard noted, it is difficult to create an orderly new structure when there are numerous existing constraints, and people do not always respond well to change. Retrofitting our
existing housing stock is an enormous challenge, but we are still building homes that do not meet zero-carbon standards.
Our open countryside is under threat from developers, whilst farmers are struggling to increase production and make their farms economically viable. Maximising food production using current methods will only accelerate the already catastrophic loss of biodiversity. In addition, agricultural labour shortages lead to food being left to rot in the fields and to long-established orchards being dug up because there is no-one available to pick the fruit.
Despite the increasing number of well publicised initiatives to introduce more sustainable food production, they are relatively small in scale, and most agricultural land continues to be farmed in ways that cause serious harm to the climate and biodiversity. The impacts of climate change will disrupt agricultural production globally. Consequently, the UK will need to significantly increase the amount of food it produces – but in a way that does not damage the environment. It is surely time to follow in Ebenezer Howard’s footsteps by considering radical new initiatives in response to the multiple crises that we face. In doing so, we will need to challenge many preconceptions about what is going on in our countryside.
Rethinking housing in rural areas
It is commonly assumed that the majority of people should live in towns and cities because we need to protect rural areas from development. The proportion of the population living in the countryside has been in decline for over 200 years. The current rural UK population is 9.7 million, more than 50% of whom live in rural towns and more than 25% is aged over 65, compared with 17% in urban settings. Half a million people live in remote areas – less than 1% of the UK population.⁷
‘Rather than maximisation of profit, the primary goal should be to create a healthy and sustainable environment for both people and wildlife’
With an ageing population, a shortage of affordable housing and a lack of well-paid year-round employment opportunities, the rural economy is struggling. Many long-established villages are in decline. In 2011, it was reported that nearly 300 pubs and 400 village shops were closing each year.⁸ The buying-up of rural properties as second homes has only added to the pressure for young people to move away.
Proposed distribution of greenspaces in Milton Keynes New Town (1970)
One reason for the high levels of opposition to development in rural areas lies in their nature, which often takes the form of a suburban housing estate dropped into the rural landscape, with no regard for the surrounding natural environment. They are often isolated, with no new community services or infrastructure, and built on the assumption that residents will use their car to travel somewhere else to access employment, retail, education and other services. There is also a valid concern about preserving the unique character of our historic rural settlements.
‘The plentiful supply of relatively cheap food has come at an enormous price that we are only just now beginning to understand’
Proposing the large-scale resettlement of rural areas – in new villages – might seem like a nonstarter, but it is both feasible and desirable to create new communities on some areas of land currently used for agriculture. With thoughtful design, new villages could not only provide much-needed, truly affordable housing, but also deliver a significant improvement in biodiversity when compared with the current agricultural use of the land.
New communities of around 1,000 families would be large enough to support a range of local services, including a small primary school, health care facilities, shops and hospitality venues, but small enough to enable people to know and support each other, all while supporting the local environment. If designed to be as resilient and self-sufficient as possible, they would reduce demand on local and national infrastructure. As well as helping to reduce the causes of climate change and biodiversity loss, they would be in a better position to respond to the threats posed by the more extreme weather events that will inevitably result from the changing climate.
A radically different approach must be taken to the process of development. Rather than maximisation of profit, the primary goal should be the creation of a healthy and sustainable environment for both people and wildlife. An extensive ecological survey that includes soil quality, along with information on how the land has been used, would establish a baseline against which to measure outcomes and improvements. The next stage would be to identify improvements to soil and biodiversity that could be achieved through the creation of new habitats and the introduction of more environmentally friendly ways of growing food. The villages would then be designed around the outcomes of the ecological survey, ensuring that important existing habitats are
preserved, and new habitats created.
A key feature of new villages would be a very different model of homeownership. All the land and buildings would be owned jointly by the community, through a community land trust (CLT). All residents would be members of the CLT with, except under exceptional circumstances, security of tenure. The whole community would be the beneficiaries of any increase in the value of the land and other assets in the village.*
Developers, mortgage providers and insurers all tend to favour the use of traditional building materials for homes, even though they are slow and expensive to build, use large amounts of environmentally damaging materials, such as concrete, and are often poorly insulated. Moving away from volume housebuilders would offer an opportunity to employ newer, more environmentally friendly construction technologies. Insuring ‘non-standard’ construction can be a significant barrier to innovation. However, the CLT would be able to insure the whole village, avoiding the need for individual buildings insurance policies.
Building a large number of houses in one location would generate savings through bulk purchasing. A wide variety of different styles and types of housing, from one-bedroom accommodation through to larger family houses would be built, but all would maximise the use of natural materials and meet the highest standards of insulation.
Development would offer an opportunity for a new generation of architects, such as those in the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN),⁹ to put their ideas into practice. The variety of housing options would give people living in the village the opportunity to move within the village as their housing needs change. A small number of homes could be used for short-term lets for visitors to the village.
Food-growing would be a key role of the village, in a way that supports rather than degrades biodiversity, with all homes having gardens in which food could be grown and a surrounding landscape of horticulture, orchards, woodlands, and largerscale agriculture. Hedgerows running throughout the village, as well along roads and around fields and orchards, would support biodiversity and provide food for birds and small mammals while providing shelter for pollinators and other wildlife. While this is not a commercially viable way of growing food for sale, it would be a small easy win for people who could ‘forage’ around their homes and the village.
Contemporary research on more sustainable ways of growing food and restoring the health of soils should be combined with exploring the benefits of ‘lost methods’, such as companion planting, or crop rotation with herbal leys to improve soils and biodiversity. Most forms of sustainable horticulture and agriculture are much more labour
intensive than large-scale mechanised farming, but even so there is a shortage of agricultural labour. New villages would help to alleviate this shortage and encourage the introduction of more sustainable farming practices, together with flexible patterns of employment.
Surplus food could be sold across the region. Plentiful energy from solar and wind power would heat and light glasshouses and polytunnels, enabling all year round cropping. When combined with more intensive growing methods and even allowing for the area taken up by housing and infrastructure, the overall productivity of the land would significantly increase, particularly if it had previously been used to graze cattle. More and more agricultural land is being used for solar farms, effectively removing this land from food production. However, there is no logical reason not to put buildings under the solar panels. A new village with attractive housing and large numbers of trees and hedges would have a more positive visual impact on the countryside (and on its diversity of flora and fauna) than fields full of solar panels.
For those not directly employed in food production and processing, high-speed broadband would enable remote working, and internal village economies could be encouraged by the provision of workshop spaces for residents running small businesses, producing goods or providing services within the village and for the surrounding region. There would also be the potential to explore new ways of working, redefining what constitutes a ‘job’.10
If core services were within easy reach, and
active travel encouraged, there would probably be significant reductions in transport-related greenhouse gases emissions. People might instead travel around using a pool of communally owned electric vehicles for hire. Experiments could be made with an electric or hydrogen village bus service, running on-demand11 and for regular trips such as taking older children to secondary school or college. The village would be connected, internally and more widely, by a series of paths suitable for walking, wheeling, and cycling. Electric cargo bikes and small electric buggies could be hired by people needing to transport bulky loads.
Further savings in energy usage could come from a combination of solar panels on all roofs; very high levels of building insulation, and energy efficiency measures. Where appropriate, a wind farm on its outskirts would enable the village to generate its own electricity. It is likely that the village would, with due exploration of means of energy storage, still be a net exporter of energy.
Measures to make more efficient use of water in the face of the frequent periods of drought likely to result from climate change should include rainwater harvesting on all buildings and ways of supporting crop-growing during periods of low rainfall, such as the use of treated greywater (made easier by the widespread use of environmentally-friendly cleaning products), and even some form of reservoir. Where a suitable water source is available, it may be possible to install a treatment plant to provide the village with its own clean water. And the installation of separator toilets would allow human waste to be safely processed and used as fertiliser, along with
Extensive market-led residential layouts in Stratton, nr. Bude, Cornwall
Freepik
compost created from gardening, agriculture, and food waste.
Social isolation, an increasing problem in our towns and cities, would be less prevalent in a village community. The size of the villages and their CLT underpinnings would make it easier for everyone to be involved in decision-making, sharing problems and developing solutions – written ‘constitutions’, more accessible elected committees and working groups to manage some of the day-to-day running would be possible.
The new villages could help to make it easier to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. Many of the features proposed here already exist in the small number of eco-communities found across the UK and elsewhere in the world. While these places provide practical examples of more sustainable ways of living, they tend to be relatively small scale and occupied by people with a strong commitment to a shared vision. If the new village approach proposed here were used for a significant proportion of the housing growth target, their successes could be mainstreamed, making a significant step towards more sustainable lifestyles. Based on a notional 100 hectares of agricultural land, the distribution of land use in the village might be as shown in Figure 1, below.
How could all of this be achieved?
Most large-scale developments are currently initiated, planned and built by private companies who must make a profit for their shareholders. Proposed new villages would be achieved in a different way, to ensure that development is driven by the needs of the environment and the people who would be living there.
A prerequisite is a central government agency with powers to grant permission for the creation of new villages provided that proposals meet a stringent set of criteria, including significant biodiversity gain and arrangements to ensure communal ownership of land and buildings. This could be achieved through revisions to existing New Towns legislation, which would also need to include measures (for example, ignoring hope value) to prevent landowners from profiteering and to enable a CLT to be set up and purchase land through a community share offer (see editor’s note).
A detailed new village proposal would be submitted to the government agency for approval, after which the CLT would raise the capital required for construction and infrastructure. Clearly this would require a substantial loan, which could be seen as a communal mortgage to be repaid by each resident, in return for which they would be issued
Figure 1: Likely distribution of land use in a new village
Tony Woodward
with additional community shares. Subject to certain restrictions, it would be possible for individuals to redeem a large proportion of these community shares should they wish to move out of the village. After about 25 years the loan would be paid off, at which point residents would own the village outright, although there would be ongoing costs for maintenance and improvements.
Vision for the future
Communal village ownership would be a big shift away from individual property ownership. However, the current market-led model of homeownership is not working for vast numbers of people, or for the planet. The need to build hundreds of thousands of new homes in the UK is currently seen as a problem, but it provides an exciting opportunity to create a large number of new sustainable communities that would help restore biodiversity and establish more sustainable countryside food production, whilst also providing truly affordable homes. Such communities would trailblaze paths to building a carbon-free future, redefining our relationship with nature, and helping people to live healthier lives.
The approach outlined above would change existing patterns of landownership and the way in which housing developments are funded – without the need for high levels of government spending. This proposal may be seen by some as a utopian dream, but, although there would be many problems and challenges along the way, what is wrong with aspiring to an idea that offers so much? In these challenging times, we need to give people hope, and a key way to do so is by providing clear, practical visions of a better future.
• Tony Woodward is an activist working to build communityled responses to the climate and ecological emergencies. Further details of the ‘New Village’ concept outlined here are available at www.newvillage.org.uk. All views expressed are personal.
Notes
1 E Howard: To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd, London, 1898. Full text available to view at: https://archive.org/details/ tomorrowpeaceful00howa/page/4/mode/2up
2 J Hicks, G Allen: A Century of Change: Trends in UK Statistics since 1900. Research Paper 99/111, House of Commons Library, Dec. 1999. https://commonslibrary. parliament.uk/research-briefings/rp99-111/.uk
3 Llewelyn-Davies Weeks Forestier-Walker & Bor.: The Plan for Milton Keynes Volume One. Milton Keynes Development Corporation, Mar. 1970, p. 28 https:// www.theplanformiltonkeynes.co.uk/the-plan
4 For a detailed exploration of the impact of these changes, see G Monbiot: Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet. Allen Lane, 2022
5 Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Summary for Policymakers. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2023. www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/ report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
6 Howard and his contemporaries clearly identified these benefits at the end of the 19th century, and they formed an important element of town planning in the early 20th century.
7 Statistical Digest of Rural England. August 2022 Edition. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Aug. 2022. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ statistical-digest-of-rural-england
8 Assets of Community Value — Policy Statement Department for Communities and Local Government, Sep. 2011. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ media/5a7959cfed915d0422067b06/1987150.pdf
9 See the Architects Climate Action Network website: www.architectscan.org/
10 See, for example, J Bellamy Foster: ‘The meaning of work in a sustainable society’. Monthly Review, Vol. 69(4), 1 Sep. 2017, 1-14. https://monthlyreview. org/2017/09/01/the-meaning-of-work-in-a-sustainablesociety/
11 See, for example, the experimentation in Milton Keynes, reported in S Potter, M Enoch, M Valdez, M Cook: ‘Demand-responsive transport returns to Milton Keynes — lessons for a bus industry in crisis’. Town & Country Planning, 2022, Vol. 91, Sep-Oct., 319-29
Editor’s Note
* A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a legally defined concept but not a legal entity in itself. A prospective CLT would therefore need to choose an appropriate entity to allow it to meet the requirements of §79 of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Housing & Regeneration Act 2008. Appropriate entities include:
• community benefit society,
• community interest company limited by guarantee,
• charitable incorporated organisation, or
• company limited by guarantee (with provision for a custodian member to ensure the asset lock cannot be voted out).
A community benefit society (CBS) has the power to make a community share offer to raise money for the purchase of assets, which are then owned collectively by members of the CBS. A prominent and successful example of the use of a CBS in this context is Letchworth Garden City.
Geoffrey Charles Steeley OBE
1935 – 2024
Geoff Steeley was an outstanding planner and thinker who played a major role in Hertfordshire, as well as nationally and with South East regional planning. He was also a long-term supporter of the TCPA.
Having served as Andrew Thorburn’s deputy in the Nottingham/Derby sub-regional planning unit, Geoff moved back to work in his home county in 1971. He led in the preparation of the first Hertfordshire County Structure Plan and encouraged all 10 Hertfordshire districts to prepare their Local Plans. Consequently, Hertfordshire became one of the first counties to achieve complete development plan coverage in the 1980s.
Geoff created a monitoring group in the department, charged with measuring economic and environmental intelligence to aid thinking about the future. He commissioned studies on a ‘what if’ basis. One of the unthinkable questions he asked the team to look at was: ‘what happens if British Aerospace ceases operations at Hatfield?’. It is hard to recall how improbable this seemed in the early 1980s, yet its days were numbered and the Hatfield Division closed in 1993.
He had good relations with senior civil servants in the Department of the Environment and contacts in HM Treasury and Brussels, which led to work on environmental budgeting, the aim of which was to measure the environmental costs of public policy and reflect these in public accounts alongside monetary costs – a forerunner of green budgeting. Years ahead of his time.
His leadership of individuals who worked with him was marked by his intimation of total confidence in their ability to do anything. But he was always available to offer two or three possible ways out of the occasional intractable problem that his colleagues presented him with.
I first met Geoff in 1985 when he appointed me assistant county planning officer at Hertfordshire County Council. His reputation as county planning officer, a post he was appointed to in 1978, was already well-established and I was privileged to be a part of his team for eight wonderful years. His formidable intellectual and strategic thinking on so many issues is well known, but I also remember a chief who was approachable, open to ideas, encouraging, supportive and someone with a great sense of fun.
I recall how he encouraged us all to get out of the office before working from home became widely accepted. Go for a walk and think things through, he would suggest or go to a lunchtime recital at the Wigmore Hall if you have time between meetings. He would be pleased to see staff spending time in the technical library, knowing how important it was to be curious. His sensitive humanity was limitless.
Geoff was the elder statesman of SERPLAN.¹ He was a superb strategist and master tactician aways with an eye on the longer view. While the main tension in SERPLAN was always regarded as the division of housing numbers between London and the rest of the South East, the real negotiations were between the counties. Here, the ways in
which each county took some of the wider infrastructure burden of the South East – for waste, minerals, national infrastructure and international airports – all contributed to the negotiations on the distribution of housing numbers between county areas. Geoff knew the importance of SERPLAN’s role in this for government, where a locally determined solution was better than one that was imposed but he also saw the merit of change, adapting SERPLAN to a more sustainable approach and supporting this change in direction. Geoff was kind and supportive, but this never stopped him making his views known privately and publicly if he thought that this was necessary. He was someone who was true to himself and respected by all.
Geoff was a strong supporter of the TCPA for many decades. A member of policy council, his interventions were always well informed and fully considered. He knew the answers before others had formulated the questions. Geoff volunteered to
help the TCPA fulfil the commission to review the green belts around Seoul, travelling to South Korea to present our findings to the government. As our ambassador he was peerless, burnishing our international reputation.
On retirement he also gave his time freely to both Eastern Arts and the National Forest Company as a board member. He also chaired the environment committee of the Royal Society of Arts, a highpowered council of the great and the good. That commitment required him to brief the late Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace on a regular basis.
Geoff and his wife, Claire, raised four children in Letchworth (the first Garden City), where they lived for almost 50 years. He was appointed OBE in 1991 ‘for services to the environment and Hertfordshire’s communities’ – a citation of which he was proud and delighted. In retirement he remained fit and well for many years and enjoyed walks with his former senior colleagues from the planning department. However, more recently, he succumbed to dementia – a tragedy for one of the brightest minds of his generation.
I will remember Geoff not only as the best chief I ever worked for by a country mile but also as my mentor and great friend. His family, who were central to his life, can take comfort in knowing that Geoff would not want them to grieve but rather to smile at his memory, celebrate the good times and look forward to the future.
Graeme Bell OBE
With contributions from: Sir Brian Briscoe and Professor Janice Morphet CBE
Note
1 SERPLAN (1965 to 2001) was the London and South East Regional Planning Conference, constituting the London borough councils and the county, unitary and district councils within Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey, East and West Sussex and the Isle of Wight. Its role was to advise the government on the contents of regional planning guidance for the South East.
Royal Society of Arts
design matters
Matthew Carmona discusses whether ‘beauty’ should be a material consideration in planning decisions and how to deliver better design quality nationally
to beautify, or not to beautify, that is the question
Revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) come thick and fast, sometimes heralding fundamental change, as is the case with the most recent consultation draft,¹ and sometimes simply tweaks, as we saw in December 2023. On that occasion the revision upped the ante on whether the planning system should ‘ask for beauty’ as the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission called for in 2020. This resulted in five references to (built) beauty being added to the NPPF in 2021, which multiplied to eleven in 2023, reinforcing this dimension of policy.
Along with a range of more fundamental changes, the most recent proposal was to remove the latest six mentions of beauty, taking us back to the situation prior to December. The accompanying explanation notes:
‘The Government recognises the importance of beauty in the built environment as an important objective of well-designed places’, but suggests that:
‘including further references to ‘beauty’ and ‘beautiful’ may result in inconsistency in how it is applied in decision-making, as many find the term subjective and difficult to define’.²
There is an inconsistency here. While the number of mentions of a planning consideration may help to ensure that it is clearly heard by those receiving the message (planning authorities, developers, communities, etc.), the number of mentions does not materially impact on the weight and authority of the message, it simply duplicates it. On that basis, one could say that the extra mentions of the term in 2023 were unnecessary. Following the same logic, their removal now is equally unnecessary. Whether we have five or eleven mentions of beauty should not impact upon how the term is used in local
policy and planning-related decision-making or on whether people find it subjective or not.
So perhaps the key message here is not the removal of duplication (something that repeated incremental revision of the NPPF inevitably leads to), but instead that beauty as an aspiration in the NPPF has survived, albeit less prominently. This reflects two far more important questions than how many times we should use the term, namely whether we should include beauty as a planning consideration at all, and if we do, how should we use the term?
Situating a beauty ambition
I discussed the first of these questions in a previous blog at the time of the last iteration of the NPPF by the previous government.³ Then, drawing on evidence from my earlier analysis of planning appeals,⁴ I noted that use of the ‘B’ word had raised the national focus on design quality and so was a
Is it possible to objectively define beautiful design?
design matters
worthwhile addition to the planning arsenal. But, I concluded, it was primarily useful as a declaration of intent and high ambition, rather than as a usable criterion that could easily be defined and measured. So, if we are going to include an aspiration for beautiful places and development, how should we frame that ambition?
There has long been an inconsistency between how design considerations are defined and expressed in national policy and how they are defined and expressed in the guidance that accompanies it. The explanation accompanying the latest proposed changes notes:
‘There is already a clear framework through policy and guidance on how to achieve well-designed places (as set out in the National Design Guide and National Model Design Code – NMDC), to enable this to be decided by local planning authorities’.²
Both are based on ten characteristics of welldesigned places that concern:
• context;
• identity;
• built form;
• movement;
• nature;
• public spaces;
• uses;
• homes and buildings;
• resources, and
• lifespan.
The NPPF, by contrast has a different list of six considerations focusing upon:
• function;
• attractiveness;
• character;
• sense of place;
• optimising potential, and
• health and well-being.
A range of other design criteria are scattered randomly throughout the NPPF, including but not restricted to:
• trees;
• habitats;
• density, and
• height.
Before the National Design Guide was introduced in 2019, this detail was necessary. Now, it is the duplication of design criteria in a different form that is inconsistent and confusing.
Restoring clarity to the design policy
To restore clarity, therefore, this iteration of the NPPF could be used as an opportunity (as the explanatory note² suggests but does not quite deliver) to move to the principle that the design paragraphs of the NPPF focus simply on three things:
• Establishing unequivocally the high-level national ambition for design quality.
• Setting out expectations about how achieving design quality should be operationalised through the planning system.
• Cross-referencing and therefore empowering accompanying national guidance in which the detailed national framework for design is set out.
To this end, on the next two pages, I offer a below a more thorough edit of the design-related paragraphs of the NPPF based upon the principles above whilst also taking the opportunity to:
• Contextualise the use of beauty as part of a high level ambition to deliver inclusive, beautiful and sustainable places.
• Add the critically important nationally described space standards⁵ to the suite of guidance explicitly referred to in the main text of the NPPF (rather than in a footnote).
• Use this as an opportunity to clarify the previous muddle on what is a design guide and what is a design code (the latter being typically a sitespecific tool).⁶
• Dealing more forcefully with the elephant in the room: the relationship between planning and highways, which this new government (if it does anything on design) should prioritise.
• Clarifying that the design expectations are for all and always, and not a discretionary ‘nice to have’ when other things allow.
• Remove repetition of messages across the paragraphs.
Enjoy!
design matters
Achieving well-designed development and places
128. The creation of inclusive, beautiful and sustainable buildings and places is fundamental to what the planning and development process should achieve. Good design is a key aspect of sustainable development, creates better places in which to live and work and helps make development acceptable to communities. Being clear about design expectations, and how these will be tested, is essential for achieving this and all local authorities should put in place rigorous arrangements to ensure that design quality is secured.
129. Plans, accompanied, as appropriate, by more detailed design guidance should set out a clear design vision and expectations, so that applicants have as much certainty as possible about what is likely to be acceptable. Design policies and guidance should be developed with local communities, so they reflect local aspirations, and are grounded in an understanding and evaluation of each area’s defining characteristics. Neighbourhood planning groups can play an important role in identifying the special qualities of each area and explaining how this should be reflected in development, both through their own plans and by engaging in the production of design policy and guidance by local planning authorities.
130. To provide maximum clarity about design expectations at an early stage, all local planning authorities should prepare or require the preparation of design codes which reflect the local design vision and expectations. Design codes can provide a site-specific framework for creating distinctive places with a consistent and high quality standard of design. Their geographic coverage, level of detail and degree of prescription should be tailored to the circumstances and scale of change in each place and should allow a suitable degree of variety.
131. Design codes can be prepared at an area-wide, neighbourhood or site-specific scale, and to carry weight in decision-making should be produced either as part of a plan, as supplementary planning documents, or, typically by landowners and developers, in support of a planning application. Whoever prepares them, all guides and codes should be
based on effective community engagement and reflect local aspirations for the development of their area.
132. When preparing design policies, guidance and codes, local planning authorities should be consistent with the guidance contained in the National Design Guide, while the National Model Design Code is the primary basis for the preparation and use of local design codes. These national documents should be used to guide decisions on applications in the absence of locally produced design guides or design codes. Planning policies for housing should make use of the Government’s optional technical standards for accessible and adaptable housing, where this would address an identified need for such properties. Policies should also make use of the nationally described space standard in order to achieve healthy living conditions in all new or converted homes.
133. The objectives of well-conceived planning policies and guidance can be easily undermined by highways and parking standards that have not been developed with a view to optimising inclusive, beautiful and sustainable design outcomes. This includes the presence of street trees which make an important contribution to the character and quality of urban environments and can also help mitigate and adapt to climate change. Government expects planning authorities and highways authorities to work proactively together to overcome such challenges and to establish local highways codes that deliver the very best place-making, including the potential for adoptable new streets that are tree-lined.
134. Design quality should be considered throughout the evolution and assessment of individual proposals. Early discussion between applicants and the local planning authority and meaningful engagement with the local community about the design of emerging schemes is important for clarifying expectations and reconciling local and commercial interests. Applicants should work closely with those affected by their proposals to evolve designs that take account of the views of the community. Applications that can demonstrate early, proactive and effective engagement with the community should be looked on more favourably than those that cannot.
design matters
135. Local planning authorities should ensure that they have access to, and make appropriate use of, tools and processes for assessing and improving the design of development. For assessing proposals there is a range of tools including workshops to engage the local community, taking specialist design advice, making use of design review arrangements, and various assessment frameworks. These are of most benefit if used as early as possible in the evolution of schemes and are particularly important for significant projects such as large scale housing and mixed use developments. In assessing applications, local planning authorities should have regard to the outcomes from these processes, including any recommendations made by design review panels.
136. Development that is not well designed should be refused. This means development that fails to reflect local design policies, guidance and codes and the government guidance on design referenced in Paragraph 133. Significant weight should be given to outstanding or innovative designs which depart from these provisions so long as they meet government aspirations for inclusive, beautiful and sustainable development and positively contribute to their surroundings.
137. Local planning authorities should ensure that relevant planning conditions refer to clear and accurate plans and drawings which provide visual clarity about the design of the development, and are clear about the approved use of materials, planting and landscape. This will provide greater certainty for those implementing the planning permission on how to comply with the permission and a clearer basis for local planning authorities to identify breaches of planning control. Local planning authorities should also seek to ensure that the quality of approved development is not materially diminished between permission and completion, as a result of changes being made to the permitted scheme (for example through changes to approved details such as the materials used or the absence of agreed trees and planting).
138. The quality and character of places can suffer when advertisements are poorly sited and designed. A separate consent process within the planning system controls the display of advertisements, which should be operated in
a way which is simple, efficient and effective. Advertisements should be subject to control only in the interests of amenity and public safety, taking account of cumulative impacts.
• Prof. Matthew Carmona is Professor of Planning & Urban Design at The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London.
Notes
1 NPPF revisions were published for consultation until 23:45 on 24 September 2024.
2 ‘Proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework and other changes to the planning system: Chapter 6 – Delivering affordable, well-designed homes and places’. Open consultation, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, updated 2 Aug. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/government/ consultations/proposed-reforms-to-the-nationalplanning-policy-framework-and-other-changes-to-theplanning-system/proposed-reforms-to-the-nationalplanning-policy-framework-and-other-changes-to-theplanning-system?utm_ campaign=14599261_01082024%20NPPF%20 Consultation%20-%20England%20Members&utm_ medium=email&utm_source=The%20Royal%20 Town%20Planning%20Institute&dm_i=1L61,8OWV1,A2 LUAA,1035GT,1#chapter-6--delivering-affordable-welldesigned-homes-and-places
3 M Carmona: ‘Beautiful places – aspiration or edict?’. Blog. 20 Feb. 2023. https://matthew-carmona. com/2023/02/20/93-beautiful-places-aspiration-or-edict/
4 M Carmona: ‘Appealing design – the tide turns on poor and mediocre housing design’. Blog. 26 Apr. 2022. https://matthew-carmona.com/2022/04/26/87-appealingdesign-the-tide-turns-on-poor-and-mediocre-housingdesign%EF%BF%BC/
5 Technical housing standards – nationally described space standard. Guidance. Department for Communities and Local Government, Mar. 2015. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/1012976/160519_Nationally_Described_Space_ Standard.pdf; see also: G Revell: ‘Time to Mandate National Space and Accessibility Standards’. Town & Country Planning, 2024, Vol. 93, Jan-Feb., 6-7
6 M Carmona: ‘Design coding – it’s the law!’. Blog. 5 Jan. 2024. https://matthew-carmona.com/2024/01/05/101design-coding-its-the-law/
Editor’s Note
It is perhaps worth pointing out that ‘achieving good design’ has been a statutory component of ‘sustainable development’ since §183 of the Planning Act 2008 inserted subsection 2(A) into §39 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.
letter from the languedoc
Graeme Bell reports on contemporary trends in the social and political landscapes of southern France
memories of summer
Digital nomads
La fête de la Saint-Jean (St John The Baptist’s Eve) celebrated throughout much of rural France in mid-summer is in full swing in our village. And it’s during the inevitable eating and drinking that we bump into Adrian – a Brit who, with three others, has recently bought a domaine high up in the hills
above the village. All four are digital nomads who met after one of them posted an online message with the suggestion of buying a place in France. We are invited to visit, and Adrian picks us up in his 4x4. He drives up a rocky track to a remote farmhouse where the restoration is not yet complete, but already looks fabulous. Pierre beurrée stonework, where the lime mortar ‘butters’ the golden limestone is an artisan skill. Too little mortar and it looks rocky and rough, too much and it looks like render, you lose the colour and texture of the stone.
Adrian escorts us around their eight-hectare vineyard, which they are rescuing after a decade of neglect. It still looks a mess to my eyes, compared
Graeme Bell
The Corbière mountains from the author’s terrace
letter from the languedoc
with the clean and tidy vineyards down in the valley, but Adrian explains that he and his friends are all involved in environmental consultancy and want to practice what they preach. They are following organic principles to be able to market biodynamic wine.* The tractor is used sparingly to avoid compacting the soil and the vegetation, which appears to be almost smothering the vines, is a rich source of biodiversity. Certainly, it is buzzing with insects while we stand amongst the vines quaffing their first cepage: Syrah 2023.
‘We’ve decided we need to keep our heads down a little more’
I ask Adrian how he keeps his vines free from pests and diseases. Does he dust and spray? ‘Yes’, is the answer, ‘but only sparingly with copper and sulphur and not with chemicals because to obtain biodynamic certification you have to follow strict rules’. I must have looked quizzical because he goes on to explain that copper and sulphur are naturally occurring minerals. Is this the same copper sulphate solution that turns small mammals bright green, I wonder? I hold my tongue.
We sit around a large table outside the farmhouse eating sourdough bread, cantal cheese infused with black streaks of wild garlic and bowls of salad drenched in locally pressed olive oil. The sun goes down, the crickets stop their din, the bats come flitting out and the pygmy owls start ‘peeping’. The temperature is still in the mid-20s as our vignerons indépendant opens another bottle.
Adrian guesses our questions; I assume we are not the first to ask. He explains:
‘The four of us who bought the domaine are in constant touch with lots and lots of people all the time. We can work 24/7 because there’s always someone awake in a time zone somewhere on the planet. And whilst we meet people in person when we have to fly to conferences, we all missed having somewhere we could just stop and call a base… That’s why we decided to find somewhere in the world where we could meet and which we could call home. France ticked all the boxes, not least because the political system is stable, property is still reasonably inexpensive, the lifestyle is wonderful, Toulouse international airport is an hour away and there’s 5G here – that was vital.’
We sense that he is almost seeking validation of his decision to take on the project and we don’t disappoint him, congratulating him on the
achievements and saying we will come back next year to taste his 2024.
Digital nomads can work from the beach or the depths of the countryside as long as there’s a good ‘phone signal, it’s a trend which now affects the UK and many other countries. And whilst it’s good to see ruined buildings brought back into use, properties in the sticks can now reach Paris or London prices, taking them out of the reach of local people looking to get a foot on the ladder.
On the walk back down the rocky path, our mobiles picking out the way ahead, we disturb a family of wild boar. The mum and dad immediately scarper while possibly half a dozen small offspring seek to follow them but keep sliding down the steep bank in a panic. It’s a memorable brush with nature in the wild. As they crash through the undergrowth the noise fades away into the stillness of the night.
Taking back control
As if we needed reminding, 2024 is the year of elections. Here in France electors have just had an extra chance to go to the polls. President Macron, disturbed by the French results in the Euro elections, where the far right made significant gains, dissolved the national assembly and called a snap election.
And now we know the results. Marine le Pen continues to make gains, although in the second round of voting she failed to secure a majority as the centre and left parties formed a coalition to block her progress. The horse trading is now in full swing as the parties seek to agree who will grasp the reins of what will be a bucking bronco of an administration, facing off against Madame le Pen and tussling with the President.
‘Pierre beurrée stonework, where the lime mortar ‘butters’ the golden limestone is an artisan skill’
They say that in the first round, people vote with their heart but in the second with their head. So it is with concern that we learn that in the second round 77% of voters in our village ticked the box for le Pen, someone who many believe is not a fan of social justice. The villagers are our friends, the ones we kiss on both cheeks (women as well as men!) and with whom we break bread. These are the families with surnames like Diaz and Fernandez,
descendants of asylum seekers from Franco’s Spain. These are our good neighbours with plaited dreadlocks whose heritage is from French equatorial Africa. Is it true that the last ones in are the first to pull up the drawbridge to keep others out?
The far right mounted a populist campaign straight out of Dominic Cummings’ (chief advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 2019-2020) playbook. ‘Take back control’ was the strapline and it resonated across rural France. Who doesn’t want to do that? It is a vacuous campaign theme that can mean all things to everyone. As with Brexit, as with Reform, populist messages find fertile ground amongst certain groups.
‘Whilst it’s good to see ruined buildings brought back into use, properties in the sticks can now reach Paris or London prices’
The Languedoc is a long way from Paris, as far as Edinburgh is from London. Little wonder that communities so distant feel they’re not on the
Élysée Palace radar. What doesn’t help is Macron’s politics, which many see as favouring the rich, and his demeanour – regarded by many as regal and even disdainful.
For us, we’ve decided we need to keep our heads down a little more and stick to the adage of steering clear of politics and religion. We rarely touched on the latter but if we have a self-denying ordinance about politics, what else is there to talk about?
• Graeme Bell OBE is a vice president of the TCPA and lives in the Languedoc for part of the year.
Editor’s Note
* Biodynamic viticulture uses organic farming methods and soil supplements prepared according to agreed formulae. The planting calendar depends upon astrological configurations and treating the earth as ‘a living and receptive organism’. Critics question whether the mystical elements of biodynamic viticulture make any material contribution to product quality in comparison with the use of organic methods alone.
Posters for France’s recent snap election
Graeme Bell
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
timescapes: to follow Ebenezer Howard or Ebenezer Scrooge
Dr Mark Dobson (far left) and Prof. Gavin Parker are both based at the University of Reading. All views expressed are personal.
A Christmas Carol was written by Charles Dickens in 1843 to reflect his moral critique of Victorian England, where inequality had become stark and public impoverishment was common.¹ Around 55 years later, Ebenezer Howard’s To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform was published as a vision not just for planning but also for people.² Both works reflect on the past and present, and in different ways envision the future. This reminds us that planning has its roots in social reform agendas aimed at improving living conditions for all, and such ideals helped form a basis for the Garden Cities Association, now the TCPA, which is celebrating its 125-year anniversary, and is still urging progressive futures.
The planning profession’s original concerns with improving public health, sanitation, housing and living conditions in urban areas has expanded widely to include a host of public interest considerations across landscape protection; amenity spaces; heritage; environmental management; transport; infrastructure, and so on. The more recent considerations of adaptation to climate change and overseeing policy for biodiversity net gain in England, represent the latest iterations of a progressive widening of the ambit of formal planning.3, 4 Whilst such widening and deepening of planning issues brings its own set of new challenges, such progress should be embraced.
The complexity and politics of planning may be
deemed wicked,⁵ but apparent intractability forms a core part of planning activity and practice in a democratic environment. What is less acceptable is the apparent disregard for the value and importance of planning in identifying ways through difficult issues and its role in delivering sustainable outcomes. Indeed, whilst planning is substantively about coordinating activity in space and shaping good places, what is often missed in this understanding is that planning is also a temporal activity; it is both about time (past, present and future), but significantly that good planning also takes time.
The twist and emphasis we bring to this enduringly progressive agenda is a focus upon the role of time and timescapes in planning.6, 7 Despite the future increasingly ‘invading the present’,⁸ the ongoing political agenda of ‘project speed’ seems set to be continued by the Labour government, a priority that has served to squeeze time in practice, featuring widespread manipulation of time to plan as well as what is being planned for. The temporal dimensions of planning require more attention not least to ensure professional consideration and deliberation over complex matters.
Given this short provocation is written with time in mind, we have sketched three short future planning scenarios below.
Special section: 125 years of the TCPA – ‘personal provocations’
Future 1 – Where the planner takes time to think and act
The planner has time to consider and research complex issues, and work with others to ensure that the merits and challenges are aired through wider participation and deliberation. There is limited pressure to make decisions as quickly as possible for growth. A long-term and strategic approach is fostered to consider the evolving challenges of meeting sustainable development. The public interest remains a cornerstone of professional practice.
Future 2 – Where the planner is squeezed, and time is equated with speed
Politicians and developers / investors continue to attack planning as a source of ‘delay’ and assert its primary focus should be to deliver housing and growth as efficiently as possible. Here the planner does whatever they can just to meet the performance timescaping of the
system and has little time for wider consideration of the future nor for including others. In this state there is little time available to consider alternatives to dominant commercial / financial objectives.
Future 3 – Where time has been annihilated (technological ‘e-uchronia’9 and the end of human-centred planning)
Planners have been dispensed with and codification has reached its zenith, where decisions are programmed in largely by AI bots who feed through data based on set criteria. The future is no longer determined by humans through land-use plans and decision-making committees. Instead, an infinite number of complex calculations for shaping the future are made in seconds. Trust is placed in seemingly objective and omnipotent machines that model every possible action.
Museum of London
A family in Bethnal Green, London, 1900, engaged in ‘flower-making’
Given these very different future planning timescapes, we can return to the past to consider lessons for our present. In setting off what we might term the ‘redemption arc’, which moves us away from self-interest and greed, Scrooge’s former and deceased business partner Marley, weighed down by the chains of his conscience, sees the error of his ways and warns Scrooge that people should be his business and caring for his fellow humans should be the priority. As the spectre of Victorian-era widespread social inequality manifests in contemporary Britain, with food banks, homelessness and poor-quality accommodation being normalised, we assert that the business of planning is for people. Time in and for planning should be reflected in this agenda. As the TCPA looks ahead to its 150th anniversary, one measure of success is that, in the spirit of Howard, it continues to fight for proper time and resources to support planning for people and the planet and to forewarn those who seek to colonise the present and future for short-term gain.
Notes
1 C Dickens: A Christmas Carol. Chapman & Hall, 1843
2 E Howard: To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1898
3 G Parker, M Wargent, O Linovski, A Schoneboom, S Gunn, D Slade, ND Odeleye, C Maidment, E Shepherd,
J Doak, T Elliot, N Nicholls, E Street, M Dobson, S Platts, T Tasan-Kok: ‘The Future of the Planning Profession’. Planning Theory & Practice, 2020, Vol. 21(3), 453-480, DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2020.1776014
4 J Sturzaker, H Hickman: ‘Planning’s value, planners’ values: defining and redefining for contemporary practice’. Planning Practice & Research, 2024, Vol. 39(2), 157-170, DOI: 10.1080/02697459.2024.2316988
5 In contemporary political language, ‘wicked’ problems are those that defy straightforward solutions, challenge conventional problem-solving approaches, and demand holistic thinking. They persistently resist easy fixes, urging policy makers and decision makers to embrace complexity and adaptability in their problemsolving endeavours. For an academic discussion of the concept and use of this term, see: J Lönngren, K van Poeck: ‘Wicked problems: a mapping review of the literature’. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 2021, Vol. 28(6), 481-502, DOI: 10.1080/13504509.2020.1859415
6 G Parker, M Dobson: ‘Planning in time, time for planning, and time to plan — ‘timescaping’ and its implications for practice’. Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Jul.-Aug., 243-247
7 M Dobson, G Parker: Slow Planning? Timescapes, Power and Democracy. Policy Press, 2024
8 A Toffler: Future Shock. Bantam, New York, 1970
9 We are playfully using e-uchronia here to demarcate between euchronia as a perfect or utopian state and uchronia as a hypothetical construction, i.e. where time is annihilated. The neologism of ‘e-uchronia’ expresses the technological element of both the euchronic and the uchronic.
Letchworth
Garden City Corporation, 1983
Bird’s Hill, Letchworth Garden City (1905). Decent housing and land to grow fresh food
future health and urban civics
Dr Lucy Natarajan is an Associate Professor based at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. She is currently editor of Built Environment, Secretary General of Territoire Europe, and Steering Group member of UK2070 Commission. All views expressed are personal.
The role of citizens in producing health is changing and this is now a hot potato for planning.
Conceptualising ‘the healthy life’ is tricky, but citizens won’t hesitate to claim basic rights for a healthy living environment. Think of citizens enforcing a low traffic neighbourhood for clean air or broader local collectives harnessing digital platforms to reclaim food waste as food bank supplies. These are examples of how democratic rights are being exercised in our communities. They are also forms of participation in planning and placemaking, and a means to co-produce healthy environments.
But we need a deeper understanding of the emerging politics of health, and a better planning response to the protest, outrage and activisms that we see today. How these actions land with
government bodies matters greatly – whether they are stymied, embraced, or co-opted for other purposes. There are diverse institutional actors across policy silos including health, care and active travel. More broadly, planning needs to step into this arena.
It is critical to consider health inequality spatially. Globally, the mooted ‘urban penalty’ on public health has been varied,¹ but it is clear that the built environment contains determinants of health, which are also at the heart of planning. Urban health studies in the noughties² focused upon the burden of disease but evolved into a more hopeful take around securing the health premiums of urban living in healthy and happy cities.³
In a world that is refocused on holistic well-being and planetary environmental disaster, there are questions about burdens/benefits and inequality/ distribution. In the next quarter century this will be an increasingly important and growing sphere of urban civics that speaks to the role of the citizen within planning.
Notes
1 DS Reher: ‘In Search of the ‘Urban Penalty’: Exploring Urban and Rural Mortality Patterns in Spain during the Demographic Transition’. International Journal of Population Geography, 2001, Vol. 7, 105-127. https://doi. org/10.1002/ijpg.212
2 D Vlahov, S Galea: ‘Urban health: a new discipline’. Lancet, 4 Oct. 2003, Vol. 362(9390), 1091-1092. https:// pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14550692/
3 MR Montgomery, R Stren, B Cohen, HE Reed: Cities transformed: Demographic change and its implications in the developing world. Routledge, 2003. https://www. researchgate.net/publication/293090297_Cities_ transformed_Demographic_change_and_its_ implications_in_the_developing_world
Healthy living measures need public support
Special section: 125 years of the TCPA – ‘personal provocations’
climate justice should not be one step too far for planning
Dr Graeme Sherriff is Reader in Environment and Society at the University of Salford and chair of the Fuel Poverty Research Network. All views expressed are personal.
One swallow does not make a summer, and nor does one broken temperature record, one heatwave or one storm make climate change. But when they all start coming together at pace, we know that we are seeing what scientists and campaigners have been warning about for decades. The implications over the next 25 years are immense. Planning will have a central role.
Even if we step up emissions reductions now, we will see changes due to global mean temperature rise. These shifts will stretch the relationship between people and place, intensify existing injustices, and bring new tensions. Calling climate change an ‘environmental’ issue belies its profound social implications.
Freepik
This will be seen at a global scale as people are displaced by water stress, crop failures and extreme weather. It will be evident across the UK, due to sea level rise and changes in where people aspire to live, can afford to live, and are able to get home insurance. Some will be able to adapt their homes to increased temperatures, some will find it difficult to bounce back from, or escape, repeated flooding events. We can expect disruption not only from these very real impacts but also (hopefully) from a (renewed?) sense of urgency to decarbonise.
Better insulation and other retrofitting measures are essential
This comes with its own justice challenges, but it is also an opportunity. Done well, it means bringing homes up to energy efficiency specifications so that the poorest no longer struggle to keep warm. It means reconfiguring cities and their transport systems so everyone can access what they need in, say, 10 or 15 minutes – that would be a neat concept, someone should give it a name.
The risk is that we plough ahead in a way that only wealthier people can engage with, expecting people to switch to heat pumps with no support to improve insulation first; switching to expensive electric cars without addressing the implications for congestion, air quality, resource extraction and energy consumption, and ignoring the fact that for many people traffic levels are the biggest barrier to cycling.
‘Calling climate change an ‘environmental’ issue belies its profound social implications’
It is frustrating to see such slow progress on these challenges. However, it would be wrong to simply assume that people are uninterested,
unmotivated, or apathetic. Instead, it would be more constructive to view it in terms of entrenched injustices. After decades of towns and cities being planned around the car, it is difficult for many to imagine access to work, education, and social life without one. Whether people are against a low traffic neighbourhood (LTN) for their locality or not – and recent Government research suggests that they are much more supportive than commonly thought – it is clear why it has been easy to whip up opposition; car dependency has been nurtured over decades and our settlements and living patterns have developed around it. After sustained underinvestment in housing, minimal support for people to improve their homes, and zero investment in building up a retrofit supply chain, it is unsurprising that people are reacting negatively to the proposition that they should now buy an expensive heat pump or be left behind.
What planning can do, with the TCPA’s leadership, is provide a vision for a low-carbon, resilient society. This can contextualise all those messy scuffles, at local and national levels. A heat pump is part of the great housing transition – warm homes for all. A LTN is just one piece of a city-wide transformation – a city everyone can enjoy. Hugh Ellis¹ argued that a return to a sense of planning as a progressive social idea could be the wind in our sails – a fine use of renewable energy. Tomorrow has to start somewhere!
Note
1 H Ellis: ‘Utopia — the wind in our sails or the ghost in the machine?’ Town & Country Planning, 2023, Vol. 92, Nov-Dec., 375-380
why can’t we deal with climate change?
Prof. Andrew Blowers is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at the Open University. All views expressed are personal.
It is more than 25 years since the Town and Country Planning Association published a report entitled: Planning for a Sustainable Environment.¹ This report opens as follows:
‘As we approach the second millennium, in a more secular age, there is a growing concern that life on earth is imperilled by the destruction of nature wrought by human intervention. While the menace of nuclear warfare has (perhaps temporarily) receded it has been replaced by the threat of environmental global catastrophe.’
At that time, the problems seemed sufficiently far away, and the idea of sustainable development seemed to offer a solution that could be implemented gradually and without great sacrifice or disruption. Our report, relentlessly optimistic, set out an agenda for action on economy, ecosystems, energy, pollution and waste, cities and transport, in which planning would play a key role in achieving a sustainable future.
Even so, the report noted: ‘deeper currents, but dimly perceived, are flowing, as yet only creating small perturbations on the surface’. But it was enough to stir innate anxieties about the world and its politics to suggest to me a conundrum. That is, when we become aware of a problem and could act to solve it, we fail to take precautionary measures; when the problem has become palpable and action becomes imperative, it is too late for action to be wholly effective.
And so it has come to pass. Over the years, the world, or at least that part of it enjoying and destroying the fruitful resources of the planet, could put its faith in ecological modernisation – that reassuring blend of capitalism and conservation. Global warming, if it was happening at all, was something for later. A growing sense of crisis was diminished by levels of fatalism, denial, or wilful neglect.
Climate change overtook nuclear annihilation as Earth’s greatest existential threat
Now, when the impacts of climate change are undeniable and accelerating, we are incapable of matching the urgency of the situation with effective commitment to cutting carbon emissions or providing financial, technical and capacity building support to those countries that need it.
We are moving ever closer to a point of irreversible change. Looking ahead 25 years, it is all but certain that we shall have passed the just about safe level of 1.5° Celsius (°C) and by 2050 the target date for net zero. But it does not end there and we must think in longer time-scales. It is highly likely
Special section: 125 years of the TCPA – ‘personal provocations’
that the target cap of 2°C, beyond which level consequences would be widespread, disastrous, and potentially unmanageable, will be exceeded before the end of the century. With little or no realistic action to reduce the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases, temperatures could pass 3°C or even 4°C, especially if the tipping points are met and runaway scenarios materialise. At 2°C, sea level rise could be one or even two metres. By the middle of the next century, the International Panel for Climate Change suggests that a rise of five metres ‘cannot be ruled out’. The possibilities are terrifying; the consequences could be lethal, and we are becoming used to the idea that what a short time ago seemed improbable can now materialise within a few years.
Can this be avoided? Two seemingly immovable barriers stand in the way.
Firstly, inequality. Already in some parts of the world the climate crisis is existential, with some areas inundated or disappearing while others are experiencing the ravages of deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity and the consequences of disease, malnutrition, war and mass migration. The poorest countries contribute little carbon but suffer disproportionately. And they find adaptation most difficult as their very existence is threatened. It is up to the rich to mitigate the damage as far as possible by a massive reduction in the rate of anthropogenic emissions and by levelling up through sustainable agriculture, reafforestation, renewable energy, and sustainable urban development programmes. For them, adaptation remains the easy option.
‘When the problem has become palpable and action becomes imperative, it is too late for action to be wholly effective’
Secondly, nationalism. As our 1993 report noted: ‘The sovereign power of the nation-state appears to be a major obstacle to sustainable development’. This was true then and is even more so today. Global institutions, especially the United Nations, are being enfeebled by revanchist nationalism, conflicting ideologies and autocratic or authoritarian regimes that dismiss the scale of the impending catastrophe, taking little responsibility for it and looking inwards to promote their own national interests. And the super-rich maintain lifestyles of excess and crude egoism, trashing the planet with their massive ecological footprints on earth and in space.
Inequality and climate change –a vicious cycle
• the richest 10% of people are responsible for 50% of global greenhouse gases emissions;
• the richest 1% are responsible for 16% of emissions, the same as the poorest 66%, and
• the global super-rich (2,600 people) control a combined wealth greater than each country of the world, save the United States of America and China.²
One of the principles set out in our 1993 report was ‘the avoidance of the imposition of added cost or risks on succeeding generations’. Intergenerational equity requires both action, in the effort to ensure a planet fit to live on, and inaction by not doing those things that adversely affect the future.
‘Don’t put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do today’ and ‘don’t just stand there, do something’ are the twin mantras to avoid the paradox of pessimism.
I remain pessimistic, fearing the worst for my grandchildren; helpless but still with an unquenchable hope for a more equal and more united world.
Notes
1 A Blowers (Ed.): Planning for a Sustainable Environment: A Report by the Town and Country Planning Association. Earthscan, 1993. https://archive. org/details/planningforsusta0000unse_o2q3/page/n5/ mode/2up
2 A Khalfan, A Nilsson Lewis, C Aguilar, J Persson, M Lawson, N Dabi, S Jayoussi, S Acharya: Climate Equality: a planet for the 99%. Oxfam International, Nov. 2023. https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2. amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2023-11/Climate%20 equality%20report%20executive%20summary.pdf
will planning save the world? not without a radical re-think it won’t!
Danny Oswell is Lecturer in Urban Planning at Newcastle University. All views expressed are personal.
Humanity faces multiple, colossal and deeply complex challenges. We have already broken through six of the nine planetary boundaries that delineate the safe operating space for human life on Earth¹ and we show little appetite for the degree of change required to return safely within those boundaries anytime soon. Many physical and social scientists have set out both the nature and scale of these challenges, as well as having posited a wide range of potential solutions to help address them.
Yet still our fetishisation of economic growth as a panacea for all our socioeconomic and political woes continues; with election-readying politicians generously promising yet more in a bid to persuade punch-drunk voters of their leadership credentials.
One might legitimately ask: where is the planning system in all of this? The somewhat dispiriting answer we must arrive at is: ‘trailing in the wake of what we now know to be reality’.
This should come as no surprise of course. Over a period of several decades, the planning system has progressively been disparaged, defunded, and disempowered. So much so that it isn’t really a ‘system of planning’ anymore; it’s now essentially a system for regulating the private process of land development. This is a bad thing on multiple levels. Firstly, at the macro level, the planning system facilitates the rapacious economic growth that is the driver of so many of our ills. In so doing, planning actively exacerbates the overshooting of those planetary boundaries that we so heavily depend upon. Secondly, at the micro level, the
planning system isn’t doing anywhere near enough to help force a significant offsetting of this boundary-busting. Efforts on issues such as active travel, modern methods of construction and biodiversity net gain should of course be welcomed. But they are too slow, too fragmented and badly lacking in the scale needed to make the required difference.
‘The planning system facilitates the rapacious economic growth that is the driver of so many of our ills’
Put a slightly different way, what we need is a symphony but what we’re getting is a series of fiddle solos.
I’m sure at this point, on reading this, my fellow professionals will be patiently mentally explaining to me that planning is required to happen within the current envelopes of legislative, regulatory and financial constraint. That is absolutely true of course. However, as both professionals and citizens, we shouldn’t unquestioningly accept the rigidity of one set of operational boundaries, whilst we blithely sit back and ignore that other set of planetary boundaries on which all our futures depend.
This is the moment for planners to get radical. We need to fight for the planning system we need,
Special section: 125 years of the TCPA – ‘personal provocations’
rather than continuing to accept the one that we are grudgingly given. The TCPA must be in the vanguard of this process, promoting to citizens a vision of how we might meet the challenges we face, whilst demanding that politicians provide us with the tools that we will need if we are to help deliver it.
There is no question in my mind that it isn’t too late for planners to save the world, but not if we remain tolerant of outmoded approaches that continually facilitate planet-threatening outcomes.
Note
1 K Richardson, W Steffen, W Lucht, J Bendtsen, SE Cornell, JF Donges, M Druke, I Fetzer, G Bala, W Von Bloh, G Feulner, S Fiedler, D Gerten, T Gleeson, M Hofmann, W Huiskamp, M Kummi, C Mohan, D Nogues-Bravo, S Petri, M Porkka, S Rahmstorf, S Schaphoff, K Thonicke, A Tobian, V Virkki, L Wang-Erlandsson, L Weber, J Rockstom: ‘Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries’. Science Advances, Vol. 9(37), eadh 2458, 13 Sep. 2023. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/ sciadv.adh2458
The Planetary Boundaries. If breached (orange and red cones), the risk of generating large scale, abrupt or irreversible global environmental changes will increase. Third update, 13 September 2023, by Johannes Ernstberger.
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023
planning for societal gain
Prof. Graham Haughton is Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Manchester. All views expressed are personal.
One of the great achievements of Ebenezer Howard’s original vision for Garden Cities was that it seemed to point a way forward for improving life for all in society without making things worse for other people or other places. It didn’t quite work out that way, but it was a noble vision and one we need to keep returning to in this era of the dominance of market-based logics when it comes to reforming planning.
Whether we like it or not, the way to a politician’s heart these days seems to be to align planning reforms to market solutions for ‘cost effective’ ways of bringing about desired policy goals such as improving biodiversity, marine ecosystems, human health or reducing flood risk. Planning can still make the world a better place it seems, but the costs of planning on the public purse cannot be increased. So planning is called upon to do more and more, but with less and less money to achieve its goals.
‘Planning is called upon to do more and more, but with less and less money’
One answer seems to be ‘planning for net gain’. The phrasing is worth reflecting on. Planning has always sought to promote itself as something that improves things – whether it’s framed as quality of life; well-being, or sustainable development, planners want to be seen as a force for good. But in practice, planning is necessarily also about negotiating tricky trade-offs – more new houses versus less greenspace being the classic. For a while, the notion of win-win-win solutions to address the so-called triple bottom line of improvements to the environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainable development seemed like it might provide a way forward.¹
Sadly though, it proved difficult to achieve in most cases and attention slowly reverted to the more usual business of dealing with trade-offs as part of the negotiations around any particular project or strategy. Net gain is important because it signals an intent, not simply to achieve ‘balance’, but rather an ambition to improve things – in the case of biodiversity by 10%. Moreover, it provides a financial mechanism that is not a drain on the public purse.
Net gain thinking currently emerging in UK planning circles is no philosophical panacea for addressing age-old moral philosophy arguments about trade-offs in search of some notion of ‘optimal’ decisions. It is essentially a market-making approach for bringing in market disciplines to help direct funding to where it can best meet a defined political goal. It comes with a swathe of technical reports into the detail of how ‘net gains’ can be measured and quantified; how different benefits aggregated into new systems of ‘credit’ can then be traded, along with cautionary advice on avoiding problems such as duplication and additionality. The UK government recently issued advice on this which makes for interesting reading for planners wanting to dig deeper into this subject.²
Biodiversity net gain³ is now a mainstream policy approach which planners are rapidly coming to terms with, requiring major developments to demonstrate 10% biodiversity net gain in England from April 2024, with the other devolved nations of the UK expected to watch carefully and potentially follow suit. The idea of marine net gain has government approval.⁴ There are also proposals about for health net gain⁵ and flood protection net gain.⁶
What does all this mean for the TCPA on its 125th anniversary as it looks forward to continuing its visionary advocacy work? I think the TCPA has long been exemplary in identifying how the planning
Social net gain would allow for a more equitable world
system should never lose sight of the need to promote the ideals of social and environmental justice and an expansive role for planners. In the past 30 years it has done this in the face of pressure from think tanks and others pursuing a narrower economistic view; one that advocates for the dismantling of much of the planning apparatus in the name of expediting efficient markets, whilst still expecting, paradoxically, planning to somehow solve the crises resulting at least in part from these neoliberal policies – from climate change and biodiversity loss to healthy living and accelerating geographical, social and environmental inequities.
Now the challenge is to move beyond rallying calls for justice in whatever form and to focus much more upon how planning can achieve societal net gain. To do this we need to grapple with and improve upon the ideas and logics of those promoting ‘net gain’ approaches. What do we mean by societal net gain and how would we know if we are achieving it? How would we want to measure it? How could we best advocate for it? How could we be more active in trying to ensure that development enhances overall societal well-being, locally and globally, not just by 10%, as in ‘achieving 10% biodiversity net gain’, but by more, much more. If we are to address the prospect of climate collapse, societal breakdown and economic stagnation, then we need planning for societal net gain on a magnitude that few of us dare think about
currently. I dare the TCPA to think at that scale and to take us with it on that journey.
Notes
1 G Haughton, D Counsell: Regions, Spatial Strategies and Sustainable Development. Routledge, 2004
2 Nature markets: A framework for scaling up private investment in nature recovery and sustainable farming. Defra, 30 Mar. 2023. https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/nature-markets
3 ‘Guidance – Biodiversity net gain – Planning practice guidance on biodiversity net gain. Biodiversity net gain is a way of creating and improving biodiversity by requiring development to have a positive impact (‘net gain’) on biodiversity’. Website. Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 14 Feb. 2024. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/biodiversity-net-gain
4 J Burney: ‘Government takes a step forward for marine nature recovery’. Blog. Natural England, 11 Dec. 2023. https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2023/12/11/ government-takes-a-step-forward-for-marine-naturerecovery/
5 J Stewart-Evans, C Koksal, M Chang: ‘Can the implementation of net gain requirements in England’s planning system be applied to health?’ The Lancet Planetary Health, 2024, Vol 8(3), 188-196. https://doi. org/10.1016/S2542-5196(24)00001-9
6 G Haughton, I White: ‘Promoting flood protection: setting a target for 10% improved water retention in towns and cities’. Blog. The University of Manchester. 18 Jan. 2024. https://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/ author/graham-haughton/
Freepik
reframing planning for the future
Laurence
Cummins (far left)
is a doctoral researcher at the University of Surrey.
Prof.
Ian Christie
is an associate professor in the Centre for Environment & Sustainability at the University of Surrey. All views expressed are personal.
Over the last 40 years, land-use planning in the UK – nationalised on 1 July 1948 – has been steadily undermined by a policy shift inspired by neoliberal market-led ideology, promoted by central governments of all political stripes. The planning system has largely been oriented away from plan-led strategic place-shaping and towards reactive development control, focusing upon regulating the activities of a private sector-led housing and development industry. Under a prolonged period of austerity, changes to local government funding have rendered councils increasingly dependent upon planning gain and land value capture mechanisms – and upon meeting centrally imposed housing targets – to fund their core services. In many cases, even this has proved insufficient.
This transformation – of both the planning system itself and the wider local governance context within which it sits – has left the planning profession simultaneously weakened and under growing pressure to prioritise speed and quantity of development over quality. The outcomes in many cases are clear: incoherent or out of date strategy on land-use and housing, delays, poor quality development, and loss of local identity.
As a result, the image of planning has never been more unfavourable. The profession and the system have consistently been downgraded in policy priorities, and public trust in them has been eroded. Yet the challenges faced by society over the next 25 years and beyond will be insurmountable without a planning system fit for purpose: climate change mitigation and adaptation, fair and just transition to
a sustainable circular economy, nature recovery and urban greening, access to clean and healthy modes of transport, and an end to the UK’s perpetual housing crisis.
There needs to be a renewal and a reinvention of planning as the profession that focuses on placeshaping for genuinely sustainable development. However, an effective response to these complex issues does not lie, as some have suggested, in merely ‘streamlining’ or simplifying the system to offer greater certainty to the development sector regarding the outcomes of planning decisions – This approach neglects the nuances and trade-offs inherent in (good) planning. A planning system fit for the next 25 years will demand a significant boost in institutional capacity if it is to support the kind of informed, democratic, and strategic planning necessary to deliver truly sustainable outcomes.
A case in point – and an area in which we can see both the constraints of the current planning system and a glimpse of a path towards more imaginative, expansive and sustainable policies – is the introduction of biodiversity net gain (BNG). BNG could offer one of the paths towards a planning system that restores nature, enhances wellbeing and helps shape sustainable communities. It contains the seeds of a long-term approach to governance for nature recovery and local greening. However, it has emerged from a neoliberalised policy system that, at present, is likely to constrain and weaken it.
In researching the recently implemented BNG legislation in England, two things stand out. Firstly, the extent to which opportunities to use strategic
planning to improve outcomes for nature and people (and make life simpler for developers) have been missed in the name of stimulating a market for biodiversity offsets. Secondly, the extent to which even the remaining regulatory component of BNG (development management and monitoring/ enforcement of any associated conditions or obligations) is likely to be significantly undermined by capacity issues within local authorities. The important role that planning can and should be playing in directing and governing advances in environmental policy is being overlooked both on ideological grounds and on the basis that it simply won’t be up to the task.
But those of us who believe that informed, democratic, and strategic planning is a necessity for navigating the challenges of the next 25 years and beyond must not settle for dealing in the art of the possible.
‘There needs to be a renewal and a reinvention of planning as the profession that focuses on place-shaping for genuinely sustainable development’
The TCPA and other bodies like them should continue to be bold in affirming the values of a 1948-style planning system and calling for it to be given the resourcing and policy focus it deserves.
Poor planning leads to poor quality development and a loss of local identity
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/
