Michael Gove has been Secretary of State for several months and speculation is mounting of a change of direction of Government policy on planning. Detail remains thin, but the soundbites indicate that reform will be driven by Levelling Up (a clue is in the new title of Gove’s department) with a draft Levelling Up Bill/ White Paper due after Christmas.
What this means in practice is unknown, notably how many (if any) of the major reforms indicated by the August 2020 Planning White Paper will occur, and it is thought that a Planning & Regeneration Bill will come forward later in 2022. A further proclamation by the Prime Minister of “no greenfield development” appeared not to be a deliberate attempt at policy change, and should be viewed cautiously. Savills provided analysis back in April that it was simply not possible to accommodate Government Brownfield aspirations in the 20 largest cities which saw 30% uplifts in their housing requirements.
Housing Need
300,000 homes delivered per annum remains a Government target for England, and whilst there has been no formal indication this would change, the location for future delivery may well be redistributed. Michael Gove recently addressed the HCLG Select Committee and said:
“I am not retreating from the desire to have 300,000 new homes as soon as we can. The key figure, as we have just been discussing, is where and of what tenure. I want to make sure that people recognise that we are not taking the approach of saying, “Let’s hit that target as quickly as possible and devil take the hindmost.” We absolutely want to hit that target, but we also want to take account of beauty, the environment, quality, decency, local democratic control and infrastructure.”
Statistics show that broadly speaking more housing is being delivered now than for a quarter of a century, noting that there is apparently a levelling off of delivery. This is ‘Build Build Build’ rather than ‘Plan Plan Plan’, and certainly not at the pace required. This is perhaps starting to affect the number of residential dwellings granted permission. What is clear, is that delivery in the midlands and north is meeting the present needs, in the south (and London in particular) delivery is behind the curve.
Looking back at the various policy mechanisms used over the past twenty years might provide clues as to what is coming next. Prior to the Localism Act, the level of planned housing provision was set first at the county-level (via Structure Plans) and then at the regional level via Regional Plans. This process was largely collaborative, based on evidence, and tested at Examination. It was though slow, and to some in the Conservative heartlands appeared ‘top down’. Localism followed, which fundamentally provided the opportunity to change the dynamic of planning, though this relied on a network of positively prepared neighbourhood plans. To address the question of how much housing the NPPF was introduced. It required each local authority to set its own housing requirement based on an ‘objectively assessed need’ (OAN). To fill the gap of strategic planning, the duty to cooperate was introduced, which was a loosely defined concept that many local authorities have failed to truly grasp. Reform never ends, and as it appeared local plans processes were being bogged down in technical detail on housing needs, the OAN was abolished, to be replaced by a ‘Standard Method’ (SM) (also referred to as a ‘mutant algorithm’). This has also been revised three times already (a draft in August 2020 totalled circa 330,000 homes pa), and has probably triggered some of the political questions the Government is now seeking to address.
Recent press articles have indicated a ‘new planning formula’ with housing need calculations linked to jobs and economic growth ambitions, with the likely effect of pushing housing numbers up in the north of England. Planning for jobs and homes on an integrated basis is sensible in principle. However, committing to more homes in certain locations before there are the jobs established for a local workforce makes less sense. The two need to go hand in hand, arguably with the employment curve ahead of the housing curve.
The SM was designed to be simple. An ‘algorithm’ that seeks to take account of future employment is going to be difficult to keep to the level of simplicity that D-LUHC are seeking.
So what next? England remains one of the only parts of Europe without a strategic component to its planning system,. It is difficult to foresee strategic planning returning across the country, albeit that there are examples associated with priority areas for growth such as the Oxford Cambridge Arc. Where does this leave the duty to cooperate? It has been the cause of numerous local plans failing at examination. Perhaps a solution is to provide greater coordination powers back to county councils, or perhaps more likely, link planning reform to local government reform, whereby fewer (and larger) unitary councils, lead on fewer (and faster) local plans ? Could the answer therefore be that it is not that we are creating too few local plans but that we are trying to create too many.
A clear option that is already emerging is to encourage (or impose) partnership boards, which operate across local authority boundaries, and have a strategic plan-making function (for example the Future Oxfordshire Partnership). Whichever way it is achieved, strategic planning is required to address matters which have implications that are larger than local, including transport network improvements, natural capital projects and energy infrastructure.
Planning White Paper
The more fundamental reform proposals, made over 12 months ago, await any sort of formal reply. This followed a public consultation exercise (44,000 responses) Savills response can be read here. This has triggered a House of Commons and Lords Select Committee processes (the Commons reports over the summer).
Some commentators, including the ex MHCLG Chief Planner, have suggested simple reforms to reduce the complexity of local plan preparation process and examination, and a standard set of national Development Management policies. Such measures could be introduced without new legislation. Perhaps Government may simply decide that policy amendments are simpler, and more likely to evoke the changes sought, without the inevitable risks of transition that new legislation brings.
Logistics Logistics Logistics
The Planning White Paper was noticeably quiet on employment provision and calculating employment need. Consequently, it is not clear if the Government has considered the relationship between housing numbers and locations for employment generation. It would make sense for employment requirements to be subject to the same level of detailed analysis as housing targets to ensure the right amount of land is allocated to meet growth demands. For example, large-scale logistics sites often serve the warehousing or distribution needs of a region (or even nation) rather than a single local authority and therefore require strategic assessment and planning. In abolishing the Duty to Cooperate as proposed in the White Paper, there may be limited opportunity to truly ‘build back better’ in a sustainable manner with employment and home ownership opportunities co-located. If for Gove, levelling up means empowering local government and increasing neighbourhood-level planning as set out in his conference speech, how will such important drivers of economic growth be factored in to the planning process?
Natural Capital in the Planning System
As Environment Secretary, Gove pioneered the Environment Bill and spoke frequently about the UK becoming a world leader in environmental ambition and addressing climate change. The Environment Act became law in November and it incorporates a requirement to achieve a net increase in biodiversity on all development sites. Where in England the NPPF already encourages local planning authorities to incorporate biodiversity, 10% net gain is now enshrined in law. Gove’s passion for the environment is evident in comments made at the Conservative Party conference, where it is reported he criticised the use of steel and concrete. Gove evidently favours more traditional materials which in his opinion have a lower embodied carbon. How this will be translated into the ‘building beautiful’ agenda remains to be seen.
The 25-Year Environment Plan, also pioneered by Gove as Environment Secretary, aimed to set standards for the protection and growth of natural capital. There are endless angles to natural capital thinking, whether its public access, nutrient offsetting, rewilding, water management or social prescribing. From a planning perspective, the importance of natural capital in valuing and assessing locations for development must be a priority. Alongside that is the objective to deliver sustainable homes and jobs where they are needed. If what really matters is the achievement of sustainable development, then this poses inevitable questions over the purpose of Green Belt, which imposes restraint on new growth in the location which provides the greatest accessibility to public transport, local services and facilities, existing schools and jobs. The concept of Green Belt hopping is not something to be encouraged at a time when we are seeking to reduce the length of commuter journeys and the carbon emissions that arise from them
Wider delivery matters
In April 2023 Help to Buy is scheduled to end after eight years of helping people purchase newly built homes. The Government’s flagship alternative, First Homes, is still in its infancy and it is not clear if the projected number of First Homes (7,500 based on 2019/20 affordable housing delivery) will be achieved. The aim of First Homes is to open up home ownership for an increasing number of less affluent households. Savills Research indicates this is likely to be the case in the Midlands and North. However, in parts of the South, the ability to deliver family housing that is affordable to middle and lower income households will be limited. It is not yet clear how local authorities will guide the delivery of First Homes, or whether some would resist, on the basis of existing local policy that aims to meet locally assessed needs for affordable homes.
The Planning White Paper proposed to abolish both Section 106 (S106) and the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and replace them with a consolidated Infrastructure Levy (IL). Although presented as a simple like-for-like alternative more directly linked to land value capture, implementation of such a sweeping change is likely to be more complex if not impossible. The proposed flat-rate IL misses the nuances embedded in the development costs of different sites, which the S106 system reflects in its flexibility. An IL based purely on development value would disregard cost variation between sites in different locations, of different sizes and with different existing use values and remediation requirements.
Since the Conservative Party conference, the Government has reiterated a ‘brownfield first’ narrative. This is a sensible focus but risks putting aside questions over the availability of sufficient brownfield sites to meet the need for development and the viability of redeveloping brownfield land that is often has a legacy of contamination derived from its earlier use. Accounting for such differences will be important to ensure that brownfield sites are not rendered unviable by the IL.
In his speech to the Conservative Party conference, Gove set out that levelling up means “empowering local government” and “allowing communities and councillors to take back control”. Away from the soundbites it remains to be seen how Gove will reconcile these priorities in the context of the ‘build build build’ agenda, levelling up and accelerating out of the pandemic. One matter which should be top of his agenda, is ensuring sufficient local government resource and expertise is available to make the planning system work, whatever new form it takes. Perhaps the way forward on this matter is to better coordinate local authority resources, through genuine partnership working over broader geographies.