New rules could allow local authorities across England to purchase land for house building at affordable prices, even when landowners don’t want to sell. Under draft legislation, councils would be given more powers to issue compulsory purchase orders, forcing landowners to hand over sites that could host housing schemes in return for “fair but not excessive” payments.
The proposals are part of the government’s ambitious attempts to get Britain “back to building”, coming hot on the heels of the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, unveiling substantial changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) last month intended to revivify the UK’s ailing planning system. After the Tories presided over a period of planning chaos which saw backlogs spiral, major infrastructure projects cancelled, 16 housing ministers in only 14 years and housebuilding fall to its lowest level in England for a decade, does Labour have what it takes to create a futureproof, vision-led planning system?
Many of the new government’s proposals are promising: there is a clear push back on traffic-centred urbanism, more focus on community infrastructure, and a vital emphasis on social housing. Vital because while new private housing does not bring prices down – as one LSE study showed – new socially rented homes provide a triple win. They protect tenants from cowboy landlords, give cash-strapped councils space to rehouse families stuck in expensive temporary accommodation – and free up capacity in the private rental sector.
The most radical change is buried in an annex. Under new rules, property developers who pay above the odds for grey belt land would not be able to use notorious viability assessments to justify delivering less affordable housing than required if it pushes their profit margins below 20%, as is common practice elsewhere. If this and Labour’s other proposed new “golden rules” for grey belt development were extended nationwide, the effect on social housing and infrastructure construction would be massive.
But though Labour’s NPPF tweaks are positive, they do not add up to the wholesale transformation many were hoping for: reforming the UK planning system is a knotty political challenge. But if Labour is serious about resuscitating the economy with a renaissance in sustainable construction, it will need to bring as much ambition to reforming planning for the 21st century as its predecessors brought to its inception in the 20th.
Planning was invented because 1920s and 1930s British developers were throwing up, with little oversight, profitable but low quality neighbourhoods strung out in ribbons along highways. If you’ve ever driven into London from Oxford along the A40, you know the kind of thing: strips of semi-detached houses immediately abutting busy roads with no schools or parks in sight.
The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 was revolutionary in not just curtailing sloppy development but in transferring power to the public. From then on, whether developers wanted to build a bungalow or a skyscraper, they needed their proposals to be approved by the democratically accountable local council before they could lay a single brick.
Labour’s postwar government had actually wanted to go much further, promising in its 1945 manifesto to nationalise not just key industries like coal and steel but land itself. Faced with strong opposition, however, in the end they settled on the compromise we have today – Britain’s land remains privately owned, but meting out permission to build is controlled by councils.
On paper, the planning system should be one of the most meaningful pillars of our democracy. While elections merely give us the chance to stick an X in a box once every few years, local planning should, in theory, empower us to help continuously steer the future of our neighbourhoods.
In practice, however, engaging with planning couldn’t feel further from empowering: the system is known for its byzantine online portals, cryptic notices cable-tied to lamp posts, and fraught consultation meetings. Planning is meant to give us opportunities to improve our local areas – but more often the opaque system breeds mistrust and resentment.
“Nimby culture is perhaps the inevitable collective response to our current planning system,” says David Knight, the co-founder of architecture firm DK-CM, whose PhD explored what would make the planning system more popular and useful. “When the tools to meaningfully effect or prevent change are obscure to us, blind opposition feels like the only way.”
It is easy to understand why people are frustrated. Individuals attempting minor home extensions are often subject to bizarre levels of overbearing scrutiny while major developers seem to be able to build towers of cramped and overheated flats with impunity. Small architects are denied permission for modest dormer windows while a 23-storey block developed by billionaires in southeast London remains unaltered, despite 26 major deviations from its original planning consent.
Some think the planning system is too onerous, “gummed-up” with “red tape” that “must be slashed”, as the FT says. But when the Lib-Con coalition government hacked away Britain’s regional planning tier in 2010, it made everything worse, stymieing effective coordination between local authorities on major projects.
Rather than less planning, Britain actually needs much more – not more of the same, but more ambitious, more imaginative and more proactive planning, setting out positive visions crafted in collaboration with community participation all across the country. “Planning has to recover its visionary, plan-led mojo,” argues Knight, “and re-establish spatial planning as a design-led, skilled discipline that includes science, evidence and art.”
Knight is right, but planning departments have been decimated – first by Margaret Thatcher’s castration of local government and again by modern austerity. While Labour has promised to recruit 300 new planning officers, it’s a fraction of the number needed, at less than one per authority. No wonder vision is in short supply when planning departments are under such sustained, demoralising attack.
A coalition of about 250 architecture firms have called on the government to invest in local planning departments – and Labour should listen to them. Rayner’s well-judged NPPF changes are a strong opening salvo in her time in office, but she should not stop there. Poor planning is a recipe for high-carbon, low-quality, shoddy development that Britain has neither the cash nor carbon budget to pay for. Planning for a better future means transforming the future of planning.
Phineas Harper is a writer and curator
