Sam Stafford's Blog

The Government published a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) Action Plan in February 2023 and committed to bringing forward reforms “to ensure the existing system can support our future infrastructure needs by making the NSIP consenting process better, faster, greener, fairer and more resilient by 2025”. Subsequent to that the Government consulted in July 2023 on operational NSIP changes to “make the system work more effectively for applicants, local authorities and communities”. The NSIP Action Plan was silent, however, on an important question that was included in the 2020 “ Planning for the Future ” white paper, which was case for allowing new settlements to be brought forward under the NSIP regime. The development industry, so I am led to believe, was supportive of this and, with the ' next generation of new towns ' back on the agenda, this is a question that it might be timely to revisit. The case for doing so is twofold. Firstly, the size of site ...

Simon Wicks, editor of the RTPI's 'The Planner', collared me after the RTPI Young Planners Conference in Birmingham a couple of months ago and asked me write 390 words for the upcoming edition. I proudly accepted this kind invitation and duly wrote 390 words on Westminster's intoxication with planning reform and what could be achieved without it. I am sharing it here for anybody who is not a RTPI member and may be interested in reading it. Thanks to Simon for the opportunity and for the title. In the same way that objecting to planning applications has become a national pastime, expounding in abstract terms on the need for planning reform has become a hobby for many in Westminster. As has been demonstrated of late though, ‘ levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England ’ is harder than it sounds. Of greater importance right now is surely just getting the wheels back on the wagon and getting the wagon moving in the ri...

Land availability is consistently cited by SME builders as a being a major issue. 52% of respondents to a HBF survey identified it as a barrier to growth, which was up from 47% in 2021 and 32% in 2020. The downward trend in the number of active SMEs ( HBF estimate that SMEs comprised an annual average of 39% of new build delivery before 1990, falling to just 12% in 2017) is surely driven at least in part by the paucity of opportunities for development being provided by the planning system. Savills has identified that in 2011, so before the NPPF, the average size of a local plan allocation was 35 hectares. Between 2012 and 2016 though the average allocation had risen to 60 hectares. Between 2017 and 2021 it was 69 hectares.   Savills identified a similar pattern in the number of sites gaining full consent. In 2012, sites with capacity for over 1000 homes comprised less than 2% of all consents granted. That proportion had risen to 10% by 2020. In contrast, the number of homes bein...

Part 1 (18-09-23). If you did not watch the first part of this after the England game last night it is very much worth your time. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001rkn5/britains-housing-crisis-what-went-wrong The development industry was probably wary of a hatchet job, but my sense was that it was the short-term nature of political decision-making that came out as the villain of the piece. It certainly highlighted to me that anybody harbouring anger, resentment and bitterness towards the development industry because the government chooses to subsidise the private rental market and first time buyers rather than subside homes for social rent, which I'm sure some people do, would be better served directing that anger, resentment and bitterness elsewhere. Politics, as was said, is choices... Landbanking got a mention, of course, but responses to that are pretty well rehearsed now and, whisper it quietly, I think starting to become more widely appreciated and un...

The first bit On the day that I started writing this the Prime Minister has confirmed in a move considered intellectually incoherent by some that hundreds of new oil and gas licenses will be granted in the UK, which signals that it is ‘Energy Week’ on the Government’s summer recess comms grid. A line appears to have been drawn from the role of an Ultra Low Emission Zone policy in securing a marginal win for the Conservatives in the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election to the softening of commitments to a net zero energy strategy. Seven days ago the Prime Minister launched the grid’s ‘Planning Reform Week’ by announcing that the Government will meet its manifesto commitment to build 1 million homes over this parliament, which would represent “another important milestone in the government’s already successful housebuilding strategy”. It is notable given the ground that Labour has gained on housing in recent months that the first week of the parliamentary recess was devoted to tryin...

A criticism often levelled at governments is that policy formulation does not look beyond the short-term and so when something of a long-term, potentially transformative nature is mooted it is only right that it be given fair consideration. Such is the case with the Infrastructure Levy (IL), the framework for which is included in the Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill, and which proposes to replace the current system of developer contributions with a mandatory, “more streamlined”, locally-determined levy. As was pointed out in many of the responses to the consultation on the technical aspects of the levy, the development industry is entirely sympathetic to efforts to both optimise and streamline developer contributions through the planning system, but, alongside an unprecedented coalition of cross sector partners, raised a number of concerns about the IL proposals. Firstly, the levy would further diminish the ability to draw a direct line between new development and the benefits that...

‘I began to see what a sacred cow the Green Belt has become’. Richard Crossman, Minister for Housing & Local Government, in 1964. The need for change The mere mention of the words Green Belt raise hackles. There are some who consider it’s present boundaries to be sacrosanct. According to recent Ipsos polling, six in ten people in England would retain it's current extent of Green Belt even if it restricts the country's ability to meet housing needs. There are some, including leader writers at The Economist , who would do away with it all together. Neither position is tenable, but there is a trend towards an entrenchment of these positions that makes sensible conversations about meeting housing needs almost impossible. The status quo is unsustainable, both literally and figuratively. The past In both planning and cultural terms, the notion of a ‘Green Belt’ goes back a long way. Long after Thomas More’s ‘ Utopia ’ and Elizabeth I’s ‘ Cordon Sanitaire ’ in 1580, the roots of ...