Sam Stafford's Blog

Episode 132 of the podcast is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . "‘The moment has come’: pro-building Labour YIMBYs are set to raise the roof" was the title of this piece in the Observer ahead of the Labour Party Conference. For many of the most ambitious of the new cohort of Labour MPs, this is the fashionable campaign of the moment, not for economic growth but as a social justice movement – and one that many of the new millennials entering parliament hope to stake their careers on. Inside Labour it is not a left-right divide, but some of its champions are prepared for it to mean internal party conflict between those who are radicalised on the housing crisis, and more nervous colleagues in rural or suburban seats won for the first time by Labour who might be tempted to retreat into nimbyism on local issues as a way of trying to keep their seats. The point about first time Labour MPs retreating into NIMBYism is interesting in the context of the propos...

A compilation, for posterity, of thirteen Instagram posts that tell the story of summer 2024. Match 1. Stones CC Sunday XI 114 ao. Stainland CC Sunday XI 43 ao. On a balmy late summer Sunday afternoon last year the two of us went for a walk that took us past the cricket club at the top of the hill. I knew that there was a game on because of attempts, as yet unsuccessful, to get Youngest over his threshold for getting involved in cricket, which, because of his autism, is high one. As we sat in the barmy late summer sun that afternoon I expressed regret that I had never played club cricket. ‘Why don’t you then?’ My Dad played, but gave it up when I came along. I recall playing a couple of games for Nottingham High School’s ‘Cluniacs’ which, looking back now, may have been my Geography teacher’s laudable attempt to get the kids without huge bags of expensive kit involved in the game. That was in 1994. It has been beach cricket and a solitary corporate game since. Yes. Why don’t ...

Episode 131 of the podcast is available now via this link or from Apple and Spotify . If you have listened to episodes 125 and 128 you will know that I sought to cover, pre-publication, what could and should be in the new version of NPPF. With the consultation deadline now starting to loom large, this episode seeks to cover what is actually in it. I was in London last week and caught up with friends of the podcast Andrew Taylor , Hashi Mohamed , Vicky Payne and Simon Ricketts at Soho Radio Studios. As you will hear we crammed as much as possible into the hour-long studio booking. We talked about the proposed new stock-based standard method and transitional arrangements for local plans, we talked about Grey Belt, 50% affordable housing and benchmark land values; and we touched on beauty, design codes, vision-led transport planning, the flood risk sequential test, neighbourhood plans, safeguarded land, and application fees.

In February 2010 the opposition Conservative party published a green paper called 'Open Source Planning' , which proposed the abolition of national and regional housing targets and a radical reorientation of the planning system that would see local plans “being built up from the community level”. In a Written Ministerial Statement in July 2010 the Conservative Secretary of State for the Department of Communities & Local Government, Eric Pickles, subsequently, indeed infamously some planners might say, revoked the Regional Strategies. The revocation of Regional Strategies will make local spatial plans, drawn up in conformity with national policy, the basis for local planning decisions. The new planning system will be clear, efficient and will put greater power in the hands of local people, rather than regional bodies. Revoking, and then abolishing, Regional Strategies will mean that the planning system is simpler, more efficient and easier for people to understand. It will ...

Episode 130 of the podcast is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . In Hitting the High Notes episodes like this one I chat to preeminent figures in the planning and property sectors about the six planning permissions or projects that helped to shape them as professionals. And, so that Listeners can get to know people a little better personally, for every project or stage of their career I also ask my guests for a piece of music that reminds them of that period. Think of it as town planning’s equivalent of Desert Island Discs. Unlike Desert Island Discs you will not hear any of that music during the episode because using commercially-licensed music without the copyright holders permission or a very expensive PRS licensing agreement could land me in hot water, so, when you have finished listening, you will have to make do with YouTube videos and a Spotify playlist, links to which you will find in the episode description. My guest for this episode is Mike Best wh...

The need to build at least 300,000 new homes a year in England has become an established part of the political furniture, but that requirement could actually be much higher. A report commissioned by the National Housing Federation and Crisis from  Heriot-Watt University suggested that 340,000 should be built; the Centre for Cities puts the figure at 440,000; and analysis by the Financial Times suggests that the figure could be as high as 529,000 if current net migration levels hold. Analysis by Lichfields for HBF and LPDF (see below) puts the current shortfall of homes at 2.1 million, rising to close to 3 million by 2030, and suggests that 2.4 million extra homes would be needed to match the per capita average of comparable northern European countries. The most recent Housing Delivery Test results reveal that the combined annual monitoring benchmarks for Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) are well below 300,000 (in 2022 they totalled 259,000) and the cumulative requirements in ...

Episode 129 of the podcast is available now via this link or from iTunes and Spotify . To rebuild or to retrofit? That is the question posed by former Secretary of State Michael Gove’s intervention in planning applications for the redevelopment of M&S’ Oxford Street store and the former Museum of London building. According to the Climate Change Committee, direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions from buildings account for 23% of the UK total. How can we create energy-efficient, carbon neutral and climate resilient new buildings and what is needed to accelerate the decarbonisation of existing buildings? The greenest building, so it is said, is the building that already exists and a ‘retrofit fit first, not retrofit only’ position appears to be emerging as the default, but this involves understanding which development options would have the lowest embodied carbon intensity and operational carbon emissions. Who is measuring what and how? Friend of the podcast Katie Wray kindly ...

As the dust begins to settle on the new Government’s planning reform announcements arguably the most striking element is the tone that has been adopted. The last Government ebulliently espoused “a coherent, holistic, long-term reform programme” but, with set piece announcements and consultations every other month, presented sceptics with regular opportunities to question whether there was anything coherent, holistic and long-term about it. The ‘Super Squad’, for example, the ‘Accelerated Planning System’ and the aspiration that Barrow-in-Furness become “a new powerhouse for the North” are unlikely to be spoken of ever again. That coherent, holistic, long-term reform programme, so it was claimed, sought to “ensure the planning system at last delivers as it should”, but at the root of the December 2023 changes to the NPPF was, ultimately, the appeasement of rebellious backbench MPs and a retreat from tackling the underlying policy obstacles that stand in the way of more homes being plann...