The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

Episode 187 of the podcast s available now via this link below or from the usual podcast platforms. I was in Birmingham recently and caught up whilst there with old friends of the podcast Myles Wild-Smith, Kathryn Ventham and Jacob Bonehill. Myles is a Director at Lichfields, Kathryn is a Senior Director at Twenty5 Planning and Jacob is a Director at Carney Sweeney. In a conversation recorded at the Podcast Room, we talked about what was then the soon-to-be, but is now the mandatory, National Scheme of Delegation; we talked about appealing against non-determination rather than waiting to be called-in; we talked about the extension of the deadline for the submission of local plans under the legacy system; and we talked about SDSs, LGR, Solihull’s Regulation 19 local plan and the West Midland Combined Authority’s Housing & Employment Land Needs Assessment. If you enjoy the episode do please consider bolstering my fragile self-esteem by leaving the podcast a nice rating and a n...

The pendulum that is the planning system’s legislative and policy framework has swung consistently back and forth since I started working over 25 years ago. Seemingly no incoming administration can resist the temptation of a landmark bill to finally get Britain building or, since 2012, a new NPPF to either also get Britain building or stop Britain building depending upon how bolshy the backbenchers are being. A minor upside of a perpetual reform agenda is a constant supply of content for columnists, bloggers and podcasters, but a major downside is that it absorbs ministerial and civil service time and energy that might otherwise be expended addressing the planning pantomime’s erstwhile Cinderella, which is development management. In this long-neglected corner of the system, despite the additional layer of complexity that each legislative and policy change has added over time, planning applications are essentially being prepared, submitted and determined in the same that I have always k...

Episode 186 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. One of the most common topics of conversation that I was party to at the UKREiiF jamboree in Leeds this year was the need for statutory chief planners. There are perhaps three factors behind that interest in building or strengthening leadership capacity within LPAs. First, the impending programme of devolution and local government reform will create larger teams covering larger geographies that will need to co-operate with newly emerging strategic authorities. Second, more authorities being in no overall control need guiding through the decision-making implications of that. And thirdly, the emerging need to manage the possibly contentious gateway test element of the soon statutory scheme of delegation. A role of statutory status, I also heard suggested in the context of wider LPA capacity and skills issues, might be something to encourage a junior officer to stay in local government and work...

I said something clever the other week and thought it so clever that I made a note to hang a blog on it. Mayoral call-in powers have the potential to do for planning what the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) has done to football. Bear with me... By way of a reminder, the consultation on planning powers for mayors in England that closed earlier this month states the following. One of the key sets of planning powers which all mayors outside London will gain through the implementation of the English Devolution Act are the powers to intervene in relation to applications of potential strategic importance (PSI). These powers enable mayors to ‘call in’ applications allowing them to shape strategic development in their area. In turn, this supports the implementation of their SDS. The Mayor of London has had the full set of powers since 2008, and successive mayors have successfully used them to shape London’s development. The specific powers are: to require LPAs to consult the mayor on PSI applic...

Long-serving (long-suffering?) readers of the 50 Shades blog and listeners to the 50 Shades podcast will recall that back in December 2021 I published the first Life on the Front blog , which informed episode 60 of the podcast a short time afterwards. I revisited the theme with a second blog and podcast a year later. The basis of the initial exercise was, at the prompting of a listener, to explore the LPA staffing crisis and, in 'taking the temperature' of the profession, it certainly struck a nerve. That first blog, as of just now, has been viewed 29,775 times, which is much, much more than my usual wittering. The second blog has been viewed 4,141 times as of just now. I did try to revisit the subject with a third blog in July last year, but that got a lot less traction. 50 Shades of Planning is though by planners and for planners and it has been suggested to me that there is an appetite out there to revisit the topic, which I am more than happy to do. So, what is life lik...

Episode 185 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. When 50 Shades first covered nutrient neutrality in February 2021, I described the process of eutrophication as a bit like the podcast itself: a little niche, but very important. When I published a second episode on it in September 2022 it had grown in significance to the extent that Prime Minister Liz Truss had pledged to “scrap nutrient neutrality rules”. The question that was posed in that second episode, and again in a third episode in June 2024, was how far away is a satisfactory resolution in those parts of the country that have been affected. Well, here we are, planning fans, almost eight years on from the 'Dutch N' judgement in the European Court of Justice, and, whisper it quietly, a satisfactory resolution to the issue that has resulted in 74 LPAs in and around Special Protection Areas withholding planning permission unless the negative impacts of development can be ruled o...

My old friend Paul Unger asked me recently to pen something for a Place North West series on solving the housing the crisis, which I was obviously happy to do. Paul gave me 500-600 words to play with and so I sent him this. It is bang on 600 words. And bang on. Obviously. How to solve the housing crisis in 600 words? Here goes. Targets. Actors. Land. Targets. Secretary of State Angela Rayner acknowledged recently that there was only a “slim chance” of the Government overseeing the completion of 1.5 million homes within the current parliamentary term. “It’s a slim chance, but I’m definitely not giving it up”, she said. “I think it’s really important that we keep a target that it was always a stretch target.” This is quite right. We will only build 300,000 homes a year when we plan to build more than 300,000 homes a year. At the point the Regional Spatial Strategies were abolished the total of their combined housing targets was 209,967. In 2022 Lichfields totted up the targets in every ...

Episode 184 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. As you will be aware, planning fans, the previous Government’s Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 introduced the legislative framework for a new system of local plan-making and in March this year the current Government introduced the regulations concerning this new regime. The headline changes are that local authorities will be required to complete plans within a condensed 30-month period; conduct three public consultations rather than the two currently required; and pass through three mandatory gateway checks on the way. As you may be less aware, 39 authorities, those that had submitted, but not adopted, a plan for examination on or before 12 March 2025 that proposed meeting less than 80% of local housing need, had to publish a Notice of Intention to commence plan-making by 30 June 2026 and will have to publish a Gateway 1 Self-Assessment by 31 October 2026. Authorities not intending to...

Episode 173 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual platforms. I was in London recently and took the opportunity to catch up with old friends of the podcast Simon Ricketts, Andrew Taylor and Mike Kiely. Simon is a Partner at Town Legal, Andrew is Group Planning and Sustainability Director at Vistry and Mike is a former Chief Planner, now independent planning consultant working mainly in the public sector as well as chairing the board of the Planning Officers Society. In a conversation recorded at Brazen Studios in Southwark, which we enjoyed visiting for the first time, we kicked around a few of the issues exercising the planning profession at the minute. Our ramble chat took in evidenced unmet need; the pause to local government reorganisation; housing targets; Reform’s planning teal paper; the importance of next month’s budget; and reports from the RTPI of increasing use of its professional conduct complaints process as a way of people seeking to challenge L...

Episode 182 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. As regular listeners will know there is often talk on the podcast about the role of local councillors in the planning system, in the context of, for example, overturning officer recommendations or a decision to withdraw a local plan. We talk less often about the role of MPs, which is something that friend of the podcast Andrew Taylor wanted to remedy and this is the third of what he and I hope will be five episodes exploring what it is to be a member of a parliament by way of conversations that Andrew records with representatives from the now five major parties. Andrew, again regular listeners will know, is the Group Planning & Sustainability Director at Vistry. This time he speaks to representatives of Reform UK. Now. The eagle-eyed amongst you might already have spotted that the title of this episode is not 'Meet the MPs', as with the previous episodes in the series with repres...

Episode 181 of the podcast is available now via this link or from the usual podcast platforms. I was in Manchester recently and took the opportunity to catch up with old friends of the podcast Lisa Tye, Shaun Knights and Jaimie Ferguson. In a conversation recorded at Reform Radio we discussed, principally, the new NPPF, but also touched upon the current live consultations on standard planning agreements for medium-sized sites and planning powers for mayors in England.

I have been invited by the the team at Pocket Living to contribute to a policy paper containing the “boldest ideas for how we can accelerate the delivery of housing and infrastructure”. This is what I have sent them. (I was given 500 words. This is bang on 500 words.) Imagine that you have been appointed Minister of State for Housing & Planning and are working with your SpAds on a press release. ‘I am delighted to take on this role...’ ‘Good start, Minister.’ ‘I will ensure this Government gets things built…’ ‘Very good, Minister.’ ‘Recalcitrant local councils and litigious resident groups have stood in the way of progress for too long...’ ‘Steady on, Minister. We need something about communities being in control…’ Whisper it quietly, but the ‘localism genie’, let out of the bottle by the 2012 Localism Act, is being put back in. The press release that accompanied the recent publication of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was titled ‘Full steam ahead to fast-track more ...

So here we are. Another NPPF Mega Blog. I spotted this morning that Paul Smith had posted the following on LinkedIn. The NPPF is replaced more quickly than the time it takes to determine planning applications for new homes. Over the last five years, the average time between NPPF updates is 414 days. The median time to determine an outline application for new homes is 439 days. It is to be hoped that there will not be another ‘Planning Reform Day (PRD)’ for well over 414 days and that, in the meantime, policy makers can focus, as the Minister promised in his UKREEIF speech , on removing some of the grit from the system . First things first, for completeness, this is what emerged on PRD. Policy paper - Creating a clear, rules-based planning system The NPPF Consultation Response Reforms to the statutory consultee system: government response Housing Delivery Test Second things second, if you have not done so already, can I suggest that you read the following. Nicola Gooch’s blog Ed Clarke’...