The rock and roll world of town and country planning is, as you know, Readers, fast-paced and ever-changing at the best of times, but it was especially fast-paced and ever-changing in December. This is an attempt at a recap, with a few initial reflections thrown in. Planning Reform Working Paper: Planning Committees On 9 December a working paper was published on welcome proposals to modernise planning committees. The paper puts forward three reforms to “support better decision-making in the planning system”, which are: The introduction of a mandatory requirement for training for planning committee members; The creation of smaller targeted planning committees specifically for strategic development; and The introduction of a national scheme of delegation. The working paper can be found here and the MHCLG press release can be found here . When this emerged in the press under headlines such as “ property developers could bypass planning committees in bid to 'overhaul' process ” i...
I am finishing this blog at the start because as I dot the i’s and cross the t’s on something that I have been cogitating over for the last week or so the Prime Minister has today empathised that building 1.5 million homes before the end of the parliament is a key part of the Government’s ‘plan for change’. To that end, building 1.5 million homes I mean, I have read a few bits and pieces recently that lead one to wonder whether the obstacles to doing so are systemic, and so can be legislated or mandated away, or are perhaps more deep-seated than that. Many in the housing sector are hard-wired to oppose new owner-occupier housing or housebuilders themselves. The reasons are endless – design quality, landbanking, ecology, sprawl, profit, water, nutrients, heritage, traffic, doctor’s capacity, sufficient permissions already, etc, etc. So wrote Philip Barnes in a recent blog, within which Mr Barnes seeks to draw a line between Trapped , Daniel Hewitt’s podcast on the housing em...