The 50 Shades of Planning Blog

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 ...