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On Mayoral Call-In Powers and VAR

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...
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Life on the Front Line IV

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...
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Podcast episode 185: Neutral Impact IV

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...
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Aim and you might hit. Why targets are crucial to solving the housing crisis.

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 ...
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Podcast episode 184: The New Local Plan-Making System

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...
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Podcast episode 183: A Framework-Led Conversation

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...
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Podcast episode 182: Meet a MP and an AM - Reform UK

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...
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