50 Shades of Planning

It was a great privilege and a pleasure to be invited to contribute to this event in London last week. It was over-subscribed so we arranged for it to be recorded event in order to share it as a Shades episode. It is available here , as well as Apple and Spotify .  Rupert kicked us off by reviewing the implications of the NPPF for housing delivery, taking in the standard method, the cities uplift and the changes around five and four year land supply. Anjoli talked about the impact of the NPPF on plan-making, taking in Green Belt, transitional arrangements and the impact of this new version on plans that have paused, as well as soundness. Meeta talked about the NPPF changes that relate to design and beauty, small sites and community-led housing, retirement housing and agricultural land. Simon made the linkages between the NPPF and the Levelling Up & Regeneration Act, with his observations on what provisions of the latter we should pay the closest attention to. I tried to put it all

Incoherence is to planners what kryptonite is to Superman. In Superman III (the old ones were better, Kids), his thinking blurred by the powerful green stuff, our protagonist gets drunk in a bar and takes to petty acts of vandalism such as straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa . It should not be suggested in any way that the cycle of the last few years, characterised as it has been by periods of interminable delay punctuated every now and then and when space on the Westminster media grid allows by a cavalcade of announcements, is driving planners to both drink and petty acts of vandalism (possibly at least one…), but this period is as far removed from a measured, rational, ‘plan, monitor and manage’-type approach as it is hopefully possible to be. It is with world-weary cynicism and fatigue brought about by this incessant cycle of reform that older members of the profession joke about “Planning Reform Days coming around far more frequently than they did in my day”. This most recent

The latest 50 Shades of Planning episode is available here , or via Apple and Spotify . This is the third of the festive 50 Shades triumvirate looking back at 2023. The first two some past contributors and I did by way of the 50 Shades Festive Christmas Quizzes. This third one sees the return of Zack Simons’ Planaraks Awards, which he again kindly agreed to reveal exclusively on the podcast. In a conversation that we recorded on Planning Reform Day, just as Michael Gove had given a speech entitled ‘Falling back in love with the future’ and just before the NPPF emerged, we canter through some of the high points and low points of the year just gone (mostly low points) and Zack confers awards for, amongst other things, 'The Most Futile Reform of the Year', 'The Most Hopeless Reform of the Year' and 'The Worst Policy of the Year'. Positivity does not abound, but we do try to generate some. Along the way we touch on many of the things that regular readers of Zac