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 one, a second pre-Christmas treat in a row, was on and then off and then finally on again, which made for good gossiping, but the wearisome build-up, the scale and breadth of the announcements, and then having to piece together the implications surely renders days like it as the antitheses of good policy-making.
For completeness, this is everything that emerged on or around the latest Planning Reform Day.
- Falling back in love with the future;
- The Next Stage in Our Long Term Plan for Housing Update (statement given by the Housing Minister on behalf of the Secretary of State);
- Government response to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: reforms to national planning policy consultation;
- Housebuilding in London (letter from the Secretary of State to the Mayor of London);
- Housebuilding in London: terms of reference – London Plan review;
- Nutrient Neutrality and Local Nutrient Mitigation Fund update;
- Green Belt guidance;
- Planning policy for traveller sites;
- Housing Delivery Test: 2022 measurement;
- Planning Skills Delivery Fund (year 1): successful local authorities;
- Local Plan intervention: Secretary of State letters to 7 local authorities;
- West Berkshire Council: Local Plan intervention letter;
- Freeports delivery roadmap;
- Street Vote Development Orders: consultation; and
- The NPPF.
In addition there are consultations on ground rent, heat network zoning, the Future Homes Standard, and the transparency of land ownership involving trusts.
In the statement given to Parliament it was stated that “this Government has a coherent, holistic, long-term reform programme to ensure the planning system at last delivers as it should.”
Some people might have cause to quibble with that.
The Secretary of State’s speech was delivered in front of a screen that included #PlanningForTheFuture, which was, of course, the name given to proposals to reform the planning system by the last iteration of this government but one all the way back in the summer of 2020. National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) aside, which may at some point become a thing, little of that transformative agenda actually survives.
In a similar highly-spun vein, the introduction to the Government’s response to the December 2022 NPPF consultation asserts that the changes proposed at that time, and now mostly followed through with, were an essential accompaniment to the emerging Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill (LURB). By common consensus, however, those changes, the consequences of which the sector will now have to deal with, were necessary not to facilitate the delivery of LURB but to facilitate its passage through Parliament. The planning textbooks of the future might describe them as an incoherent, atomistic, short-term political calculation.
Enough world-weary cynicism though. Railing against the politics of planning is as productive a use of time as railing against the sun coming up. It is what it is. A much more productive use of time is trying to understand what has been announced, and why, and what it all may or may not come to mean.
The announcements
The speech
The Secretary of State began his speech, which was entitled ‘Falling back in love with the future’, by harking back to the Victorian era, including a reference to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. That, as commentator Paul Smith wryly observed, is a story about one man’s realisation that the route to happiness is not protecting what you have got, but helping those who need it, which, in so far as the delivery of new homes is concerned, is the opposite of what the cumulative changes to national policy will achieve.
The title of Mr Gove’s speech may or may not have had something to do with Nicholas Boys Smith, but it was striking that Mr Boys Smith used the phrase in a recent Guardian article (one should say Nicholas Boys Smith MBE, an honour bestowed for services to planning and design).
Key elements of the speech include the following.
League Tables
‘When I was education secretary, I saw that nothing concentrated the minds of system leaders as sharper accountability. Rigorous inspection, robust league tables. I’m going to apply the same principles of performance to LPAs. We will publish league tables revealing real performance: the speed with which they respond, the level of approvals, their delivery against targets’.
Mr Gove is also to shine a light on the use of extension of time agreements, noting that, when stripped out, in the two years to September 2023, only 9% of LPAs determined 70% or more of non-major applications within the statutory eight-week period and only 1% determined at least 60% of major planning applications within the statutory 13-week period.
The use of planning performance agreements, which extension of time agreements come under, has significantly increased in recent years.
According to DLUHC data, 43.2% of all planning decisions in 2022 involved either a planning performance agreement, extension of time, or other performance agreement. According to Planning Magazine, just 0.4% of decisions in 2013 involved a performance agreement.
In response to the speech Jon Palmer, Head of Planning at Milton Keynes City Council, posted the following on LinkedIn.
It was less than 13 days on from the introduction of new fees, which have come about due to the chronic shortage of planning professionals available to administer the system. Now the SoS "will make sure that every local authority is held to account...for the speed with which planning applications are processed". He will strip out the use of Extensions of Time agreements to "more clearly identify the good planning authorities and those who are hiding behind these agreements to mask their dilatoriness." On the face of it, I am sure many would agree. We definitely do need clear and robust performance metrics that all can rely on. Yet it will take years to support and develop the new Senior/Principal Planning Officers who are urgently required. This is something we have started to do with the Milton Keynes Planning Academy. However, these professionals will not materialise simply because we constrain the use of Extensions of Time. The consequence will be a significant rise in requests that applications, which require any form of amendments, are withdrawn or refused. At least this aligns with the government's response to the fees consultation which stated that amendments and improvements to schemes "is best undertaken at the pre-application stage to ensure that high-quality schemes are submitted first time round." However, there is still no recognition of the explosion of requirements that need to be met by applicants, mostly coming from a myriad of changes national planning policy/regulations and have come into effect since the statutory timeframes were originally set. I would humbly suggest that reviewing these arbitrary statutory timescales is urgently needed to alleviate the stress and pressure being experienced by some LPAs. At the moment (today) my team has 19% of applications that are either out of time, have a Planning Performance Agreement or an extension of time agreed. We need everyone to be asking why are Extensions of Time used and how do we solve this problem.
Designation
The Secretary of State took the opportunity to make an example of two district councils, Chorley and Fareham, for poor quality decision-making and stated that the current criteria and thresholds for designation will be reviewed “to make sure we’re not letting off the hook authorities that should be doing better”.
In a statement issued in response, Fareham said the last time the council made a decision on a major planning application that was subsequently overturned on appeal was in November 2021. It added that all the appeals allowed in the two years to September 2022 related to “housing developments on greenfield sites at a time when the council did not have an up-to-date local plan [or] a five year housing land supply and was endeavouring to address the issue of nitrate mitigation”.
“Since that time the council has adopted a local plan, established a five-year housing land supply and secured nitrate mitigation measures to enable housing development to take place across the borough”, the authority said.
According to the “most up-to-date information the council holds, the council will be below the government's designation threshold” for the next official assessment period, covering the two years to March 2023, it went on to say.
A statement issued Chorley said it was “astonished by the decision, which ignores the numerous meetings held and letters sent over years from Chorley Council and the MP for Chorley, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to explain to the government the negative impact that their changes to the planning rules have had on the borough”.
Statutory Consultees
The Secretary of State said that he believed that statutory consultees are ‘an important check and balance within our planning system, safeguarding the environment, respecting heritage and ensuring health and safety considerations are properly taken into account’, but expressed worry about “delay and procrastination with statutory consulting".
"A superficial glance at the statistics suggests that most statutory consultees respond within the expected 21-day limit, but look a little closer, and you can observe the regular use of holding responses - effectively an 'I'll get back to you later' acknowledgement”.
Sam Richards has been appointed "to lead a rapid three-month review into the statutory consultee system". Richards is campaign director and chief executive at Britain Remade. He has been a special advisor on energy and the environment on energy and the environment at Number 10.
"If we want the 21st century infrastructure communities are crying out for then we need a 21st century planning system, and as part of this review I will leave no stone unturned", Richards has said.
Both the development industry and the planning profession are likely to welcome a light being shone on the role to consultees, from whom the ‘holding response’ has become more prevalent in recent times. These are typically a generic ‘more information needed’ response, that, a cynical applicant might assume, simply masks that an application has not yet been read.
The issue is a timely one.
Recent RTPI research on local plan-making concluded as follows.
There appears to be evidence that Statutory Consultee engagement, or lack of it, has delayed the publication or submission of plans, but this is difficult to draw out from the written sources. There are however examples of where the lack of ongoing engagement (possibly on both sides) has led to delays at the examination process.
Delays in receiving responses from statutory consultees was also identified by the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) as one as one of factors driving up the length of the planning process. The CMA’s recent paper on planning states that.
LPAs reported issues with getting statutory consultees to respond within the 21-day consultation period. Responses from statutory consultees were stated to commonly be late and, in many cases, returned well in excess of the required 21-day period. This was largely attributed to resourcing issues within the statutory consultee organisations.
In setting out possible future planning reform the CMA goes on to suggest that LPAs could only be required to consult with a clearly defined set of consultees (although this would not prevent LPAs from consulting with other stakeholders, if they choose to, or other stakeholders from providing their views to the LPA) and that LPAs could only be required to take into account the views of statutory consultees if they provide their views within the mandatory 21-day period. Under this proposal, if a statutory consultee does not respond within 21 days the LPA can deem them to have consented to the planning application.
In his speech the Secretary of State stated that ‘the performance of Natural England, the Environment Agency, Historic England and other arm's length bodies needs to improve’, but it will need to be highlighted through the review that internal LPA consultees (environmental heath, ecology, urban design, heritage, etc) and, in two-tier areas, County Councils (minerals and waste, flood risk, local nature recovery strategies, education and health), are just as important to the formulation of policy and the determination of planning applications.
Similarly, whilst not a consultee as such, internal legal resource is fundamental to the ability of a LPA to transact Section 106 Agreements.
The CMA proposal for a clearly defined set of consultees would be welcome.
Further, consultation by reference to the size of project or other such criteria may help to focus efforts more.
Further still, if an applicant has consulted the consultee at pre-application stage and there have been no substantial changes to the submitted application proposals then the pre-application response should be able to be used to assess the application.
Consultees should not be able to divert from a previously agreed position without consequences proportionate to the disruption this causes.
A list of accredited technical consultants could be maintained by a LPA and where a housebuilder has sought the professional advice of such a consultant and relied upon a previously agreed position with the LPA and/or consultee that element of the application should not be subject to further scrutiny.
Where statutory consultees do recommend the imposition of a condition it should be capable of being discharged by direct liaison with the consultee rather than being mediated/processed by the LPA. A utility company, for example, should be able to approve a drainage design rather than advising a LPA that it should be approved. Legislative change may be required to allow this.
The CMA’s ‘use it or lose it’ proposal has not been met with unanimous support. Whether or not such an approach is introduced, fundamentally, a solution needs to be found for soliciting consultee input in a timelier fashion.
Consultees need to be incentivised to and compensated for providing meaningful input into the planning process, which might be achieved as part of the ‘accelerated planning service’ proposition.
The Levelling Up & Regeneration Act makes provision for national statutory consultees to charge for providing “advice, information or assistance” on planning applications. It is considered vital though that consultee pre-application processes be integrated into a LPA-led process and not be conducted separately. The LPA, for example, could distribute an ’accelerated planning service’ fee at agreed milestones and for an agreed level of service.
The key point is perhaps that statutory (and non-statutory) consultees have become fundamental to the operation of the planning system, but in most cases planning is only peripheral to their respective core operations. Redressing that imbalance would arguably make the biggest practical impact.
The Written Ministerial Statement
In the relation to extension of time agreements, the WMS confirmed an intention to consult “on constraining their use, including banning them for householder applications, limiting when in the process they can apply, and prohibiting repeat agreements”.
A couple of other extracts of note.
On accelerated planning services, which were confirmed in the Autumn Statement, these will build on the existing model of Planning Performance Agreements, which are struck between local authorities and developers, detailing how an application will be handled and what timescales will apply. While we know these agreements work well in some areas, it is also clear that they are used inconsistently – with many developers finding that the payments charged and the level of service offered vary significantly between authorities.
We will now look to regularise these arrangements – making sure that they are offered across England, that clear milestones have to be agreed, that fees are set at an appropriate level, and that those fees have to be refunded where milestones are missed. Given the complexity and necessary flexibility that comes with such applications, we will work closely with the sector as we design these arrangements before consulting in the new year.
On planning committees, we rightly see elected representatives judge the merits of significant applications – and it is vital that they focus their time on applications that truly merit such scrutiny, and arrive at decisions following legitimate reasoning. On this basis, I have asked the Planning Inspectorate to start reporting to the department about cases where a successful appeal is made against a planning committee decision, and the final decision is the same as the original officer’s recommendation. The overturning of a recommendation made by a professional and specialist officer should be rare and infrequent – such that I have reminded the inspectorate that where it cannot find reasonable grounds for the committee having overturned the officer’s recommendation, it should consider awarding costs to the appellant.
Both the Secretary of State’s speech and the WMS mentioned Cambridge, where the Government would like to see “a new urban quarter – one truly plugged into the existing city rather than simply orbiting it – with beautiful neo-classical buildings, rich parkland, concert halls and museums providing new homes for thousands each year”.
The Secretary of State said that “we will establish a new development corporation, with a broadly based Board to steer its efforts. These we will arm with the right leadership and full range of powers necessary to marshal this huge project over the next two decades, regardless of the shifting sands of Westminster.”
Gove also said that Peter Freeman has been “working flat out to deliver our vision for the city, in collaboration with local leaders and representatives.”
In a statement responding to the announcement, the leaders of Cambridge City Council, Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridgeshire County Council, and the combined authority mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, raised concerns.
“We note in the latest announcement that the number of new homes put forward by Rt Hon Michael Gove MP has come down from 250,000 to 150,000, but this is still substantially more than the over 50,000 homes we have identified as needed in the emerging Greater Cambridge Local Plan (to 2040) – a number which will already be incredibly challenging to bring forward," said the statement.
“Clarity is also needed as to who is involved in the ‘Cambridge Delivery Group’, what it will do, and how it will be governed”, it goes on to say.
The focus on Cambridge is interesting for at least two reasons. Firstly, if the development of Cambridge is considered vital to the national interest then why not, it is not unreasonable to as, other places as well. Secondly, Labour is seemingly interested in another ‘fresh’ generation of new towns as well as (and perhaps more likely) urban extensions and the extent to which progress can be made in Cambridge might inform thinking on how applicable a development corporation model might be elsewhere.
The NPPF consultation response
Some points of note.
The consultation draft had proposed that plans would no longer be required to be ‘justified’, and instead simply have to meet housing need ‘so far as possible’, taking into account other policies in the NPPF. The majority of consultees opposed this suggestion and the Government has said in response that whilst the change will not be proceeded with there is still a commitment to streamlining evidential requirements for plan-making.
The Government ‘has heard’ concerns that NDMPs could prevent authorities including a given topic in a plan and it will remain possible for locally-produced policies to address matters of particular local importance, provided that they are not inconsistent with or repeat a NDMP.
The new NPPF does not include the proposed ‘switching off’ of the presumption for LPAs that have delivered more than 115% of required permissions, “the Government will continue to consider ways in which this approach could be introduced in a future policy update.”
The Government had consulted on different options for sanctioning developers that persistently breach planning controls or fail to “deliver their legal commitments to the community”, but, unsurprisingly, consultation responses were split on taking this forward and so ‘irresponsible planning behaviour’ will now merely be ‘considered carefully in any future policy development’.
Proposals in relation to build-out rates are to be taken forward, but only after “full consultation on them and related issues”. Three interventions have been proposed: that data will be published on developers of sites over a certain size who fail to build out according to their commitments; that developers will be required to explain how they propose to increase the diversity of housing tenures to maximise a scheme’s absorption rate; and that delivery will become a material consideration in planning applications.
The Government will continue to consider the proposal that social rent homes be given higher priority in the NPPF.
The consultation had said the Government was looking to clamp down on the use of artificial grass in new development and the ‘gaming of biodiversity net gain rules’, but the response includes no specific policies in relation to these issues.
The possibility of embedding a broad form of carbon assessment in planning policy will be explored in a future review of national planning policy.
The consultation response states that the Government intends to review national planning policy “in due course” to make sure it contributes to climate change adaptation as fully as possible.
Arguably though the single-most interesting thing revealed by the consultation response document is that not only is there a Mansard roof campaign, but there are 226 members of it.
Housebuilding in London
In a move considered likely to relate to the forthcoming mayoral election, the Secretary of State has appointed an expert panel to review potential barriers to housebuilding in London Plan
A letter from Mr Gove to Sadiq Khan states that “due to the significant shortfall in housing supply and under delivery of housing in our capital, I have concluded that it may be necessary to take further action now, as a matter of urgency, to make sure London is delivering the homes our capital needs.”
Christopher Katkowski KC has been appointed to lead a panel that includes former Conservative LGA chair James Jamieson; architect and chair of the Construction Industry Council Paul Monaghan, and past RTPI president Dr Wei Yang. Supported by Lichfields, the panel is to report by 15 January on “whether there are specific changes to London Plan policies that could facilitate urban brownfield regeneration in London for housing delivery in an appropriate manner and, if necessary, recommend changes to the London Plan accordingly."
This is the view of London-based developer Nick Cuff.
Green Belt
A new paragraph called 'When can development take place on brownfield land in the Green Belt?' has been added to PPG, but effectively reflects what is already in the NPPF.
Housing Delivery Test
The long-awaited HDT results show that 20 additional LPAs are now subject to the presumption as a consequence of poor housing delivery. 59 LPAs are now subject to this sanction. 19 are subject to the 20% buffer in relation to land supply and 22 are in Action Plan territory.
Local Plan Intervention
Mr Gove announced that seven authorities would be subject to intervention for failing to submit a local plan for examination for 20 years.
The seven that it was subsequently confirmed have been written to are Amber Valley, Ashfield, Basildon, Castle Point, Medway, St Albans and Uttlesford.
Basildon, Castle Point and St Albans were among 15 LPAs that received similar letters from Sajid Javid in 2018.
Whilst talk of intervention is tough-sounding, the seven have actually only been given three months to submit a Local Development Scheme, which, in terms of actually taking a hard line, is to plan-making what this chap is to football stewarding.
The response to Mr Gove’s letter from Medway, which lists the issues that affected the preparation of a plan there, is very much worth reading.
Actual intervention did occur later on Planning Reform Day when, for the third time in three months (following Spelthorne and Erewash), the Government moved to prevent the withdrawal of a plan from examination. West Berkshire Council had called an extraordinary meeting to consider withdrawal that night. This is how the local paper covered the drama.
Freeports
Freeports are arguably not featuring in the planning profession’s consciousness as much as they should given that there are now 12 of them across the UK and given the similarities to the Investment Zone concept
A new 'Freeports Delivery Roadmap' states that the Government will move to "reflect" freeports and investment zones in the NPPF, the new national development management policies, and other policy statements over 2024/25. It confirms that any freeport or investment zone project deemed to be a nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP) will benefit from a reformed NSIP consenting process from spring 2024, including being able to use the new 'fast track' route for seeking development consent.
The Roadmap also says that "to accelerate particularly large-scale, priority developments", DLUHC's new 'Planning Super Squad' of expert planners will be "empowered to support freeport and investment zone projects, which could include bolstering local authority capability and greater use of local development orders.
Street Votes
Simon Ricketts has written a blog that includes a detailed analysis of how a Street Votes Development Order. It is interesting to read the consultation material not as a planning professional but as a lay person potentially interested in the concept and then imagining how likely it would be for a lay person to follow that initial interest through all the way to putting an extra storey on every house in their street.
The NPPF
Finally then to the NPPF.
Standard Method
The standard method is an “advisory starting point” for LPAs, which the Government’s consultation response states is making explicit in policy what had been set out in guidance, but, whilst the exceptional circumstances required to deviate remain, the PPG refers to a "minimum number of homes expected to be planned for" so this is a very distinct change of tone. The response also confirms plans to review the implications for the standard method of new household projections data based on the 2021 Census, but these are not now due to be published until 2025.
More explicit indications are given of the types of local characteristics that may justify the use of an alternative method of assessing housing need. It is stated that “exceptional circumstances, including relating to the particular demographic characteristics of an area” may justify an alternative approach. A footnote is added, which will hopefully come to be called ‘the Bob Seely clause’, with the example of “islands with no land bridge that have a significant proportion of elderly residents.”
The arbitrary 35% uplift for the 20 largest towns and cities is retained and it is now stated that this should be accommodated within those places themselves except where there are voluntary cross boundary redistribution agreements in place. Neither the NPPF nor consultation response provide any further detail on the alignment test that was thought would replace the Duty to Co-operate.
This image from Catriona Riddell shows the size of the problem that is not being grappled with.
5YHLS
As of 19 December, LPAs with a local plan that is less than 5 years old will no longer need to demonstrate a 5YHLS.
According to Planning’s local plan tracker, 93 LPAs have adopted a local plan within the past five years and are now exempt from the 5YHLS requirement. Of these, 19 were unable to demonstrate a five year housing land supply prior to the publication of the revised NPPF.
The 5% and 10% buffers have been done away with, but the need for a 20% buffer where the Housing Delivery Test is not met will still apply.
LPAs can include historic oversupply in 5YHLS calculations. The Framework has been amended to include a reference to the “circumstances in which past shortfalls or over-supply can be addressed”. The Government consultation response states that planning practice guidance will emerge in due course to offer further clarification on how this can be done.
Also as of 19 December, where emerging local plans have been submitted for examination or where they have been subject to a Regulation 18 or 19 consultation and which include both a policies map and proposed allocations towards meeting housing need, the LPA in question will only have to demonstrate a four-year housing land supply requirement.
Zack Simons has written a blog on the implications of this change and whether the requirement is a 4YHLS or four fifths of a 5YHLS.
Updated practice guidance is expected in due course, but it does seem anomalous that LPAs with an out-of-date plan and at an early stage of a review will only need to demonstrate a 4YHLS when determining applications submitted prior to 19 December. There would appear to be major implications for applications and appeals that are running where these circumstances prevail and, for example, where the removal of a buffer is material given that transitional arrangements are silent on this.
It is not hard to imagine LPAs with a marginal land supply looking to publish a plan with a policies map in very short order.
On the other side of the coin, Stafford Borough Council, which consulted on a Regulation 18 Plan (including proposed allocations) in 2022, resolved on 11 January to delay further work, citing the ability to not accommodate unmet need
from elsewhere and to justify the use of a lower target. Presumably it still need only demonstrate a 4YHLS.
A not inconsiderable can of worms appears to have been opened.
Green Belt
It is now explicit that Green Belt boundaries need not be reviewed, not just to meet housing need, but for anything, though LPAs can still choose to review boundaries “where exceptional circumstances” justify it.
This is unequivocally a retrograde step. Previously housing need could be a circumstance exceptional enough to justify boundary change. Now it very much is not.
Character
Proposed changes to Paragraph 11 that would have meant that the need to avoid development seen as “uncharacteristically dense” for an area would have outweighed the requirement for LPAs to meet local housing need have not been followed through with. Instead a new Paragraph 130 seeks to protect the character of local areas and states that significant uplifts in the average density of residential development may be inappropriate if the resulting built form would be “wholly out of character with the existing area”. As well as being a higher bar, the consultation response makes clear that this applies to plan-making only and that any resulting policies should be evidenced by local design codes.
Simon Slatford has written this blog on the character issue.
Agricultural Land
A new footnote to paragraph 181 states that when agricultural land must be used, poorer quality land should be preferred over higher quality land. It states that ‘the availability of agricultural land used for food production should be considered, alongside the other policies in this Framework, when deciding what sites are most appropriate for development.’
Neighbourhood Plans
Policy previously was that the adverse impact of allowing development in conflict with a neighbourhood plan is likely to outweigh the benefits, but not if that plan is more than two years old. This protection has now been extended to plans that are up to five years old. Tests have also been removed that required LPAs to demonstrate a minimum housing land supply and have delivered a minimum amount in the Housing Delivery Test in order a Neighbourhood Plan benefit from this provision.
Paragraph 14b of the version published on 19 December stated that one of these requirements was that neighbourhood plans needed to contain “policies and allocations to meet its identified housing requirement… where that requirement has been identified within five years or less of the date on which the decision [on a planning application] is made”.
In an updated version published a day later though Paragraph 14b had been amended to remove the five-year timeframe. The requirement is now that the neighbourhood plan simply “contains policies and allocations to meet its identified housing requirement”.
DLUHC issued a statement explaining that the text was removed because it “was not intended to be included in the published version on 19 December”.
Other provisions
There are also new provisions relating to small sites, community-led housing and retirement housing, planning conditions to require clear details of a scheme’s design and materials, the promotion of mansard roof extensions, and “significant weight” now to the importance of energy efficiency through the adaptation of buildings.
What it might mean
So where does all of that leave us. Well there was, unsurprisingly, something for almost everybody.
Beauty
For those who would like to do away with identikit housing and make all new development look like Poundbury, beauty is now to be, somehow, a strategic planning priority and the new NPPF is peppered with reference to it.
MPs and Councillors
For MPs or councillors in marginal shire constituencies that are washed over by Green Belt, it has been emphasised that there is no requirement to review boundaries when local plans are being prepared or updated. This applies not just to meeting housing need, but the need for development of any kind such as logistics hubs or data centres.
Also for MPs or councillors in marginal shire constituencies that cannot meet self-generated housing need or might be tasked with accommodating a shortfall from an adjacent larger city, it is has been emphasised that the standard method is only an advisory starting point (and that localised demographic quirks may justify planning for less) and that there is no longer any compulsion to help neighbouring authorities.
Pseudo-Environmentalists
For pseudo-environmentalists keen to mask an otherwise nakedly cynical objection to local development in a cloak of national food security there is now a requirement to take into account the availability of agricultural land when deciding which sites are most appropriate for development.
Development Industry
For the development industry, grappling with all of this and the simple, fundamental point that 40% of LPAs need not, at the stroke of a pen, demonstrate a five-year land supply, the Government is going to publish some LPA performance data and review the role of statutory consultees. These are issues that there is great merit in exploring, but if there was hope that talking tough about some things over here would mask going soft on some other things over there then that cunning plan has been seen through.
Planning Policy Managers
Those that are responsible for shepherding a local plan towards adoption now have no excuse not to do so…
…, but most might quibble with that.
Planning Profession
For the planning profession who will have read last year of several high-profile call-in decisions by the Secretary of State, his acknowledgement that at the heart of good practice is respect for the professional judgement of planners will be very welcome if not somewhat surprising. He may perhaps be close to achieving full enlightenment.
The Secretary of State’s speech was a now trademark Govian smorgasbord. B.I.D.E.N got a mention, of course, but Barrow did not. It would have been good to get an update on the proposals for it to become a ‘Powerhouse of the North’, which were announced during last summer’s Planning Reform Day.
This Planning Reform Day did not disappoint in terms of speculation and excitement, but it did in terms of the presentation of a compelling vision of the future.
“The Victorian Age”, as Mr Gove pointed out, “was one of growth, innovation, expansion and ambition. They looked to the future with hope. It was in the 19th century that our great cities expanded to become the workshops of the world, the forcing houses of invention and the homes to swelling millions”.
There will be no such expansion of our great cities (apart from Cambridge) in the current policy environment though because, as with the draft a year ago, the motivation behind and in turn the practical effect of this round of reform will be that fewer homes get built.
Among those warning that the proposals will lead to a smaller number of houses being built each year was Robert Colvile, co-author of the 2019 Conservative manifesto and director of the Centre for Policy Studies.
Responding to Mr Gove’s speech, Mr Colvile said that the tone was “absolutely not Nimby-ish”, adding: “He was adamant that we need more houses. But he is incredibly restricted in that by the political compromises they had to make with their backbenchers.
“So what quite a bit boils down to is making it faster to build homes, building better homes, speeding everything up, but ultimately probably building fewer homes.”
That is where we. A non-nimbyish tone, but ultimately probably building fewer homes.
The final word goes to Mike Kiely of the Planning Officers Society.
“A very unjoined-up set of policies: [councils] don’t have to review green belts or increase densities and there’s no mechanism to meet unmet need, yet [Gove] has a plan to deliver housing! My question to him was - what was his plan to meet the unmet need from councils not delivering housing numbers if they are not reviewing green belts or densifying? He didn’t really answer it - there’s clearly no plan.”
FIN.
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