In February 2010 the opposition Conservative party published a green paper called 'Open Source Planning', which proposed the abolition of national and regional housing targets and a radical reorientation of the planning system that would see local plans “being built up from the community level”.
In a Written Ministerial Statement in July 2010 the Conservative Secretary of State for the Department of Communities & Local Government, Eric Pickles, subsequently, indeed infamously some planners might say, revoked the Regional Strategies.
The revocation of Regional Strategies will make local spatial plans, drawn up in conformity with national policy, the basis for local planning decisions. The new planning system will be clear, efficient and will put greater power in the hands of local people, rather than regional bodies.
Revoking, and then abolishing, Regional Strategies will mean that the planning system is simpler, more efficient and easier for people to understand. It will be firmly rooted in the local community. And it will encourage the investment, economic growth and housing that Britain needs.
With the enacted of legislation of the same name in 2011, which brought with it the introduction of a new neighbourhood planning regime, the localism genie was well and truly out of it's bottle.
The success or otherwise of the era of planning that all of this heralded, with more planning locally and less planning regionally, is difficult to judge.
In terms of public participation, a University of Reading study in 2020 found that 2,612 areas had been designated and either had or were progressing neighbourhood plans, which could be said to have had a positive impact in that regard. That said, 91.5% of designations were led by parish or town councils, which indicates a distinctly rural focus to the enterprise.
The impact of neighbourhood planning on housing supply is certainly questionable. The same University of Reading study found that only 19% of neighbourhood plans had based their housing requirements on an adopted or examined local plan, which might mean that, even if making provision for some housing, more might have been expected had a local plan review been more advanced. Only a minority of communities had, the study found, allocated “additional sites”, which is consistent with research by Turley in 2014 that found that more than half of the draft neighbourhood plans published for consultation to that point had ‘protectionist’ agendas.
The revocation of the Regional Strategies and their replacement in plan-making terms by the ‘Duty-to Cooperate’ is not looked upon favourably by planners.
Whilst Regional Strategies were by no means perfect, they were at least a forum for discussions about distributing housing need at a city-region scale and a platform for the Green Belt reviews that this more often than not entails.
The revocation of Regional Strategies did not, of itself, lead to the lowest number of local plans adopted last year since the first NPPF was adopted in 2012 (see above a graphic from Planning magazine), but a strong case could be made that it did.
It should also be noted that strategic planning is about much more than housing and the revocation of the Regional Strategies also created a void in the planning for other key areas of public policy at a greater-than-local scale as well.
In contrast to the tone adopted in opposition by the Conservatives back in 2010, a press release issued by the Labour party to coincide with Kier Starmer's party conference speech in October 2023 was entitled "‘How’, not ‘if’: Labour will jump start planning to build 1.5 million homes and save the dream of homeownership."
The press release stated that:
Labour’s plans will enhance local communities power and voice over ‘how’ housing is built to best service local people, while challenging those who question ‘if’ homes the homes people need should be built at all.
Is the Localism genie about to be put back in it's bottle?
Planning practitioners will likely not mind too much if it is because the system evidentially and to it's immense discredit presently lacks what Shelly Rouse at the Planning Advisory Service has taken to call a ‘Cascade of Proportionality', which could be described as decisions of national significance being taken nationally and decisions of regional or sub-regional significance being taken regionally or sub-regionally. In the absence of such mechanisms above, it should be of little surprise that local plans buckled under this responsibility and that, from below, some town and parish councils might have prepared neighbourhood plans that took advantage of that local vacuum.
It is something of a shame that it has taken the near collapse of plan-making for politicians to spot planning's proportionality gap because there is also a strong case to say that appetite of the public to 'restore local control' was overestimated by the proponents of localism back in 2010.
This is borne out by some striking YouGov survey material from around the time of the afore-mentioned ‘How, not if’ Labour press release.
It is very much worth noting that
- Over 50% of people do not actually have a strong opinion, based upon everything that they have seen and heard about the planning system. 21% are ‘like, yeah, you know, whatever...’ and 33% do not know, which might reasonably be translated as ‘do not care’;
- Only 33% of people would oppose housing on low-quality Green Belt such as scrubland and car parks; and
- Only 28% would oppose building new town-sized settlements in areas with significant housing need.
The Westminster bubble policy wonks who obsess constantly about putting 'communities in control' might be advised to give weight to American philosopher H.J. Simpson’s view on Localism.
The reason we have elected officials is so we don’t have to think all the time.
When asked about Grey Belt or yet another ‘next generation of new towns’ the majority of the Great British public are probably just thinking "that sounds sensible, why don’t our elected officials just get on with it?”
Herein lies the rub because the problem, of course, is that, we do not just get on with it.
First there is a consultation on housing numbers; then there will be a consultation on which low-quality scrubland and car parks in the Green Belt should be released and where the new towns should go; then the housing numbers will change so there is another consultation on that and since the numbers have gone down the new town does not need to be planned for and fewer low-quality scrubland and car park sites need to be released from the Green Belt. When those that are released have finally been allocated there will be a consultation on an outline planning application and then on the reserved matters, during which, dollars to Mr Simpon’s donuts, somebody will spot that the housing numbers have gone down again and query whether these sites do actually need to be developed.
As stated though, the new Government looks set to take a very different approach.
A revised draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has been published for consultation that proposes new mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning, including short-term measures to strengthen cross-boundary cooperation ahead of introducing formal strategic planning mechanisms through new legislation. In regard to housing targets and Green Belt, significant bones of contention for Conservative MPs during the last parliament, references in the NPPF to the standard method being ‘an advisory starting point’ and the ability of LPAs to use ‘exceptional circumstances’ to argue for the use of alternative targets are set to removed. Further, it is proposed to replace the use of household projections as basis of the standard method, which can be volatile and are subject to change every few years, with a new stock-based starting point.
Under the existing NPPF, there is no requirement for LPAs to review Green Belt when housing need cannot be met within existing urban areas. Instead, LPAs may choose to review and alter Green Belt boundaries where exceptional circumstances are considered to justify. If a revised NPPF is adopted as drafted LPAs will be required to undertake a review where its identified housing, commercial or other need cannot be met without altering Green Belt boundaries.
Further, it is proposed that the NPPF make clear that, in instances where a LPA cannot demonstrate a 5-year housing land supply or is delivering less than 75% against the Housing Delivery Test, or where there is unmet commercial or other need, development on the Green Belt will not be considered inappropriate when it is on sustainable ‘Grey Belt’ land.
With regard to new towns, at the same time as publishing the revised draft NPPF the Government launched a new ‘New Towns Task Force’, the role of which is reportedly to provide ministers with a shortlist of locations for significant housing growth within twelve months.
The success or otherwise of localism is difficult to judge on a subjective basis, but on an objective basis the system cannot be said to be clearer, simpler or more efficient as a result. Indeed, there is a further case to say that planning has become more rancorous as the tensions inherent in putting ‘communities in control’ of greater-than-local decisions slowly surfaced.
A planning system needs a ‘Cascade of Proportionality’. It needs an articulation of national, regional and local priorities, as well as neighbourhood priorities. It needs the lessons of the last few years to be learnt and, whilst time will tell, the majority of the public would probably agree.
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