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 representatives of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In this episode you will meet a MP and a London Assembly Member (AM).
The AM in question is Alex Wilson, who is a Londonwide assembly member rather than a constituency assembly member. I did not know that there were two kinds and I hope that insights such as that about the wider working of the London Assembly serve the same purpose as the rest of this series, which is to learn about the working lives of politicians that we might not otherwise hear from.
In a conversation recorded online last month Alex tells Andrew about his time, before switching allegiances, as a Conservative councillor in Redbridge that included a spell as the Cabinet member for planning. They then touch on the London Plan and the package of emergency measures proposed by the government and the Mayor of London to support housebuilding in the capital.
Having heard from Alex you will then hear from the MP for Boston & Skegness, and the Deputy Leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice.
In a conversation recorded online a couple of weeks ago Richard tells Andrew about his background in property and the live property-related issues in his constituency, which also include viability. This led them to the planning teal paper, which was published when I was at the recent Reform Party Conference.
I would offer the following reflections on that paper.
What do I like?
The system is excessively cumbersome, slow and expensive to navigate, lacks certainty, places undue value on process over good outcomes and has massively overreached through mission-creep.
That is surely unarguable. ‘Make outlines be outlines again’ is a message that I could certainly get behind. Perhaps I should suggest a baseball cap?
What am I less keen on?
Remove affordable housing requirements for brownfield schemes except in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol where 5% on-site affordable housing would be required in residential developments of 20 or more homes (or a payment equivalent to 10% for off-site provision).
Remove Community Infrastructure Levy payments for brownfield residential developments.
Remove all other “Section 106” financial payments for brownfield residential developments.
This is the start of an article published in Building magazine in January 2009 called 'Buckeroo!'
One reason we’re in this mess is because the government has loaded developers with a weird assortment of tasks – which suggests an analogy with a well-known game.
The author of that piece? Mr Michael Gove.
The subsequent journey that Mr Gove went on, a journey that takes in of course BNG, nutrient neutrality and the building safety levy, is highlighted in a great piece by friend of the podcast Paul Smith called “Buckaroo! The burdens that have become a big problem for house building”. Do please read it if you have not already.
I mention this because we do have a big problem that Reform is very much right to highlight, but I am more drawn to temporary reliefs, flexibilities in affordable housing tenures and deferred or phased payments rather than wholesale exemptions.
Making national planning policy ”statutory” to ensure it prevails over inconsistent policies found in legacy local plans.
Statutory NDMPs! Let’s definitely put that in the 'like' column.
Apply a national planning policy presumption that brownfield residential schemes are to be approved in all but the most exceptional cases (a strong and irresolvable reason for refusal) and regardless of whether there is or is not a housing land supply or delivery shortfall in the area.
Ok, but how are we squaring that with:
Retaining local democratic oversight of decisions concerning whether the principle of development is acceptable.
I do not think that those two things can be squared, but I suppose that these are the kind of things that a party can say in opposition.
Then this, a nod perhaps to the afore-mentioned Mr Gove, which is very much in the 'dislike' column.
Remove nationally imposed targets for housing land supply in order to improve local democratic oversight of greenfield developments. Local planning authorities would be empowered to decide for themselves how much greenfield housing land they require, by assessing whether the brownfield available will meet demographic projections (under our net negative immigration plans) and household formation rates.
We saw what happened when Mr Gove made the dis-appliance of housing targets implicit so we need not have to work too hard to imagine what making it explicit will do, especially with the proposed scrapping of Spatial Development Strategies.
Finally, herewith the somewhat striking conclusion.
The proposals laid out above represent a significant departure from the planning consensus of preceding decades. We anticipate that the adopted proposals will rapidly accelerate housebuilding, on brownfield land, and paired with mass deportations will help put home ownership back within the reach of countless working British families.
Now, according to YouGov, as of 1 September 2026, when asked how they would vote were there to be a general election tomorrow, 23% of people said Reform, 23% of people said Labour and 20% of people said Conservative (and for completeness, 13% said Green and 12% said Liberal Democrat).
So as to engage with the people that either have, or might have, an influence over the planning system I will this year be going to the Reform, Labour and Conservative party conferences, not for fun (though they can be…), and not to endorse any one or other, but because, as Roy Keane would say, it is my job.
In a personal capacity though, whilst I have the values and beliefs that I try to live by and promote, I also recognise and appreciate that, politics, like planning is not, ahem, a black and white endeavour. There is more than one way to run the country and there is more than one way to run the planning system.
It needs to be said though that there are good ways and there are bad ways.
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