Nottingham City Cllr’s thoughts on the Government's Planning White Paper
Nottingham City’s Councillor Pavlos Kotsonis writes in to the NDSA, outlining his thoughts on the Government's Planning White Paper.
The government’s main theme in the 'Planning for the Future' August 2020 planning white paper is its aspiration to deliver affordable homes while placing blame for insufficient housebuilding to the current planning system and local authorities. In his forward to the white paper Prime Minister Boris Johnson writes “Thanks to our planning system, we have nowhere near enough homes in the right places.”
This is unfortunately a simplistic, ahistorical and unrealistic position.
It is simplistic because it fails to acknowledge the good aspects and the successes of the current planning system. The existing system is not perfect and improvements can and should definitely be made to it, but a ‘tear it down’ attitude is just an example of poor policy making and lack of imagination.
It is ahistorical because it fails to acknowledge the historic link of public spending with high total levels of per annum housing delivery. It’s characteristic that in the 1960s and early 1970s the total number of houses built exceeded 300,000 per annum, a number that resulted from private and public housebuilding combined. This was supported by policies such as the housing act 1946 and further later amendments made to it, the new towns act 1946, the town and country planning act 1947 and the housing subsidy act 1967. All of which motivated increased publicly led house building coupled with area improvements and slum clearance. This changed radically during Thatcher’s government in 1979 which initially imposed huge reductions in government funds allocated towards housing provision, and later introduced the housing act 1988 which moved funding to housing associations and away from councils directly. Since the early 80s total annual housebuilding remained largely below 200,000. Afterwards the numbers off houses built annually would reflect more the movements of the market rather than state intervention.
The prime minister’s view of blaming the 1947 planning system for not delivering houses is therefore ahistorical. That is because it was later policy decisions influenced by Thatcher that actually led to the decline in numbers.
Finally the prime minister’s position of blaming planning for the decline of housebuilding is unrealistic. That’s simply because planning doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Regardless of the planning policy framework developers can still abandon applications even if they have already been given outline planning approval. In 2019 alone, 371,000 homes were approved and yet still only 241,000 were delivered.
Factors that feature on the white paper such as the speed or the efficiency of planning, or the availability of land are certainly factors that would affect housebuilding. It should be also added however, that policy changes on the planning system would have at best marginal effects to the total number of buildings being delivered annually, since planning is only part of the process. Simply put, planners don’t build the buildings, developers do that and even if all applications that were submitted were to be approved it would still be the developers prerogative to actually deliver them. If the developer’s decision is not to develop this may be affected by a number of factors, including delayed instalments by utility companies, limited availability of capital, the limited supply of building materials, the unavailability of bricklayers, a developer’s own financial situation at the time, or broader economic conditions that are mostly outside planning’s remit. So it’s unrealistic and unfair for the prime minister to blame councils and the planning system for low numbers of housebuilding delivery.
Serious concerns associated with the planning reform suggested in the ‘planning for the future’ white paper include that:
Centralises the planning policy and shrinks local democratic accountability over planning decisions
Introduces changes that will drive local councils to borrow at a time of economic crisis and will make developer contributions for public benefit more difficult to receive
Offers no guarantee or support to councils to address the current climate emergency
Creates barriers for people with protected characteristics to get more involved in planning policy and decision making
In the proposed system there are growth zones, in those zones outline planning applications would be given ‘automatic approval’. That means that neither the community, nor specialists nor councillors would have the right to take part in scrutinising individual planning decisions. The government certainly hasn’t taken into account the advice given in the Raynsford review (2018) which has proposed to integrate the 3 principles of the 1998 Aarhus Convention in future planning reform. This includes the citizen’s right to be informed, the right to participate, and the right to challenge planning decisions.
On the wider strategic planning level the white paper proposes the streamlining of the content of local plans and reducing their role merely in allocating land for development, allowing policy to be made at a national level. This takes away the power from the local community to effectively lead in place-making. Setting a 30 month deadline for the production of local plans for all local planning authorities also risks the further devaluation of the policy document. This goes against suggestions made by the Raynsford review (2018) which argued for the enhancement of the scope of local plans as policy documents by altering legislation so they can be made ‘sovereign’ in future planning reforms.
The white paper also proposed a change of the existing system for developer contributions for public benefit. The new system is supposed to consist of a single nationally or locally set infrastructure levy that will replace the existing 106s and community infrastructure levies. In the new system however the difference will be that instead of contributions being made as part of the outline permission process, they will be instead made after a development is built and if councils needed to complete infrastructure works before a development took place, they would have to borrow. Public borrowing to provide infrastructure for developments for which there is no guarantee they will ever be developed is simply not a responsible policy suggestion. It would certainly add to the problems councils already have due to overstretched budgets nationwide.
The white paper also sets a 2050 target for net zero carbon emissions but provides no firm commitment for support and funding for councils to achieve that. It also fails to be ambitious enough, Nottingham is set to achieve carbon neutrality by 2028.
People from protected characteristics are also challenged by the propositions included in the planning white paper. Proposing to potentially remove the "right to be heard" under section 20(6) of the 2004 planning act risks to take away power from people who need a 1-1 physical meeting with planning officers to discuss issues associated with local planning policy documents while their contents are still being decided. Furthermore by moving the public engagement on planning issues online, certain groups that due to disabilities struggle with the use of computers will be excluded from decision making. Lastly citizens who lack the financial means to buy a computer or a smart phone will also be effectively excluded from place making.
Any planning reform needs to ensure it places the communities and elected council representatives at the heart of the planning processes. The government will need to provide more clarity in many of its suggestions as well as the methods with which it arrives at some of its conclusions.
Cllr Pavlos Kotsonis, NCC Planning Committee Member