Wednesday 18 October 2023

Planning to fail

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor announced in Liverpool last week that an incoming Labour government would 'overhaul' the UK’s “antiquated planning system” in order to “get Britain building again.” She implied that planning rules had remained unchanged since Clement Attlee effectively nationalised planning in this country by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. Let me say that I am not an expert on planning (or anything else for that matter) but it seems to me the planning system has been going through nothing but constant ‘reform’ for decades.

What she said was almost exactly the same as what John Prescott said in 2003 when speaking at the Labour Party conference as Deputy PM. He too promised an “overhaul” of the planning system and proceeded to start scrapping the 20+ Planning Policy Guidance notes (PPGs) that were then being used to influence planning matters. 

Prescott said: "We can't be in a situation where major housing developments are being held back. Planning must be part of the solution, not part of the problem."  This was twenty years ago.

Prescott replaced the PPGs with Planning Policy Statements (PPSs) and had gotten through more than half by the time Labour was kicked out in 2010. It's hellish difficult nowadays to find any copies of these old documents online but they were substantial - the one covering Planning and the Historic Environment (PPG15) which is still on a UN website, ran to 100 pages. Some were less, perhaps 20 or so but on average I expect they were at least 30 pages long.

I imagine that collectively we had 600-1000 pages of guidance for a system that didn't ban anything and permitted very little (minor extensions to the rear of your house AFAIK). Everything is based on balancing needs with the impact on the visual and actual environment. It's a recipe for indecision, argument and delay.

The Tories then swept into office with a manifesto saying: "Britain’s complex and unwieldy planning system has long been cited as a significant barrier to growth and wealth creation. We will create a presumption in favour of sustainable development in the planning system. We will abolish the unelected Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) and replace it with an efficient and democratically accountable system that provides a fast-track process for major infrastructure projects."

The PPGs and PPSs still in force at the time were all gone by 2012, replaced by a much slimmed-down National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) with just 65 pages. It has subsequently been updated but is still only 76 pages.

So that speeded up decision-making then? Errr..... no. 

Perhaps one reason is that the government almost immediately began issuing further ‘guidance’ to micro-manage planning policy. There is now a list of 57 items available on a website HERE.  Some guidance is quite extensive, which means, in short, we have gone around in a very large circle for twenty years and are now back in 2003.

Don’t forget this is all connected with a planning system which puts this mass of guidance and the Local Plans derived from it, front and centre of decision making. I don’t see how this is putting local communities in charge in any case.

More recently Michael Gove has taken over responsibility for planning policy and researching for this post I came across a blog post: How Gove is Repeating All of John Prescott’s Greatest Planning Policy Mistakes

The author, Andrew Lainton, describes the ‘Gove Prescott Cycle’.

  • Government (of whatever colour) announces ‘planning reform’
  • Opposition (of whatever colour) denounces reform (whatever is proposed) as a ‘developers charter’
  • CPRE launches a national campaign opposing any reform
  • The Daily Telegraph publishes photographs of concreting of Green Belt – in each and every case of sites 10s or 100s of miles outside the Green Belt
  • The Government U-Turns
  • Announces Priority for ‘Brownfield First’
  • Housing Completions fall off a cliff, local plan making and housing numbers in local plans are reduced
  • After a couple of years the Treasury panics and announces an economic review after 2-3 years, worried about overheating of housing markets and falling off of construction as a proportion of GDP
  • Government (of whatever colour) announces ‘planning reform’
  • Rinse Repeat ad nauseum

He says this cycle "goes back to Patrick Jenkin and even to the 1960s as governments have reigned back of housing targets as household formation forecasts were undershot because households only form into houses that are built."

So, if Rachel Reeves is serious she needs to break out of the 'Gove Prescott' cycle - but I doubt that she will.

Mid-Beds and Tamworth by-elections

The Tories face a tough test this week with two by-elections being held tomorrow. Chris Pincher's old seat in Tamworth seems lost, but they may cling on in Mid-Bedfordshire because Labour and the LibDems look like splitting the anti-Tory vote:

Apparently, 45% of the voters in Nadine Dorries' former constituency want another Tory MP. This is in the same week that Peter Bone was suspended for six weeks on more misconduct charges. One can only be stunned by it.

A leaked internal Tory memo claims support for their man is lower at around 30%, but it may be managing expectations so later they can claim victory. We'll know on Friday.

Israel- Hamas

What is happening in Israel and Gaza shames humanity. I can't bear to watch it any more. The events at the Al-Ahli Arabi Baptist Hospital in Gaza yesterday are simply unbearable.

The killing of so many innocent civilians is truly horrific but Israel's general response is not just shocking, it's counterproductive. They should be trying to drive a wedge between ordinary Palestinians and Hamas. What they're doing is the precise opposite and each day they are creating future resentment and more Hamas terrorists. Not only that, they're destroying whatever sympathy the international community has for them.

There has to be some restraint - on both sides - and space given for talks on a long-term settlement.

I am convinced Putin is behind it all - with Iran financing and arming Hamas - as a way of deflecting from the war in Ukraine. 

We won't have peace on earth until that man is gone.

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