Keeping up appearances
The poster evokes the 1950s, but will there be a return to 1950s housebuilding levels?
First of all, an apology and an admittance dear readers. With the growth in Bellona’s workload, we’ve not been particularly on the ball with the regularity of our reports in recent months…and that’s in part down to struggling to keep up with the sheer volume of actual and proposed supply side reforms to boost development in the UK.
The pace and scale is absolutely frenetic - but are they likely to hit the mark? This whistlestop tour provides details on these reforms, their likelihood of success and what remains for both Government and industry to step up to the plate on in both making the economy more productive and in making better places in the future.
The Planning & Infrastructure Bill: surely worth a blog in itself?
The Government’s long-trailed Planning & Infrastructure Bill was published this week ahead of what looks like a speedy ascension through Parliament. Its headline description reveals little as to the extent of its intentions:
A Bill to make provision about infrastructure; to make provision about town and country planning; to make provision for a scheme, administered by Natural England, for a nature restoration levy payable by developers; to make provision about development corporations; to make provision about the compulsory purchase of land; to make provision about environmental outcomes reports; and for connected purposes.
The Government’s own guide on the purpose of the bill is a better place to begin. Describing it as central to the delivery of the Government’s stated aim of building 1.5m homes this Parliament (unlikely in our view - see later….), the fast tracking of ‘150 planning decisions on major economic infrastructure projects by the end of this Parliament’ and the support of the Government’s Clean Power 2030 target (another unlikely to be hit target), it has five overarching objectives:
Delivering a faster and more certain consenting process for critical infrastructure;
Introducing a more strategic approach to nature recovery;
Improving certainty and decision-making in the planning system;
Unlocking land and securing public value for large scale investment;
Introducing effective new mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning.
Its contents deserve a report of its own….and luckily for us, the redoubtable Nicola Gooch of Irwin Mitchell has done a handsome job of summarising its contents. Read her thoughts here.
Within these intended reforms, there are two parts which we are OVERJOYED about - previously covered in multiple reports on this website…..
PLANNING COMMITTEE MEMBER TRAINING. The lack of a universally recognised or applied training programme for planning committee members has undoubtedly contributed to some of the absurd non-material reasons given for turning down planning applications in recent years. The Bill is attempting to right this obvious wrong by introduction a national scheme of delegation that will, through regulations:
…..set out which planning functions should be delegated to planning officers for a decision and which should go instead to a planning committee or subcommittee. This measure will ensure that there is greater consistency and certainty across England about who in a local planning authority will be responsible for making planning decisions. We are also taking a power to legislate through Regulations for the size of committees, to support effective debate and avoid sprawling committees.
As a result of this legislation, committee members will be required to undertake mandatory training before they can take planning decisions. The power to require planning committee members to complete training aims to create consistency in training and ensure that key areas of law that are relevant to a planning committee member’s decision-making functions are understood to an adequate standard across the country.
Quite right. Hurrah!
THE RETURN OF STRATEGIC PLANNING. In an era of sustainability, resource scarcity and (conversely) an almost insatiable appetite for energy and data, it’s daft that in the past fifteen years we’ve turned our back as a nation on strategic planning in the regions - the very place where future supporting infrastructure including roads, railways and parks should be debated, planned and eventually funded!
Catriona Riddell and a number of other luminaries deserve enormous credit for resurrecting strategic planning; Catriona, Prior & Partners and others have spent a number of months preparing for its reintroduction, given it necessitates new Governance at a time of increased regional devolution. This is how its reintroduction has been described:
With the exception of London, most of England is not currently covered by a strategic plan. The current development plans system therefore depends on individual authorities cooperating with one another on their local plans to address cross-boundary issues such as addressing housing need. The government’s view is that housing need in England cannot be met without planning for growth on a larger than local scale, and that reform is needed to introduce effective new mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning.
The Bill will enable the government to introduce a system of strategic planning across England. The strategic planning tool being rolled out is the spatial development strategy (SDS), and this is closely modelled on the system that has been in place in London for over 20 years.
The Bill places a duty on combined authorities, combined county authorities, upper-tier county councils and unitary authorities to prepare a SDS for their area. The Bill also enables the government to establish “strategic planning boards” to prepare SDSs on behalf of specified groupings of these authorities.
Under an existing legal requirement, local plans must be in general conformity with a SDSs that become operative under these arrangements. London will continue to produce its SDS under the provisions in the Greater London Authority Act 1999, given the unique arrangements of the Greater London Authority.
So….a lot for mayoral combined authorities and local authorities that remain post reorganisation (more on that later!) to consider, particularly in recruiting the required staff or providing resourcing just to get going. It’s reintroduction is absolutely essential however for three particular reasons:
If you really want the right homes and right employment in the right places, then you really must properly plan sub-regional infrastructure; this is an essential step.
It will drive sub-regional investment strategies, both in crowding in non-public patient capital and then deploying money for projects that are often too small for national Government but too big for single local authorities to deliver. For projects such as new link roads or railway stations that often unlock or improve development, this is the missing middle - and is particularly relevant at a time of likely public expenditure restraint.
It provides the basis for regions to properly work together. This will improve the value of recent announcements including Yorkshire’s new White Rose Agreement between the Mayors of South, West and North Yorkshire.
Quite a lot of the media’s focus in response to the bill has been on the future use of Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) for public bodies to piece together development. Now CPOs are complex beasts and are (frankly) a method of last resort; for an informed view of what’s been put forward, read the view of my good friend Jon Stott here.
Remember, all of this is still at Bill stage and can still be amended - so if there’s anything in there that you believe is deleterious, speak with us or your elected representatives….
Other reforms in the past eight months
The Bill puts forward lots of changes in itself….but let's look at what the Government has done since July on its enormous supply-side reform programme. In its own words….
“In our first 8 months in office, the government has taken decisive action to restore economic stability, increase investment, and reform the economy to drive up productivity, prosperity and living standards across the UK. To build the homes and critical infrastructure our country needs, we have already delivered the most significant reforms to our planning system in a generation, including the publication of a revised, pro-growth National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in December 2024. The publication of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill marks another major milestone in our reform programme.”
Ah, the NPPF…..revisions that were made to the principal governance framework for planning policy (made in December 2024) increased potential Secretary of State intervention in the Local Plan process, introduced ‘Golden Rules’ for Green Belt development and now defines the already much-contested “Grey Belt”.
The NPPF defines the “Grey Belt” as follows:
“For the purposes of plan-making and decision-making, “grey belt” is defined as land in the Green Belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that, in either case, does not strongly contribute to any of purposes (a), (b), or (d) in paragraph 143. ‘Grey belt’ excludes land where the application of the policies relating to the areas or assets in footnote 7 (other than Green Belt) would provide a strong reason for refusing or restricting development.”
Want further detail? The imperious (and fellow Wire fan) Simon Ricketts describes NPPF reforms here, whilst the mighty Zack Simons has already explored the effect of this new Grey Belt designation following the publication of supplementary Planning Practice Guidance in February here. This includes a series of planning decisions that have already accounted for the new NPPF; this keeps increasing week-by-week, including this recent decision in Surrey Heath.
Spare a thought for local authorities in all this; these are big changes to implement in the creation of future Local Plans, as this note to Tandridge’s Planning Policy Committee demonstrates. Remember - there are over 300 local planning authorities in the UK, all with their own political make-up and ideas on what they want for their local area. It is fair to say that their response isn’t uniform…..
Will these reforms actually work?
It’s worth remembering that planning is ultimately only one part of what’s needed to deliver 300,000 homes a year or to create the economic clusters required to improve the UK’s economic performance. Major work is needed elsewhere in skills development, skilled labour migration, industrial strategy and in providing incentives to address areas of market failure, particularly towards SME housebuilders in lower value areas (see reports passim) to get anywhere near both aims.
We strongly agree however with the thrust of the reforms to re-assert a plan-led system - providing investor and developer certainty whilst maintaining democratic checks and balances. It needs this dedicated attention as the proportion of local planning authorities with an up-to-date local plan has continued to fall, shown by the graph below:
Thanks to Paul Smith for flagging (courtesy of Planning Magazine)
Not having up-to-date Local Plans is not in the best interests of developers or investors (who cannot plan) or local communities or Councils (who are at the risk of so-called ‘departure’ applications that are not sponsored within formally adopted Plans). A strengthened NPPF and supplementary guidance with a demand to plan for growth - or face Ministerial consequences - will undoubtedly, in time, help housing and commercial development delivery in the right places.
We’re also optimistic about the Planning & Infrastructure Bill positively influencing build out - particularly in strategic planning acting as the lever to get major pieces of infrastructure funded. We’ve worked on three major live residential schemes in 2025 that are held up by the lack of funding surety for new link roads; strategic planning will give this a much-needed kick.
In the short-term however, things will get (politically) bumpy which may further affect build-out rates. Whilst a number of local planning authorities are continuing with their local plan examinations as this list shows, others have well and truly hit the buffers - with recent withdrawals including Stroud, Shropshire and the ongoing soap opera that is Elmbridge.
These new arrangements will take a while to embed; our advice is to judge its success in two years time rather than two months time, and to come to terms with the fact it is not a silver bullet to get to 300,000 new homes per year….
Don’t expect these to be the last reforms!
For those of a nervous disposition, look away now….as there are a number of other related reforms in the wings which could also have far reaching consequences.
1) There will be significant local government re-organisation - and an extension of regional devolution - from action resulting from the English Devolution White Paper (published on 16 December 2024). This set out the government’s vision for:
“simpler local government structures which can lead to better outcomes for residents, save significant public funds which can be reinvested in public services, and improve local accountability.”
Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution Jim McMahon subsequently wrote to all councils in remaining two-tier areas and neighbouring small unitary authorities to set out plans for a joint programme of devolution and local government reorganisation.
On 5 February 2025, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced the list of places that have come forward to join the government’s Devolution Priority Programme, with a view to mayoral elections in May 2026, alongside an update on local government reorganisation and decisions on requests to postpone local elections.
This will ultimately alter the number of local planning authorities whilst also editing which areas have responsibility for the production of Spatial Development Strategies - whilst also potentially creating a dizzying list of service and structural changes for local people to get used to….
2) A Government Select Committee is currently considering the effectiveness of Land Value Capture methods and the need for new ways of capturing any uplift in the value of land associated with the granting of planning permission or nearby infrastructure improvements and other factors.
If this sounds familiar, it is! A select committee with similar aims sat down and reported in 2018; I made representations on behalf of my previous employer back then, stating that reforming present Land Value Capture mechanisms should be the Government’s focus rather than introducing additional forms of tax which could affect scheme viability - particularly in low land value areas. My view remains exactly the same.
3) Finally, we have one of the major political events of the year in June - the announcement of the results of the Treasury’s Comprehensive Spending Review, pushed back from the Spring. This will determine how funding is allocated between government departments for a number of years. The Chancellor is in a very tricky fiscal position, with little in the way of headroom as the IFS point out here. Expect furious negotiation and gnawing of teeth between now and June, particularly if May’s local elections do not go the Government’s way….
Chairs Missing
Finally, it wouldn’t be a Bellona Advisors report without a call for further action in both making the economy more productive and in making better places in the future. We’re going to refer you to our previous reports on ‘skills development, skilled labour migration, industrial strategy and in providing incentives to address areas of market failure’ and instead focus on two immediate issues….
First and foremost - and tied to the Comprehensive Spending Review -the long-term funding of institutions at the centre of plan making requires assurance, as superbly explained by the County Councils Network here:
“These major changes will require a lot more local authority resourcing, so it is imperative that county and unitary councils have the funding to assemble strategic planning teams and deliver evidence bases to make these new plans as effective as they could be. This should be considered in the upcoming Spending Review, where the funding a local authority receives could dictate how comprehensive its strategic plan is. Alongside funding, the government must also ensure councils have the workforce capacity needed. This is especially pertinent for large rural areas where recruitment and retention of planners is more of a challenge.”
Secondly, whilst the Government’s reform programme is ostensibly about ‘getting Britain building again and deliver(ing) economic growth’, some of its own planning decisions continue to run counter to this aim. The Secretary of State’s recent decision, for example, in refusing development consent for a new Strategic Rail Freight Interchange in Leicestershire - outlined here - makes little economic sense, particularly as the justification makes clear that there is a "compelling need" for the development nationally.
It is therefore not enough for the Government to state what it wants from others in delivering against its missions; it must set the example too.
As ever, get in contact with us if you want to discuss any of this report in more detail.