Why it’s time to redraw a dysfunctional planning regime

“Plan­ning rules in this coun­try are not designed to shape devel­op­ment. They are designed to pre­vent it.” The speak­er is Fred­die Pos­er, direc­tor of Priced Out, a lob­by group for hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty, but it could be any­one in the con­struc­tion trade.

Plan­ning in the UK is dire. Slow. Bureau­crat­ic. Unpre­dictable. And get­ting worse. In a recent twist, Nat­ur­al Eng­land demand­ed 120,000 new-build hous­es be put on hold until devel­op­ers can prove they are not adding to nutri­ent pol­lu­tion. “A com­plete mess,” said the Com­mu­ni­ty Plan­ning Alliance.

The result is a hous­ing short­age. Vacant dwellings are 2.6% of the stock, by far the low­est among com­pa­ra­ble nations – in France it’s 8%, Japan at 14%. Homes are tiny, too. The aver­age new-build in Eng­land in the UK is 76m², com­pared to 112m² in France and 137m² in Den­mark. Room size in the UK is less than half of Den­mark.

Planners are overwhelmed

So what’s going wrong? Where to begin. “There’s no one rule­book in the UK, or should I say Eng­land, Wales, North­ern Ire­land and Scot­land, as plan­ning is devolved,” Pos­er says. “Instead, there are mul­ti­ple acts span­ning decades. There are end­less stick­ing plas­ters, end­less changes, end­less lev­els of envi­ron­men­tal reviews and design reviews that the coun­cil must take into account.”

A plan­ner must con­sid­er ground con­di­tions, land sta­bil­i­ty, ecol­o­gy, drainage, flood risk, high­way safe­ty, trav­el plans, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, trees, bio­di­ver­si­ty net gain, impact to the land­scape, noise, air qual­i­ty, ener­gy, her­itage and pub­lic engage­ment. 

Then there’s the loca­tion. There are Nation­al Parks, Areas of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty, the green belt, and con­ser­va­tion areas. Any­thing with a list­ed build­ing brings its own prob­lems.

Thus a sim­ple project, such as the demo­li­tion of a two-storey build­ing in Enfield and replace­ment with four tow­er blocks required 195 doc­u­ments. This includ­ed a response from Sport Eng­land on increased leisure demand (swim­ming pool demand would be raised by 0.04 pools, plus 0.05 rinks of an indoor bowls cen­tre). 

The plan­ners are nat­u­ral­ly over­whelmed. There are too few, and those that exist are under­fund­ed. 

Planning budgets cut

The Roy­al Town Plan­ning Insti­tute (RTPI), which rep­re­sents plan­ners, con­duct­ed a sur­vey to find out the con­di­tion of mem­bers. Near­ly three-quar­ters think that con­stant changes to plan­ning by gov­ern­ments have hin­dered their abil­i­ty to deliv­er good places. More than half think these changes have hin­dered hous­ing devel­op­ment. Near­ly 70% think that they are less able to deliv­er the ben­e­fits of plan­ning com­pared to 10 years ago.

The lack of fund­ing is arguably self-defeat­ing. A few more quid on the plan­ning bud­get would unlock projects, stim­u­late the con­struc­tion indus­try, and ulti­mate­ly reduce pres­sure on house prices – help­ing the rest of the econ­o­my. Pro­fes­sor Alis­ter Scott of Northum­bria Uni­ver­si­ty is a vocal defend­er of plan­ners try­ing to cope despite being under-resourced and mucked about by politi­cians. “The RTPI report on Resourc­ing Pub­lic Plan­ning in 2019 revealed that total net invest­ment in plan­ning is now just £400m,” Scott says. “This is 50 times less than local author­i­ty spend­ing on hous­ing wel­fare, and 20 times less than esti­mates of the addi­tion­al uplift in land val­ues which could be cap­tured for the pub­lic dur­ing devel­op­ment.”

This may present a pic­ture of plan­ners sprawled over legal doc­u­ments. Yet the human ele­ment plays a major role in plan­ning con­sent. Research by Leader Floors shows plan­ning author­i­ties such as Wigan, Isles of Scil­ly, and Rich­mond approve more than 95% of appli­ca­tions; in Hilling­don and East Hert­ford­shire the approval rate is under 40%. 

“It is very polit­i­cal,” says Grace Man­ning-Marsh, head of staff at LandTech, a soft­ware plat­form for automat­ing the plan­ning process. Deci­sions for all major appli­ca­tions of 10 res­i­den­tial units or more are made by local coun­cil­lors, who can over­ride the plan­ning offi­cer’s rec­om­men­da­tion. This is often done for a non-plan­ning rea­son and the coun­cil is left find­ing a pol­i­cy to attribute it to. These appli­ca­tions then often end up being suc­cess­ful at appeal, but this is a time con­sum­ing and cost­ly approach to get­ting plan­ning per­mis­sion.”

The sub­jec­tiv­i­ty can be seen, she says, when two plan­ning offi­cers take oppos­ing views on the same project. An appli­ca­tion can be reject­ed, only to be rehashed in near iden­ti­cal form and giv­en the green light by anoth­er plan­ning offi­cer.

She tells the tale of a plan­ning com­mit­tee in Oxford, run by Labour coun­cil­lors, vot­ing against the build­ing of a new pri­ma­ry school against an officer’s rec­om­men­da­tion. No sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors were cit­ed. The school in ques­tion was a Free School, part of the Con­ser­v­a­tive party’s edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy. One com­mit­tee mem­ber said they would not sup­port a Tory par­ty pol­i­cy. The appli­ca­tion went to appeal and the school opened a few years lat­er.

Rules let nimbys block developments

Last of all is the developer’s bane: the Sec­tion 106 stalling tac­tic. In the­o­ry, Sec­tion 106 ensures devel­op­ers con­tribute to the com­mu­ni­ty to com­pen­sate for the impact on new arrivals. This should be a sum worked out math­e­mat­i­cal­ly. In prac­tice, it can be any­thing but. “It’s been weaponised,” says one com­men­ta­tor, who pre­ferred to remain anony­mous. “Coun­cil­lors may want to block a devel­op­ment for polit­i­cal rea­sons. So they make the Sec­tion 106 so oner­ous that the devel­op­er declines. They can make it so there is no way a devel­op­er can tick all the box­es, it’s just too dif­fi­cult.”

The nim­by instinct, the acronym for “not in my back yard”, thrives in this pol­i­cy jun­gle. Even cab­i­net min­is­ters can throw a span­ner in the works. At Enfield, the plan to build four tow­ers, includ­ing 132 afford­able flats, gained coun­cil approval, only to be vetoed per­son­al­ly by Grant Shapps, the trans­port sec­re­tary, at the behest of Chip­ping Bar­net MP There­sa Vil­liers. The objec­tions by Vil­liers focused on the scale and design. Shapps blocked the devel­op­ment owing to a loss of car park­ing. The site is adja­cent to the Tube stop. 

Con­struc­tion firms know the cost of this fail­ure. Delayed appli­ca­tions. Absurd expense. Erod­ed faith in the san­i­ty of the sys­tem as deci­sions are declined on bizarre pre­texts. 

Over­all, the cost to the indus­try and nation is incal­cu­la­ble. The con­struc­tion indus­try is ham­mered. And life for many is mis­er­able due to hous­ing costs and qual­i­ty. Research by The Times found 90% of house-shares adver­tised in Lon­don lack a sit­ting room. The com­mu­nal space is con­vert­ed into a bed­room. It’s a mis­er­able way to live. 

Even the gov­ern­ment con­cedes things need to change. Hous­ing sec­re­tary Michael Gove is vocal about the “bar­ri­ers that can gum up plan­ning appli­ca­tions”. His pre­de­ces­sor Robert Jen­rick recent­ly admit­ted, “The cur­rent sys­tem clear­ly does­n’t work. It does­n’t pro­duce out­comes which any­one seems to sup­port. The qual­i­ty of homes is often poor. The design ele­ment of homes is not good.” And even sug­gest­ed reforms, such as an infra­struc­ture levy on big devel­op­ers to fund local projects to reduce objec­tions, and a revi­sion of design codes, are not enough says Jen­rick. More is need­ed to “make any dent on the hous­ing cri­sis.”

Find­ing a solu­tion will be tricky. It will take polit­i­cal com­mit­ment to tack­le entrenched inter­ests. More hous­es mean tak­ing on the nim­by lob­by. Urban build­ing requires con­fronting pro-car advo­cates who believe we all have a right to dri­ve and park. Faster approval means upset­ting coun­cils where elect­ed offi­cials cam­paign on oppos­ing local devel­op­ments. Even sim­ple upgrades such as per­mit­ting mansard roofs demands a rethink from plan­ners who decid­ed — quite arbi­trar­i­ly — on design prin­ci­ples favour­ing flat lin­ear sky­lines. Jen­rick, for one, is clear, this polit­i­cal will is absent.  

It is worth not­ing that Europe’s most beau­ti­ful cities exist­ed before for­mal plan­ning. The city of Flo­rence is a mess of added sto­ries, hig­gledy-pig­gledy roofs, impro­vised orna­men­ta­tion, and nar­row streets. The apart­ments in Piaz­za San Pier Mag­giore were built cen­turies ago, out of the back end of a now demol­ished church where Bot­ticini’s Palmieri Altar­piece was placed. The poet Byron declared him­self drunk with the beau­ty of the city.Under our cur­rent plan­ning reg­u­la­tions, bare­ly a build­ing in Flo­rence would exist.

When Flo­rence is for­bid­den but soul­less rec­tan­gu­lar blocks thrive, it is clear some­thing has gone bad­ly wrong.