BPF Perspectives on Planning for the Future
With the government’s Planning for the Future consultation now officially closed, we reflect on the real estate industry’s take on the proposals. Originally trailed as the most radical set of reforms to the English Planning System since World War Two, the proposals have drawn comments from far and wide.
We have undertaken an extensive round of consultation with our membership considering the different aspects of the White Paper from plan-making and design to infrastructure funding and digitalisation of the system. We consider a selection of, but not all the perspectives from our extensive consultation response within this blog. For a comprehensive overview you can read our full response here.
More attention must be given to the implications for commercial property and complex urban regeneration schemes
The lack of any meaningful reference to how the new system will plan effectively for commercial property has been well documented and is evident across the proposals. This includes but is not limited to reforms to plan-making, design quality, and the new proposed Infrastructure Levy. Our members deliver and operate some of the most complex commercial urban regeneration schemes in the country, informed by significant engagement with the community at application stage. Significant concerns have been raised as to whether an outline permission at the plan-making stage will work for these schemes as it would not provide the necessary level of consultation and flexibility required to maximise the potential of these complicated sites.
The BPF therefore recommends a fourth ‘Long- term growth’ zone in addition to the government’s proposed land categories of growth, renewal and protect. A key characteristic of this additional zone would be that sites within this category would not have an outline permission allocated at plan-making stage. Details would instead be worked up over time in combination with heavy community consultation as the development proposals progress.
Infrastructure levy lacks detail
Simplifying developer contributions sounds attractive, but the lack of detail in the White Paper makes it difficult to assess whether what is proposed is workable? Certainly what is proposed is radical, with a national levy (de facto development tax), paid at occupation, and infrastructure funded by local authorities through borrowing to tide over the period between the provision of the infrastructure needed and levy receipts. However, little mention is made of viability, which is built into both aspects of the current system – s106 and CIL – and whilst simplicity may have some allure, it may be at the cost of development activity if the levy is not sufficiently sensitive to local conditions and different forms of development. There are also concerns as to whether the levy can deliver timely infrastructure, which is so necessary to prime development, and the risks inherent in local authorities borrowing against uncertain receipts. In accommodating these and other concerns, the alternative is to say let’s simplify within the existing system, taking on board the CIL Review Group’s proposals and standardising aspects of s106.
We need a new mechanism to deal with strategic cross boundary planning and the sharing of unmet local need
The paper proposes the formal abolition of the Duty to Cooperate (DTC), however this is something we cannot support without the introduction of a more robust mechanism in its place. The DTC, whilst flawed, is the only statutory arrangement for strategic cross boundary planning at present. The lack of a joined-up approach across authorities is a particularly acute problem for industrial real estate providers and has implications for housing delivery in constrained areas. Crucially, large strategic employment land spans across different geographies with little regard for local authority administrative boundaries making it difficult to plan for enough industrial land in the right locations.
Of course, much of this area of reform is fundamentally intertwined with the government’s forthcoming Devolution White Paper so it may be that the issue of cross authority working is fleshed out in further detail when this paper is released. On the surface, fewer districts and boroughs and more joint planning arrangements and Mayor-led Combined Authorities could certainly make effective cooperation between authorities more achievable. This might also take some heat out of the government’s proposals to impose a top down housing requirement if there is a role for regional governance in determining the specific distribution of numbers.
More Local Authority resourcing is needed if these reforms are to achieve in practice
It is likely that the Planning for the Future proposals will place Local Authorities under much greater strain as a result of requirements to plan in a different way and at a faster rate than ever before. Any new system will therefore need a well-structured and impactful skills and resources strategy to support new ways of working. This runs true across various aspects of the new proposed system such as front loading the planning system so that ‘more work’ is done up front through the new proposed land categories or on the design front whereby Local Authorities will be tasked with producing their own, and assisting the local community in delivering local design codes?
A perhaps underappreciated component of the new proposed system will be the Planning Inspectorate. With a new system of Local Plans, the Planning Inspectorate’s job in terms of testing the robustness/soundness/sustainability of these plans will become even more important. Any resourcing and skills strategy should consider the Inspectorate alongside bolstering Local Authorities.
Local Authorities must be incentivised to get on with plan production.
A further key focus for the government should be incentivising plan production – it has certainly been on MHCLG’s radar in recent weeks with newly appointed Chief Planner, Joanna Averley using her first planning newsletter to remind authorities not to slow down on their plans in light of the government’s ambitious planning proposals. But this point will also ring true when we move to the new system and hence effective mechanisms which incentive plan production such as the need for Local Authorities to demonstrate a five-year land supply should certainly be retained.
To supplement this blog please read our consultation response in full for the BPF’s take on the government’s ambitious planning reform agenda.
