Solving the housing crisis, boosting the economy, creating sustainable jobs, meeting net-zero goals and responding to Covid are all laudable aims. How you get there is another matter. It’s an age-old Conservative Party trick to create a narrative about a broken system, then conclude that the only solution is the unfettered market riding in on a white charger. That’s what lay behind the Planning for the Future White Paper, now set to come before us as a bill following the Queen’s Speech.
There’s no doubt elements of the planning system are slow and archaic. We need timely local plans, modern digital systems plus improved quality and design standards. But it’s wrong to lay the blame for the housing crisis at the door of the planning system.
Between 2010 and 2019, government cuts to local authority budgets meant a 42 per cent reduction in the amount invested in planning authorities in England, stripping planning departments of the funding they need to work effectively. And we are not building enough homes, which is less to do with a flawed planning system and more to do with an over-reliance on market-led housing where supply is controlled in order to keep profit margins high.
Let’s not forget there are 1.1m unbuilt housing permissions from the last 10 years. That’s why we have called for “use it or lose it” initiatives to create opportunities for small- and medium-sized developers as well as public housing.
Here we get to the crux of the matter. The government is too close to larger-scale developers that monopolise the market. These are the very developers that fill Conservative Party coffers. That’s why Labour called the White Paper “a developers’ charter.”
This is not about fixing a broken system but about the Conservatives selling out communities to reward their friends with a planning free-for-all. What bigger clue was there than when Boris Johnson’s former top aide, Eddie Lister, who advised on the planning reforms, suddenly and quietly stepped down after it emerged he was employed by two major property firms?
You do not have to scratch far beneath the surface to discover that at the very heart of these proposals is a shift of control and influence from local communities to big developers and Whitehall. They will do very little to build back better, more beautiful and greener. In fact, letting the free market run rampant is likely to do the exact opposite. It will create a framework of chaos with an extension of permitted development rights that will lead to bad homes and blighted communities, with high streets hollowed out when former shops become houses in multiple occupation. One report from government advisers warned that permitted development risked creating “future slums.”
Have we learned nothing about the health impact of overcrowding following Covid, or the need for proper building standards after the tragedy of Grenfell? The zonal approach of designating land for “growth,” “renewal” and “protection” is particularly concerning, analogous to building an artificial world in a computer game. It runs the risk of well-resourced developers carving up villages, towns and cities—and also the green belt.
After a decade of austerity and the impact of the pandemic, these reforms will strip away yet more power and finance from local authorities and, with that, take away the ability of local communities to have their voice effectively heard throughout the planning process. This was the point made by Civic Voice, who reference only a very limited opportunity for engagement at the early stage of a 30-month local plan timeframe.
As the opposition, you would expect us to be against some aspects of the proposals. But the vast majority of councillors also believe these proposals are undemocratic—that includes 61 per cent of Conservative councillors. Over 250,000 supporters of the countryside charity CPRE argue the same, along with many more organisations in and beyond the housing sector. The Woodland Trust, for example, is keen to know what environmental protections will be in place. And the prime minister’s comments about “newt-counting” do not exactly instil confidence that the government takes ecological protection seriously.
Notable by its absence so far has been the lack of any mention of social housing. It seems likely we will remain over-reliant on private builders and market cycles when it comes to getting homes built. If we’re serious about maximising housing delivery and meeting building targets, the government needs to stop ignoring the answer right in front of it: a new generation of high-quality, affordable social homes, that will help us meet our net-zero goals.
The Local Government Association found that 30,000 affordable homes over the past five years would have gone unbuilt if the government’s proposal to scrap Section 106 for developments of under 40 or 50 homes had been in place.
We cannot cheat our way out of the housing crisis. Building healthy and sustainable homes should be the response to this pandemic.
We should be putting communities at the heart of good place-making, strengthening and resourcing our planning system, extending local democracy through digital and face-to-face engagement and making good quality, sustainable and affordable housing available for all.
