A new Planning Olicy

HAVING discovered that the country has a bit of a problem, our nation’s leaders now have to work out what to do to solve it. The default solution to all problems back in the 1850s seemed to be to send in the Royal Navy, then negotiate. Off the back of this gunboat diplomacy, Britain prospered.

Today the problems are different, but the attitudes haven’t changed much, particularly in the exercise of political power. A show of overwhelming force, followed by the natives coming round to their senses. Or else…

We don’t ask, we tell

In these more peaceable times, gunboats have been replaced by government consultations. They’re a lot cheaper, not quite as impressive, but just as dangerous.

Two current consultations are about the problems with Britain’s housing and one of them sets out the new National Planning Policy Framework, dubbed the NPPF, and we’re being asked our opinions.

As you’d expect, the consultation comes with loads of bumph – over 240 pages as last week’s commentary wrongly reported. Since then, more documents have come to light and the total is now a brain numbing

458 pages.

To understand what’s changed one needs some perspective on the past – then a look at what’s coming next.

The good old days

Back in those halcyon times before the housing crisis was discovered, “the problem” was that local authorities weren’t granting enough planning permissions fast enough.

They were the bad guys who were stopping the nation’s plucky builders from helping the country out of recession and onto the sunlit uplands of economic recovery.

The government responded magnificently and the planning system was duly streamlined with over 1,000 pages of regulations, guidance and regional plans being scrapped. This was all replaced with a policy framework document of just 47 pages, plus a few bits and bobs online, so that all of the over-staffed and under-worked planning departments in councils up and down the land could easily understand how to apply the new policy.

And things were going swimmingly – good guys to the fore, villains penned up and duly vilified, we can really get on with building a better Britain.

Which was when the builders found they didn’t have the staff, didn’t have the bricks, didn’t have the land, but by golly, they were certainly going to get Britain building again.

Cue the music, roll bulldozers.

But those pesky planning departments just weren’t cooperating and we still couldn’t get enough houses built, so the good guys needed to appeal to higher authority.

Enter those champions of justice, slayers of dragons and all round cleaner-uppers – the Planing Inspectorate. Things were really going to change.

And they did.

National targets were being missed by wider and wider margins, more and more land banks were building up, and between 400 and 4,000 cases of ‘planning by appeal’ were fought. It seemed that the only numbers going up were the lawyers’ and planning consultants’ fees for the appeals.

But everything was ‘still going to plan’, and the ‘villains of the piece’ were definitely those Local Authorities.

What a load of horse feathers.

So what’s new?

Although it’s claimed that much remains the same, the structure, sequence and language of the NPPF has been changed, so this comparison isn’t as objective / accurate / provable as it usually would be.

While the NPPFs use economic, social and environmental factors, the old one calls them roles the planning system needs to perform while the new one describes them as overarching objectives that need to be pursued.

A subtle difference perhaps, a bit like contrasting happiness and the pursuit of happiness.

A not-so subtle difference is where the old NPPF talks of core planning principles: high quality design; sustainable economic development; thriving local places; thriving rural communities; empowering local people; practical framework; a creative exercise; enhance and improve; opportunities for growth; reducing pollution; etc etc.

The new NPPF doesn’t have these phrases. While some of the words still appear, their context and meaning is different. Some might say that’s OK, because it’s still using all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order. Others might claim that by removing all the core principles it’s become … un-principled ?

What’s needed to solve the problem?

If you like loads of new homes being thrown up at any price, anywhere, then please don’t read on, the new NPPF is just fine and you’ll be a lot happier.

On the other hand, if you’d like to see that your children and grandchildren will have the same or better opportunities than you had with housing, then you might be interested in one of the following topics which the new NPPF completely fails to address :

Measure housing output (as well as land input), then manage throughput by incentivising and penalising the right organisations, not just the local authority this’ll need changes to the five-year land supply as well as the housing delivery test).

Put in some checks and balances to eliminate planning by appeal

Get councils to look after their own population growth first by rewarding those that do - with financial support for infrastructure and amenities and charging those that don’t - with a ‘duty-to-cooperate tax’ to pay those rewards

Introduce a whole-cost of infrastructure policy to charge developers the real costs for increasing capacity for cycles, roads, railways, buses, gas, electric, broadband, water, flood storage, sewage, etc.

Help bring local authorities back into high volume (500k pa) house building by eliminating or severely curtailing the current right to buy system and by a 90% tax on any land-price-premium above agricultural

Help eliminate the property price bubble in UK housing by regulating and taxing heavily any form of foreign investment / speculation in UK housing (just as 90% of developed nations do today for their domestic housing)

Introduce taxation based on capital property value for new property that stays empty

Remove the right for inner city authorities to catapult their excess/unplanned housing needs over the green belts into non-neighbouring boroughs

Eliminate positive feedback (microphone squeal / howl) in housing need calculations

Introduce a policy of rewarding local areas with social infrastructure funding to provide more hospitals, GP surgeries, dentists, schools, shops etc. to match population

Raise the fees for planning applications to match the true cost based on actual local experience of previous applications and appeals

Introduce measures to manage price/earnings ratio for rental & purchase property in an area together with tax breaks for those who live close to their workplace

Whether or not any one of the above is currently regarded as practical or affordable isn’t the point. The reason they’re listed here is to demonstrate that there are alternatives to yesterday’s breakfast leftovers being chopped up and warmed over to then be marketed as tomorrow’s fine dining.

The Last Word

Goes this week to a Wokingham resident, Colin George, who’s launched an ePetition to get real debate in parliament on the above, instead of more bumph from the Ministry.

The rules of the government’s ePetition website means that his petition can only propose a solution to a couple of the points above and it’s aimed to ‘prevent developers and land speculators from “gaming the system” in UK housing’.

You can vote for it online at https://petition. parliament.uk/petitions/212794.