World Town Planning Day: Developers transform more than just land
To mark the annual event, Lanpro – a leading independent consultancy of planners, designers and environmental specialists – turns their attention to one of the biggest pieces of news to affect the industry this year – Labour’s ambitious housing targets.
The focus of World Town Planning Day 2024, which is taking place today – Friday 8th November – is the function of planning and planners in delivering housing that meets the needs of communities and helps to create equitable, inclusive and sustainable solutions. Arguably, this year planners have never been so important with the government introducing new targets to deliver more homes – 1.5 million to be exact.
With this in mind, Lanpro examine whether significant changes are necessary to meet the government’s new targets and ask their team what is the single most important policy change that Labour must initiate to get development moving?
There was a recognition that that change is long overdue – ‘The development industry has been hamstrung for a long time due to a lack of clear direction and initiative,’ but that the new government was heading in the right direction. One planning consultant commented that the most important policy change was the publication of the revised National Planning Policy Framework: (NPPF): ‘This will be key to unlocking land for development. However, it will be interesting to see if the somewhat subjective view one could take in the definition of ‘grey belt’ land, and the application of this, will be amended following consultation.’
Similarly, the reinstatement of mandatory housing targets was also a subject that cropped up a lot alongside creating new towns and appraising the appropriateness of Green Belt policy.
‘Speeding up and streamlining the processes,’ and ‘reforming delegation powers to local planning authorities’ were also considered important but several people expressed the opinion that this could only take place with greater resources provided for local planning authorities (LPAs).
One commented, ‘The government must provide additional funding, as promised in the Budget, to enable local planning authorities to hire more planners and expedite decision-making. Without this support, and given the historic lack of resources in LPAs, decisions will continue to be delayed, stalling development—particularly the delivery of the 1.5 million homes required by the government. The government needs to resource local authorities and statutory consultees properly. Changing the policy at national level is fine but if at the decision-making level there aren’t the people to action it will make no difference to delivery. Applicants experience too many delays purely based on a lack of resource.’
With this topic in mind, it was believed that a more permissive approach should be applied to strategic planning: ‘Whilst the proposed changes to the NPPF are encouraging at a high level, insofar that they will re-introduce the requirement to maintain a five-year housing land supply and increase housing targets under the standard method, there is too much opportunity for restrictive Local Plan policies to frustrate these objectives.
‘LPAs should be required to take a more permissive approach to settlement boundary policies which are unduly restrictive and frustrate growth in locations that are otherwise suitable for development.’
Linked to this was a belief that LPAs should be better incentivised to increased housing in their areas: ‘I think the biggest disconnect is between national government, which is very supportive of economic growth and housing development, and LPAs which are at the coalface and often faced with a powerful anti-development lobby. I’m not sure whether a policy change can address this issue but possibly a stronger ‘carrot and stick’ for LPAs to deliver growth may help.’
Funding for affordable housing was seen as important: ‘Continue with providing increased funding for registered providers and public sector to increase delivery of genuinely affordable homes. The government’s 300,000 homes per annum target cannot realistically be achieved by the private sector alone, and the lack of funding is already starting to impact on the delivery of Section 106 affordable homes by developers.’
Echoing a similar view, another commentator said, ‘A priority must be the delivery of the £500m ‘top up’ of affordable homes programme for funding 5,000 new affordable homes. Also flexibility to extend timescales for funding awards under existing affordable home programmes beyond March 2026 so that unspent money (because of existing development challenges and current focus on existing stock) can actually be spent.’
Infrastructure is high on the agenda – ‘Speed up the delivery of infrastructure (transport, water, energy),’ and ‘align housing requirements and delivery with planned infrastructure provision’. Likewise it was felt that a green industrial strategy was necessary to bring about growth: ‘The single most important policy change for the UK government to stimulate sustainable development would be a comprehensive green industrial strategy. Such a strategy would position the UK as a leader in the green economy by addressing infrastructure, energy production, and skills development. The current Green Paper Invest 2035: the UK’s modern industrial strategy marks the start of this process but needs to be accelerated fast towards tangible outputs.’
Finally, the bigger picture of significant housing growth will not succeed without attention to the specific causes of delay – of which nutrient neutrality is a significant factor in certain geographies: ‘Whilst the need to protect the water environment and ecological designations is fundamental, the government must address the issue of nutrient neutrality through policy reform and legislative changes to unblock the significant amount of new housing which has been stalled.’
Reflecting on the varied comment provided by Lanpro, Tom Pike, Director of Planning said: ‘July’s general election provided a fresh start for the property sector and a much-needed opportunity to genuinely address the housing crisis. While we are encouraged by the speed at which the government has committed to change – not least consulting on a revised NPPF within the first month of the new administration – there is much more than needs to change, both on a micro and a macro level.’
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