Localising planning is not a game of Jenga
August 2010
The new Government is driven by the ideology of localism. To achieve its goals, Ministers have moved fast to remove or discredit the parts of the old system that do not fit. They seem to think that, by removing some building blocks, they can still keep the edifice of planning standing, rather like in a game of Jenga – just minus bits they don’t like. Alas, they have caused the whole structure to become unstable. And while they have easily removed some bits that were not crucial, they have now pulled a piece that has been holding it all up - regional planning. The tragedy is not that we are losing something that was inherently valuable in regional plans – there were many defects in the system – it is that nothing has yet been devised to replace the key missing piece now. So, much of the planning system and the devolvement industry is in a wobble while we wait to hear how the structure might be stabilised. It could be a painful wait.
Anything to do with targets or regions was immediately in the firing line. Density targets, along with the very minor real-life issue of garden-grabbing, got pulled out. No wobbles there. The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit got the chop (with immediate effect) once Ministers found out what they did – producing consistent housing supply targets at the regional level. With the subsequent revocation of all regional strategies - except London, of course – a yawning and unstable gap has appeared. The geography of planning is up for grabs. A new kind of national policy is promised, which is welcome. The RDAs and other regional quango budgets were cut and then told they would be abolished. Meanwhile, local authorities play musical chairs as they try to form viable Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) to replace them. Ministers have indicated LEPs will include planning, so will they provide some form of upper tier plan-making function? At RTP, we have always advocated sub-regions as the most appropriate plan-making unit, based around real employment and housing market geographies. There could be real opportunities here, if local authorities can get their LEP geographies right. But it is not going to happen quickly; so more uncertainty for a time.
Our recent survey revealed that over half of all local authorities are expecting to review their housing targets. This alone is causing a hiatus in the system, reducing confidence among developers and investors in housing and economic development. The recently proposed New Homes Bonus will not, in our view, incentivise planning authorities to get on with plans for housing growth – certainly not south of Birmingham. Too many in the south are already cutting back their housing numbers – even growth points like Ashford - and the incentives are not strong enough to overcome the NIMBYs.
The lack of any transitional arrangements is a big concern that has been voiced by many. But we are where we are, so how can we make the best of the situation?
New opportunities for planning
We identify six things for planning in this new era.
The first is to see the new agenda as an opportunity now, rather than something we have to endure till it gets better. We are, after all, being given the freedom to do planning more locally, so can use that opportunity to do it much better.
The second is to take stock of the evidence base. It doesn’t get binned; there are parts we can re-use as well as parts we may discard. Much of it can be recast to help support new aspirations, while we seek out new tools better fashioned for the new agenda. But across the piece, the scale and cost of the evidence base does need review: too much box-ticking meant too much was assembled; too much of it was impenetrable to local people; and too little policy-making reflected the purposes of the evidence base. The result has been ‘evidence silos’ rather than the evidenced strategies needed.
Third, we quickly need to do housing numbers differently. Prescription is going; local innovation is coming. Many authorities are unhappy with the targets they were given and they will be reviewed. But how do they plan, now that they can plan locally to suit? New and bespoke methodologies will be needed. For our part, we have already developed a Local Choices Toolkit. This allows local authorities to develop locally-driven, robust and mutually consistent demand forecasts for housing and jobs, using the latest modelling techniques.
Fourth, we need to plan more coherently. Housing numbers and jobs need to be planned together, not in separate silos. Both also need to take into account the roles of town and city centres and their particular economic geography, as too many authorities still see them as retail and leisure centres only, and develop the evidence base for them accordingly. Our Toolkit can also be used to translate jobs into employment land, or convert the findings of infrastructure studies into supply assumptions.
Fifth, plans need to become more real. New methodologies will be needed to embed deliverability into strategies, which will help avoid the yawning gap between theoretical targets and the real rates of build we see in so much of housing, town centre, employment and regeneration policy.
Lastly, reconciling local needs and aspirations will require better processes, including well-timed opportunities for informed political choices to be made. The danger now is of gut-reaction politics that simply reduces housing targets in isolation. So a more iterative, rather than sequential, process will be needed.
Conclusions
If we are right about the opportunities ahead of us, while frustrations will remain for a while, the next phase of the development of town planning will be an exciting one. The result ought to be simpler planning structures, using more flexible planning tools and more localised (and more realistic) planning policy. Isn’t that what we all want?
John Parmiter, Partner, Roger Tym & Partners
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