Responding to two-speed Britain

There was an interesting article in the Observer on Sunday which highlighted the gap in development activity and property market movement in London and the South East compared to the rest of the country. They pointed out that there were more cranes on the London skyline than the rest of Britain put together. This really raises the question of whether our current planning system is fit for purpose across the country. To date it is really only suited to either encouraging market-led development (where it can) or resisting development pressures (where they exist). This clearly does not describe great swathes of the country. In my forthcoming book I argue that there are alternatives using community-based development and management and thinking about the value that low-priced areas have for local communities. I present a number of reforms to the planning system that would support such an alternative approach. It is interesting to see that some of these overlap with some current government initiatives (although not the prevailing planning ideology which is firmly pro-market). I would point to the announcement of measures to re-use empty buildings, provide land for self-builders and put funding into high streets, sometimes through community ventures. These are clearly times of change and such change is not alway simple. Yes, the government are in favour of deregulation and promoting market-led development. Yes, they are weakening the negotiating power of local authorities through their reforms of planning gain. But there are also these smaller changes which perhaps are there because of the Localism agenda that could form the kernel of a different way of doing planning. What is needed is a broader programme of reform to build on this.

Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013

The Growth and Infrastructure Act has now received Royal Assent and become law. Among its various provisions is the potential for reconsideration of Section 106 agreements that have been negotiated between developers and local planning authorities to secure community benefits from new developments. The argument that has been put forward is that existing S. 106 agreements are rendering developments unviable and therefore holding up new build projects. Let these agreements be renegotiated to reduce the financial burden on the developer, and then these projects would go ahead. It has been suggested that the construction of 75,000 homes could be prompted by this measure. This could be seen just as a further move towards deregulation; I think this is wrong as it is more a restructuring of regulation to tip the balance of power towards the developer. But more interesting is the assumption explicitly built into the new legislation that planning has to operate within the constraints of the viability of private sector development. This builds on previous policy guidance from the Coalition Government to local authorities, as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework for example, that ensuring the viability of development must be a core principle guiding local plan making. The explicitness of this acknowledgement that current planning practice is reliant on the decisions and investment activities of private sector developers is at the heart of growth-dependent planning. But the move to allow S.106 agreements to be renegotiated also shows the limitations of this paradigm. Planners can no longer weigh up the costs and benefits of a development proposal with any certainty, as the negotiated benefits of planning gain may be open to reconsideration; broadly the community will get less for permitting the development to go ahead. The message seems to be that the local planning authority and local communities should be happy to get the development itself and little more.

The book's argument

Well, the book has gone off to the publisher and is scheduled to be out in September. So what is its key argument? Planning has, I contend, become explicitly dependent on the promotion of growth and market-led urban development. This can work in some situations: it requires an underlying pressure of economic growth, effective regulation through the planning system (and a willingness on the part of planning authorities to negotiate for broader community benefits) and support by local communities. However, there are two major problems with such an overwhelming dependence on market-led development to deliver on public policy goals. First, as we are all too acutely aware at present, economic growth cannot be taken as a given. Even where national economic growth has returned to positive figures of several percentage points, there will always be areas that are suffering from a lack of demand and growth. What kind of planning should operate in these areas and during periods of general downturn? Second, there are significant concerns about the environmental and social consequences of growth-dependent planning. It is not clear that this approach will lead to resource efficiency and social equity. So a new agenda is proposed - drawing on the concept of just sustainability- and the book explores elements of an alternative planning approach. This encompasses different types of development model (including community-based development), ways of protecting and enhancing areas with low economic value as measured by rents and property prices (areas that often play an important function for lower-income communities) and community ownership and management of common assets. The final chapter discusses how these two approaches to planning can be combined and sets out in detail the reforms to the planning system that will be necessary to make space for planning beyond growth-dependence.