Shake-up of planning rules ‘a tougher ask than Brexit’

Boris Johnson has the UK’s planning system firmly in his sights as he aims for Britain’s economy to “build, build, build” its way out of the Covid-19 crisis.

Ever a man in a hurry, the Prime Minister has declared war on the newt-counters delaying precious development and promised to bring forward “the most radical reforms of our planning system since the end of the Second World War”.

A policy paper on the controversial topic is due within days, but the limited initiatives announced since his keynote speech in June have so failed to match the soaring rhetoric, and even triggered concerns over “a race to the bottom” on housing standards.

The PM is also treading a narrow path between zealots pushing for a complete overhaul and Conservative voters (and backbench MPs) with a vested interest in the status quo.

So can Boris the Builder really fix planning? The UK’s discretionary system, in place since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, has been under fire for years for failings such as the politicising of decisions and limiting the supply of land for homes where they are most needed.

Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics and the UK’s leading authority on the topic, also attacks the system for exacerbating inequalities both between older homeowners and ‘generation rent’ and the north and south of the country. “If people claim there isn’t a problem they are bamboozling themselves,” he says.

Academics such as the University of Warwick’s Nicholas Crafts have suggested liberalising planning could see an extra 100,000 homes a year built and add around 1pc a year to GDP. Reform is seen by proponents as one of the “trillion-dollar bills lying in the street” – to use the phrase of the PM’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings – to kick-start the UK economy.

A hint that the Government is prepared to think big came with the appointment of Jack Airey as a Downing Street special adviser in February. Airey joined from think tank Policy Exchange just weeks after publishing a blueprint for 21st century planning, which slammed the system for being “captured by the noisy minority”, stunting growth and fostering uncertainty.

Rather than the present discretionary system, Airey and his co-author Chris Doughty – now at the Treasury – have pushed for zones where the market rather than councils determines “need”, and local plans with non-negotiable rules.

More controversially, Airey also said local politicians should vote on the rules but have “no say” over applications for developments, which “should be a purely administrative exercise”. The Green Belt should also be reviewed to see “whether it is still justified”, despite a Conservative manifesto pledge to “protect and enhance” it.

How far the Government is willing to step down Airey’s path remains to be seen. Its March update, Planning for the Future, was completely overshadowed by Covid-19, but promised a full White Paper by the end of the year and signalled more leeway for authorities to encourage development through “zoning tools”.

Measures revealed so far, though, have left planning experts and housebuilders nonplussed. Ministers have announced two expansions of so-called “permitted development rights”, which allow works and changes of use without the need for a full application. Extensions of up to two storeys on homes and commercial properties are now allowed, while vacant commercial buildings can be demolished to make way for housing, rather than converted.

But the new rights come with many caveats. Richard Blyth, head of policy at the Royal Town Planning Institute, says: “We don’t know how many people will take up the offer as it only applies to housing built since 1948, which as far as Greater London is concerned, is ruling quite a lot out.”

Tony Mulhall, head of planning at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, says the changes are likely to have “limited impact”, while making the more practical point that the “idea of being able to extend upwards by two storeys presupposes you have got the foundations to support them”.

Moreover, the use of PDRs still involves an application under the authority’s “prior approvals” process, and an assessment of factors such as design quality and the impact on neighbours. Andrew Whitaker, planning director of the Home Builders Federation, warns: “Permitted development isn’t ‘not needing planning permission,’ it is a deemed planning consent regime. Essentially it gives planning permission to everybody to do something within the rules. Prior approval applications cost almost as much as planning applications and can take just as long as well.”

Concerns over quality have also come to the fore. Awkwardly for a government going down the PDR route, research commissioned by the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government published with little fanfare last week was critical of the standards of 46,000 homes delivered through office to residential PDR conversions, saying they were “more likely to create worse quality residential environments”.

The UCL’s Ben Clifford, who led the research, submitted the report in January and noted the “interesting timing” of the eventual publication, saying “I do start to wonder perhaps that it was felt not to be helpful”.

He says: “It does risk the chance of further poor quality environments. There is a view that the planning process is holding back housing supply, holding back the land allocation process and there is scope for a discussion about that. But if your way to tackle that issue is permitted development, they have overlooked the other safeguards that planning regulation has in it, such as proper consideration of the quality and design of schemes. What we have seen is a willingness to have a race to the bottom, frankly.”

Cheshire agrees, adding: “PDR is the easy apparent solution, but it won’t solve the problem. It will, on the margin, help, but it will also tend to generate some pretty horrible housing in some pretty silly locations.”

The expanded use of PDRs – so far limited to urban areas – is likely to provoke more opposition as it creeps into suburbia. Groups such as countryside charity CPRE have fears over a democratic deficit. Paul Miner, the lobby group’s head of strategic planning, says: “We have major concerns over what the arrangements would be under any new system for the public to get involved and, indeed, have a meaningful influence over what happens where.”

The advantage for ministers in using PDRs is that as statutory instruments, changes can be made quickly, without the need for primary legislation. But even if the Government does have the courage to go for a full zonal overhaul involving a new Bill, the prospect of radical change in the pipeline could have the perverse consequence of halting development now.

Blyth says: “If you want to pump blood back into the development industry and get the sap rising in projects, then you don’t really want to give to investors any sense that it’d be best to hold off a bit.”

Then there’s the politics. Insiders say pushing through planning reform will take drive when the going gets rough as well as a grasp of the detail not traditionally counted among Johnson’s strengths. Cheshire is not expecting much, despite pressure from the likes of Airey and Cummings for radicalism. He says: “Boris plays to the gallery, and he has got a gallery of backbenchers who want to protect the Green Belt.”

He may have “got Brexit done”, but getting planning done may prove almost as hard.