Being a NIMBY is "so last year". Soon everyone will want to be a SLIMBY…..

The Government is in the midst of a crisis. No, not that crisis – this short article does not utter the dreaded B-word more than (I promise!) once. The housing crisis. 

It’s a crisis which sees the young increasingly unable to get a foot on the housing ladder, increasing numbers of homeless on the streets of our towns and cities, and is seeing the housing industry increasingly criticised by the national press for many and varied alleged misdemeanours: land banking, shrinking room sizes, bulging Chief Executive pay awards, and the overall quality of new housing product. 

When Kit Malthouse MP took the job of Housing Minister four and a half months ago (you'll have noted his predecessor took on the role of negotiating (here is that forbidden B-word) Brexit, and has since resigned), he was told that when it came to the housing market, he had three goals to deliver for the Government: "more, better, faster". 

Well documented reforms to the planning system, and fiscal measures to help first time buyers, have already gone some way to achieving increased delivery. 

The Government has set a testing target of 300,000 completions a year by 2020. 

In the period 2017-18, there were some 222,000 completions. 

That is the highest number in over 30 years. So far so good, but in the rush to build more, will quality and design suffer? 

Or, in building more, can we also build beautifully?

Last night's Policy Exchange conference in Westminster discussed that very issue with a line-up of speakers including the Housing Minister, Anne Ashworth of The Times, Ben Derbyshire the President of RIBA, British Land's Roger Madelin, the former Mayor Of Newham Sir Robert Wales, and Paul Finch the Editorial Director of Architects' Journal.

The event followed on from the publication earlier this year of Policy Exchange's publication Building more, Building Beautiful co-authored by Sir Roger Scruton, Sir Robin Wales and Policy Exchange's Jack Airey. The report received a mixed reception from architects, planners and developers, but concluded that if greater emphasis is placed on design in the planning system, that will lead to increased delivery because communities will be reassured that development will enhance rather than detract from their community.  The report also set out a number of recommendations:

·    each local authority should produce a design and style guide in consultation with local residents

·    local wishes should be incorporated into the definition of sustainable development, specifying that "planning should….always seek to secure high quality design and a good standard of amenity for all existing and future occupants of land and buildings, reflecting local will on issues of building design and style

·    there should be an accelerated route to planning permission for developments which reflect design codes

·    there should be a new designation 'Special Areas of Residential Character' to give residents confidence that new developments will be in keeping with existing look and style.

In July this year the Government of course revised the NPPF, which includes a new chapter twelve on design. This underscores the need for design to play its part in the formulation of new local plan and neighbourhood plan policy, empowers local planning authorities to refuse development of poor design, and states that in the determination of new developments great weight should be placed on design which is both outstanding and innovative.

So to last night's event, and a short summary of the main observations from the speakers:

1.        Kit Malthouse MP: if the Government is to deliver its 300,000 a year new homes target, it will need to embed good design and quality into the system to avoid NIMBYs creating delay and added cost through the planning process. To that end, the Government does not want to restrict architects, but wants to "let architects rip". The Government believes there is room for all styles of housing and not just identikit pastiche product – beauty means many things to many people, but always enjoys a shared vocabulary and grammar. The Government wants housing of all styles to permeate through the planning system, and the Minister's aim is that in years to come, the homes we are delivering today will be looked at "not through the window of a bulldozer", but with a view to its listing and protection. 

2.        Roger Madelin: Beauty is more than the buildings people live in. It is the vistas, the streets and the connections which sit around them. Large regeneration projects such as Brindleyplace in Birmingham and King's Cross in London have succeeded in both delivering, and creating a 'sense of place', because they have benefited from scale.  That has meant that the design of the spaces which sit around the buildings within those schemes has not been piecemeal, but part of a bigger picture which creates the memorable experiences people associate with "beauty". To that end, he asked whether more local planning authorities would benefit from considering a greater role for CPO in achieving great design. It was a key which could unlock more developments being build at scale in our towns and cities.

3.        Sir Robin Wales: the Planning system has too many aims and aspirations – in seeking to achieve them all, it achieves none of them especially well.  If the most dangerous words in the English language are "let's talk about planning reform", he queried why the Government does not circumvent that discussion. Rip it up, and start again from the ground up asking "what is it you actually want to achieve?" 

4.        Peter Finch: leave it alone! The planning system is doing its job well, and is delivering. The NPPF now goes far enough on the issue of design. By comparison, Finch noted there was no duty placed on any public authority in England and Wales to actually build new homes.  Not Homes England, not any local authority. Whilst the cap on local authorities Housing Revenue Accounts is due to be lifted, there will still be no public body tasked in England and Wales with needing to deliver any new housing. A slanging match over architectural styles was a futile and a needless distraction from achieving delivery. The Government should instead be looking at a public programme of house building to deliver increased housing, rather than entertaining debates around what is "beauty" in housing. 

The debate about the role of elected officials and communities in determining what is "good design" and "beautiful" in the planning system will no doubt continue. 

For my part I hope calls for yet further planning system reform fall on deaf ears in Government - though in the short term I suspect the absence of Parliamentary time will dictate that is in any event a non-starter. 

Most people working in the planning system are now agreed that we really do now need a period of calm, and allow the system as we know it to just get on and do its job. 

That said, I am also concerned that we do now risk moving into territory where prescriptive local policies and design guides, encouraged by the NPPF, and which are aimed at delivering the housing which people think they want, stifle the innovation and delivery of exciting, quality housing which people do not know they just might love. 

Oh, and to end: what you ask is a SLIMBY? 

It stands for 'Something Lovely in My Backyard'. 

The Housing Minister is hoping we see more of them turning up at planning committee meetings and planning inquiries speaking in favour of new residential developments over coming years. 

I hope he is right, but will believe it when I see it. 

20 November 2018