C+ for the Planning Paper

Having spent the best part of Thursday digesting the Select Committee report on The Future of the Planning System I found myself nodding along with much of what they said. As an associate director with Cratus I regularly find myself sympathising with applicants about the long delays in the system and with elected members about the limitations of the current planning process and as a councillor and parliamentary candidate I often hear the distress of residents who see greenfield and greenbelt development while brownfield consented sites sit empty or developers failing to deliver the necessary (and promised) facilities to reduce the impact of new homes on their communities.

It is quite clear that the current system is not working, but the implication that the system through local authorities is the root cause is fundamentally incorrect. We know that there are nearly one million homes consented but unconstructed and that's mainly as a result of a lack of penalty or incentive to build out rather than wait for land value to increase.

The new bill does little to address this and the Select Committee proposal to charge full council tax on homes unbuilt after a defined period is a sensible one. As a Party, the Liberal Democrats have regularly discussed the merits of schemes such as land-banking taxes or other levies on incomplete sites so it seems reasonable that the areas who should be seeing some fiscal return from the development in their communities are not penalised in favour of landowners seeing prices inflate.

Clearly, planning departments need capacity building to ensure that the LPA is not responsible for excessive delays but if developers cannot or do not wish to build out their consent within a reasonable time they should be encouraged to sell it to someone who will and communities left for decades not knowing if a housing site will blight or benefit their lives should have this anxiety minimised with time limits.

The zoning of the country into Protect, Renewal, Growth was criticised, suggesting that this is a gross simplification and could lead to a loss of democratic oversight. I completely agree; whilst speeding up of the planning process is advantageous local people and their elected representatives must still have the opportunity to voice their concerns. We also know that Local Plans can be unwieldy documents for residents to comprehend, using broad brush statements that can be easily misunderstood. It is only when residents see a development on their street or which will affect their daily lives that they will take a genuine interest and if this is lost, we will see even more disengagement between communities and their councils, which can only be a bad thing.

I am also personally relieved that the Committee has spoken up for Neighbourhood Plans. Whilst they are imperfect (research by University of Reading recently found that only 5% of completed plans are in areas with just 6.7% in the most deprived parts of the country) they are often able to consider hyper-local issues and can see impressive engagement with communities where they exist. The apparent downgrading of their role following the Planning Bill is of great concern, sending out mixed messages to communities across the land.

The intervention around funding for councils by the Select Committee is welcome. The need for more frequent and more detailed local plan proposed under this Bill will require additional resources from already overstretched planning teams. With shrinking central funding and increased competition by planning consultancies and developers councils across the country have found it more difficult to recruit and retain the best planners so the suggestion of ring-fenced treasury funding IN ADVANCE of the Bill's introduction should enable local planning authorities to provide for any change. Also strongly supported are the pilots that have just been announced to improve the digitisation of the system, though safeguards to ensure those who do not have access to online services can still have their voices heard must be in place.

One of the most striking sections of the report is the one entitled 'Omissions' - the lack of commitment to climate change, to reducing inequality of housing, to building alongside sustainable transport, ensuring that energy and natural infrastructure needs are met and the flagship 'levelling up' agenda demonstrate the continued silo approach of Government.

Criticised by community campaigners and councils alike as a 'developers charter' the Committee calls for more work to be done to address the needs of communities rather than just create a framework to deliver the numbers promised.

The report reminds us that in only 6 years since the World War Two has the country built 300,000 homes - all of them in the 1960s - and that if we are genuinely going to build back better, more beautiful and achieve net zero this Bill will not achieve those goals without radical change.