Alistair Smyth tells MPs the skills needed in town hall planning departments will change due to government reforms
Labour’s proposed shift to a plan-led system will require changes to the kinds of skills needed in planning departments, a National Housing Federation (NHF) director has told MPs.
The government has proposed a wide-ranging package of policies to overhaul the planning system, including measures to bypass local planning committees when developments comply with local plans and national guidance. Under the revised National Planning Policy Framework, mandatory local housing targets will also be restored.
In a bid to alleviate concerns about capacity in planning departments as ministers look to build 1.5m homes, the government has pledged to provide £46 million of additional funding to recruit and train 300 “graduates and apprentices” to work as junior planning officers.
However, Alistair Smyth, director of policy and research at the National Housing Federation (NHF), told a committee of MPs that while this increase in resources is welcome, the types of skills needed in planning departments will also need to change.
Smyth, speaking in front of the environmental audit committee, said: “We will need not only more planners but planners with the kinds of skills that perhaps used to exist more when we had strategic planning in place.
“So the government will need to keep a close eye on the skills that are required now but also in the future as we move back towards that planning system.”
He said recruiting skilled planners must be a priority to accelerate housebuilding with consideration of the environmental implications of development.
Smyth said delivering high percentages of affordable housing could be a “challenge” because “we don’t have sufficient planning coverage, we don’t have a plan-led system in place at the moment.”
However he added: “If the expectation is clear from the outset [in a local plan], then land values will adjust accordingly and you’re more likely to achieve that percentage of affordable housing set out in the plan”.
The NHF has been calling for a long-term housing strategy and hopes the government will publish one later this year.
>>See also: The new NPPF: the time for waiting is over
>>See also: The 1.5 million-home question: Does the government’s planning reform programme add up?
Smyth said the the NHF believes there to be a “strong case” for a 30-year housing strategy because “the National Infrastructure Commission produces its 30-year assessments of the UK’s infrastructure need, so if we do that for infrastructure more broadly, why don’t we also do it for housing alongside infrastructure so we have a long-term understanding of what we need and where and what it will cost?”
He said that NHF members would also plan their activities, including developing new homes and investing in existing homes over the same 30-year period.
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