How we can improve planning under Labour

There is something encouraging in the renaming of DLUHC as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

It feels like abandonment of hyperbole and a return to common sense. And I’m hearing that it’s not just the name that’s changing in the department’s declared mission of ‘fixing the foundations of an affordable home, handing power back to communities and rebuilding local government’.

Most commentators agree that there is no chance of achieving Labour’s target of 300,000 new homes a year without a significant contribution from the public sector.

So we look forward to Labour’s plan for council housing, at once reducing costs for tenants, contributing to economic growth, helping to meet the 2050 net zero target and reducing the burden of housing benefit payments. There’s more to welcome in Labour’s plans to upgrade five million existing homes.

Although the new government won’t abolish Right to Buy (it’s not been all bad), it will address over-generous discounts. Labour promises reform of compulsory purchase compensation rules, offering landowners “fair”, rather than exploitative compensation. The commitment to resource local planning authorities is essential for improving speed and quality of housing delivery. 

Yet any changes to the planning system run the risk of slowing the process down, rather than speeding things up. A thoroughgoing analysis of the risk of unintended consequences will be essential

The return to mandatory housing targets for Local Authorities, abandoned by the Tories following the crushing 2021 Chesham and Amersham by-election defeat, is essential. We are eating into the Green Belt now, so call it what you will, but convincingly planned urban extensions on ‘grey belt’ land are a much more sustainable way of providing homes in easy reach of social and transport infrastructure. Sensibly, the NPPF is to drop the nebulous reference to ‘beauty’ and return to a requirement for high quality design.

Yet any changes to the planning system run the risk of slowing the process down, rather than speeding things up. A thoroughgoing analysis of the risk of unintended consequences will be essential.

As I have previously argued, any attempt at compulsion, prescribing the form of development in detail with authority-wide design codes, as intended in the Levelling Up & Regeneration Act, will fail. It is tilting at windmills to suggest that the imposition of ‘provably popular’ housing typologies can improve either local acceptability or quality of new homes. This effort should be scrapped before it completely gums up a supply chain already struggling for want of material and human resources.

>>See also: A boost for housebuilding or an ill-defined gimmick?: Labour’s ‘grey belt’ plans explained

>>See also: In the rush to build 1.5 million homes how do we safeguard quality?

In the search for the delivery of both increased supply and quality of new housing, government will find no better exemplar than Cambridge Future’s Charter for Growth and the establishment its multidisciplinary Cambridgeshire Quality Panel. Their tally of 11 Housing Design Awards in a decade (more than England’s 20 largest cities outside London combined) has been driven by early engagement with the panel whose ‘4 Cs’ philosophy: Community, Connectivity, Climate and Character focuses public realm.

Design codes for even the very large sites are required not to exceed 100 pages with a clause which says that where betterment can be demonstrated, the code can be interpreted flexibly, overlooked or changed. 

There is plenty of improvement to be found by bringing together proven processes of improvement into a cross departmental programme for change that is already well under way and understood

This more flexible approach would further benefit from wider deployment of standards that already exist, are well understood, but not universally applied. Why not mandate the Nationally Described Space Standard across the country, require the universal application of the 12 requirements of Building For a Healthy Life, for example?

The government could accelerate the application of the future Homes Standard which the industry is already working towards. The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, working closely with MHCLG, might galvanise the process of EPC Reform as an effective trigger for market driven improvements in energy performance of both new and existing stock.

The new government should shut out the noise of what was to have been a disastrous ‘once in a generation’ overhaul of the planning system, echoes of which can still be heard. There is plenty of improvement to be found by bringing together proven processes of improvement into a cross departmental programme for change that is already well under way and understood.

Ben Derbyshire, chair, HTA Design and former president of RIBA

His book Home Truths is available to buy here: https://www.ribabooks.com/Home-Truths_9781399942256#