A plan for plans
Planning reform: The public don’t just want 1.5 million new homes…
The proposed reform of Britain’s sclerotic planning system has taken on totemic status. Get this right — the argument goes — and we unlock building, tackle the housing crisis and stimulate economic growth. What’s not to like?
Since taking office, the Government has been forthright in its rhetoric on housing supply and is developing policies to match. One of its six milestones at the heart of its Plan for Change involves a commitment to build 1.5 million new homes within this Parliament. Labour says it will get behind ‘builders’ and put an end to decades of pandering to ‘blockers’. In the words of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), the Government will take “bold and decisive action”.
This ambition, and the very large number at the centre of it, were evident in ‘socials’, created by MHCLG at the end of last year. These shouted ‘coming soon’ about 1.5 million new homes, adopting a style reminiscent of the materials produced by Labour and Conservative governments during the 1950s (although these celebrated rather than promised mass housebuilding).
Given the importance of culture — something which famously “eats strategy for breakfast” — this has been among several important and decisive signals that the Government means business. That 1.5 million figure is hard to ignore but one problem with it is that Britons are not especially interested.
It’s not necessarily that people don’t support a step-change in building or can’t appreciate the imperative to unlock supply to tackle the housing crisis (although some don’t). It’s just that they have a different priority altogether. They want housing to be more affordable to buy or rent. This is likely to be one of the reasons why rent controls are so popular as well as the idea of extending social housing so that it is more mainstream.
Building this many new homes is a means to an end, not the end itself. Recent Ipsos polling also points to the importance the public attach to the quality of housing (more so than politicians). Moreover, large numbers and political promises tend to leave people cold.
People are sceptical about the merits of past building, the quality of new housing (and the small sites they occupy), the affordability of new homes to those most in need including locals, and the suitability of social and economic infrastructure. To many, new housing seems to spring up from nowhere with nothing.
Town halls not Whitehall
Since it took office last summer, the Government has worked quickly and efficiently to re-introduce centrally set housing targets for local authority areas, a policy which had been dropped by the Conservatives under pressure from agitated backbenchers. This has theoretical public backing but — and there’s often a but with public opinion — people also prefer decision-making about new housing developments to be local rather than national.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill aims to move the planning system away from a discretionary system to something more rules based. There will, in effect, be a presumption in favour of building — a ‘passport’ to development provided certain conditions are met — and a movement away from a system which puts the burden of proof onto those proposing schemes.
This has prompted suggestions that local democracy is being undermined by a Ministry which will pull all the levers. In response, Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook signalled the need for local authorities to continue to lead and involve residents:
“It is primarily for local areas to shape where development takes place through local development plans. We want more residents involved upstream in those plans deciding where development takes place, but the conversation has got to be about how that development happens, not whether it happens at all.”
Jumping in upstream
Involving residents in local plans make sense on several fronts. Housebuilding and associated issues can be complex and contentious, and existing local plans will likely need updating given a new policy landscape and a set of priorities including requirements to refresh green (and grey) belt designation and improve tenure mix.
The public can be forgiven for being bamboozled by planning speak — nutrient neutrality and Section 106 anyone? — and can find it difficult to look beyond the here and now with immediate loss aversion and disruption looming large over future planning gain. This takes time and skill.
Another advantage of upstream engagement is that people are more likely to be positive about being involved in more formative stages of policymaking — in strategy — rather than being given more incidental decisions about the detail of a pre-determined delivery. Their input is likely to be more meaningful if involved from the outset and, done well, this could be an opportunity to change the frame around residents from being ‘nimby’ troublemakers to partners in place-making.
Another reason for local engagement is that Ipsos has found people have a much stronger sense of a national housing crisis than a local one. This reflects national discourse and the absence of local attention. And, according to Ipsos polling, in the public’s eyes the lack of political effort is one of the main reasons why Britain hasn’t built enough homes. So too is local opposition.
But how should upstream involvement work in practice and what would pass the sniff test for something to be credible?
Wide, deep, and well defined
Engagement needs to be wide as well as deep. Width means extending involvement beyond the usual suspects — while the ‘vocal locals’ will jump at most opportunities to take part, most won’t — and deep means avoiding involvement in tick-box exercises (although these can play an important role in a mixed economy of engagement).
In Opposition, Labour and especially Sue Gray talked excitedly about a role for citizens’ assemblies possibly with recruitment by jury-style sortition. These were seen as a mechanism for helping to solve ‘wicked’ problems and to re-build trust. Housebuilding was mentioned as an issue ripe for such an approach.
A new rules-based planning system needs to put some shape — rules even — on the Minister’s expectations for resident involvement, otherwise it will likely not happen especially given limited local capacity (unless the new generation of planning officers have this skillset). This could create a risk that the public are reduced to onlookers, caught somewhere between a locally imposed plan for ‘where’ and a centrally imposed target of ‘how many’.
To put it mildly, the politics of housebuilding is hard. It will be made even harder if national and local planning fails to include the people who will live in, or nearby, the 1.5 million new homes.
