The government has revealed its plans to get Britain building again. Some of them might just work
The UK government has published its planning and infrastructure bill, a cornerstone of its strategy for growth. The bill aims to “get Britain building again and deliver economic growth” and includes the hugely ambitious target of building 1.5 million homes in England over this parliament.
The bill is ambitious in scope – 160 pages long and very technical. But what does it promise exactly?
On infrastructure, it outlines reforms to limit vexatious repeat use of judicial review to block development. There are also some measures for a stronger electricity grid to ease the move towards renewable energy. While the plan to reward people living near new pylons with £250 off their bills grabbed headlines, just as important are measures for energy storage to level out peaks in demand and supply.
On the planning side, planning departments will be allowed to charge more to those making applications. This should speed up decisions by funding more planning officer roles. But there are no measures to increase funding for drawing up local plans. This is important because councils often fall behind schedule in producing these. And where there is no up-to-date plan, there is a danger that developers will push through controversial proposals.
The bill also provides for more decisions to be delegated to planning officials rather than planning committees – this means council staff rather than elected representatives. This already happens for smaller planning applications, so is not entirely new. But it does raise concerns about democratic scrutiny.
The government argues that local democracy will not be undermined, as planning officers will be making their decisions in the context of democratically approved local plans as well as national legislation. But this could be misleading, unless planning authorities have the funds to update local plans regularly.
There are also changes to existing development corporation legislation, to support the building of new towns. Particularly welcome is the responsibility on development corporations – government organisations dealing with urban development – to consider climate change and design quality. This is in order to hit net-zero targets and avoid cookie-cutter housing estates.
Other measures are aimed at ensuring appropriate infrastructure is built to serve these new towns.
Read more: Why building new towns isn't the answer to the UK's housing crisis
There are changes planned too on when compulsory purchase orders can be used to buy sites that are broadly to be used for the public good. This could be for affordable homes, health or education facilities, for instance. It would work by reducing payments to the actual value of the land rather than its “hope value” (when landholders hold out for price rises once planning permission is granted).
There is also a commitment to creating a nature restoration fund, which the government hopes will overcome some of the delays to approving new housing caused by potential threats to wildlife.
The fund will aim to unblock development in general rather than specific sites, as happens at the moment, and will pool contributions from developers to fund nature recovery. Where there are concerns for wildlife, experts will develop a long-term mitigation plan that will be paid for by the fund while allowing the development to go ahead in the meantime.
Will it work?
As a professor of urban and environmental planning, the question for me is will the bill encourage development to progress more speedily? Almost certainly – probably mostly in terms of bringing forward improvements to critical national infrastructure schemes such as the electric grid. For residential development, some incremental speeding up is likely as developers crave certainty in planning decisions.
But on their own, these measures are unlikely to be enough to provide the 1.5 million new homes set out in the government’s target. They offer nothing to tackle critical bottlenecks in terms of both labour and materials. It is also difficult to see the target being met without much more government involvement – by building social housing in particular.
Will the bill result in better quality development? There is surprisingly little in the plans about improving design quality, other than in development corporation areas. This is disappointing, and a missed opportunity to ensure that developers raise their game in residential building and neighbourhood quality.
And might it override local democracy? Arguably yes, but in practice not as much as some critics might argue. Most of the reforms are finessing existing practices, such as delegated powers to planning officers. Much depends on what the national government guidance turns out to be.
The biggest concern is that it might increase invisible political pressures on planning officers by councillors and senior officials. It would have been good to have seen more measures to protect their independence and professional judgement.
Hopefully the bill will speed up delivery of nationally important schemes for critical infrastructure. This means things like modernising the electricity grid and removing repeated use of judicial review to block a development. These elements should create jobs sooner and support economic growth.
Where the bill will make absolutely no difference is in improving living standards for people with older homes. This bill is focused on new builds and has little to offer those hoping for support in retrofitting ageing housing stock with more energy-efficient features or creating green spaces in areas where new development is increasingly in demand.
Despite some of the ministerial bluster about removing red tape, much of the content of this bill is not about removing planning regulations. It is much more about improving them. Some measures will work better than others, but overall, given the government’s electoral mandate to deliver growth and protect the environment, this is a reasonable balancing act.
It’s unlikely to deliver much growth in its own right, but as an enabler of growth, it is promising. More worrying is whether it will lead to poor-quality housing built at pace and massive scale to inadequate energy-efficiency and design standards. This would fail to deliver on net-zero and biodiversity ambitions. It is very much a minor win for facilitating growth, but for nature it is nothing more than maintaining the status quo.
Graham Haughton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.