The Government** seems to be misjudging the growing pressure wave of resistance to the proposed changes in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).
…the line trotted out ad nauseum by Government politicians and their big business supporters that the planning system is preventing the development of homes and the creation of jobs is just nonsense. I won’t trot out the facts about the scale of allocated sites in local plans or the pipeline of sites with planning permission but it is clear that it is currently mainly credit markets and reduced public funding of affordable housing that are contributing to the slow down in housing completions and starts.
Most rational people can see what is happening here. The planning system has gradually become slower, more bureaucratic and more expensive. The developers, who are often frustrated more by the planning policies preventing the worst of their excesses than by the system itself, are trying to use the inefficient system as a reason for removing the policies it is intended to deliver.
…fundamentally this is a problem of markets. Markets do not deliver affordable housing where the jobs are. And Governments can’t do this either. We would do better to have a rational debate about what we are trying to achieve, what the best tools to achieve those objectives are and only then about how the planning system can help achieve some of them.
I was reminded of something a planning academic once told me;
"The reason why I would always support (and indeed, I often 'champion') planning as a system/activity/profession is because without it - we are left with only the market, and with market allocation of land, land uses and all the things that come with that (goods, services etc). So, outside all the bunkum that you've no doubt read about the planning system being there to do x, y and z (which is it's purpose, of course) - really the reason we have a planning system is that we as a society decided some time ago that the use and development of land should be regulated and strategically provided for. That means that all the red tape and regulation you're currently working through is supposed to be there to ensure that land is developed in a way that doesn't just suit the landowner, but contributes something to broader social/environmental/economic goals. Now, that of course is the key question for debate - and where planning becomes very politically contested (as you know) over whether a development constitutes something that contributes to such goals, and even what the goals should be."
**NB 'English' Government
[Newsnight on taxation; first part of the programme here ]
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