Notes on planning reform: Follow the Money

These aren’t just any old planning reforms, folks. No. These reforms are supposed to be once in a generation. A blockbuster planning revolution. Radical and necessary. The biggest change since the 2nd World War, Boris tells us in the foreword:

“Not more fiddling around the edges, not simply painting over the damp patches, but levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England.”

Golly - big words! But, hang on. We’ve had big words on planning reform before. Many many times before - have a look at the brilliant historical survey from Matthew Dale-Harris to Lord Carnwath’s White Paper consultation response here. We’ve been promised “radical” reform for - literally - decades. But here’s one thing we can agree on:

Words are free. Reforms cost money.

And I said the day after the White Paper came out:

“And resourcing - well, the paper accepts that spending on planning has been substantially cut, and that has led to shortages of qualified personnel. There’s a lot in the paper about a “culture change” in planning departments to make them more tech-savy and outward looking, which is all very well. But a bold new era of digitised plan-making will be expensive. There’s a promise of a “resourcing and skills framework” - so we’ll wait and see on that. But not yet a promise of the cold, hard cash it’s likely to take to make these reforms actually work.”

Right. Root and branch reform. The biggest change since… well since the modern planning system started. How much does something like that set you back? Pounds, shillings and pence?

Well, in September, the good people over at the RTPI have tried to work it out. To give you a flavour:

• Producing a new local plan top-to-bottom costs about £1 million per authority over 4 years.

• So - broad brush-strokes - the national new round of plan-making proposed by the White Paper puts us back by £340 million. The RTPI sought 1/2 of that figure as a plan-making fund, so £170 million.

• But that’s under the current system. The White Paper’s all about transitioning to a new era of digital plan-making. Changing the skill-set of planning officers. Dialling up the local plan on your smart-phone. Rolling “digital transformation” nationwide. The RTPI puts that at £46 million nation-wide.

• What about all of that focussing in on high quality design. Supporting a new wave of design codes. The RTPI puts rolling all of that across England at another £81 million.

• What about place-making. Putting a “chief placemaker” at the top table of local government. Increasing engagement with all stakeholders of the system - making that engagement early and often. £100 million.

• And there’s more. Much more. Responding to the climate emergency adds £67 million over 4 years. Another £50 million for a community engagement fund. Another £15 million to facilitate joint working between LPAs. Monitoring another £67 million.

We don’t need to quibble over the detail of figures - the overall headline is unmistakable. To get this package off the ground, we’re talking about not just tens but hundreds of millions of pounds.

But to state the obvious, not all of that cash needs to come from central government. LPAs have their own budgets for planning services. Some of it comes from the development industry through e.g. application fees. But here’s the problem. Those budgets are going down. LPAs’ total net spend on planning was in 2017/8 was £401m in 2017-18, (0.5% of their total net spend) down in both absolute and relative terms since 2009-10 when it was £686 million (0.6% of net spend). Across English LPAs, subsidy for development management has fallen by £220 million a year and subsidy for planning policy by £60 million a year compared to pre-2010 levels.

Let’s get out of the figures and back into what we know. We know - any of us who work with, against or alongside local planning authority officers - that lots of planning departments are on their knees. Over-stretched. Under-staffed. Flagging resources. So there’s no doubt about it. If we want earth-shattering reform, it’s going to cost cold hard cash. It’ll need to be new cash, and a fair amount of it’s going to have to come from Central Government.

And if we want to know how serious our Government really is about achieving those big ideas in its White Paper, don’t follow the Cummings and goings in Number 10. Don’t follow the press releases. Or the speeches. Or the policy papers. Follow the money, friends. Always follow the money.

Now. For reasons we can all understand, there’s an awful lot on the Treasury’s plate at the moment. Historic disasters for our economy. And it’s far above the pay-grade of a modest little planning law blog like this to be urging the Chancellor to put funds into one pot or another. No. This blog’s about trying to work out - and then let you lot know - the way the land lies. On the thorny issues planning law and policy. So, what’s the news?

Well, this week, the Chancellor released the 2020 Spending Review. Scroll down to p.74. How much cash does the Government’s “radical planning reform agenda” get this year?

£12 million.

Does that sound like a lot to you? This is all relative of course. But I am struggling to find a smaller figure in the Spending Review document. Anywhere. On anything. Can you find one? What does that tell you? Well, the RTPI aren’t pulling their punches.

Now that £12 million is just for this year, of course. And it may be the Government decides that the real heavy lifting for planning reform won’t start until a bit later, e.g. 2021/22. Who knows. If it does think that, we can kiss goodbye to the original idea of the new generation of plans nationwide being ready to roll by the end of this Parliament.

But in the end, notwithstanding all the rhetoric, what the £12 million really tells us is all about relative priorities.

For now, anyway, for better or for worse, and - so you may think - for perfectly understandable reasons, planning reform is not at the top of this Government’s shopping list. Here’s the point: given the many horrendously tricky political fights to come, to get these reforms anywhere near to the finishing-line, I fear it’s going to need to be shunted up that shopping list pretty quick.

Stay safe and well, #planoraks, whatever tier you now find yourself in. And carry on planning.