A National Housing Plan - the White Paper’s really radical idea

What’s your planning reform soundtrack? For me, it’s John Lennon every time:

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

…

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan

So. Did you get around to reading it yet? Since last week, those #planoraks who aren’t on holiday (= a fair few of us ☹️) have mostly been nattering through “Planning for the Future”. They said they want a revolution: well, you know, we’d all love to see the plan. But if you’d settle for a 5 minute summary of the plan, have at it. If you have a couple of hours spare and want a deeper dive, well enjoy.

They say they got a real solution: well, you know, when you scratch under the surface, the headline items in the early (and critical) parts of the White Paper all rely on a very big new idea. It’s an idea which would totally transform England’s approach to working out how much housing needs to be built and where.

You say you want a revolution? Well, you know: the new fixed standardised housing requirement isn’t far off. In effect, it adds up to a new national plan for housing.

What’s so radical about this? Well, join me back in 2010 when then-Secretary of State Eric Pickles decided to wipe away regional strategies because (his words not mine):

• “Top-down targets from regional quangos and bureaucrats” aka “failed Soviet tractor style top-down planning targets” were a “terrible, expensive, time-consuming way to impose house building and worst of all threatened the destruction of the green belt”

• All of which amounted to “a national disaster that robbed local people of their democratic voice, alienating them and entrenching opposition against new development”.

• Then-”Decentralisation Minster” Greg Clark (note readers, we don’t have a minister for that anymore) added “regional edicts, which allowed communities no say, injected poison into the planning system which stymied development.”

Well. How far we’ve come. The era of letting local planning authorities set their own housing numbers is all of 9 years old. But our current Secretary of State doesn’t seem to think it’s worked very well. And his idea to solve it takes us back to the future.  

Because the centre-piece of “Planning for the Future’s” approach to housing hoovers back up of responsibility for setting and distributing housing numbers accross the country back to the good folks at Number 2, Marsham Street - a seismic shift in the balance of power between central and local government. It’s farewell to localism, friends. I hope you enjoyed it.

So. What’s the big idea?

The proposal’s for new centrally-set “binding” housing targets fixed for each local planning authority. The authority’s job is then to meet their number through these new re-vamped pared-down local plans you may’ve heard about. No negotiation either way. The Ministry hands down the figure (no doubt on tablets of stone). The local planning authority meets it (more on how they might actually try to do that in a future post). And taken together, the various figures add up to the Government’s 300,000 annual target.

Hang on, you might ask? Haven’t we got a standard method for dealing with housing need already? Not one anything like this. Today’s standard method for assessing local housing need is all about setting a demographically derived starting-point for plan-making. But it ain’t binding (here’s looking at you, Central Bedfordshire). And it ain’t the final requirement figure. You only get to a final requirement figure by over-laying e.g. local constraints or opportunities. Some authorities heavily covered in designated areas (e.g. the Green Belt, an AONB or a National Park) only ever set out to meet a fraction of their “objective” local housing need. The constraints - what the courts have been calling since the first NPPF the “policy-on” bit of the housing needs assessment - is where the magic really happens. And that job of adjusting demographically derived housing need figures up or down to reflect local circumstances - well at the moment that’s a job for local planning authorities through their local plans. Indeed, it’s normally just about the most contentious and fundamental thing their local plans will do (because you normally can’t sort out a spatial strategy until you know how many homes you need to strategise for).

Anyway. Those days are over. If this White Paper is followed through, anyway.

It’d be a fond farewell to debates about “objectively assessed need”, and tinkering with the numbers to accommodate “policy-on” constraints. That’s because - and this bit’s important - those constraints (e.g. Green Belt, AONB) are (somehow) already to be baked into the figures which will be handed down from the Ministry. Plus, those figures don’t seem to be based around “need” - they’re based around a policy target. Their fundamental job is to get England up to 300,000 new homes year.

A big change, but what’s the prize? Why bother? Well, there’s no doubt about it - fixing housing numbers could speed up plan-making and decision-making processes very substantially. It’d drive all users of the system in the direction of certainty. Which all sounds like a noble aim. It would enable a bit of push-back against certain authorities (you know who you are) who have persistently dodged their spiralling housing needs. Imagine readers - a local plan examination with no discussion at all about housing targets. That’s a radical shift indeed.

Well, you know, we all want to change the world. But that prize isn’t easily won. The challenge of building a national housing plan and actually getting it right will be (and this isn’t hyperbole) monumental. Really, it’s at least two kinds of challenge– both of which are huge.

We have the substantive challenge – how will the targets actually be calculated? What do the formulae look like? What adjustments do we make for constraints? How are the relativities bewteen the different kinds of constraint computed? Who does this maths? Who makes the “policy-on” judgments on how to reflect these constraints, and the all-important evaluations on what goes where? (NB although there’s a consultation on the current standard method for calcualting housing need in the Changes to the current planning system consultation, that’s a very different animal because it does not seek to produce a binding housing requirement figure. So whatever approach to the numbers the Government does come up with on this issue, it’ll have to be new.)

Then more daunting still – there’s a procedural challenge. Whatever the outcome of this national exercise it’s going to be just a leeeetle bit controversial in more or less every quarter of the planning system. And given that allocations in this new system can add up to outline planning permission / permission-in-principle (more on the detail of what that really means in a future post), the implications of distributing these housing numbers will be enormous.

Which means there’ll have to be a forum of one kind or another to consider and adjudicate somehow on competing submissions for where England’s housing should actually go. Designing a forum in a way that’s both streamlined enough to meet the demands of the White Paper to speed things up whilst also being fair and democractically accountable… well, that won’t be easy. 

So how is it actually going to work? How will politicians, local planning authorities, the development industry and everyone else interact with this new process? How will it avoid the charges of being anti-democratic which bedevilled regional strategies? And all those references to Soviet Tractors? Are we on for sort of regional or national examination-style process? A public inquiry?  A series of written consultations? Given the importance of what’s on the line, it would be remarkable if there were no face-to-face (or at least Zoom-able) way of interested parties making their case to the Ministry.

But how? You tell me. We get (literally) nothing on these massively important questions in the White Paper.

They say they got a real solution, well you know: if the big ideas in “Planning for the Future” are ever going to jump off the page and into our planning system, these questions need answers.

So happy days, #planoraks - well, so long as you enjoy responding to consultations. Because I’ve a feeling that however the current consultations turn out, we’ve a few more to come!

In the meantime, stay well #planoraks.