Is the proposed reintroduction of regional spatial planning the most important housing announcement the government’s made so far?

So I am excited to see the return of strategic planning, and the opportunities that it represents in overcoming challenging political matters at a local level; it can elevate the housing numbers debate beyond individual concerns.

Also, while strategic planning might not directly drive delivery on development sites, it will free up some ‘bandwidth’ within local authorities. Strategic plans and regional bodies can deal with housing numbers, demographic statistics, and other often ethereal matters, allowing local authority officers to focus on site-specific delivery by allocating robust and deliverable sites, and using agency and partnership opportunities to reduce infrastructure gaps.

We have been here before. Most planning consultants and developers will agree that the regional spatial strategies (RSS) of the late 1990s were generally pretty successful, allowing infrastructure and new housing, specifically social and affordable housing, to be delivered around planned growth over a wider city-region area. 

Our planning system is the product of decades of tinkering and little overview as to how the system should work, from national policy down to planning applications. In 2011, localism was brought in to try to appease the argument that RSS were top-down ‘unelected quangos’. Along with removing the most important element of strategic planning, this essentially introduced an element which (intentionally or otherwise) was anti-planning and anti-development.

A reoccurring challenge recently has been the duty to cooperate, or failures in that duty, where neighbouring authorities have – despite best intentions – never reached an agreement on the level of ‘unmet housing needs’; less so, how to share that unmet need among other local planning authorities (LPAs). Even where those agreements have been made – like in Oxfordshire – it remains an area of acute political rancour. 

In my view, for planning to succeed and for housing targets, including social and affordable housing, to be met, the regional level must be reintroduced. This would alleviate some of the pressure on local plans and better manage the politics in planning. The introduction of the promised spatial development strategies (SDS) is eagerly anticipated. 

For SDS, as with many of the initiatives in this bill, timing may be an issue: the bill must progress through both Houses of Parliament and will inevitably attract some opposition. Additionally, the government is committed to local government reform alongside planning reform.

How will a changed approach to strategic planning be implemented alongside emerging plans for devolution? There are many moving parts to the reforms package and the government will need to ensure that measures are compatible with one another and will deliver the planned levels of growth. 

“For planning to succeed and for housing targets, including social and affordable housing, to be met, the regional level must be reintroduced”

However, in removing pressures from the local level, I am not advocating a top-down approach, but one that makes it easier for local planning to succeed: if, for example, housing targets were determined on a regional level and passed down to the LPA, planners would be able to spend time planning for those numbers, and where development might best be delivered in a sustainable and coherent way, rather than arguing over whether the correct base date has been chosen, and the most up-to-date affordability ratio has been applied.

Planners can return to creating places for the people that these formulas and statistics represent. More time could also be spent on assessing the genuine deliverability of sites and understanding when and where new infrastructure is required. Partnership working, and agency, with statutory consultees and service providers such as utility companies and health services could be improved. 

Local councillors, too, would no longer risk the electoral unpopularity that comes with justifying housing targets or the consequences of failing to meet them. That said, there is likely to be some politics at a regional level (and there should be some accountability, to avoid the criticisms made of RSS), but it will be felt less acutely, and of course, the government must impose responsibility from the top: both carrot and stick have a role to play. 

The proposed SDSs are absolutely key to increasing the number of social and affordable housing throughout the country – but as many said following the first reading of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill in the House of Commons, planning is only part of the solution (and strategic planning one element of that): it is necessary for other components of the bill, and of the National Planning Policy Framework, and of initiatives yet to be launched, to combine to bring about the much-needed change. 

Peter Canavan, partner, Carter Jonas