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I am no fan of the planning system, but the government has backed the wrong horse with its reforms

The government appears less interested in reforming the planning system than bypassing it. That may speed things up, but sprinting off a cliff is not a good strategy, writes Matthew Bailes

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Boris Johnson announced the expansion to permitted development rights during his ‘build, build, build’ speech (picture: BBC)
Boris Johnson announced the expansion to permitted development rights during his ‘build, build, build’ speech (picture: BBC)
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The government appears less interested in reforming the planning system than bypassing it. That may speed things up, but sprinting off a cliff is not a good strategy, writes Matthew Bailes #ukhousing

I am no fan of the planning system, but the government has backed the wrong horse with its reforms, writes Matthew Bailes #ukhousing

As my colleagues at Paradigm will testify, I am not a fan of the planning system.

It is a constant source of frustration. Slow worms, even slower processes and a constant revolving door of planning officers – each with their own different take on the same policies, which leads to lengthy delays and increased costs. Had Sisyphus ever tried to make minor changes to car parking arrangements, he might have concluded that boulder rolling was slightly less exasperating.

The view from our main office doesn’t help, since it is dominated by a combination of disused offices and derelict brownfield land. The planning authority has said that the site must be used for employment purposes. The market wasn’t remotely interested even before COVID-19. Years have been wasted trying to prove what is obvious.

I ought, therefore, to have been pleased when Boris Johnson announced “the most radical reforms since the Second World War”, but I wasn’t. In fact, I was deeply concerned. Here’s why.


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First, although I find the current arrangement frustrating, I accept that some process is needed to calibrate complex economic, social and environmental trade-offs. That said, the system ultimately needs to be underpinned by democratic accountability.

As a result, I think we need to greatly ‘improve’ the planning system. Some of this might be relatively straightforward, such as increasing capacity and paying planning officers a competitive salary.

Other issues are more complex. For example, there is a strong case for reforming the way an uplift in land values is taxed, but the issue is complicated and there is scope for undesirable consequences if reform is botched.

“The evidence that it is the right long-term answer is hardly compelling. I am sure that it has sped things up, but sprinting over the edge of a cliff is not a good strategy”

I fear the government is about to take a different tack – namely that the answer is to ‘bypass’ the planning system wherever possible and leave it to the market to decide without any checks and balances.

This has, of course, been tried before – in the form of the permitted development regime. The evidence that it is the right long-term answer is hardly compelling. I am sure that it has sped things up, but sprinting over the edge of a cliff is not a good strategy.

A significant proportion of office conversions we have been offered are very poor buildings in wholly inappropriate places. They are cheap and nasty jam today and yet another problem for the next generation to solve tomorrow. We shouldn’t try to mimic that experience across town centres and business parks across the country. I don’t want to look out over a woefully inadequate office conversation.

We can and should do a lot better.

The government might argue that it is all very well worrying about the long term, but what about ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ today? It is certainly true that we are in an enormous economic hole and that housebuilding and construction can and should play a key role in getting us out of it.

However, I fear the government is going to be disappointed if it thinks bypassing the planning system will solve our immediate problems. Yet again, it appears to be ignoring our old foe: the ‘absorption rate’, the fact that developers will only build out at a rate consistent with maintaining current prices.

In this context, against a backdrop of mass unemployment and a sharp recession, developers will be nervous about taking on town centre and office conversions. Where they do, it will most likely be at the expense of progress on other competing local sites.

It might not be a zero-sum game, but it probably means a small uptick in completed homes in exchange for long-term problems and the loss of contributions to infrastructure and affordable housing. It is not a great trade.

So what should government do?

There is a decent case for planning reform, but it needs to be led less by ideology and more by evidence and facts – the scalpel not the sledgehammer. It would be most effective if it was part of a wider housing market reform package that also addressed tax and other distortions.

In the short term, immediate demand-side problems need immediate demand-side solutions. The stamp duty holiday might help, but the real answers lie in building the one tenure that is largely immune from the whims of the market: sub-market rented housing.

It is telling that the government is likely to publish its planning reform proposals before the prospectus for the new – and relatively modest – Affordable Homes Programme. Not for the first time in this crisis, it is backing the wrong horse. Let’s hope the chancellor has a change of heart before his next big intervention in the autumn.

Matthew Bailes, chief executive, Paradigm

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