Eddie Millar: Proposed reform is promising, but leaves planners on the hook

Eddie Millar is a Policy and Practice Advisor at the RTPI 

With the submission of the RTPI’s NPPF consultation response, we’ve officially delivered our stance on the government’s latest planning proposals. Planning is clearly right at the top of their agenda for delivering their goals, and while we largely support the government’s proposed changes to the NPPF, this puts the planning profession firmly on the hook for economic growth and housing delivery.

We fully support the ability of a well-resourced planning system to help deliver much needed homes in sustainable locations, but there are other important factors contributing to housing delivery that exist outside of planners’ control.

Matthew Pennycook, Minister for Housing and Planning, wrote a letter last month to the President of the RTPI, highlighting the important role planners and planning will continue to play in “unlocking the growth the country needs”. His words have been well received by the profession, and they represent a positive step in this new government’s commitment to planning.

But, given the strong message, there is a lot riding on the profession to unlock this growth and lay the foundations for the delivery of 1.5 million homes across five years. Given the work required across multiple sectors to achieve this, we do not want planners set up to fail, or undermined. Positive planning reform alone will not be enough to achieve Labour’s housing targets.

The planning system has two key functions: allocating appropriate sites for housing and granting permissions for development. Within the process, however, there needs to be a developer willing to purchase the land, manage the development process, and deliver homes.

Skilled workers are required to build the homes. At each step in the process, there are financial costs and considerations. The housebuilding industry is dealing with rises in material costs, a lack of construction workers, and the urgent need to get more young people trained in construction and other built environment professions in the next decade.

Planning policy can be changed to help give developers greater clarity and certainty, but planners have no control over expensive site constraints, remediation costs, or the availability of skilled labour.

If the government is to have any hope of meeting the 1.5 million homes target this parliament, and beyond, we need a new housing delivery model. Volume housebuilders have a clear role to play, but further support for SME housebuilders is needed to help them compete with larger firms and enter the market.

The government’s proposed New Towns will help address national housing need over the next decade, but beyond this, we need direct housing delivery from local authorities.

Public sector housing delivery can operate counter-cyclically to mitigate the impact of market downturns. Direct local authority involvement across all parts of the development cycle would also help SME housebuilders, through land assembly and unlocking of sites that smaller housebuilders can financially access. Furthermore, this model would result in a greater diversity of tenure and housing type, with local authorities able to respond directly to local housing need.

As we highlighted in our NPPF consultation response, the Letwin Review found that developments with a mix of tenures and types can avoid saturating the local housing market, and result in more diverse communities and faster build out rates.

Planning has a crucial role to play going forward in the delivery of homes and the growth of healthy, sustainable communities. Across the country, planning professionals are gearing up to play their part, but without appropriate support and resourcing, they will only be able to do so much.

Additionally, it is essential that the government understands the other players involved in delivery housing, so that if the 1.5 million target is not met, the blame is not laid solely at the door of planners and planning. Public trust in planning is already brittle, and once lost, it is not easily regained.