Last week we had a flurry of important publications from Government, including their consultation analysis and response to the implementation of the Local Plan regime set out in the Levelling Up Regeneration Act (LURA).
In short, the Government has proposed a new style local plan system which will be simpler, shorter, more standardised and visual, supported by a push to advance the digitisation of process. This response will flow into future reform expected this spring with consultation on National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) and further amendments to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF); slimming it down and focusing it as a plan-making document.
This work is heavily framed within the current context of low local plan coverage in England with only around one third of local planning authorities having adopted a local plan in the last five years.
As ever, the thorny issue of resourcing does rear its head throughout the response. This is something we of course have being paying close attention to. Last month we published our key asks of the Planning & Infrastructure Bill, which included the ask of a long-term resourcing and capacity strategy to be published alongside the Bill.
In the response, the Government does recognise the need to improve resourcing and foster a strong pipeline of planners, reiterating the commitment to bring an additional 300 planners into system, which the RTPI strongly welcomes.
However, the Home Builders Federation (HBF) calculations from its recent report ‘Planning on Empty’ shows that the number falls short – with an estimated national shortage of over 2,200 planners in local authorities. Set against the ambition of the government, that number could be as much as 7,500 full time equivalent officers needed to fill the skills gap, according to HBF.
Moreover, it would be a reasonable assumption that a number of these new planners will be engaged in development management to meet the demands of the expected uptick in applications resulting from current planning reform to achieve the Government’s ambitious growth agenda.
That’s why we have asked for a resourcing plan for local planning teams with the Local Plans Delivery Funding 2024/25 superseded with significant and long-term multi-year funding arrangements.
A number of queries from respondents on the resourcing of key stakeholder in the local plan preparation process such as the Planning Inspectorate and prescribed public bodies remained to some degree unresolved. Indeed, within our proposed resource and capacity strategy we have asked for a full system audit to understand the resourcing context of all key stakeholders in the planning system.
However, in general this long anticipated response is a positive step forward, and getting this right will be vital if the Government is to successfully deliver on its ambitions. Not least the drive towards making better use of brownfield sites. In our recently published response to the Planning Reform Working Paper on Brownfield Passports, we were clear that to steer the right development to the right place, and ensure all the necessary infrastructure is in place for this to happen, it’s key that we take meaningful and significant steps to improving coverage of Local Plans across this country.
