When properly resourced, local plans can clearly express place-based visions that have design quality and beauty, economic recovery, sustainable transport, infrastructure, health and wellbeing, climate change, resilience, and the environment integrated from the start.
Planners have already delivered a greatly increased number of permissions in recent years and our profession is eager to embrace digital transformation, improved design standards and new opportunities for community engagement.
However, the planning system alone cannot solve the crisis of housing affordability because permissions do not always result in homes and communities cannot be expected to endure the challenges of development without great investment in roads, schools and other services beyond just affordable housing.
We therefore call on Government to strengthen local plans making them simpler, faster to produce, easier to understand and a reliable foundation for local housing strategies. We also ask government to increase public subsidy for the direct delivery of affordable homes.
