Shadow planning minister Matthew Pennycook on BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Thursday, 20 June highlighted the lack of mechanism for strategic planning to enable local councils to work together to deliver housing growth at scale. He is right to highlight the omission. His thinking must be applauded. But he faces big headwinds. It is … Continue reading Labour’s approach to strategic planning

In an interview.tonight with the BBC’s Nick Robinson Labour leader Keir Starmer says he will tell people who object to electricity pylons or housing. development near them they will have to see these plans go ahead.. I wish his prediction well. But he is wrong. His prediction is the first step towards another decade of … Continue reading Tough is insufficient

Is this possible? I mean Labour’s housing plan? Can it work? Labour is to announce locations for new towns and large urban expansions within a year of becoming the government. What happens when they do publish the new town sites? All hell will break out in these locations. Local councillors, especially the non-Labour ones; local … Continue reading Making Labour’s housing policy work

Wishing them success. Supporting the objective. Admiring their courage. All positive responses are not enough to endorse Labour’s plan to publish a list of new town sites within its first 12 months in government, in partnership with local people.The locations will selected by an expert independent task force appointed to ‘help choose the right sites’ … Continue reading Labour new towns policy. It is naive.

A rare event happened in the House of Commons today. The Prime Minister, in responding to the Langstaff report on the contaminated blood scandal covering a period twenty years, until around 1991 has offered the victims and their families an unequivocal apology for what he called a day of shame for the British state. Significantly … Continue reading Needs Thought?

The recent decision by the government to remove Lewis District Council’s planning powers and the reaction of the local council to this decision is a stark illustration of a deep rooted fracture in our planning system. Whose authority is paramount? The government whose legitimacy is they act in the national interest. Or local councillors who … Continue reading Local opposition to change

Launch (June 2024) A general election will take place on 4 July 2024. Despite several decades of housing policy failure in England the outlook for lots of new homes that are needed remains grim. Available grounds for believing any of the three main political parties have a deliverable housing policy, which is what all three … Continue reading HOUSING MANIFESTO 2024

Is this a return to strategic planning abolished by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2011? The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) last month published a report they commissioned written by Tony Poulter entitled Homes England Public Bodies Review 2023. Significantly it says Homes England should play a bigger role in leading and … Continue reading DLUHC, or local? Which agency?

On 13 March 2024 the Institute of Government think-tank published a valuable paper, How should The the next government complete the job of English devolution? A serious and sensible piece of work, that reminds me of the earlier, heavyweight CMA report in some regards, more blind spots. . This new analysis of the governance weaknesses … Continue reading Is Devolution the housing solution?

Local opposition is at the heart of our broken planning system. Nimbyism has over several decades shown its power to stop progress . Excessive house prices, weak economic growth, failed levelling up, unloved new builds and outstanding zero carbon targets are all the symptoms of policy failure on several fronts: local democracy, fear of local … Continue reading How powerful is Nimbyism?