On 13 December 2024, the Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner sent a letter to Housing Industry Stakeholders. It is she says, all about building the homes we need. She makes telling points. Her immediate objective is to set out the principal changes in the new National Planning Policy Framework. I support the spirit of her aspirations. But in this post I want to focus on her first priority. Which is the foundation of her new order. It is the plan-led approach, named by the Deputy Prime Minister as the cornerstone of the the planning system.
Simply expressed, is the plan-led system the solid foundation of future delivery success she, and many others believe too, or is a dangerous swamp that fools us all? I have in previous posts expressed major doubts about the plan-led system. So is Angela right? Or instead are my doubts, built on decades of market led eexperience right? The correct answer is not immediately obvious. I am vividly aware that many serious planning professionals take these plans as their starting point. . This fact must and does carry a lot of weight for me.. On the other hand, it is widely acknowledged that the current system for delivering new homes is broken. Has been for a long time. With the result that house prices and rents are wickedly excessive; that the planning system is not trusted; and new homes are opposed by local activists with a passion that blinds them to consequences of always saying no.
I do not believe this government can build 1.5 new homes by the summer of 2029. But I do believe it can assemble and put in place the core elements that will enable the next government to significantly accelerate the rate of house building, and crucially and for the first time, do so with local support. Local support is a game-changer.,Without this support two bad things will happen. Far fewer homes than needed will eventually be built and those that are built will be disliked and opposed locally as much as those built since the noughties. So local opposition to land use change will grow, not reduce.
Winning local support for local land use change is therefore the first hurdle that must be identified and achieved. It will take several years to be captured. It cannot happen on a lasting and long term basis, which is essential to success, without cross-party support in Westminster and above all locally. Look at my blog, dated 13 January 2025. . Read what the local political leader said. He rejects government policies to build many more homes. He sees the debate about new homes in political, not spatial, terms. Why is this adversarial attitude so widespread? It is out of place. His mind-set must be changed. In my own constituency, Richmond upon Thames the local MP simply wants to avoid the housing debate. The local leaflets she distributes are silent. Housing is too toxic! Obtaining answers is, so far, unsuccessful. Sarah Olney,, my MP is also a Liberal Democrat. Currently, unlike her colleague in Stockport she is not up in arms about new housing, because in Richmond very little new housing is going on, although of course house prices are going on….upwards! One wonders when the connection will be made? Neither of these local leaders shows any sign of wanting to lead locally in the creation of long term, sustainable spatial housing supply policies nor any sign , of wanting to work together with other civic leaders to deliver the homes needed by their residents’ families, and to build their area’s future prosperity. Just as well their predecessors long ago took their civic responsibilities far more seriously than these weak leaders.
(As an aside, I remind readers that a long term and consensual spatial policy for each area is central to future spatial success locally if the key local vested interests, in other words the key local land owners, are going to accept the new system of building land delivery despite the fact they will be losing their powers to game the system).
Which brings me to the core reason for believing the plan-led system is doomed. It relies on the ‘call for sites’ as the means to find and include in the plan-led system the future housing locations. What an odd spatial policy. What a daft method of local spatial planning. Leaving land owners to decide and compete in the supply of building land might have worked in the nineteen thirties when society had different priorities. Nearly one hundred years ago! It is not surprising that local authorities do not give the call for sites system much air time, and the local media ignores it. In reality it is an abdication of leadership. Think about the calibre of spatial analysis and long term strategy that a local public debate about where not to build would release. Why is this wonderful opportunity to guide our future so hidden?
No, I do not believe the plan-led system can continue to be the cornerstone of building land supply. It has failed for four decades. Why will it succeed now?
Ian Campbell
15 January 2025
