A useful review of government plans to grant mayors powers to build new homes by Chris Smyth, Whitehall Editor in The Times (Sunday 13 July 2025) has set me thinking afresh. How to get locals on board to support change near them . The context is the new English devolution bill published last week that sets out Angela Rayner’s (deputy prime minister) plans for all of England to have a mayor with greater powers over areas such as housing and infrastructure. Significantly the intention is, the report says, to ‘give mayors far wider power over local planning applications’. The advowed aim is to is ‘to kickstart home building and other development that will spur the economy’. Something called a ‘mayoral development order’ will enable mayors to give in principle planning permission across an area to speed up development. It could apply to building of new homes and new job development of the type the mayor wants to encourage,
The theory is, so Chris Smyth tells us it will encourage mayors to identify promising sites for building. The London mayor already has these powers but has never used them. Local councils also already have similar powers. The piece does not say whether any councils have used them, or to what effect. Interestingly if mayors plan to introduce these orders and local councillors object mayors will have the right to appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. The government hope these powers will enable mayors to set up major projects more easily as mayors will also be expected to come up with regional strategic development plans.
All this is good stuff, which I welcome. Chris Smyth says Robbie Calvert, of the Royal Town Planning Institute says the bill may offer ‘…a transfer of significant powers over transport, housing, economic development, and public services to mayoral strategic authorities…’ Well are they actually new powers? No apparently. Hopefully he adds recognising it is ‘…important that we bring communities with us …’ . Why should this alteration in who controls what, change local attitudes held by opponents of change? Importantly Calvert adds that giving mayors ‘…extensive new delivery powers and funding has the potential to strengthen investor confidence across all types of development.’ If the new powers do reassure and encourage investors to invest that is good. Will his happen? Advising an investor, my starting position will be to see what happens in the ground. On the evidence so far, not much.
So whilst I welcome and support the intentions behind the bill, my question is this. Will local opponents of change view future proposals for land use changes in their areas any differently to now? I do not see a reason why this procedural change will alter local attitudes towards development unless the mayor, once he or she is in place adopts a different approach to the prevailing council. This independence of mind seems unlikely.
So we are back to square one, so it seems. The government wants mayors to show leadership. To look ahead. To think far ahead. Which is why these new powers are being released..But, why should mayors reverse long rooted resistance to change if their local supporters, who I suspect will come from the vociferous tribes who resist change, not want leadership. They want no change, because it suits them. They fear change. What they see they don’t like. Nor do I. Much of it is third rate.
Let’s pause, The issue then becomes, how does the government change local sentiment, whose default is resistance to land use change, to local sentiment which is positive towards change? There are two obvious methods. One, you pay local residents whose areas host new development. And I would fund the cost with surcharges on areas which fail to accept their share. It is an obvious solution: a tried and tested formula which works. Two, you spend 10+ years on local communications campaigns convincing local residents why new building in their back yard is a good thing. A long delivery time scale but actually the right one. It enables local councils to buy in the key development control sites in order to ensure their local communities pocket the hope value dividend new building releases which is in the councils gift. Or a mix of both.
Mayors leading new local development corporations are the best means of delivering these changes, But there is no evidence the government has understood that fact. Local mayors must have both the powers, the obligation and the motivation to take the responsibility local leadership needs. Otherwise nothing will change, with or without a new generation of local mayors. Responsibility for enabling local building happens must be taken away from local land owners and given back to local mayors. In other words the disgraceful call for sites system, an extreme abdication of spatial responsibility for protecting popular areas, and promoting change in unpopular areas, must be reversed. Mayors must not be asked, they must be mandated to take back spatial control.
Ian Campbell
15 July 2025
