Tag: Planning

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Planning reforms for small and community-led builders

Building work by Brett Jordan licensed by Unsplash

Tom Chance will be speaking at a Labour Housing Group webinar: What should be in the Labour Government’s NPPF, on Tuesday 17th September.

The government’s consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) asks 106 questions. Buried in the middle are a few questions about how the planning system could support more small builders and community-led development.

Dr Tom Archer argued here in May that we need a more diverse and competitive housebuilding industry, including more community-led housing, if the government is to hit its housing targets. I represent many of the 900 community groups that have been trying to build more than 23,000 homes in a broken system. So how could the NPPF help?

Not by watering down standards and reducing the requirements for social housing. Community-led developers want to raise standards, and most Community Land Trusts (CLTs) focus on social rent.

Nor is our problem with ‘NIMBY’ planning committees overturning officers’ recommendations. If anything, we have more of a track record of the reverse, with members overturning finickity officer objections to approve community-led homes.

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The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) review on housebuilding concluded that the main barriers to entry for SME builders are the length and uncertainty of the planning process, and the complexity, cost and information requirements.

Take information requirements. The Housing Forum found that across 21 local authorities there were 119 different types of document that might be required to apply for planning approval. The list has grown hugely over the past 20 years. In one recent case, a CLT applying for permission to build 6 homes needed 82 documents.

Drawing this up now costs CLTs around £11,000 per home, substantially larger than the £3,500 per home estimated by the CMA for larger sites.

As for the length and uncertainty, we analysed 84 applications submitted by CLTs between 2006 and 2022. The average time to get a decision was 359 days, compared to the statutory target of 56. Some, held up by issues like nutrient neutrality, have been stuck for years.

Having spent all that money, and waited a year or more, will you get permission? Even if you think that you have met all the policy requirements, you cannot be sure.

Local planning authorities do not tend to allocate many small sites, a process which would confirm the principle that they can be developed. It is more costly and resource-intensive to allocate 20 sites of 20 homes than one site of 400 homes.

The NPPF says large sites could be subdivided to create opportunities for SMEs and CLTs. But this is very rare. The Letwin Review concluded as much in 2017, but his proposed reforms have not been acted on.

So communities generally seek permission on what are known as ‘windfalls’ – sites not allocated by planners, where the principle of whether it should be developed is in question. The uncertainty is risky.

The point about this complexity, cost, length and uncertainty is its impact on finance. You will need to find at least £100,000 to prepare and submit a planning application. You have no idea if it will succeed, or be wasted money. You do not know how long it will take to get a decision. Nobody will lend you money on those terms. So new entrants need deep pockets, or depend on grant programmes like the Community Housing Fund.

We could reduce the uncertainty in a few simple ways.

One would be to expand the community-led exception site, a policy we secured in the NPPF last year. It enshrines the principle that democratic community-led developers can develop windfall sites adjacent to settlements to meet local needs, removing any uncertainty around the principle of development. But it has an arbitrary size cap that we want lifted, and it should also apply within settlements to help community-led approaches to suburban and urban infill. Many CLTs have successfully negotiated the local politics to develop disused garages, underused open space and even back gardens, as well as brownfield and greenfield sites on the edges of villages and towns.

We would also like community-led developers to be able to propose ‘community priority projects’ when local plans are drawn up. These would allocate sites, or parcels of large sites, to meet specified local needs, ringfenced for community-led development. The process could ease the pressure on officers by having communities do a lot of the legwork to establish ownership and viability, and win round their neighbours to the principle of development.

These modest reforms will help. But we really need the forthcoming planning and devolution bills to fundamentally change the balance of complexity, cost, delay and uncertainty that is hobbling the diversification of our housebuilding industry.

You can find out more about the asks of the Community Land Trusts Network in their recent submission to the NPPF consultation.

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Fast wins for more homes: how Labour can champion infill development

Burnett House, Lewisham, an example of upward extensions. Image by Kate Matison licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

The housing crisis remains one of the most pressing issues facing Britain today. With homebuilding at crisis levels, numbers of households in temporary accommodation rising, and young people struggling to get on the property ladder, Labour recognises the urgent need for action.

Labour has a powerful electoral mandate for bold and ambitious home building. There is also a need for fast wins that deliver rapid, sustainable growth in housing supply through smart urban infill development.

Building more homes is critical for economic growth. Every 100,000 additional homes adds around 0.8% to GDP during construction. However, ambitious long-term projects like new towns will take years to bear fruit. That’s why to get results we must pull other quick levers. Three ‘fast win’ policies could boost housing supply in the short to medium term, without requiring additional central government resources.

The Government can create approximately 30,000 new homes per year through carefully planned infill development, enabling residents to expand their homes, and making the most of housing association land. This approach aligns with Labour’s commitment to prioritise brownfield development and create high-quality urban environments.

We can build new homes in the right places through:

  1. Building up: Learning from successful Labour-led initiatives in boroughs like Haringey, the government should set national policy for sympathetic towards upward extensions of existing homes. This will add more living space and create new homes while preserving neighbourhood character.
  2. Street votes: The government can complete the implementation of ‘street votes‘, an initiative based on the Mayor of London’s Outer London initiative with strong centre-left support,  empowering communities to bring forward sensitive development through local decision-making. This builds on the principle of community engagement that Labour has long championed.
  3. Estate renewal: By amending national policy through the NPPF or Written Ministerial Statement, the government can make it easier for social landlords to deliver better homes for tenants. Cross-subsidy from new market homes could fund improved council housing for existing tenants and create additional social housing stock.

These policies focus on building more homes in high-productivity areas — breaking down barriers to growth and opportunity. By enabling people to live closer to good jobs, we can reduce commute times, improve quality of life, and cut carbon emissions.

Importantly, these low-key quick win approaches prioritise small and medium-sized builders, create jobs and support local economies. This is infill development done sensitively; enhancing rather than disrupting existing communities.

Labour’s vision for attractive communities is popular with voters. By making use of the potential of brownfield sites and urban areas, we can deliver the homes we need.

A small wins approach has seen success internationally. In the US, reforms to allow ‘granny flats‘ have dramatically increased housing supply in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Labour’s government in New Zealand has nearly doubled new housing permits in Auckland through smart infill policies.

By enabling more homes in existing urban areas, we can make better use of infrastructure, support struggling high streets, and improve public transport viability.

Crucially, an approach to infill development prioritises community support and environmental sustainability. A Labour Government can learn from successful Labour local government initiatives like Sadiq Khan’s tenant ballots for estate renewal in London, which have shown strong resident support for carefully planned renewal and delivered thousands of council homes.

Labour’s plan for housing represents a pragmatic, forward-thinking approach to one of Britain’s most pressing challenges. By focusing on rapid, community-supported development in areas of high demand, we can boost economic growth, improve quality of life, and create the homes that Britain desperately needs. This is how we build a fairer, more prosperous country for all.

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Planning for 1.5m homes: What are Labour’s Options for Reform?

Key to Labour’s policy offer is a pledge to build 1.5 million homes during the next parliament. Doing so would be transformative, lowering costs, creating tens of thousands of new jobs, and funding the creation of a new generation of affordable and social houses. 

Increasing housebuilding is easier said than done. Despite a similar target of 300,000 homes a year, the current government is well short of this. Only 232,800 homes were delivered last year, and a downturn is expected as the country’s economic situation worsens. 

Reforming the planning system will be a key plank of achieving this goal, after being identified as the most substantial barrier to delivering new homes in a survey by the Federation of Master Builders. This will not be easy, however, given how complicated the planning system is. 

The problems with the planning system go well beyond the obstacles it presents to building new homes, and it rarely incentivises building high-quality dwellings well-resourced by local infrastructure and amenities. But, in order to achieve its goal of 1.5 million homes, a future Labour government will need to find priority areas to alter in ways which maximise impact while reducing controversy.

Reducing the Burden

The planning system is burdensome for everyone involved. While debate often focuses on the onus on housebuilders, any document filled in by a developer also has to be read by a planning officer, councillors, and locals keen to have an input into developments in their area. 

This is in part due to regulations being duplicated, between national and local requirements, and within the same local authority. There will be a degree of overlap, for instance, between a tree survey, arboriculture impact assessment, and biodiversity survey. But some councils ask developers for all three. 

This can also be due to regulation being in the planning system inappropriately, regardless of how noble its intensions are. For instance, it is currently impossible to build homes in areas with particularly high nutrient pollution – even though new housing contributes to less than 1% of said pollution. 

A root and branch review of the planning system, ensuring that regulations are not duplicated are in the right place, would reduce the burden for everybody involved in planning and speed up the pipeline of new homes.

Standardising Requirements

Similarly, the complexity of the planning map is an obstacle to building new homes. England contains 391 local planning authorities, ranging from Rutland and its 41,381 residents to Birmingham, the largest local authority in Europe. 

Each of these areas will then have subtle differences in regulations required. These can be seen in the ‘planning validation checklist’, a list of planning documents local planning that authorities are required to publish. Research conducted by the Housing Forum has shown that many authorities lack an up-to-date checklist, and of those that did, the number of documents required to build as few as 10 homes could range from 24 to 42. 

Simplifying and standardising requirements between local authorities, and even considering more radical steps like transferring planning powers to county or combined authorities, would reduce local variation, without reducing the quality of regulation.

Supporting Planners

Delays in the planning system are in part caused by capacity issues in local authorities. Only one in ten local authorities have fully staffed planning departments, with 70% reporting difficulties recruiting new planners. This is fuelled by pay disparity between public and private sectors, difficult backlogs, and online abuse – as a result a quarter of planners have left the public sector in the last ten years. 

It is in part due to this that one in five local authorities still lack an up-to-date local plan. 

Reversing this decline in the public sector would speed up the delivery of planning applications, improve the institutional expertise within the planning system, and help local authorities and developers to work together more effectively to deliver locally appropriate schemes.

Repositioning Democratic Input

Much as excessive paperwork makes navigating the planning system difficult for everyone involved, so too does the nature of democratic input frustrate both those seeking to build new homes, and residents looking to have an impact on their local community. 

Currently, locals get most involved in commenting on individual planning applications, which will already have been drawn up in partnership with a developer and a local authority. The fact that 90 percent of planning applications in the UK are approved points to the fact that most of these are a finalised and detailed product. Thus local input is often perfunctory and ineffective, and many can feel that they have little voice in the process. 

Similarly, developers often express concern that plans can either be delayed or cancelled outright by a particularly vocal local campaign, and councillors can often feel pressured by a vocal minority of residents who often little as small as 1 – 3 percent of a local population 

Meanwhile, as Labour’s Planning Commission (2019) notes, engaging at an earlier stage, when councils draw up their local plans, “often made plan making unapproachable and sometimes intimidating for residents”. After all, residents are seldom planners, architects, or contractors: but they contain valuable knowledge about their local area which should be put to use in constructing local plans. 

Simplifying democratic input at the local plan making stage would make it easier for local people to get involved, for councils to focus attention to a single event, while empowering a greater range of voices.  

This is similar to the calls for a ‘zoning’ system, promoted by organisations such as the Centre for Cities. This would bring the UK in line with comparable democracies, by removing the discretionary nature of the planning system, where planning committees decide on individual applications. Instead land would be designated for a certain use, such as ‘housing’, ‘industry’, or ‘commercial use’, and a set of regulations then applied. Developments which followed these regulations would then be automatically approved. 

Countries like New Zealand, and individual cities like Austin in the US changed their planning systems from discretionary ones to zoning systems, and both saw an increase in housebuilding and a comparative decrease in house prices.  

While moving to such a system would require intensive legislation, moving community input upstream in the planning system could be a suitable stepping stone to simplify the democratic process while broadening it out to a wider audience. 

Reforming the planning system is far from an easy process, and successive governments have promised it and failed to deliver. But identifying achievable and high impact goals will be crucial for a future Labour government to speed up the delivery of homes and meet its 1.5 million home goal. 

This is the first part of a 4-part series in what a Labour government can do to meet its 1.5 million homes goal. Stay tuned for future instalments!

Alex Toal is Communications Executive at The Housing Forum, a cross-sector housing membership organisation representing local authorities, housing associations, contractors and a range of other housing sector organisations. Before joining THF, Alex worked at the Institute for Government and Make Votes Matter, and is a ward organiser for Cities of London and Westminster PPC Rachel Blake. Based in Haringey, Alex helps to run his local LGBTQ+ tennis group and volunteers at his local food bank.

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We Need to End National-Grid Lock

There are two existential threats to our country’s future: tackling the climate emergency and fixing Britain’s housing crisis. Future generations will not look kindly on us if we let these two systemic issues run on unresolved for another decade. They might seem like two distinct challenges, but they’re connected by one key piece of infrastructure: the National Grid.

Two Critical Priorities: Housing & Energy

In my hometown of Bracknell, the previous Tory council oversaw anaemic house building. Last year, only 390 houses were built. The situation for social and affordable housing is far worse. From 2017 to 2022, Bracknell Forest built only 8 homes for social rent. Meanwhile, 1,690 families are stuck on the council’s housing waitlist. 1.2 million families are on waiting lists throughout England.

Now, with a Labour council leading Bracknell since the local elections, there is real hope for change. But grappling the housing crisis requires national, as well as local leadership. And with a Tory government crippled by NIMBY activists in its own ranks, it is clear Rishi Sunak has no leadership to give on the issue.

Nationally, Labour has set forth a bold set of proposals to get Britain building, including reforming planning laws and putting an end to so-called “hope value” blocking public procurement.

Energy policy also requires both local and national leadership. Labour has ambitious plans to retrofit and insulate existing housing stock, to make it more energy efficient, and they will create GB Energy, a publicly-owned energy company focused on renewables.

At a local level, it is great to see Labour embracing co-operative and community energy schemes, which will empower communities and drive local economic growth.

Unlocking Grid Capacity

Tackling both climate change and the housing crisis require us to face up to a significant challenge.  The capacity of the National Grid is far too low, and creating new connections takes far too long. Any new house puts increased strain on the electricity grid; only compounded by the transition to electric cars, heat pumps and other green technologies. And new onshore wind farms and solar panels need to be actually connected to the grid if they’re going to help us reach Net Zero by 2050.

John Pettigrew, the Chief Executive of the National Grid, has said that “we will need to build about seven times as much infrastructure in the next seven or eight years than we built in the last 32”. Strategic planners have suggested the grid needs £54 billion of investment to meet green goals.

Housing projects are already being delayed or rejected because of local shortfalls in National Grid connectivity. The National Grid currently operates a first-come-first-served system for connecting new projects, which means any delays have a knock-on effect – and ready-to-go projects are facing years-long delays.

One problem is that expanding the National Grid to build more homes also requires planning permission. And just as house building can attract local controversy, so too can projects to expand the grid. An incoming Labour government needs to be ready for this.

The other major issue is, of course, money. That’s why it’s so welcome to see Labour committing to spend £28 billion on green investment by the mid-point of next parliament. A proportion of that will need to be spent on upgrading the National Grid.

As Keir Starmer said when unveiling Labour’s green agenda, “we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and start building things and run towards the barriers – the planning system, the skills shortages, the investor confidence, the grid.”

Only a Labour Government can show the leadership we need to end a National Grid-lock.

Peter Swallow

Peter Swallow is Chair of Ealing Central and Acton CLP and a researcher at Durham University

@PDJSWALLOW
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Making the Moral Argument for Housing

Let’s start with first principles: housing is a fundamental human right. A right so central, so  fundamental, that it intersects with all others. An inalienable and essential need enshrined in  moral and natural law – though not yet in the statute books. Without it, all else suffers;  educational outcomes fall, inequality worsens, psychological and physical health  deteriorates, and human potential is capped and even drained. As Hashi Mohamed  beautifully puts in his book A Home of One’s Own, having secure and dignified housing  “allows the mind and soul to wander to more important matters; the growth of one’s  personality, the ability to dream and desire.”1It is the basic human need for shelter, without  which all other needs cannot be meaningfully met. 

We have all seen the figures that illustrate the scale of the problem. Over 100,000  households now in temporary accommodation, 64,940 of those with children. As of the start  of 2023, over 1.2 million households on local authority waiting lists, the true numbers of  those in need likely far higher. And underlying these statistics, the daily human tragedies that  flow endlessly from the national emergency that is the housing crisis. 

As a councillor in an inner-city London borough I have come face-to-face with the  desperation and devastation faced by those in desperate need, as well as the uncertainty  and anxiety of young people with no hope of laying down roots. Like many of us, I have also  personally faced the soul-destroying horror of housing insecurity and eviction – and the  displacement that comes with it. 

If we accept the truly destructive nature of the housing crisis across all metrics, and accept  that housing is a human right, the next question surely must be: will we do whatever is  necessary to fix it? Not for the sake of it, but because this is a matter of social and moral  justice. Holding our principles front of mind and recognising that the housing crisis is not just  a headline, we have no choice but to be bolder. Put simply, we as a Labour movement have  an ethical, not just practical, duty to be fearless in our efforts. 

Firstly, we have to slay some common myths on the progressive side of politics, namely that  we can fix the housing crisis simply by filling vacant homes (whether they belong to overseas  investors or not) and by building solely on brownfield sites in existing urban centres. I know  why these are common arguments – I understand why they are attractive fantasies. We care  deeply about inequality and reject the commodification of housing, recognising the  unsustainability and immorality of the notion of homes lying vacant during a housing crisis,  and we embrace our role as custodians of the environment, preferring to limit the impact of  human existence on nature

But as is often the case, these fantasies are the waking dreams that risk distracting us from  the real work required. The facts are sobering. The UK has the lowest long-term vacancy  rate in Europe, bar Poland, at just 1.1% of the total housing stock– a mere drop in the water. Building to full capacity on all the brownfield sites in the entire country would only  deliver 31% of the homes needed– a significant, but ultimately inadequate, amount. 

While no option should be taken off the table, it is clear these approaches taken in isolation  are not enough. Facing an estimated 4.3 million home deficit, only more radical, progressive  solutions will end the injustice and suffering faced by so many. 

Take the Green Belt, imagined by many as a noble, pristine ring embracing our cities while  in fact acting as a semi-industrial chokehold throttling supply. Here we have an opportunity  to make a radical, and observably true, argument – the Green Belt isn’t really green at all,  and has very little to do with the environment. It does not exist to preserve England’s green  and pleasant land but to restrict urban growth, and is already largely built upon with light  industry and low-density housing. It is estimated we could fill the entire 4.3 million home gap  by just building densely on under 6% of the Green Belt, if taken as the only solution.  Counter-intuitively, this would then have the effect of limiting urban sprawl and allowing us to  preserve and re-wild our actual natural landscapes. 

Or we can look to the related work of architect Russell Curtis, whose research has  concluded that we could provide 1.2 million homes by building solely around rural train  stations, where the transport infrastructure already exists. The knock-on benefits of this for  the economy and reducing reliance on cars are obvious, and would also require less new  infrastructure to be built. 

No argument about solving the housing crisis and fixing supply should ignore the need for  wider planning reform, though, beyond re-designation of the Green Belt and other measures – as long as our planning regime operates on a case-by-case, discretionary model, as laid  out in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, achieving the levels of supply required may  be prohibitively difficult. Our approach should therefore include a recognition of the need to  overhaul the system as it currently stands and embrace the radicalism that makes us  Labour: when systems are no longer fit for purpose, we build new ones. 

When those outside the Labour movement, or our political opponents, make similar  arguments about acting boldly to fix the housing crisis, they make them largely on the basis  of practical and economic necessity. Our movement has the opportunity, and the  responsibility, to make them with the moral necessity in mind and, while we do not have a  monopoly on morality, we must remember the reason we exist – to redress these injustices. 

It is why the Labour Housing Group and Labour Campaign for Human Rights came together  to clearly say “Housing is a Human Right”, bringing together housing and human rights  practitioners, and why our conference motion calls for housing to be front and centre of the  party’s campaigns. 

The housing crisis is a catastrophe affecting all strata of society; young people forced into  HMOs and limiting environments well into their 30s, unable to flourish as they wish, millions  more of all ages and backgrounds in insecure and undignified housing up and down the  country, not to speak of the thousands experiencing street homelessness.

Failure to fix this problem – and failure to make this argument persuasively – is therefore a  moral failure. The recognition that we must do whatever it takes to end the housing crisis  should be at the front and centre of every debate, every political conversation, and every  policy consideration: not simply to boost economic growth, or to attract younger voters, but  because it is the right thing to do.

Omid Miri

Omid Miri has been a Councillor in Hammersmith & Fulham, and Chair of the Planning Committee, since May 2022. He is passionate about tackling the housing crisis and campaigning for housing as a human right, and particularly interested in re-prioritising social and council housing as a form of tenure.

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Labour’s Plans to Increase Home Ownership & Abolish the Leasehold System

The Labour Party will gather shortly at Liverpool to discuss the National Policy Forum’s report which is likely to form the basis of the manifesto for the next General Election.

Labour is seeking the support of aspirant home owners with proposals to guarantee the deposit of those who can obtain a mortgage. The party is concerned that the number of home owners is falling especially among young people.

The Leadership wants to see the proportion of all households who are home-owners reach 70%. The current rate is 65%. The last time it was 70% was in 2003. This target is therefore ambitious given the decline in wages and is dependent on a growing economy.

Labour will retain the Right to Buy for council tenants, though the discount rate will be reviewed. Council leaders will argue that this policy will not help their efforts to reduce the record numbers of homeless households in temporary accommodation.

Labour supports leasehold reform

The report sets out helpful polices to attract the support of the 4.86 million leaseholders who live in England and Wales. Scotland abolished their leasehold system in 2004.  Many leaseholders live in marginal constituencies.

Leaseholders do not own any bricks and mortar in their homes. They own the right to live in their property for a limited period. Once their lease runs out, they will become mere tenants if they do nothing. Service charges disputes are commonplace. Freeholders can recover their legal costs from leaseholders even if they lose at court. Virtually all the former UK colonies no longer have a leasehold system.

In 2002 Labour introduced the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act. This was designed to replace the leasehold system with commonhold. It failed due to opposition from many vested interests. 

There are only a handful of commonhold sites in England and Wales. Commonhold is not just for flats. It also applies to interdependent buildings with shared facilities and common parts. On the Isle of Shepey in Kent, the owner of a mobile home site gave the land via a commonhold company to the site residents who now manage the site themselves.

The Law Commission’s proposals to replace the feudal leasehold system with the modern commonhold tenure will be implemented in full at minimal cost to public funds. Commonhold will become the default tenure for flats.  Such proposals are very timely as the Government has decided to drop their own plans in this area. The Conservatives will deny that this is linked to nearly 40 % of their donations coming from developers.

Fire Safety

All leaseholders will be protected from the costs of remediating fire safety defects for cladding and non-cladding defects. All dangerous buildings will be identified, registered, and made safe. In September 2021 there were over 1000 unsafe buildings in London alone. The current government still does not know how many blocks are unsafe. The rate of remediation is painfully slow and there are non-qualifying leaseholders who are ineligible for help  under the 2022 Building Safety Act. Such proposals are welcome.  

The report refers to the rate of remediation being accelerated. However, there is no mention of who will pay for such work or how it will be carried out. This area needs to be sharpened up though the financial implications are challenging. 

Flat sales are falling due to the complexities around the Building Safety Act. Some conveyancers  will not act for leaseholders who are forced to sell at a loss at auctions. 

Further work needed

There are other problematic issues for home owners that need addressing. Shared ownership needs to be reformed. How can this be considered as a form of ownership when such residents can be evicted for two months’ worth of rent arrears and lose all any equity that they have built up?  There is currently a Commons Select Committee inquiry into shared ownership. It is likely to be critical.

The estate charges that house owners pay on unadopted private estates to volume builders are controversial. Home owners can lose their homes if they ignore such charges. These are known as fleecehold. The former Labour MP for Bishop Auckland Helen Goodman produced an excellent 10-minute rule Bill in 2017 (see her YouTube video here).  Her Bill is outside the scope of the Law Commission’s work though the  Competition and Market Authority are in the process of investigating such charges.  

The situation for the owners of mobile homes is crying out for reform. They own the property but not the land it sits on. They have to pay 10% commission to the site owner if they wish to sell.

Attitude of Party members

Labour outside Westminster appears at times to have a cultural problem with owner occupied housing. Although leasehold reform has been in nearly all Labour election manifestos since the war, this issue has seldom been discussed at Labour conference. None of the progressive think tanks have produced reports on leasehold reform, though see this report by the Welsh Government. 

One of the reasons for the failure of the 2002 Act was the lack of support outside Parliament. Unfortunately, the work of the leasehold reformers such as the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, the National Leasehold Campaign and Commonhold Now are seldom discussed in Labour circles.

Devolution

Labour will introduce a Take Back Control Act. This will devolve power away from London. It is not clear what the implications are for housing. The NPF envisage that new development corporation will lead in partnership with developers and local councils in the drive for building new homes. Will Sadiq Khan be empowered to require developers to introduce a commonhold scheme as envisaged in previous manifesto? Will “fleecehold residents “be able to require local councils to adopt communal facilities on their estates? 

The NPF report is strong on the need to build more homes. Potential home owners will be attracted to the Labour Party by the thought of a guaranteed deposit. However, doubts remain whether young people can obtain a mortgage when the average property in London costs over £600,000.  Reinvigorating commonhold will attract political support. The Labour leadership needs to provide support to Labour parliamentary candidates on how to campaign on leasehold reform.

Dermot Mckibbin is on the Executive Committee of Labour Housing Group, and will shortly become a member of the new Beckenham & Penge CLP

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The Lost Progressive Potential of Local Plans

What are Local Plans?

Local Plans are the bedrock upon which the entire UK planning system is based. Prepared by local planning authorities (councils) they essentially establish how land should be utilised in a given area. Once agreed, they are used to determine planning applications. 

The current Local Plan system properly emerged with the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. This implemented for the first time a ‘plan-led’ system whereby anyone wanting to develop land had to first seek planning permission. 

Despite their importance Local Plans are often treated with at best detached apathy and at worst visceral animosity. 

One reason for this is their complexity. Local Plans respond to a myriad of needs. How can enough housing be provided? How can the local economy be stimulated? How can the climate crisis be addressed? Responding to these needs means that they often amount to hundreds of pages of convoluted, Kafkaesque policy.

Reading’s Local Plan is 251 pages long1. Northumberland’s is 404 pages2. Southwark’s is 601 pages3. Most people have neither the time nor willpower to wade through such gargantuan documents. In Dorset less than 2% of the population provided feedback during the recent consultation on their Local Plan4. In Portsmouth less than 1% of the population provided feedback5. 

A second reason is their association with new housing. Local Plans must identify sites where sufficient homes could be built to meet independently assessed housing needs. Unsurprisingly, people often disagree with the location of these sites. In 2021 more than 8,000 people objected to the housing sites earmarked in Ashfield’s Local Plan6. In 2022 more than 10,000 people objected to the sites earmarked in Hertsmere’s Local Plan7.

‘It begins as a house, an end terrace in this case, but it will not stop there’

– Simon Armitage, Zoom!

The coalescing of these two factors, complexity and an association with new housing, means that despite their importance Local Plans are rarely up to date. Recent research by CPRE found that two thirds of Local plans are out of date8.

Why is the lack of up to date Local Plans a problem?

The most obvious impact is upon housing. Local Plans provide a degree of certainty as to where new housing is permitted. If they are not up to date this certainty is limited, meaning that housebuilders may be less willing to submit planning applications. Between October and December 2022 the number of planning applications received fell by 13% to 93,000 versus the same quarter in 20219. This figure is clearly insufficient given the scale of the UK’s housing crisis. A recent Centre for Cities report suggested that compared to other European countries the UK has a deficit of 4.3 million homes10.

However the impact of out of date Local Plans stretches beyond housing. As the National Planning Policy Framework states, Local Plans should not only address housing needs but also ‘other economic, social and environmental priorities’11. This alludes to the progressive potential of Local Plans.

‘The urban landscape, among its many roles, is also something to be seen, to be remembered, and to delight in’

– Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City

This progressive potential has existed throughout history. Ebenezer Howard in the nineteenth century introduced the idea of garden cities, marrying the positive elements of both town and country. He argued that ‘human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed together’12. Patrick Abercrombie’s 1940s plan for London, based around the idea of neighbourhood units, is unmatched in its extensive scope. He hoped to allow for ‘a greater mingling of the different groups of London’s society’13. Richard Llewelyn-Davies, appointed in the 1960s to plan Milton Keynes, welded the theory of garden cities with the American grid system. The aspiration was to provide freedom with which ‘the people who come after us [can] plan and build a future’14.

If Local Plans are not up to date this progressive potential cannot be realised.

What is to be done?

How could a Labour government tackle the problems caused by a dearth of up to date Local Plans?

There have already been substantial movements in relation to the housing crisis. A plethora of policy interventions from the left have suggested ways to build more homes and counteract the drag caused by out of date Local Plans. These have begun filtering through to Labour’s leadership. Starmer recently announced his intention to back ‘the builders, not the blockers’15. He has detailed plans to restore housing targets, allow more green belt development and empower councils to purchase land without factoring in the ‘hope value’16.

Unfortunately there have not yet been similar movements in relation to the progressive potential of Local Plans. 

The housing crisis is not the only crisis afflicting the UK. Inflation sits at 8.7%17. GDP growth this year is forecast to be just 0.4%18. On current trajectories the UK will not meet net zero by 205019. After thirteen years of Conservative rule the public sphere is decimated, with loneliness rising and community engagement falling20.

Labour’s recognition of the housing crisis is positive. But it is not enough. 

Howard, Abercrombie and Llewelyn-Davies’ plans were not perfect. Howard’s conception of town size limits, Abercrombie’s rigid zoning system and Llewelyn-Davies’ prioritisation of car transport are all now obsolete.

Nevertheless it is not the plans themselves which are significant but the way in which the plans were conceptualised. All three individuals recognised the progressive potential of plans and in addition to building homes they all strove to tackle other crises. Howard hoped to reconnect people with nature. Abercrombie sought an entire societal transformation post-WW2. Llewelyn-Davies attempted to resolve the perceived failures of earlier new towns, such as Stevenage and Harlow.  

This recognition of the progressive potential of Local Plans, and a desire to use them as a way of addressing crises, should be adopted by Labour. 

Firstly, Labour should seek to change the narrative surrounding Local Plans. Steps have been taken in this direction. Labour openly discuss planning reform and expound the benefits of house building. They should go further. It is inadmissible that less than 2% of the population engage with Local Plans given their importance to the planning system and their progressive potential. 

Secondly, rather than simply encouraging and cajoling councils to build more homes Labour should encourage and demand councils, via their Local Plans, to build a better society. Local Plans shape the physical world in which we live. Consequently there is a huge opportunity for them to corroborate Labour’s policy agenda. This opportunity cannot be missed simply because council’s lack up to date Local Plans. 

A Labour government is potentially less than a year away. The UK faces multiple crises. Local Plans are critically important and, as demonstrated throughout history, have a remarkable progressive potential. By embracing this importance and progressive potential Labour could use Local Plans as a crucial component in their attempts at solving crises and moving the UK forward. 

Sean Eke works in housing policy and public affairs for The Terrapin Group. He is a Labour member in Tower Hamlets.

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Let’s Improve Planning, Let’s Abolish It!

I’m the managing director of Positive Homes. Since 2016 we’ve developed five little sites – the last of which won ‘Development of the Year’ at the 2021 Offsite Awards. Everything we’ve done is one version or another of ‘modern methods of construction’ (MMC), and highly energy efficient.

So Red Brick said, how about 1,200 words on what it’s like to be a (new-ish) small housing developer. Well, blimey. Where to start?

How about small developers built a quarter of new homes in the late 1980s. Now it’s 1 in 12. And SME developers always have higher per unit costs. Even worse: At least 99% of all the new homes built since at least 2008 are obsolete the moment their buyers first step over the threshold. That’s because only 1% of new homes are ‘A’ rated for energy efficiency (including all of ours).And ‘A’ is the least they need to be, to avoid a hefty retrofit bill to make homes ‘net zero’ carbon.

Both of these facts are the inevitable consequence of a dysfunctional planning system, that has created an oligopoly of large companies. Hardly a surprise that 94% of small developers say planning is their biggest problem. Why? Because the system makes something not scarce at all (land) into something beyond valuable, by restricting its supply.

Some more facts: According to Savills, we consistently lose around 26,000 hectares of agricultural land a year. Which sounds like a lot – except we have more than 18 MILLION hectares of farmland, and only 6% of the country is actually built on. So we aren’t running out of land any time in, oh, the next several centuries!

Land use is a choice. But it’s a choice we aren’t allowed to make as a society, because it’s been hived off to a group of anonymous, over-powerful ‘planners’. The public are treated like patronised children, being told what’s good for them. Hardly surprising then, that people act accordingly and kick off when it feels like things are being done to them, not with them. There are people from across the political spectrum fighting to stop new homes. We call them NIMBYs, rather patronisingly. But surely these are just reasonable people not liking the concreting over of the precious countryside?

What a mess. So now for the seemingly counterintuitive leap: The best way to get better results – that benefit the whole community – is to abolish the planning system as we know it. Huh?

We need more affordable homes (of all tenures). We need better built, more energy efficient homes. We need better use of existing buildings. We need a resurgence of smaller developers to bring choice to the market and drive innovation. And we need to protect and enhance the environment.

What prevents that happening? Land use restrictions. By preventing the productive use of something we have in vast abundance, we do nothing other than make our society poorer (house price inflation is a mirage). Instead, we would rather blame the big builders for being ‘too successful’, than acknowledge how the current planning system distorts the market. If land is ‘scarce’ and therefore expensive, there’s obviously less money for environmental improvements/ bigger rooms/ better built homes.

So let’s try a different tack: Let’s abolish planning. (Specifically, the post war planning system, and all its evolutions – yes, including the green belt). But wouldn’t scrapping the planning system produce some sort of mass free for all? Actually no –

because there are numerous essential protections and provisions in place that wouldn’t disappear.

First, you need some guiding principles. So how about the Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Article 1, Protection of Property (humour me)*:

“Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.”

Or, in other words if it’s my land, I should have the right to do whatever I want with it – the ‘peaceful enjoyment’ of my property, providing it doesn’t affect my neighbours’ ‘peaceful enjoyment’ of their property.

From that, you can set (the smallest necessary number of) questions which developers need to answer. And if the answers are right, then there’s nothing to stop you getting building.   Or is there? Actually there’s rather a lot. We need answers to questions like:

  1. Could the highway network handle the extra traffic?
  2. Can the local electricity supply cope with the extra demand? (Especially with electric cars and heat pumps coming in etc)
  3. Does the land flood? Could this be overcome?
  4. Can the water supply and sewer systems cope?
  5. Will every home be ‘net zero’ carbon?
  6. What about local school places? The local GP? Biodiversity?

But hang on – it can’t just be as simple and easy as that can it? If I can successfully answer everything positively, then I can just build? No site identification in the takes-forever-local-plan? No months and years spent on a subsequent, expensive application process? Yes, it really is that simple, with one condition – that additional question I mentioned: 

7. ‘Does the scheme meet the local design code?’

One of former Housing Minister Robert Jenrick’s most interesting reform proposal of 2021 was the idea of local codes, written by residents to recognise what makes their communities great. New housing boss Michael Gove has taken this on by proposing street by street design code referendums.For me, these are a logical extension of neighbourhood plans which, if done right, encourage the voices of the vast majority who don’t get involved in the current system.

Where I live, our village plan process involved a huge number of local people making positive contributions. That included identifying potential sites, along with the type and quality of homes that should be built there. There are now 700 homes under construction, and all the developers embraced the village’s requirements in their designs with minimum fuss.

Is it really so wrong so say we should trust local people to know what’s best for their communities? Most people are capable of weighing up competing priorities to arrive at a sensible, democratic outcome that benefits everyone. Or would we rather continue the ‘who shouts the loudest’ moanathon as the balance to the anonymous planners, who think they know best for your community?

Instead, let’s replace the centralised planning system with….. you and me: Human beings who want the best for their children and their community. Hopelessly optimistic?

Well it happened in Tottenham just recently. The council’s role? To facilitate the development of a design code that local people wanted and needed – and to then get out of the way and let them get on with it. Why wouldn’t you want that where you live too?

(PS: I started writing this when Housing Minister Robert Jenrick was proposing some highly sensible reforms to the planning process. I finished it with Michael Gove fundamentally abandoning the zoning model – while the House of Lords says we need action to support smaller developers and build more homes. And we wonder why nothing ever gets done around here!)

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Martin Valentine</span></strong>
Martin Valentine

Martin is the Managing Director of Positive Homes.

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How scrolling through ‘Nextdoor’ made me a YIMBY

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Nextdoor, an app and social media platform for neighbours to connect and share information based on their location. For those unfamiliar with this, Nextdoor is probably best described as Facebook residents’ groups gone wild. Not my favourite place to be on the internet, but I’ve only recently moved into my current area of London and I’m nosy.

There was the usual fare. A mixture of missing animals, requests for decorators, and the occasional whinge about closed roads. I usually scroll past without a second thought. However, on this occasion I saw something that gave me pause for thought. A headline in bold and all caps read:

“6 STOREY BUILDING WITH NO PARKING MUSWELL HILL RD AT JUNCTION WITH WOODSIDE AVE”

No parking? Oh the horror!

I can’t say it was sympathy that made me pay attention.

I read on. It claimed the development would cause a “parking crisis” if allowed to go ahead. Fourteen car parking spaces would be lost, it went on to state. Furthermore, the planned buildings were “atrocious” and there was the classic objection of being “out of keeping with the area”.

And then, the final nail in the coffin for me was a comment that read “it is for social housing, so a good cause, but current plans ignore local impact”. The author might as well have literally used the words:

“Not In My Backyard’ or NIMBY for short.

It was this bit that really enraged me. I work as a Caseworker for two Members of Parliament in two London Boroughs. My job is trying to help people who are so desperate, who have tried every other option, that their last resort is to seek help from their MP. One of the biggest and most frequent issues by far is housing.

Now, I have many friends who know a lot about housing policy. I know people who look at the data and statistics in great detail, and who engage in debates with people about why most people my age will never be able to own property. I am not one of these experts. I have no idea about the detail.

But what I do know is that we simply do not have enough affordable places to live. I have dealt with too many people who are living in terrible conditions, properties in serious disrepair. I am sick and tired of telling people that they will have to use their living room as a bedroom, because they simply don’t have as great a housing ‘need’ as other people.

Every single person deserves a safe, warm and comfortable place to live. That should not be a controversial statement. Yet we’ve reached such a shortage that local authorities are put in the terrible position of having to tell families that there’s a waiting time of over 15 years for a property with enough bedrooms for their children.

Of course, unsuitable accommodation is only one issue. How can children focus on their schoolwork when they have no quiet place to study; when the block that they live in is a hotspot for anti-social behaviour because the front door is regularly damaged? How can anyone build a life in one place when their ceiling suddenly caves in and they have to be moved to temporary accommodation on the other side of the city?

Housing is more than just a place to sleep. It’s a place to live, a base from which to take advantage of opportunities. It should not be a luxury but sometimes, especially doing the work I do, it feels like it is.

It is for these reasons why I found it so enraging to see this kind of NIMBYism on my local Nextdoor social network. Social housing is great. But…not here. My car goes here.

I had a look at the plans for myself. 41 new properties, 32 of them let at social rent levels. 32! I couldn’t believe that so many new council properties might be built only an 8-minute drive from my house. The design didn’t look too bad, certainly not as jarring, and different as some blocks I’ve seen. Nor what I would describe as out of keeping with the area.

As for the parking, the plans included five wheelchair-accessible spaces. That was my last possible worry alleviated. I went straight to my council’s planning website, hoping I wasn’t too late, and wrote a comment informing the authority I support application “HGY/2021/2727”.

I’d never done this before, engaged with the planning process. As a 23-year-old renter, I’d never stayed long enough in one place to feel part of a community, the kind of person who should comment on these things. But this time I did.

To be honest, and without any research to back this up, I have to say that the entire process felt loaded towards objections. I remember being given several easy options to click for issues with the plans, but not very much at all in favour.

I wrote something short about the need for good social housing, with a reminder about the need to reduce private car journeys for good measure and submitted. Mine was the first comment in favour.

After a few YIMBYs (‘Yes In My Back Yard’ – those in the pro-housing movement in contrast and in opposition to the NIMBYs) I know spread the word, the application now sits with five supporting comments. And over 170 objections. Now, I’d like to think that more than five people in my borough would be supportive of this scheme, but the planning process does not seem set up to hear from them. Planning is too often associated with a ‘bad’ thing that must be fought, rather than a way for local residents to express what they want in their area.

At the time of writing, no decision has been made on this development. I haven’t got my hopes up, if I’m honest. NIMBYs are very well organised, and some political parties feed the beast as a way to win support. But if I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that I need to speak up more. I’ll be checking the Major Developments of my council’s planning website more often from now on. And hope other supporters of new housing do the same.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Hollie Wickens</span></strong>
Hollie Wickens

Hollie is on the Executive Committee of the Young Fabians and currently works as a case worker for Wes Streeting MP and Sarah Jones MP.

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Multi-coloured walls?

Politicians may be missing the point when they reference red or blue election walls. Should they instead be focusing on multi-coloured walls, and the real walls of real houses? 

The Community Planning Alliance map[1], was launched in March 2021, already includes 525 active planning campaign groups. It is a clear indicator that all is not well at grassroots level in our communities across all areas of the country.  The planning system is potentially facing a popular revolt.  

Community Planning Alliance , Campaign Map

Until now, those groups were on their own – yet the battles they are fighting are very similar.  These campaigners never thought they would be campaigners, most wish they did not have to be, and some, like me, have become full-time campaigners.

Why?

Local communities face many problems…  Councils are, on the whole, disinterested in residents’ views, or even obstructive.   Developers call the shots, targeting areas with no five-year housing supply, and regularly reneging on promises of affordable housing, using the viability loophole.  (What other industry is guaranteed a profit of 15-20% anyway?).  

Trust in the system is virtually non-existent.  This, from a report by Grosvenor[2] in 2019 says it all:

“This year, we conducted the largest ever canvassing of public trust in placemaking in the UK, finding that just 2% of the public trust developers and only 7% trust local authorities when it comes to planning for large-scale development.

The research also unpicks the drivers of this lack of trust − the biggest being the perception that developers only care about making or saving money, with 75% of respondents identifying this as a reason for their lack of trust.”

Green space, countryside, hedgerows, clean air, rivers and streams, are all at risk in the relentless drive to meet government’s 300,000 pa housing target, deliver its roads programmes, and even its renewable energy targets.   Never has land been under so much pressure, from providing the food that we eat, to use for housing and commercial development, biofuels, off-setting and tree-planting.  

And, of all those pressures, it is the high house-building targets shared by all political parties which are causing the most controversy.  For years, the populist line we have all been fed is that to solve the housing crisis, we need to just build more houses.   

Three misunderstood points about the ‘housing crisis’

  • The 300,000-homes per annum target is based on out-of-date statistics, and population growth is slowing dramatically.  Local level data has been found to overstate population growth in around 50 cities and towns.
  • Housing targets do nothing to address real affordability or solve the housing market problems.  Housing waiting lists remain stubbornly high, chiefly because very few social houses are being built – only 6,566 last year – and more are being sold off or demolished each year than built.  Then there’s long term empty homes and the holiday or second home problem, all of which are housing stock unavailable to people who need homes. 
  • Developers release new properties into the market when it does not depress prices. If prices start to fall, they will slow new build supply.

So, you might get a shiny new housing estate at the edge of your town or village, but it will be car-dependent and many of the properties will be unaffordable to your children. That’s even if they are described as ‘affordable’, which is actually only a 20% reduction off market price.   

That’s why the Community Planning Alliance campaigns for three solutions :

  1. Housing policies that address need, based on accurate and up-to-date, bottom-up local household projections, ensuring that the housing delivered is truly affordable (and based on local wages rather than discount to market value).  We support Shelter’s campaign for social housing, and we support the campaign of Empty Homes, to ensure that our existing housing stock is far better used.
  2. Enhanced community participation where residents can really shape their future with their elected councils, not, as now, have planning imposed on them.   We argue for a process of ‘engage, deliberate, decide’, instead of the current ‘decide, announce, defend’.  There needs to be a rebuilding of trust in the system and to start to do that, there needs to be real debate at the start of local plan-making so that issues and concerns are addressed. 

Statements of Community Involvement need to be more accessible and improved, to include, for example, minimum standards such as Gunning Principles[3] or the seven best practice principles of the Consultation Institute[4], which ensure that consultations are held when decisions have not already been made, that there is sufficient information available for stakeholders to respond, sufficient time for responses and that responses are actually taken into account.    We also call for Local Plan Votes, in the same way that Neighbourhood Plans are subject to a referendum. 

3. Taking better care of our precious environment.  The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and the recent Natural History Museum report in advance of COP26 noted[5] that we have led the way in the destruction of the natural environment.  Build, build, build at all cost is not acceptable, nor is token environmental mitigation. 

If each of the 525 groups on the map were to count only 1,000 supporters (and we know that some have many, many more, some as many as 10,000), that’s over half a million people active in the planning and local political system.    What will be the impact if each of those groups decides to put up independent candidates in local elections?  There is potential for a re-shaping of the political order.  It is a multi-coloured, grassroots wall that government and opposition should heed.  

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Rosie Pearson</span></strong>
Rosie Pearson

Rosie is Chairman of the Community Planning Alliance.

The Community Planning Alliance was founded in March 2021, with an interactive map, on which 525 separate groups campaigning against inappropriate development across the UK have now self-listed.  The map has been viewed 183,000 times and we have 1,800 members of our Facebook group. 

Contact:   [email protected] 
Interim website:  https://grassrootscampaigns.weebly.com/

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[1] Community Planning Alliance: grassroots map (google.com)

[2] Grosvenor – Grosvenor Britain & Ireland addresses lack of trust in UK developers & planning system

[3] The Gunning Principles.pdf (local.gov.uk)

[4] The Consultation Charter – The 7 Best Practice Principles — The Consultation Institute

[5]UK has ‘led the world’ in destroying the natural environment | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)