Tag: White paper

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Will a new planning system magically create new housing?

Labour would make a great mistake if they think that the disquiet in the Tory shires about the Government’s proposed planning reforms – or the departure of Dominic Cummings – will sink the Planning White Paper.  Johnson has come out plainly saying he wants abolition of the present planning system, come what may – and we have to understand why so much political capital is invested in this.

Developers and landowners have made massive profits over the last 40 years.  Indeed the economy is largely built on this speculative success. So why get rid of something that works for them so well?  What exactly is the Government’s agenda, and what is Labour’s answer? 

The White Paper ‘Planning for the Future’, proposes not reform of the current system but total abolition of existing town and country planning legislation.  The replacement would be a US style ‘zoning system’ accompanied by high tech design codes.  Thus, if developers can tick the boxes on the zones and codes they get automatic consent.  Bingo. Communities and local councils are by-passed.

No more planning applications to be submitted and poured over by pesky planners and local communities – the landowners and housebuilders are free at last.  At least that is their dream – but things are more complicated than that, and the Tory record with planning makes them highly vulnerable to close examination.

The premise of the White Paper is that the housing crisis is caused by planners putting obstacles in the path of housebuilding companies and that a new planning system will remove these obstacles and magically there will be more housing – a view fuelled by the housebuilders lobby, the Home Builders Federation.  This part of the Government’s rationale does not stack up. The facts are that housebuilders have planning consents for 1 million homes and have not built them out.   To do so would bring down house prices and that is the last thing investors want.  The truth is that there is no evidence that the proposed reforms will deliver more homes.    

The reality is that the White Paper proposals are a tangled mess, and largely unworkable as explained in recent essays by a group of planning academics (including myself), ‘The Right Answers to the Right Questions’, ed. Andy Inch, 2020.  Nor are they what the volume housebuilders have been asking for.  They have been lobbying for measures to speed up planning decisions and make more housing land available, but they have not asked for legislation that is so wide ranging it may disrupt their highly profitable business model.

The White Paper proposals requiring councils to replace existing Local Plans with zones of Growth, Renewal, and Protect, plus algorithms for housing supply targets, and design codes – many dictated from Whitehall – are complicated and contentious to deliver in most urban areas and could engender even more NIMBYism and public cynicism.  The Tory shires are already voicing concerns about ‘Growth Zones’ and housing targets being imposed on their villages.     

So what lies behind the Tory aim of deleting current planning legislation?  It is ideology. The UK planning system is one of three remaining pillars of the post-war settlement, the others being the BBC and the NHS.  The Tories and their think-tanks have always regarded these pillars as ‘socialist’, or ‘welfare state’ measures. 

Town planning was enshrined in the foundational 1947 Town and Country Planning Act which was in its original purpose a socially redistributive mechanism to regulate development and distribute the profits from land development in a fair way – alongside providing a democratic framework for rebuilding towns and cities after the war. It was a force for good aimed at benefitting all classes and all regions.  Over years these principles were watered down but the essence of 1947 Act remains in all the succeeding planning legislation.  

The ideological Tories are not defensive about this intention, but where they are vulnerable is their collusion with the vested interests that have taken control of the planning system.   The landowners, developers and financiers who are the bedrock of funding and politics of the Tory Party have huge influence over the development of land and have creamed off the massive increase in land value created by the planning system.  

They are supported by a formidable property lobby that has been absorbed into Whitehall’s machinery. They do not intend to give up this privilege.  Communities, local councils and housing campaigns have become increasingly sidelined in the face of these interests, so well illustrated by Robert Jenrick’s shady dealings with a major developer and Tory donor  in the Isle of Dogs, and Boris Johnson’s blatant favours to developers when Mayor of London.  Meanwhile volume housebuilding has been commandeered by a small number of large developers who limit supply to keep up prices.   

Labour should be demanding full transparency and an end to housebuild cartels and cronyism.  If we have done our homework, this attack will have wide support.  The other part of our challenge is to be entirely positive about planning – placing it at the centre of a socially and economically just vision for the country.   Planning must be returned to public service, acting positively to care for the health of the people and the planet, to capture more land value for the community, and to widen planning democracy.

  

<span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color"><strong>Bob Colenutt</strong></span>
Bob Colenutt

Bob Colenutt is a member of Oxford Labour Party, a member of the Highbury Group, and author of ‘The Property Lobby’, published by Policy Press, 2020

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The Return of Housing Regulation

From a Government that has until now been considered de-regulatory, we are now witnessing a return to housing regulation. But will it deliver the goods?

The aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy in 2017 has been far reaching. The Public Inquiry continues with revelations every week about the appalling practices in both the building industry and the procurement framework that led to the deaths of 72 people.[i] One outcome was the Government commitment to reform social housing and place tenants and residents at the centre of decision making around the management of their homes and the estates where they live. As a consequence the Government published a Green Paper one year after the fire proposing reforms to social housing to address some of the problems revealed by the Grenfell fire. [ii]   

Following the fire, the existing framework for regulating social housing was subject to savage criticism. Since 2010 the regulation of ‘consumer services’ had effectively been abandoned. Before the election in 2010, the Tenant Services Authority and the Audit Commission jointly regulated/inspected the housing services delivered by housing associations and local authorities under a regime designed by the Labour Government.  Research subsequently showed that the regulation/inspection of social housing in the 2000s significantly boosted performance in the sector.[iii]

But as the Coalition Government set about the ‘bonfire of quangos’ both the TSA and Audit Commission were abolished. The DCLG led by Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps took a contrary approach to Ministerial colleagues in the Education and Health Departments (taking two examples) where ‘consumer regulation’ was highly valued. Ofsted and CQC were seen as important parts of the Government armoury in education, health and social care. But consumer regulation was anathema to those running DCLG.

 Shapps actually wanted all formalhousing regulation abolished but the funders of housing associations (the banks and other finance institutions) fought hard to retain a regulatory regime that oversaw financial viability and governance.  After all, £100bn of private finance is invested in social housing provided by housing associations. And if you ran a finance house you would be foolish not to have the State carry out at least some of the checks of the bodies you fund. 

The regulation that remained after 2010 was transferred to the Homes and Communities Agency.  Consumer regulation was given a minor role in the new set up. And the hurdles erected to limit effective consumer regulation were high. For instance, ‘serious detriment’ had to be identified before any regulatory action could be taken by the HCA. And a ‘democratic filter’ was introduced to in effect stymie the efforts of tenants seeking to complain about their social housing landlords.

The 2018 Green Paper recognised the weaknesses of the regulatory framework for social housing with one section of the consultation paper calling for enhanced empowerment of residents and the strengthening of the regulator. Two years after the Green Paper was published, the social housing White Paper finally emerged this month (November 2020).[iv]  

Specifically looking at regulation, ‘The Charter for Social Housing Residents’ really does take us back to the position in 2010.[v] And in many ways the proposals significantly strengthen the regime that existed a decade ago. Points to note:

  • A major step forward sees all regulation of social housing placed under the auspices of one body – the Regulator of Social Housing; this finally realises one of the key ambitions of the seminal review of social housing regulation by Professor Martin Cave in 2007.[vi]
  • The return of service inspections. It is instructive to note that the ‘i’ word was used just once in the Green Paper of two years ago – and then, bizarrely, in relation to the assessment of the financial performance of housing associations. Inspection is the centre piece of the proposed regulatory framework.
  • An inevitable but welcome focus on health and safety.
  • A strengthening of the ties between the enhanced Housing Ombudsman Service (run by former Boris Johnson adviser Richard Blakeway) and the regulator.
  • A proposal to publish details about executive pay for housing associations (nothing that some association CEOs are paid over £400,000 a year).
  •  A strengthening of the enforcement powers available to the RSH including the introduction of unlimited fines for non compliance with the regulator’s standards.
  • A recognition that for-profit providers should be subject to greater scrutiny to prevent fraud and not claim housing benefit for their tenants when there is no entitlement.
  • A proposal to make housing associations subject to the Freedom of Information Act provisions that apply in the public sector (although this may founder given how this might threaten the private sector status of associations[vii]).

From a Government that is portrayed as de-regulatory, this revamped housing regulation framework is remarkable. Indeed you wonder how civil servants managed to persuade Robert Jenrick and his Ministerial colleagues to accept this much enhanced regulation regime. Those interested in improving the performance of social housing providers and ensuring those providers are fully accountable for their actions should welcome these changes.    Tenants in particular should relish the prospect of greater scrutiny of their landlords.  Certainly the Government appears to have rejected the siren voices from the larger housing associations in particular that have batted off tougher regulation in the past.  There is every prospect on this occasion that the regulator will not be subject to ‘professional capture’.

But there is a long way to go before the good intentions become a reality. Even if there is a fair wind it will be three/four years before the new regime is in place given the time needed to pass the necessary legislation and to set up the new arm of the RSH covering consumer regulation.  Funding may also be a problem as spending cuts are implemented to pay for the pandemic.

Even if the legislation is passed and monies found to pay for an enhanced RSH, tenants and others pushing for better performance by social housing providers need to ensure that a rigourous methodology is developed to inspect landlords in the new era. Inspecting largely from the user’s perspective is critical – a technique followed by the Audit Commission’s Housing Inspectorate from 2000 until 2010. Tenant Inspection Advisers must be involved in all inspections. Enforcement is key too. The RSH has been reluctant in the past to use its significant powers to bring back sliding providers to book.

And there are still gaps in the proposed regulatory framework. The current proposals do not cover the regulation of local authority strategic housing services such as homelessness or meeting housing needs.  And if we are seeking a true level playing field, perhaps the large providers of private rented housing – with over 1,000 homes, say – should be subject to regulation by the RSH.

Perhaps in another ten years…….

<span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color"><strong>Roger Jarman</strong></span>
Roger Jarman

Roger Jarman is an Associate with the Housing Quality Network where he provides consultancy services, leads training programmes and writes on housing regulation and other matters. He is also a Non Executive Director of two housing organisations.

From 1991 until 1999 he was Head of Housing Management at the Housing Corporation and then from 1999 until 2011 he was Head of Housing at the Audit Commission overseeing the 1400 housing inspections undertaken by the Commission during that period.  

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[i]   https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/

[ii]  https://www.gov.uk/government/news/social-housing-green-paper-a-new-deal-for-social-housing

[iii] https://www.ukhousingreview.org.uk/ukhr1011/index.html

[iv] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-charter-for-social-housing-residents-social-housing-white-paper

[v] Older readers will note the language used here as it echoes the Tenants’ Charter promoted by another Tory Government in the early 1980s.  

[vi] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20070701140243/http://www.communities.gov.uk/pub/422/EveryTenantMattersAreviewofsocialhousingregulationReportbyProfessorMartinCave_id1511422.pdf

[vii] https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/statementonclassificationofenglishhousingassociationsnovember2017

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Labour’s Planning Commission and the Planning White Paper Compared

Similar analysis different outcomes

During the latter stages of the previous government a Planning White Paper was expected almost on a daily basis. Like many other policy initiatives it fell foul of the Brexit stranglehold on parliament. It was partly to ensure that Labour had a response to the long expected White Paper that it launched a Planning Commission in September 2018 to develop a new suite of planning policies in advance of a General Election then expected to be in 2022.

Labour’s planning proposals made it into the 2019 manifesto but as we know Labour did not make it to government. Nevertheless, the Planning Commission’s suggested reforms sit as a powerful antidote to the view of planning and what it can achieve set out in the Government’s White Paper. Having said that the similarity in some of the analysis of what needs to change is striking.

Labour’s recommendations for greater use of digitisation in the planning system to improve accessibility and engagement with planning and the need for more investment in skills and training for planners are mentioned in the White Paper proposals.

Likewise, the need for reform of the Community Infrastructure Levy and putting in place a nationally agreed method of assessing housing need also are also reflected in both documents. Similarly, there is cross-party agreement that the design and quality of what is built need to be improved. There is also widespread agreement that local plan making needs to be simplified, speeded up and subject to statutory time limits.

However, what is massively different is the policy agenda that is envisioned by Labour and the Conservatives to achieve long lasting change to our neighbourhoods, regions and nation, and the values that need to underpin our planning system to achieve development fit for the 21st century and beyond.

Since 2010 the blame for the government’s inability to deliver on housing targets including those for affordable housing was laid at the door of planning even though the numbers of new houses approved through the planning system but not actually built rose year on year.

Alongside this, constant deregulation of planning, greater use of permitted development, sanctions against planning authorities for having too many appeals, contracted out planning services and too many local authorities without local plans in place led to an increasingly undemocratised, technically focused planning system that was increasingly at the mercy of speculators and where plan making and the visionary underpinnings of planning took a back seat.

Communities for the most part felt that planning was done to them and their views on planning were increasingly ignored or bypassed. Place making if it happened at all was the result of developers, planners and residents working together, despite the constraints of the system, to build or rebuild better communities.

And it was the need to build and rebuild strong and sustainable communities that was the starting point for Labour’s Planning Commission. We wanted place making to be at the heart of a planning system that would be value based to tackle inequality and address climate change.

The Labour Commission included representatives from key planning agencies and stakeholder groups and meetings of the Commission were supplemented by regional events with residents, developers and local authorities. The strong evidence base the Commission established documented the democratic deficit and technocratic complexity at the heart England’s planning system and led to proposals for radical change most notably in the need to build good quality homes with supporting infrastructure in genuinely sustainable neighbourhoods.

Thus, Labour’s proposals include recommendations for a new system of building standards to address quality, climate change and safety issues, and suggest putting in place new principles and guidance as well as national standards to achieve high quality design. It argues for a review of permitted development with planning permission being reinstated in most cases.

Labour wanted to see the relationship between what happens in local communities, their wider regions and the country as a whole reflected in a connected planning system with community, local, regional and national planning tiers so that infrastructure, jobs, local services and leisure and cultural facilities could be planned at the right spatial level. This would not only enable people to be properly housed it would facilitate people travelling safely to work with a transformation in greater use of cycles and public transport.

All neighbourhoods would be planned to have a high quality of life with the services they need to promote well-being on their doorstep and with the heritage of the built environment and natural environment protected and where possible enhanced. We wanted to achieve this by giving residents the ability to plan their communities alongside planning professionals who would give advice and would liaise between levels of the planning system.

That the Government’s White Paper says nothing about how to achieve well-being or equity through the planning system is perhaps not a surprise. What is a surprise is how little is said about land availability except for arguing that greater certainty needs to be given by the planning system to enable developers to come forward.

In contrast Labour suggested a radical approach to bringing more land forward by proposing setting up Public Development Corporations with the power to purchase, sell, and develop land to assist with the making and remaking of communities, alongside greater use of a simplified CPO system if necessary.

Labour also proposed introducing a land value capture system that would capture uplift for current and future communities. And Labour sees the  greenbelt not as a land set in aspic but land to be used as part of climate change mitigation and that can help reduce health inequalities.

The Government has argued for change too but their proposals for a new zonal system do little to match the rhetoric expressed in much of the White Paper and will depend on the type of zonal system adopted as well as the details of the plan that goes alongside it. It could result in a development straight jacket without measures to support delivery and the high quality development the Government says it wants to see. Likewise the proposal to support permitted development that is replicable could reduce quality rather than improving it.

Both of these proposals also run the risk of further denuding democratic oversight of, and involvement in, planning. There is no acknowledgement in the White Paper apart from keeping some sort of neighbourhood planning of the need to have citizens actively engaged in planning rather that simply being consulted (and then often ignored) about it.

Labour sought to address the need for active participation by involving  residents in the  first tier of planning – producing their community plan and making it the building block of the whole planning system.

The conclusion of TCPA is that the White Paper does not provide a single new right for community participation or a single new opportunity for democratic involvement in planning. For that reason alone the government should be asked to think again or come back with much more detail on how they will actually achieve the good quality place-making they say they want but cannot deliver through the proposals outlined so far.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Roberta Blackman-Woods</span></strong>
Roberta Blackman-Woods

Roberta Blackman-Woods is the former MP for the City of Durham (2005 to 2019) and was the Shadow Minister for Planning until November 2019.

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Open and shut case: it's CCT all over again

In the middle of the phone hacking scandal David Cameron found time to launch his White Paper on ‘Open Public Services’ (see the Cabinet Office website).
This document contains more warm words than you can count about the benefits it will bring to individuals and communities, but it is remarkably reminiscent of the proposals
for the NHS: when you strip away the verbiage, it is about putting most public services out to tender to any willing provider, extending the purchaser/provider split, and reducing the role of public bodies to that of commissioners.  As the paper says: “the principles of open
public services will switch the default from one where the state provides the service itself to one where the state commissions the service from a range of diverse providers.”  In the real world, it means more private companies running more public services, the process otherwise known as privatisation.
The implications for housing are not entirely clear.  ‘Housing management’ is identified as one of the services where the government will consult about how to open up the service to more local commissioning.  There is no specific mention of councils who still directly manage their housing stock but there may be serious implications for them further down the line as the plans develop.
There is a specific reference to arms length management organisations (ALMOs).  They are given as a good example of how public sector providers could be given ‘autonomous status’ and become like housing associations.  We covered some of the options available for ALMOs recently on Red Brick, but although the White Paper talks a lot about improving accountability and empowerment, more importantly it raises the spectre of ALMOs being forced to become ‘autonomous’ even when this is against the express wishes of the tenants.
One other reference to a housing-related service concerns Supporting People, a service
which is already largely commissioned but where the future emphasis is planned to be on the development of personalised budgets.
There are three principle fears about the White paper and none are addressed in it.
First, that this will follow the same route as Thatcher’s Compulsory Competitive
Tendering regime but with more soft soap – it is bound to involve compulsion but the likely mechanisms for achieving compliance are not made clear.  Classic Cameron.
Secondly, there is no reference to the need to undertake an EU procurement for services, which is a major issue when considering the future direction of ALMOs.
And thirdly, there is no linkage to the size of future budgets and the cuts – new rights for individuals and communities will only be worth the paper they are written on if there is the money to back them up.