Royal Town Planning Institute – General Assembly

NOTES of a meeting of the General Assembly held at the Leggate Lecture Theatre, University of Liverpool, on Wednesday 15 July 2009.

PRESENT: Martin Willey (President), Ann Skippers (Senior Vice-President), Richard Summers (Junior Vice-President), Janet O’Neill (Immediate Past President).

Janet Askew, David Barraclough, Jan Bessell, Ken Burley, David Chapman, Heather Cheesbrough, Jim Claydon, Michael Crossley, John Esslemont, Sandra Fryer, Peter Geraghty, Clive Harridge, Mike Hayes, Colin Haylock, Bernadette Hillman, Robert Hobbs, Meeta Kaur, David Marshall, Daniel Massey, Hazel McKay, Janice Morphet, James Morris, Janet O’Neill, Cath Ranson, Wayne Reynolds, Glyn Roberts, Leonora Rozee, Chris Shepley, Ann Skippers, Alistair Stark, Des Stephens, Richard Summers, Ron Tate, Andrew Taylor, Pat Thomas, Alan Wenban-Smith, Tony Whitehead, Richard Williamson, Owain Wyn.

Guests: Peter Batey, David Curtis, Timothy Harrison, Michael Napier, Bob Sharples, David Shaw, Sarah Webb.

In attendance: Robert Upton (Secretary General) and other members of RTPI staff.

Apologies for absence: Don Alder, Janthia Algate, Ian Angus, Charlie Collins, Vincent Goodstadt (Honorary Treasurer), Jed Griffiths, John Harvey, Kelvin Hinton, Philip Jackson, Antonia James, Ismail Mohammed, Hector Pearson, Gemma Rhodes, John Scott, Mark Southgate, Graham Stallwood, David Twigg, Peter Wilbraham (Honorary Solicitor and Secretary).

Report by Michael Napier:

Welcome

Professor David Shaw, head of the department of Civic Design, welcomed Assembly members. The department of Civic Design was celebrating its centenary, having been founded in 1909. An exhibition was currently running based on the department’s centenary. In 2008, Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture, the university’s Victoria Building (which housed the Leggate Lecture Theatre) had been re-opened following an £8.6 million refurbishment project.

Professor Peter Batey, Lever Professor of Town and Regional Planning, explained that the department’s foundation had been financed by a donation from William Hesketh Lever (later Lord Leverhulme), using money he had been awarded in a libel action. The funding had produced the world’s first department for the study of town planning; the world’s first professorship of town planning (the Lever chair); and the first international journal on town planning, The Town Planning Review.

The department had an extensive archive of material relating to its own history, which Professor Batey drew on to illustrate the main features of its development over the past century.

General Assembly Business

Secretary-General

The President, Martin Willey, referred to Secretary-General Robert Upton’s impending departure following his appointment as one of two deputy chairs of the Infrastructure Planning Commission. The President thanked him for 13 years of outstanding service to the Institute and he was warmly applauded by Assembly members.

October General Assembly meeting

The President said that his diary commitments made it necessary to change the date of the October meeting. A new date would be announced as soon as possible.

Town and Country Planning Summer School

Leonora Rozee, Deputy President of the Town and Country Planning Summer School, asked members to pass information about this year’s TCPSS to any of their colleagues, not in receipt of the Institute’s journal.

Executive Board report

The Secretary General’s report to the 17 June meeting of the Executive Board (paper EXB09/JUN/06) had been circulated with the agenda.

The Senior Vice-President, Ann Skippers, as chair of the Executive Board, made a report which covered the financial situation, including action to be taken in light of the projected shortfall of £375,000 against budget; the recent Planning Convention and launch of the Planning to Live with Climate Change initiative; Planning Aid; education and membership, including accreditation, the assessment of professional competence and learning partners; and the Board’s recent Away Day.

She said that Pat Thomas had kindly offered support in the absence of the Honorary Solicitor and Secretary, Peter Wilbraham, and that Chris Shepley, a former Honorary Treasurer, had kindly agreed to stand in for the period of Vincent Goodstadt’s indisposition.

In discussion, a number of points were made.

• Recruitment would not be frozen across the board, as a result of the financial shortfall, but would be strictly controlled.
• A revised corporate plan was being drafted and it was hoped that a draft would be ready for the Assembly’s next meeting.
• All contracts for the provision of RTPI services were being closely scrutinised. The point was made with particular reference to the conference programme, run by Hawksmere, who charged commercial rates without (in the opinion of some) always offering a commercially competitive product, and without paying their speakers.
• The Executive Board wanted to improve its own effectiveness through more corporate working, encouraging people with the appropriate skills to stand for election, succession planning, having the right information for decision taking, and having an annual plan for its meetings.

Membership subscriptions 2010

The Secretary General spoke of the circulated paper, explaining why the Executive Board was minded to leave subscriptions for 2010 at their present level. The paper was received without comment, although General Assembly members had until 14 August to respond on an individual basis.

Audit Committee

David Marshall, as chair of the Audit Committee, said that the committee was continuing its consideration of the processes involved in the recent staff restructuring exercises, and hoped to present its report to the next meeting of the Assembly. It was then minded to look at (amongst other things) aspects of the way the Institute engaged with its members.

The committee now received independent support (in the person of Michael Napier) and had been assured that it would also have access to legal advice, should this be required.

Planning to live with climate change

Rynd Smith (Director of Policy and Partnerships) reminded Assembly members of the RTPI’s seven commitments for planning to live with climate change, backed up by many other ideas in the Planning to Live with Climate Change document, and drew attention to the evolving body of work on the website. He also referred to the memory stick, available from the RTPI.

In discussion, a number of points were made.

• In the run-up to the next general election, the volume of Government consultations was expected to diminish, releasing Institute resources for the climate change initiative. In the longer term, the climate change initiative would inform the revised corporate plan and future budgeting.
• The climate change initiative would be rolled out in a number of ways, including forthcoming evidence to the House of Commons Environment Committee, roadshows at conferences, the content of national and regional conference programmes, dialogue with planning schools and learning partners, links with political parties, the involvement of Planning Aid, etc. Links with industry and with schools also needed to be pursued.
• Two words of warning from Assembly members: First, the RTPI could not and should not try to change the world – its business was to change planning, including the profession and its partners and stakeholders. Do that well and the RTPI would have a sound platform from which to address the wider world. Second, the RTPI should not duplicate work. It should identify and build on good work already done by others, where this existed.

Recession and Housing Markets: Short term trough or long term shift?

An outline of issues

Andrew Matheson, Network Manager for the joint RTPI/CIH (Chartered Institute of Housing) Planning for Housing Network, listed some of the issues that the Network had been discussing with leading players in the housing field.

With the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU ), the Network had been debating three questions: 

• whether targets for affordable housing were realistic; 
• whether a greater supply of land would increase affordability; and 
• whether buy-to-let disrupted traditional markets.

With the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), the Network was debating 

• whether pipeline housing could be sustained; 
• whether the renegotiation of planning obligations could help; 
• whether adaptations to meet climate change could still be afforded; and 
• whether the draft PPS4 on Planning for Sustainable Economic Development could help with community sustainability.

With Knight Frank – authors of a recent report on The Future of Residential Development – the Network was debating 

• whether profitability for house builders could be restored; 
• whether the current funding model for social housing was broken; 
• whether the urban fringe would be the only attractive option for house builders; and 
• who would pay for climate change obligations.

With local authorities, the Network was debating 

• whether the guidance in PPS 3 on Housing was sufficient and helpful; 
• whether flexibilities with planning obligations, both old and new, were helping; and 
• whether eco-towns could make a helpful contribution.

With the think tank, Localis – joint publishers of a recent report on Principles for Social Housing Reform – the Network was debating 

• whether broken neighbourhood obligations could be passed on to social landlords; 
• whether capital subsidies could be replaced by more effective personal ones; and 
• whether more empowered consumers would drive a more responsive supply chain.

Sarah Webb, Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), said that some issues had been given greater urgency through the impacts of the present recession. These included the need to maintain pressure on the Government and to take full advantage of HCA intervention in housing supply. It was important to spread awareness of successful practice, especially with regard to planning obligation reviews. Cross-sector support was needed, and professional skills had to be built up.

An upturn in the economy would come, eventually, and we needed to plan for that, for example, through sustaining an appropriate supply of land, developing new delivery models, finding new routes to affordability, improving infrastructure planning and achieving partnership working across sectors.

A number of factors – the recession, demographic change, climate change, political volatility, a possible change in the public mood – had combined to provide an important opportunity to rethink housing. 

A new objective for housing was needed, an objective that sought to avoid a repeat of boom-and-bust. 

A possible formulation of such an objective might be:

“for everyone to have access to a decent, affordable, carbon neutral home in an economically and environmentally sustainable community that provides the opportunity for them to fulfil their potential.”

The truth was that we were not as customer-focused as we liked to think. People didn’t have much real choice when it came to housing. 

A new approach was needed that put customers first and offered them real choice. Such an approach would be tenure neutral, based on flexible tenure as the norm: the sharp divide between ownership and renting would become blurred. 

The new approach would assume a mixed economy of providers, and would distinguish more clearly between ownership, development and management.

What would this mean for planning?

Under-supply of land remained the key problem, even allowing for the number of homes unoccupied at any given time. A new approach to supply should have, as its objectives, the provision of more land, coupled with control of land values, to reduce land as a proportion of housing cost; and the securing of enough supply to cope with demographic change, including migration – and this should include bringing empty homes into use.

Such an approach meant the planning system delivering sufficient land and houses, with a flexible mix of tenures, the Government adopting affordability targets rather than tenure targets, and decisions being taken at the right spatial level.

Other issues that had to be thought through included retro-fitting for climate change, with the aim of creating a carbon neutral housing stock. This had to happen at the level of whole communities, as well as individual houses. 

(It was possible, for instance, that Green Belt policy made things worse by forcing out-of-towners to live further away from centres of population, and so to commute further, than they otherwise might.)

An ageing population also required adaptations to housing stock.

How, in meeting all these demands, could quality and density be maintained? 

Who should own and control land and buildings?

At some point down the line, there was an argument to be had about the pros and cons of wholesale demotion of housing that it was impractical to make carbon neutral.

Andrew Matheson concluded the joint presentation by mentioning some of the Network’s forthcoming activities and initiatives:

• a paper from the CIH on Land for Affordable Housing to be the subject of member discussion
• a joint website with Shelter and the Government Office for the South East, promoting case studies of successful responses to the housing downturn
• continuing (through the RTPI website) the work of the RTPI Collaborative Working Group on the Code for Sustainable Homes

Discussion

Sandra Fryer said that we had to find new ways of working with private sector landlords.

Leonora Rozee referred to the Government’s bias in favour of owner-occupation. A culture change was needed, with renting seen as an equally acceptable form of tenure.

Jim Claydon, welcoming a debate likely to lead to a more sophisticated understanding of the issues, said that it was now clear that the private sector, left to itself, would never deliver affordable housing.

Colin Haylock asked whether there were any signs that the desired culture change was beginning to occur – or had we not yet had enough of a bad time?
Peter Geraghty wondered whether the rest of Europe was experiencing a housing crisis, or was it just a British problem?

Mike Hayes raised two issues: 

• volume house builders, whom he referred to as the behemoths who didn’t deliver sustainable communities; and 
• the elusive “golden thread” linking national or regional targets to the places where homes were actually built.

Janice Morphet referred to owner occupiers regarding their homes as pension funds, part of a culture in which construction was seen – in the UK far more than in the rest of Europe – as an indicator of economic activity, and in which there was consequently much double-thinking about the role of construction.

Ron Tate emphasised the necessity of making communities, not just individual homes, carbon neutral. Only thus could carbon neutrality be achieved.

Sarah Webb, responding to the discussion, and agreeing with much of what had been said, spoke of the need to get away from the housing career model – in which people were encouraged to get onto the owner-occupier ladder as soon as possible and stay there – to a more flexible pattern of housing tenure.

Housing in changing times: an HCA perspective

David Curtis, Director of the Homes and Communities Agency, Yorkshire and Humberside Region, and a Chartered Town Planner, said that the HCA vision was to create opportunity:

• for people to live in homes they could afford, in places they wanted to live in;
• for local authorities and communities to deliver the ambitions they had for their own areas and, as a national agency, to work locally, through its nine regional offices.

The “Single Conversation” was the process developed by the HCA to secure delivery at the local level of its national objectives. By working in an open and transparent way with local authorities and others, the HCA aimed to become local government’s best delivery partner. The Single Conversation covered the full range of housing, infrastructure, regeneration and community activities, drawing on priorities set out in key local plans. It would address issues of sustainability, funding (both public and private), land value capture, planning obligations, the community infrastructure levy.

A sound basis of planning policy was essential. The Single Conversation relied on the spatial planning process and on deliverable local development frameworks. 

Core strategies needed to 

• reflect the goals of the Sustainable Communities Strategy, 
• make clear spatial choices for development, 
• include affordable housing policies, and 
• be backed up by viable investment plans. 

PPS1 was very clear:

“Spatial planning goes beyond traditional land use planning to bring together and integrate policies for the development and use of land with other policies and programmes which influence the nature of places and how they function.”

The Single Conversation exactly fitted this approach.

The market downturn, with all its attendant difficulties, was expected to continue into 2010. But despite the short term problems, the current market was not out of kilter with long term trends.

David Curtis agreed with previous speakers that a different approach to tenure was needed. People’s housing requirements changed over the course of a lifetime and did not necessarily follow a simple linear owner-occupier pattern. Different attitudes and more flexibility were required.

The Government’s Kickstart Housing Delivery programme had been announced in the 2009 budget. It targeted stalled sites and aimed to support the construction of 9,000 high quality mixed tenure homes by the end of 2010–2011. The money allocated to the programme was being treated as investment, not subsidy.

More recently, the Prime Minister had announced a £1.5 billion boost to support the development of 20,000 new energy efficient homes over the next two years. This “Housing Pledge” comprised:

• up to £750 million for about 12,500 new homes through the National Affordable Housing Programme
• up to £500 million for about 4,000 new homes through Kickstart (in addition to the £400 million announced in the budget)
• up to £250 million for direct development by local authorities of about 3,000 new homes (in addition to the £100 million announced in the budget) and 
• a Public Land Programme for around 500 new homes, initially, using publicly owned land contributed in return for equity share, and designed to bring new construction players into the market.

David Curtis identified some of the behaviours that might be expected of developers, particularly in the context of the current downturn:

• They would want to find ways to mitigate the loss of value of land; 
• they would try to minimise planning obligations; 
• they would seek overage; 
• they would bank favourable consents and preserve consents by means of nominal material starts.

The HCA had issued a good practice note on Investment and Planning Obligations: Responding to the Downturn, to help manage the delivery of infrastructure and affordable housing from planning obligations. It was intended to inform both HCA staff and HCA stakeholders on how HCA investment could best work with the planning process,

The HCA saw itself as an investor, rather than a funder. As an investor, its principles could be summarised as:

• the importance of land value for viability
• planning obligations based on current values
• flexible investment alongside flexible and transparent development management
• additionality and added value
• recovery of investment where practical
• phased approach to viability in a recovering market
• better control of delivery timing
• viability shelf-life in a recovering market.

Achieving the right investment balance, between infrastructure and affordable housing, would be an important part of the HCA’s Single Conversation process. The process itself would need to be different in different places, and would change over time.

Recession and the market

Glyn Roberts, Director of Technical Services, North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership, agreed with other speakers that the Government approached housing from an economic perspective.

He said that the market would remain the main allocation mechanism during the downturn. Planning needed good market analysis at all levels.

The sixty-four thousand dollar questions were whether population trends would stay as predicted, and whether we needed as much housing supply now. 

In answering these questions, it had to be recognised that the south east was not typical. There were huge regional market variations.

He displayed graphs, comparing his own area of North Staffordshire with the region and the country, as a whole, and showing the tendency of people to move out of conurbations to rural areas. But they also showed that a programme of public intervention, including planning controls, could have a clearly marked effect, for instance in reducing the number of long term voids.

Lower demand markets required an appropriate response from planning and housing policy. 

Spatial priorities might need to be re-defined. Phasing was crucial to safeguard older urban areas and inner cities. Too much new-build in suburbs and new settlements would threaten regeneration.

Investment in existing stock should be prioritised, and unmet needs – such as starter homes and homes for the over-70s – should be targeted. 

National and regional demographic and housing assumptions needed to be reviewed. It was no longer possible to rely on nationally determined numbers. 

Strategic housing market assessments needed to be carried out, as required by PPS3, providing a basis for regional and local plan policies.

Planners needed to sharpen their skills and to work in partnership with (amongst others) demographers, economists and housing strategy officers. 

The RTPI itself needed to develop a better understanding of national market and key spatial variations.

Now was not the time to accept conventional wisdom, but to learn from market evidence and to meet the challenges it posed.

Busting some myths

As if taking his cue from the previous speaker’s closing remarks, Alan Wenban-Smith identified what he described as five myths.

Myth 1: that the planning system provided houses.
No: the planning system provided land for housing. More land did not necessarily mean more housing. A gap could exist between the effective demand for housing (both private and public) and the planned supply of land. “Fire and forget” land supply trajectories in regional spatial strategies increased this risk

Myth 2: that new houses were needed for net new households.
But there was no such thing as a “net household” – 60% of the net increase in households were old households, getting older and smaller. Very few new young households accessed new housing. Moreover, 90% of housing choice was from existing stock, and most entry level housing consisted of existing homes in the poorer areas of cities. 

So the condition of existing stock was what mattered most for the delivery of decent housing.

A graph demonstrated how housing choice, migration and social change were whole stock processes. 

In this example, the addition of one new house to an existing stock of 99 houses – a net stock change of 1 and a net increase in the number of households of 1 – involved a total of 20 housing choices: 10 households moved within the area, four moved out of the area, five new households were created, plus the one new house.

Myth 3: that more housing land increased choice.
Where there was over supply of land, house builders would prefer greenfield sites to brownfield, but, whilst greenfield building might increase the number of new homes for sale:

• new development would attract an unfair share of attention, infrastructure and services
• existing housing areas would be disadvantaged and social divides made worse
• choice of decent existing stock (90% of the market) would be reduced
• the poorest new households would be particularly affected
• urban areas would become less attractive
• those who could afford to do so would migrate
• travel patterns would become more diffuse, with greater car dependency and an increase in carbon emissions.

Myth 4: that more new homes would improve affordability.
But most of the value of a house lay in its context, not its bricks and mortar. Building 240,000 new homes per annum would only return purchase affordability to the 2007 level. 

Affordability depended not just on purchase prices but also on rental levels. And, whilst ending the house price bubble might increase people’s ability to buy houses, increasing income inequality hit the poorest.

A graph showing the Gini coefficient, from 1961 to 2007, illustrated the extent to which income inequality had increased over this period. This country’s record was not good.

Myth 5: that household projections were a firm basis for planning.
But household projections depended on volatile economic and social processes. 

National household projections needed to be revised every two to three years, and sub-national projections were even more volatile.

A particular danger of over-reliance on household projections was that, whilst an under-supply of land was easily corrected, over-supply had permanent results.

In conclusion, the present planning policy for housing was to maximise new build so as to improve affordability. But this policy could not be implemented, it could not deliver its own main objective, and it risked extensive collateral damage. 

Should the RTPI support such a policy?

Good planning required a clear sense of strategic direction combined with tactical flexibility to respond to new problems and opportunities. Planning for housing land must therefore respond to the possibility of high long term needs, whilst avoiding irreversible harm from over-provision in the short term.

In other words, plan, monitor and manage.

Our partners in housing

Rynd Smith briefly outlined some of the thinking emerging from the RTPI’s partners and other stakeholders in housing, prompted partly by the opportunities for change offered by the current situation. Much of this thinking was apparent from presentations given by previous speakers, and focused on the role of the customer (the demand side of housing), the role of land and housing provision (the supply side), the management of stock reform, and the relevance of planning to all of this.

There was an emerging desire to move towards a situation in which:

• there was improved stewardship of the housing stock
• planning delivered land and housing but not necessarily particular types of tenure
• Government did not have tenure targets but aimed for an effective housing system in which the balance of tenures could change in response to demand
• residents could fund property upgrading from energy savings
• loans costs resided with the property rather than the person
• planning and tax incentives or penalties were used to stimulate desired outcomes.

There was a distinction to be made between planning’s spatial, land supply and sustainable communities role and housing tenure delivery. Planning would no longer deliver particular kinds of tenure but would focus on delivering the right diversity of stock in the right places, to the right standards, and with the right infrastructures, to achieve sustainable outcomes.

Break out groups

The meeting divided into six break-out groups and each then reported back very briefly to the full Assembly. Each group had been asked to identify four priority issues, questions, conclusions or recommendations.

Group A: The impacts of the recession on housing

Group leader: Richard Summers

Report: Peter Geraghty

• The market had failed. The current model was bankrupt and had failed to deliver.
• Partnership was the new model.
• We needed greater regulation – of standards, quality, affordability, tenure. We must not be fearful of regulation. Strong intervention was essential.
• Public funding should have a greater emphasis on investment, capable of generating a return, and representing a more effective use of resources. To make this happen, planners needed a better understanding of the underlying economics.

Group B: Housing need and demand

Group leader: Alan Wenban-Smith

Report: Alan Wenban-Smith

• Overblown demographic projections were not helpful. We needed to demystify them and get a good long term view.
• We needed a better delivery system. The HCA’s Single Conversation was just right. It was actually about spatial planning. We should embrace this approach.
• We desperately needed to avoid a top down one-size-fits-all approach in favour of localisation.
• Undeliverable projections were actively dangerous. We needed five-year delivery plans for local development frameworks, and we needed to put a stop to land banking.
• To meet the needs of the poorest we should find ways of doing more with what we’ve got, using existing stock, right to buy, housing benefit, brownfield sites, local authorities’ own land.

Group C: New build and the urban renaissance

Group leader: Colin Haylock

Report: Colin Haylock

• We needed a loose fit. Proper use of the sequential test approach should ensure that new build supported renaissance. We must hold our nerve.
• We needed to understand the potential and the limitations of the existing stock, including the economic, social and environmental costs of replacement, and using new build to do what existing stock could not do.
• We needed to find ways of making retro-fitting attractive to the development industry, as part of a wider effort to force higher environmental standards onto the market.
• We needed to understand how people’s accommodation requirements changed at different stages in their lives, and ensure that they were able to make the appropriate choices. At present people had little real choice. Young professional for instance had little choice but to move to the suburbs. Real choice must help in renaissance terms

Group D: Maximising benefit from the existing stock

Group leader: Glyn Roberts

Report: Tony Whitehead

• Existing stock was very variable across the UK as regarded infrastructure, quality of stock, quantum of households, community – so the context must always be looked at.
• New public investment in the existing stock was needed to achieve decent housing, although this was likely to be more expensive than new build if done properly – and it must be done properly or not at all. So we should take the bull by the horns and demolish only if existing stock was incapable of adequate improvement, and only after full research and cost/benefit analysis.
• Better base-line data on the nature and quality of existing stock were needed. Nowadays we were actually less well informed than our predecessors had been 30 or 40 years ago.
• We needed to develop cross-funding mechanisms to achieve improvement of the existing stock and enable the private sector to make its contribution.
• We could have some kind of housing scrappage scheme (comparable to the current car scrappage scheme) to give people more real choice.
• We needed eco-neighbourhoods, not just eco-housing.
• Planners needed better commercial knowledge and skills.

Group E: Reassessing national policy and delivery.

Group leader: Alistair Stark
Report: Leonora Rozee

• We should start to deliver proper “plan manage monitor” (in that order) around regeneration as well as land release, based on functional regions – not necessarily the same as administrative regions – to underpin managed release and appropriate phasing mechanisms.
• Simplistic targets led to perverse outcomes – land banking, delay, mismatch of production to need.
• The Government should recognise that the public sector had a key role to play, in pump priming and serving, and possibly also through the tax system as a means of reclaiming land value.
• Were we supporting the housing market, or delivering houses? They were not the same thing. We should empower communities through funding and other means to deliver the housing they needed, instead of pursuing the top down approach prevalent in England.

Group F: Market sensitive planning for housing

Group leader: Helen Cheesbrough

Report: Helen Cheesbrough

• The existing affordable housing delivery model did not work. More emphasis should be placed on delivery during the plan making process, and a wider range of agencies should be included in delivery plans.
• When the market wasn’t working ways should be found of making private sector deliver – e.g. using private finance initiative, institutional investment, the Transport Innovation Fund, the Community Land Trust fund. In these and other ways local authorities needed to be proactive. They should not regard themselves as having a solely regulatory function.
• Planners needed to develop new skills and a better understanding of housing market performance.
• The planning system should focus more strongly on existing stock.

Discussion

The President, Martin Willey, identified some of the points to emerge from the discussion so far:

• Volume house builders wouldn’t change, so needed to be driven to deliver by commercial imperatives or coercion.
• Public funding was, rightly, increasingly regarded as investment seeking a return (although that might not always be possible).
• Planning needed a clear delivery system. The HCA’s Single Conversation approach was attractive, but there was real concern that it could diminish the role of the local development framework. It was important to avoid the proliferation of different plans and to maintain the centrality of the plan making process.
• Existing stock had a critical role to play.

Leonora Rozee said that the HCA Single Conversation should facilitate a local authority’s vision, not dominate it.

Mike Hayes said that the local development framework must be corporately owned and local authorities needed a clear understanding of their contribution to the process. Chief planning officers needed support in that process. The RTPI could consider offering such support, perhaps through a mentoring service.

Sandra Fryer said that there were already examples of developers doing deals directly with the HCA, bypassing the local authority.

Alistair Stark said that Government thinking was dominated by conventional economic models. We needed to break down Government silos, partly through the National Strategic Partnership Forum (as

Sir Bob Kerslake had done in Sheffield, the President pointed out).

Colin Haylock said that we needed to be intelligent about what we built and where we built it, as well as how much we built.

The President said that we needed to engage communities to develop a better understanding of their needs.

Peter Geraghty said that the divide between perceptions of housing need and opposition to housing provision had to be bridged.

Alan Wenban-Smith asked how we could achieve legitimacy for something that was not popular. Communication was the key. We had to talk to the public about the issues and the trade-offs, making intelligent use of research.

Glyn Roberts said that the housing market was driven by aspiration as well as need; housing markets had to be understood spatially.