Time to plan the plan-led system?

With the strong political emphasis on achieving immediate growth, there’s always a thought that sits somewhat uncomfortably with me – ‘as a planner, is it not our true strength to envisage long-term economic, societal and environmental outcomes?’. Setting my idealism aside, planning is and will always be a socio-political structure and therefore I don’t think we’ll ever be free from short termism and the temptation to ‘overhaul’ the planning system yet one more time. However, against this backdrop how can we continue to advocate for, and promote long term and stable approaches to managing the use and development of land?

Well thankfully, and to bring me some sense of comfort, the government has been putting a lot of thought and effort into how we can achieve this through proposing a new approach to achieving a plan-led system. This has cumulated in the assent of the Planning and Infrastructure Act, ushering in the reintroduction of strategic planning in England, the publication of updated guidance and anticipated laying of regulations relating to local plan preparation and now within the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) out for consultation, clearly delineating policies relating to plan preparation and development management.

The issue of local plan coverage, and the time taken to prepare plans are well documented in England. The problems are deep set, complex, politically challenging and framed by years and years of disinvestment in planning policy. Indeed, our State of the Profession 2025 research identified a 28.8% reduction in spend on planning policy teams since 2010, which have been cut proportionally more that other parts of the planning service.

It’s safe to say - the solutions are complex, costly, fraught with unintended consequences and especially tricky to manage in their transition. For example, when looking at the draft NPPF as currently set out, whilst acknowledging the potential future removal of a significant amount of written policy in the new style local plans, there seems to be an expansion of workloads elsewhere.  This includes greater emphasis on allocating more small and medium sites, upstreaming viability assessments, greater emphasis on defining settlement boundaries and incorporating any important matters currently held in supplementary planning documents before they are phased out, all with a longer proposed time frame, currently set at a 15 year minimum.   

And let’s not forget about local government reform.

So, will the government’s ambitions for a plan-led system succeed through the parliamentary term? I certainly hope so, but turning around such a large ship is never going to happen overnight. With a new rules-based planning system and nationally framed policy, getting the plan-led system working is going to be crucial in securing community buy-in to the planning systems and a means to contribute to the future of their places.

As ever if we are serious about setting in place a plan led system, we need to put our money where our mouth is and provide the resource necessary to do so. We very much welcome the recent government announcement to provide another £14million to support local plan preparation, but as our Autumn Budget submission set out, funding needs to be significantly higher in our estimation and needs to also identify the cost and workforce necessary to bring in the reintroduction of strategic planning.