2025: Will it be the year to end planning uncertainty?
We’re approaching the end of 2024 where substantial change in planning and development has been promised – but the publication of the revised NPPF is the first actual change with potentially far reaching and long-term consequences.
This industry-led long read was written by Nick Diment, director of Boyer.
Despite many positives, the change in government has created considerable uncertainty for planning and development – from local authority planners unsure of which version of the NPPF to base their local plans on, to developers concerned that while their likelihood of planning success may be increased, the actual implementation of those planning consents is wracked with uncertainty, not least capacity at each stage of the supply chain.
And so in looking ahead to 2025, it is worth addressing some of the unanswered questions.
Uncertainty
Planning touches almost every part of the economy and certainty is a prerequisite of growth and investor confidence, and yet currently uncertainly continues to exist at many levels be that the approach to green belt release, the scope of strategic planning, future of planning committees, national development management standards, retrofit versus redevelopment, viability and permitted development rights (PDR)… the list goes on. Economic uncertainty, if it continues, will impede potential development despite greater clarity in the planning system.
The revised NPPF has been published and more changes are due to follow in 2025. The planning system needs time to acclimatise to these changes but how will planning authorities in the process of preparing a local plan manage this process and ensure plans are up to date and capable of responding to change?
Devolution – or not?
Both the English Devolution Bill and future Planning and Infrastructure Bill promise further devolution. We understand that responsibility for strategic planning is to be removed from a local level and bestowed at a higher (regional) level. But is this transfer of power upwards actually devolution? Likewise the introduction of a suite of National Development Management Policies which local authorities will be required to adhere to, limiting the opportunity to address these issues on a local level.
Additionally, the geographical coverage of devolution appears unclear and potentially chaotic. The previous Labour government put in place Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs) to oversee strategic planning, ensuring that coverage was universal. The regionally-led approach to devolution, on the other hand (whereby areas can determine whether they wish to form a combined authority) could lead to some local authorities falling between two regional bodies and retaining strategic planning powers at a local authority level.
Devolution (defined by Gov.UK as ‘decision making moved closer to the citizen’) would, ironically, have a greater presence in those local authorities who had retained the status quo, as opposed to those whose planning powers were transferred to a higher level.
The patchwork approach to devolution, which has not existed previously will also lead to an odd disparity of planning powers. Currently the London combined authority has planning powers; Manchester is in the process of acquiring planning powers, but other devolved assemblies will, initially at least, have less autonomy over planning matters. Will these powers sit at a national, or a local level?
Resourcing
The government has promised funding for 300 additional planners. Irrespective of the fact that this would allow for less than 0.5 planner per local authority – and considerably less so if devolved bodies also require strategic planning expertise – it is not only planners that are required to enable development to take place.
At a local authority level alone, planning positively requires input from conservation officers, ecology officers, highways to name a few . Beyond planning, development requires a huge range of skills, from construction workers to sales and marketing. In many circumstances, government support will be needed to ensure that the necessary skills are available.
Strategic assessment
The government has put in place a target for the development of new homes. But homes are a single element of new communities.
For example, the country lacks a standard methodology for assessing employment need. The observation of trends is of little use bearing in mind the curveball that Covid has thrown at us: we cannot look at patterns that have emerged over the last decade because sectors are fast moving, particularly industrial and logistics, where policies need to be more agile.
Unlike housing, its more difficult to predict a target number for development of new spaces for employment, since employment use is so nuanced – by sector and by geography. We cannot rely on appeal decisions to determine the number of jobs that must be created through new employment spaces but in the absence of targets, important decisions will be taken by individual Inspectors.
The revised NPPF: beyond residential
What about employment uses to support the million plus new homes?
A change in planning policy for commercial and industrial development was notably missing from the revised NPPF but perhaps not a surprise.
From a commercial development point of view, one of the few changes to the NPPF was the recognition that local plans must have regard to national industrial strategy (Invest 2035). Is this a nod towards strategic planning, and something we can expect to see more of in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill? It is widely appreciated that regional planning is by far the best means of enabling good industrial development, much of which operates at the national, regional, or subregional levels and this would certainly be welcomed.
Furthermore, it is surprising that ‘flexible workspace’ was dropped as an example of flexible working practices, given changing working patters. This is likely to be unpopular with those who advocate flexible working as part of a health work / life balance.
And while we can’t have everything we want for Christmas, I felt the NPPF missed the opportunity to provide some clarity around retrofit versus redevelopment.
Conclusion
While the government’s housing targets appear unattainable within the first year of this Parliament (and the Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that the net supply of new homes will drop below 200,000 this year) certainty of development is decreasing, rather than increasing and the number of planning applications is coming from a very low base.
Substantial commitment is needed to turn this around. A Ministerial Statement, outlining the direction and timing of future government policy would be a very positive step in removing uncertainty from the system and a positive start to 2025.
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