Can Steve Reed save Christmas with his planning reforms?

December is upon us and soon that jolly man with a beard and a red hat will be bringing us new things. Then, not long after Steve Reed has published a suite of new planning policies, we can look forward to a visit from Father Christmas. Despite all the excited anticipation, both planning reform and Christmas can sometimes disappoint.

National development management policies (NDMPs) have long been on the industry’s Christmas list, as a way of standardising the way that decisions are made across our 300-plus planning authorities rather than each having their own subtle variation on a theme. And, while NDMPs look set to be part of the Christmas blitz, we already know – because Reed has said so – that they will be non-statutory.

That will seem an arcane point, but it is important. It significantly weakens their effect. Rather than overriding local plan policies, NDMPs will instead be just a material consideration.

Councils will try to duplicate them in their local plans, introducing their own local authority specific tweaks, just as they do now – exactly the issue that NDMPs were intended to solve. The government’s ability to impose pro-growth policies on local authorities will be limited.

The arguments against statutory NDMPs seem to centre on the fact that they would immediately render equivalent local plan policies out-of-date, while preventing councils from adding their own bespoke adjustments. Yet that is exactly their point. And, if we do want councils to be able to put their own spin on policies, the NDMPs can be written in a way which allows that. 

The government’s ability to impose pro-growth policies on local authorities will be limited

It is a huge disappointment; akin to discovering that the winter wonderland you were expecting is not a festive extravaganza, but fairy lights and a YouTube video projected onto the wall of an industrial unit by the ring road.

This continues a disturbing pattern of the government choosing the least impactful option for reform. As welcome as they are, it will be 2030 before the new, higher housing targets apply across the whole of England.

The additional affordable housing required by grey belt policy means development of green belt sites is only taking place at any scale in the South-east. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill was watered down. With so much more reform in the works, that tendency is a concern.

The policies and regulations for the long-awaited 30-month local plan process are imminent. We have been promised a streamlined system to deliver simpler plans more quickly, increasing our dire local plan coverage from its current level of less than 30%.

Achieving that needs genuine incentives for local authorities to plan – and consequences for those who do not. The preview of the new system that was published recently lacks hard deadlines for plan-making and suggests that we will end up with a variant of the current process which allows plan-making to meander for decades.

It is like asking Santa for a smartwatch, only to get a cheap knock-off that has stopped working by Valentine’s Day.

The mooted national scheme of delegation could reduce the number of planning applications being decided by politically volatile planning committees, providing more certainty for applicants and speeding up decision-making without the long lead times associated with committee agenda deadlines. The greatest impact would come from only requiring committees to decide the very largest applications.

The fear is that we will end up with just sites already allocated in our largely non-existent local plans being exempted from the planning committee thrill ride, providing a perverse political incentive to avoid preparing a plan at all.

>> See also: Now is not the time to panic about low planning approvals

The government press release announcing a default “yes” for new homes near train stations promises a sensible policy to provide more certainty for developers that higher density development on our best connected sites – both brownfield and greenfield – will be supported. Yet, when you keep being promised fancy aftershave but end up unwrapping Lynx Africa, it is hard to keep the cynicism in check.

Why does the press release put the default “yes” in inverted commas? What exactly does “well-connected” mean? And what are the “certain rules” that schemes must comply with? Worries of extra policy burdens that make most schemes undeliverable are understandable.

But there is still time for Reed to save Christmas. Delivering transformative changes to our planning system that will make a positive impact on housing delivery just needs a bit of careful thought and the bravery to make sure that they are not diluted.

One subject on which we can accept a watering down, perhaps, is that this Christmas, just one wise man will do. 

Paul Smith is managing director of The Strategic Land Group