On Thursday this week, Reform UK launched what they are referring to as their Planning Teal Paper. From initial analysis, this seems to be the first policy platform of any mainstream party for some years which takes a pure play pro supply approach as its starting point.
This is a consultation not a fully worked through set of policies. But the direction is clear. The Party has watched carefully what is happening in the market and has concluded that permutations of the status quo simply are not working.
As they observed at their conference, brownfield supply is collapsing. Moreover, what’s now happening is the emergency is becoming hard baked. The policy making community is taking note of the fall in housing supply and this is influencing policy formation with lots of ideas popping out of think tanks and other interested groups trying to figure out what is happening. London in particular, is a stand out example of the stresses the current system is under.
Prop Views is at a number of the Party Conferences this year and I moderated a fringe after Deputy Leader Richard Tice’s key note where we got into the reeds on delivery. We were also joined by Alex Wilson, London Assembly Member and Chris Worrall of Build for Britain and another Prop views commentator.
There’s lots of interesting stuff in this Teal Paper and I can’t cover everything. Here’s my initial take on three of the most eye catching moves and the implications and challenges ahead if this morphs from direction of travel to firmed up policy:
Land value capture
- Affordable housing thresholds will drop to 5% in the five main cities. It is presumed that grant may be available on additional but as yet unclear.
- CIL will be scrapped.
- Section 106 financial contributions will also be halted. It is unclear but assumed that Section 106 will remain but no longer take the form of financial contributions.
In discussions with Richard Tice and his team, it’s clear they do not consider the current land value capture regime to be functioning and believe there is a need to move to a focus on outputs, growth and jobs. This is a pro market approach and the sector will likely welcome a structural rebalancing. The ask is indeed too great – particularly on brownfield.
But the challenge I put back to the Reform team is that by removing all the goodies, are we in danger of creating an even more adversarial planning system? After all, in London, there has been significant push back from the Boroughs on the new 20% threshold.
Moreover, there still surely remains a role for Section 106 and there is the important question of whether the community should benefit as a whole from new development and what form that takes? It is hard to see a situation where for say a major scheme, Section 106 won’t still be needed to improve immediate surrounds even if the contributions may not be primarily financial. I also wonder how this will work in practice where say a piece of land outside the ownership of the development requires improvement – maybe a new road or some other supporting development.
Financial contributions can be useful carrots here to enable development and other than extending redlines into land not owned I cannot see a way round not having some form of financial contribution in the locker. My view is this will need some more working through but the overall direction is unlikely to change, fewer development taxes. This will be welcomed by the developers but I suspect the LGA will be less than impressed!
Spatial development frameworks
- Removal of spatial planning.
- Extinguishing the London Plan.
- Moving away from the Mayoral agenda.
During the day it became quite evident that Reform are less than enthralled with the Burnham approach to devolution and particularly the creation of more Mayors. Robert Jenrick at one stage suggested even a reversal of the existing ones. As part of the Teal Paper policy platform, the Local Plan will be the primary document and all spatial frameworks will be ditched including the London Plan.
It’s difficult to make a practical case for the London Plan’s existence, but it is easier to make a principles case. In my view, and I made this point to Tice and his team, plans that transcend borders tend to be more compelling and enable more significant infrastructure to be built.
I gave the example of the effective Nine Elms Opportunity Area Framework penned by Colin Wilson. That cross boundary framework, which two Local Plans could not enable alone, delivered the Nine Elms and the Northern Line extension.
Whilst there was significant push back from the current Mayor of London on the principles of the Nine Elms this came too late to do any damage and Labour Lambeth and Tory Wandsworth worked quite well together thanks to the OAPF. The result is delivery at a scale. The challenge and legitimate push back is of course that the current London Plan is not a shining example of success. It’s a fair point.
The new Draft London Plan requires billions of additional public subsidy to prop up the Mayoral flagship policies of thresholds and rigorous land value capture. But this will only work with a significant uptick in taxpayer backed equity and debt. Examples such as this do not help the spatial planning case when defending the idea to Reform. However, the new Plan is only in draft and one city hall insider confided to me that it had not been properly peered reviewed by senior leadership and so still could be materially altered.
Targets and other plan points
- Removal of housing targets
- Grey belt under review and may be scrapped.
This one sounds familiar readers. Wasn’t the removal of the housing targets what the Tories did a few years ago? The result was stalled plan making and delivery. It was a low point in a pretty low performing previous Tory Government.
The concern of course is scrapping national housing targets altogether and leaving it to individual authorities to decide leads us down a road to no where. And asking Local Authorities how much greenfield housing land they need will put into development without any firm target will result in a predictable response: none.
I put this to Tice and team. There’s more discussion to be had on this point and they felt that a more permissive environment would render targets unnecessary. So to an extent, the devil will be in the detail here.
The Reform team, in conversation, are also by no means absolutist on green belt development. Their view though is brownfield land needs to be delivered first. The current system with the Grey Belt innovation has changed the priorities and there is a sense that the current Government has put brownfield development into the too difficult pile at least for now. I don’t think it is immediately apparent that Grey Belt will go out with the bathwater but the tests might be tightened up considerably.
Overall assessment so far
There’s lots still to cover and I will leave for another post. I am encouraged by the pro-supply ethos. There is realism here that brownfield development cannot carry the burden the state’s wish list. But are these proposals practical to the extent that they will require local councils to accept far reduced benefits for the developments they receive. I finished with the provocation that perhaps this package also needs to be accompanied by more financial carrots and structural reform of local government. I will get onto the tax ideas another time which are also interesting. That’s all for now folks.
