The UK needs a rules-based zoning system for planning
Under the discretionary planning system created in 1947, no part of England has ever been able to harness private sector development to meet housing targets at the scale we now need. It’s time for a radical overhaul, says Andrew Carter
The government has rightly made improving workers’ take-home pay a measure of success for this parliament. Achieving its ambitious 1.5m housebuilding target is crucial to delivering this ambition.
The lack of housing is throttling pay and productivity in places across the UK. Young people in particular can’t afford to live in places where they might get a well-paid job – whether it’s London or elsewhere like Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge – because of sky-high housing costs.
Solving our housing problems cannot be achieved without tackling the problems with the planning system. Government knows this and has already shown initiative by making welcome changes to the National Planning Policy Framework.
Next month’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill is another valuable opportunity for it to make further reforms to the planning system to deliver the generational increase in housebuilding and tackle the UK’s pay and productivity gaps.
As Centre for Cities has shown, since the UK switched to its current, uniquely discretionary planning system in the 1940s, housebuilding rates have steadily fallen, leaving us with 4.3m fewer homes than if we had added new homes at the rate that similar European countries did over that period thorough their flexible, rules-based zoning systems.
Reform of the planning rules away from a discretion-led system and towards a zoning-led system is vital to building lots more homes.
A new rulebook
Only a more flexible, rules-based zoning system for planning can enable the UK to bridge its housebuilding gap. Under the current planning system, no part of England has ever been able to harness private sector development to increase housing stock fast enough to achieve the targets they now need to achieve.
What does adopting a zoning-led planning system mean in practice? Planning decisions are determined by certain rules that apply over land that meets specific criteria set by government which distinguishes between rural, suburban and city-centre zones. Local planning authorities then lay their own rules and designations on top to determine what is permitted to be built and where. Then, any planning application that complies with the national and local rules is automatically approved.
Shifting to such a system would vastly improve housebuilding outcomes by removing unnecessary cost and uncertainty from the current system.
The planning bill offers an opportunity to address this and establish a legal basis for a rules-based zoning system that would promote growth.
The government is already considering reforms that would limit the circumstances in which planning applications rely on local councillors’ discretion to be granted approval. This is one step to making the planning system more rules-based. It should adopt these reforms in the bill.
If the government also activated the national development management policies, this combination of reforms could largely replace local planning policy with a consistent national rulebook.
While local oversight of the impact of new development is important, there are ways to streamline it by ensuring it takes place upstream of individual planning applications.
To do this, the new legislation should replace the current requirement for planners to have regard for “material considerations” in the planning process with a new system of “material designations” – additional checks in special places that local planners would overlay on top of the national planning rulebook.
These changes would still provide the flexibility for local authorities to have a say over planning decisions, which is important. But they would also increase the certainty and predictability that developers currently don’t get from the current system.
Introduced together they would boost the already bold commitments made by government on pursuing housebuilding for growth. The Prime Minister recently celebrated the high number of applications from potential locations to build the next generation of new towns. Meanwhile, the Chancellor and the housing secretary signalled their intention to unlock land for high density development around transport stops on commuter routes. Both are good ideas that would result in more housing being built and would have a positive impact on economic growth, particularly if they are focused in and around London and the Greater South East, and the country’s other big cities.
Since it came to office, the government has prioritised the need to increase economic growth across the country and has identified the planning system as a big blocker to achieving this. The next few months, when we will see a Planning and Infrastructure Bill and an English Devolution Bill, and an Industrial Strategy, will show how serious the government is about achieving its economic growth ambition.
Andrew Carter is chief executive of Centre for Cities.