On the face of it, Labour's manifesto proposes some of the most transformative changes to the planning system since the post-war New Town era. Keir Starter gives the impression that there will no longer be a fight for the delivery of much needed homes, short staffed local authorities, long delays for planning and appeal decisions, and unlocking of the grey belt. If all these Labour dreams come true then things certainly would get better.
But the big question is HOW exactly will these dreams be implemented into reality?
Set around an ambitious commitment to deliver 1.5 million homes over five years (500,000 more than its promise in 1997 and The Conservative Party’s delivery over the past five years), Labour's policies place considerable focus on immediately reimposing housing targets, creating new towns, and changing Green Belt policy.
Other ambitions include the come-back of strategic planning and providing powers to Combined Authorities for better funding, ensuring the delivery of high-quality and sustainable homes and creating places that increase climate resilience and promote nature recovery, while also ambiguously implementing solutions to ‘unlock' the building of homes affected by nutrient neutrality.
Housing targets - if housing targets are to become mandatory again, there needs to be clear consequences - for example, in the form of sanctions - for those who do not meet or deliver their housing need. Labour is committing to making full use of intervention powers to avoid the blocking of development, but what these powers are, nobody yet knows as the manifesto contradicts itself in stating that it will also “ensure local communities continue to shape house building in their area”, so how exactly will they find the right balance?
Grey Belt - Labour’s proposal to introduce a ‘Grey Belt’ category to differentiate areas of the current Green Belt based on their quality and target the poorer quality areas for new housing development is a rational approach in our view. Albeit, the definition of ‘Grey Belt’ will need to be carefully considered and curated as we anticipate that this could be open to interpretation and could lead to more appeals where planners are in disagreement. Proper consideration will also need to be given to the viability of remediating land if it is truly poor quality.
Local plans and funding - a staggering 78% of authorities will have an out-of-date Local Plan by 2025 (source: Land, Planning and Development Federation), primarily due to the slow pace, delays and pauses in plan-making, and rates of unsoundness, enhanced by Michael Gove’s detrimental updates to national planning policy in December 2023. Labour’s manifesto pledges to strengthen the local plan-making process by giving them greater support, but this appears to be just by giving extra funding. But we know from the past that extra money doesn’t necessarily result in improved planning services. We need radical changes to the structure of local authorities to ensure that they are well-resourced and planning officers are supported in their training and workloads.
New towns - Labour’s goal to deliver the next generation of new towns is a longer-term strategy (i.e. not solving the housing crisis in the short term) from an economic perspective because of the financial success the original postwar new towns had. When new towns were first developed, public development corporations were able to capture the uplift in land value created by the development of new towns rather than private developers. If the next generation of new towns can replicate this success, then this could deepen public pockets to help Councils with the funding of much-needed social and affordable housing. However, this is not a new concept and Labour will need to learn lessons from the past around the design of these new towns to be able to ensure their longevity and capacity to adapt to changing infrastructure demands in the future. For example, these need to be much more sustainable and people-friendly than the previous generation of new towns were which were heavily car-dependent and poorly connected. Up-front investment from the private sector could promise better quality housing in the long-term but potentially at the expense of affordability which ultimately lies at the heart of Labour’s housing agenda.
We’re very glad the “community right to appeal” has not transpired in the manifesto!