Centre for Public Policy

Blog by Dr Rob Richardson, Research Associate at the Centre for Public Policy

The new UK Government has again set out proposals for planning reform in England. With the overarching aim to “get Britain building” more housing and infrastructure, the proposed Planning and Infrastructure Bill will include measures to streamline infrastructure delivery, change compulsory land purchase rules, and increase local planning authority capacity. Scotland’s recent experience highlights the challenges of implementing such high-level change, however, and suggests that planning reform alone is unlikely to lead to a swift change in outcomes.

Planning often receives criticism owing to perceptions that decision-making is slow and leads to unsatisfactory development outcomes. Arguably, this is to be expected given that the very purpose of planning – which is devolved in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland - is to reconcile intractable differences in interests between actors, across spatial scales. National or regional priorities, including building housing and infrastructure, often clash with localised interests, for example.

Criticism of planning can also be a product of politics, with some taking the view that the planning system – as with the state more widely – should do less, and the ‘market’ should do more. Planning reform therefore always looms large on the horizon. For example, the UK Government’s Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill brought changes to the English planning system in 2023 (although several contentious aspects of the bill were withdrawn following backbench opposition), while Scotland is continuing to enact reform after the Planning (Scotland) Bill was adopted in 2019.

Planning reform in Scotland

A root and branch review of Scotland’s planning system was completed in 2016. Subsequent reform was spearheaded by a new Planning (Scotland) Act in 2019, and the Fourth National Planning Framework (NPF4), adopted in February 2023. NPF4 is Scotland’s highest-level planning policy document and sets Scotland’s spatial strategy for new development to 2045, and forms part of the statutory development plan, so must be considered alongside local authorities’ local development plans when decisions are made on planning permission.

NPF4 was designed to fundamentally change Scotland’s approach to planning, to help embed collaborative place-based approaches for delivering Scotland’s net zero and sustainable development goals. However, its early implementation has not been smooth. Early on, the Scottish Government’s Chief Planner identified many policy areas which have generated “greater than expected debate”, particularly in relation to housebuilding. This includes aspects of NPF4 policy 17 on ‘Rural Homes’ and policy 16 on ‘Quality Homes’, where interpretation has differed markedly between stakeholders and localities, particularly regarding the (un)acceptability of speculative housing proposals on greenfield sites which were not previously allocated for housing development.

The transition from existing policy has also caused uncertainty. Unlike NPF4, the previous National Planning Framework (NPF3) was not part of the statutory development plan, and there has been disagreement over the weight to be placed on NPF4 compared to authorities’ own local development plans – many of which are now much older than NPF4. This was recently tested by an unsuccessful appeal to the Court of Session from a private housebuilder, which resulted in several major development proposals stalling while a judgement was awaited.

In line with these issues, a consultation by Scotland’s National Planning Improvement Champion recently found that no overall agreement exists between different stakeholders as to what ‘successful’ planning looks like. The private sector typically prioritises quick decisions, while public and third sector bodies are more likely to prioritise placemaking and tackling climate change. The consultation report therefore finds that greater collaboration is required to find solutions, which is echoed by the Chief Planner who calls for a more positive dialogue on planning for housing.

The planning system is designed to balance and resolve these tensions, given different actors want and expect different outcomes from the planning system. However, this is made more difficult by increasingly entrenched resource challenges and systemic complexity: the Royal Town Planning Institute finds that the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 placed 49 new unfunded duties on planning authorities, and that pressures from spending cuts and recruitment challenges have grown since.

Changing embedded practices will take time

Reforming the planning system alone is no panacea, particularly for delivering housing at the scale the UK needs. One reason is the structure and behaviour of the private housebuilding industry, which builds most of the UK’s new homes. For example, the equivalent of only around 75% of homes granted planning permissions are built out in any given year, which a UK Government review in 2018 concluded was largely due to a systemic ‘absorption rate’, which causes developers to stagger house sales to avoid undermining local prices. Likewise, assembling the required to build housing at scale takes significant time and capital.

Planning reforms such as mandatory housing targets for local authorities, or releasing more land for development, are unlikely to spur a quick proportionate increase in output, without deeper institutional change. The state across the UK currently plays a very limited role in housing and infrastructure development compared to several nations within continental Europe, and compared to past UK eras when rapid development has been needed. The post-war housing boom was predominantly delivered by the state, for example, while urban regeneration companies in the early 2000s delivered complex redevelopment across the UK’s cities. Political and economic circumstances have moved on, but if the will existed, more active state involvement could go some way towards de-risking development and reconciling differences between planning stakeholders.

It is more promising therefore that the UK Government’s approach for delivering infrastructure in England appears to be moving towards Scotland’s practice of designating key developments within a national spatial plan. While this could reduce the impact of organised local opposition to infrastructure which is in the national public interest, Keir Starmer’s aspirations to “bulldoze” planning regulations will create controversy. Bypassing local communities is somewhat at odds with the aims of the planning system, and if regulations are weakened too far, could lead to inappropriately located and poorly designed development as well as conflict between tiers of government. Proposed investment in planning authority staff capacity is therefore also welcome, although whether any of these proposals go far enough remains to be seen.

Scotland’s recent experience of planning reform suggests that shifting the culture to agree on and deliver a step-change in outcomes will not be straightforward. Difference and disagreement are inherent to planning. Expectations of a significant improvement in housing and infrastructure delivery through further planning reform in England should therefore not be too high.

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First published: 25 July 2024