Real Estate Development Yule Blog – 5 housing ministers

"Radical reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War.

Not more fiddling around the edges, not simply painting over the damp patches, but levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England.

One that is simpler, clearer and quicker to navigate, delivering results in weeks and months rather than years and decades."

These are the words of the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his Foreword to the August 2020 Planning White Paper "Planning for the Future". Promising to fix England's "outdated and ineffective planning system", he painted a picture of an aging system that had been "patched up here and there" with "extensions added on, knocked down and rebuilt according to the whims of whoever's name is on the deeds at the time". "Make-do-and-mend can only last for so long" he said.

Where are we now? Moving towards the new planning system that fixing England's housing crisis apparently demands?

Unfortunately, probably not. "Incapacitating uncertainty" might be one way to describe where we are now. "Chaos" could be another. In this post we take a look at how we've got to this point and what might follow.

Planning reform and the levelling up agenda

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, or the "LURB" as it was quickly nick-named, was published in May 2022, almost two years after Planning for the Future was published. A far cry from the package proposed in the Planning White Paper, the reforms that the LURB contained could themselves be described as a patchwork. Planning for the Future was lacking in detail and broadly drafted enough to have been a Green rather than a White Paper. By the time the reforms reached Parliament, they had also been watered down significantly. Some changes had been achieved by then through the back door of secondary legislation and changes to national planning policy and guidance. Others had been quietly dropped to pacify backbench opposition. Our article in the November 2022 issue of Property Law Journal (PLJ) looked in more detail at what happened to the various proposals - you can read it here.

2022 – a year of political upheaval

Between the August 2020 publication of Planning for the Future and the May 2022 publication of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, we had a change of Secretary of State – Robert Jenrick gave way to Michael Gove in September 2021. By 6 July 2022, Michael Gove too was out, one of the first casualties of the Conservative Party leadership crisis, with Boris Johnson appointing Greg Clark as Secretary of State the day before he himself stepped down as Prime Minister. Having been told that the LURB would be pushed through Parliament quickly, the long leadership battle that ensued resulted in an unexpectedly quiet summer for those of us following planning reform – we were left wondering "what next?" for both the reforms and for the levelling up agenda.

Simon Clarke's appointment as Secretary of State following Liz Truss' victory left us none the wiser. Politics moved so fast that we never got to hear what he proposed for the LURB, nor for the awaited "prospectus" of changes to the National Planning Policy Framework – as flagged in our November 2022 PLJ article, all attention was on Liz Truss' and Kwasi Kwarteng's Growth Plan 2022 and what impact the new Investment Zones would have. At the request of the government, local authorities across England ploughed time and money into putting forward hundreds of areas as candidates for Investment Zone status. We then had all change again with the second Conservative Party leadership election.

This is how we have ended up with five different ministers for housing at DLUHC this year - so far at least. Chris Pincher was in post until February 2022. The subsequent changing face of government resulted in four further ministers holding the post in the space of three months – Stuart Andrew, Marcus Jones, Lee Rowley and the present incumbent, Lucy Frazer. Given that the housing crisis is what has been driving the apparent need for planning reform, it’s clear to see how this has been less than ideal.

The future for planning reform?

Michael Gove's reappointment as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities could have been a welcome return to stability of sorts. It certainly felt as though he was picking up where he left off and that the LURB would resume a speedy path through Parliament. We considered what this might mean for planning reform in our article in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of PLJ, which looked at planning announcements in the Autumn Statement and changes proposed to the LURB by the government after completion of the House of Commons Committee Stage – for this article see here.

However, politics has again worked its magic. Last week on 6 December 2022, in a Written Ministerial Statement and also by a separate letter to MPs, Michael Gove announced a series of proposals in concession to backbench rebels. Many of these amount largely to a promise that the government will consult on the changes asked for. However, there is deep-felt concern amongst the planning professions that these concessions could have fundamental consequences for the integrity of the planning system and its ability to function. Some proposals indicate a flawed understanding of how the current planning system works, and that it does indeed work. Others, if adopted, could create a potentially unworkable system. Of particular concern are proposals contained within the latest revisions to the LURB and in the Written Ministerial Statement that purport to give local planning authorities control over whether or not to grant planning permission based on the previous record of a developer itself – this could take into account not just their building record but their very "character". We are scratching our heads to understand what this is supposed to mean, and just how it can sit alongside the fundamental principle that planning permission runs with the land unless expressly provided for by conditions. This is but one of the proposals which, if implemented, could make a nonsense of principles which have served planning well since the system's inception in 1947.

Given the reason for this journey of planning reform – to overhaul a system blamed for our housing crisis – are we on the right path? If not, what should be done?

Let's return to where we started, with Boris Johnson's Foreword to the Planning White Paper:

"The whole thing is beginning to crumble and the time has come to do what too many have for too long lacked the courage to do – tear it down and start again.

… let’s do better. Let’s make the system work for all of us. And let’s take big, bold steps so that we in this country can finally build the homes we all need and the future we all want to see."

"Big, bold steps" are indeed needed.

The biggest and the boldest step now could well be to acknowledge that politics, that close relation of planning, is failing to deliver the stability, clarity and certainty that is needed for England's planning system and those working in it to do the job that the country needs. Perhaps the time has come to tear down the current reforms, and acknowledge that a sustained and crippling lack of central understanding and resource, as is the case for many of the country's public institutions, may be the root cause of the problems. Perhaps this, along with reviewing housing targets and a renewed focus on regional planning, is what should be addressed to allow the existing system to perform to the best of its ability.

HSF Real Estate Development Yule Blog 2022

Links to the previous posts in our Yule Blog series are below. To receive number 4 in your inbox tomorrow, you can subscribe to our blog here.

• 6 years for silence
• 7 storeys high...
• 8 jolly judgments?
• 9 keys to MEES
• 10 percent more
• 11 metre buildings
• 12 points to ponder 

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