UK election 24
'The courage to change' – How about planning reform built on political and legal realities?

With the UK general election campaign now in full flow, planning reform is (once again) to the fore, with the issue sharply dividing the policy instincts and core voting bases of the two leading political parties. Yet recent history gives little confidence that the current focus on the reform that many believe the nation urgently needs for infrastructure and housing will break the entrenched policy deadlock.

There have been so many commissions, think-tanks, campaigns and political parties coming out with ideas for planning reforms in recent years. The ideas put forward are remarkably similar and superficially attractive. But in a series of articles over the next few weeks I will address them one-by-one and explain why they are generally either impossible to implement, won't make any difference or will make matters worse.

If that sounds depressing, it shouldn't. Only by facing reality can we tackle this difficult problem effectively. The purpose of my critique is encapsulated in the famous Prayer for Serenity: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." The key for any government is to have the courage to change the things that can be changed and accept the things that cannot. These articles will try to give readers a little more wisdom to know the difference in the hope that poor ideas stop being pumped out and we can all narrow our focus to what can and must be achieved.

Despite all that's been written on planning reform, what has consistently been lacking is rigorous analysis of the factors (legal, political, human, common sense…) that place those ideas somewhere along the twin spectrums of, firstly, quite-possible-to-utterly-impossible and, secondly, highly-effective-to-totally-ineffective.

With all the powers government has to legislate, publish guidance and fund better resourcing, there are still fundamental limitations to its ability to tackle many of the things that slow our planning system. I list some of these at the end of this article. Anyone serious about reform has to recognise and understand them.

As I take each reform idea in turn, I will refer back to these principles to explain cases where we must reluctantly accept the status quo and look elsewhere for ways to speed up planning. We are all frustrated with the planning system but too often the big ideas that sound so sensible fall apart under analysis.

To be clear, we are assuming the objective of reform is to speed up planning and make it less labour-intensive, while still procedurally fair. The current government seemed to start off with speeding up as its objective (Project Speed being the government's name for its original reform consultation). However, recent consultations often seem more focused on process standardisation and other "improvements" not necessarily to be measured by advances in speed, time or cost efficiency for developers. This drift in purpose is itself a worry.

I expect politicians reading this may be incredulous at the idea that for all the groups that have addressed planning reform there could be so many holes in what's been put forward. On one level it amazes me too. But I believe it arises from the fact that planning reform is being addressed by two sets of individuals: firstly, bright and eminent people who are not planning or public law lawyers and therefore unaware of irritating legal difficulties hidden in the weeds. The second group constitutes planning lawyers and other specialist professionals who are so steeped in how things are done now that their ideas tend towards accepting and doubling down on existing processes.

What we are seeing is therefore a mixture of ideas that are either too radical to be implemented or too trivial to make any positive difference. What we need is a smarter, deeper, more forensic legal analysis of the problems and how to solve them. We need legal brain surgery – precise interventions, not sledgehammers or cosmetic procedures.

This series is intended as constructive criticism because our team is passionate about using what we know about how planning works to help find real solutions to improve the system. I hope you enjoy what I intend to be a practical look at the problems of planning reform. The focus will be largely on energy and infrastructure but we may also touch on ideas such as bringing housing within the "nationally significant infrastructure" regime.