Policy paper calls for Labour to renew the public planning system

Developed collaboratively by researchers across the country, and led by researchers at UCL Bartlett School of Planning, the policy paper, ‘Planning for the Public: Why Labour should support a public planning system’, lays out five core areas for planning reform, that will help to build stronger and more equitable communities at the local, regional and national levels and respond to the climate and housing crises. The paper calls for the next Labour government to establish a plan-led system and properly resource local, devolved and national governments to produce up-to-date plans through democratic processes.

Read the paper: Planning for the Public: Why Labour should support a public planning system

The five overarching areas for reform include:  ensuring communities have the much-needed resources for planning, enabling greater democracy and participation in the planning process, establishing  planning frameworks to address regional and spatial inequalities, and supporting  public planning to deliver green energy, and social and affordable housing.

To reach these goals, the paper contains a range of concrete policy recommendations, including:

• Increase land value capture and introduce progressive reforms to land and property taxation to fund social housing and infrastructure.
• Restore local government funding to pre-austerity levels in real terms.
• Re-instate a plan-led system, across the local, regional and national level of planning and legislating for (properly funded) authorities to have up to date plans based on strong public engagement.
• Introduce a regional/devolved funding formula, similar to devolved nations, to ensure regional/devolved governments have consistent levels of resources following a needs-based approach.
• Give the highest policy priority to green energy and technology developments (e.g. removing de facto ban on onshore wind) and introducing local and regional carbon budgets.
• Invest in a new programme of social housing, with priority given to its development over housing that is only affordable to the top income deciles.
• Follow other nations and the ‘new town’ development corporation model of state-led public and private housing delivery.

The paper argues that the current, “market-led” approach to planning which emphasises deregulation, privatisation and centralisation of powers is exacerbating the housing and environmental crises and failing to address inequality. The existing system erodes the ability of local planners to shape land use decisions in the public interest and for communities to benefit from these decisions. The authors point to the pollution of rivers and coasts, missed climate targets, rising inequality and the housing crisis and argue that these are resulting from poorly-regulated market-led approaches  and cash-strapped local governments across the country whose capacity and skills for planning has been reduced over the past decade under austerity.

Prof Simin Davoudi (Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape) said: “over the last decades we have seen a series of failed experiments with market-led approaches to planning which have resulted in delays in decision making, diminished public trust, inadequate infrastructure, unaffordable and unfit housing, widening inequalities, growing air and river pollution, and unmet climate targets.  It is time for the next government to stop these failed experiments and put public planning at the centre of its social, economic, and environmental agenda.  What we need is a progressive and well-resourced plan-led system which works in the interest of communities rather than developers and landowners.”

Prof Geoff Vigar said: “What we have set out in the policy paper is a progressive alternative to the de-regulatory approach to planning. Relying on market-based solutions doesn’t work for either people or the planet. The only way to deliver socially and environmentally beneficial development is through a system led by a well-resourced and empowered public sector.”

Dr Loes Veldpaus “Our planning system can be a tool for wealth redistribution and thus increasing equality and quality of life for people, and we need to start employing it as such. Our environment should not be a source for speculation and making profits, it should be a common, shared resource. The next Labour Government has an historic opportunity to rebuild and renew a plan-led system which centres on public needs and services, on reuse and recycle, and leave a legacy to be proud of, and, indeed, build on.”

The authors of the paper suggest that although the policies laid out in the paper are expansive, they are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, they offer starting points for Labour to reform the planning system away from the current market-led model to one that is plan-led and where local communities take a more active role in in the decision-making process.