By Simon McCabe, Chief Executive, Scarborough Group International
In the opening weeks of Andy Burnham’s premiership, we’re starting to get a much clearer picture of how this Government intends to stimulate development and economic growth.
The new National Planning Policy Framework was a significant first move. Now we have proposals to give mayors across England powers to call in strategically important planning applications, grant permission directly in certain circumstances and have a much greater say over how national housing and infrastructure funding is deployed in their regions.
Taken together, it’s a significant shift and, from a developer’s perspective, there’s a lot to like about the direction of travel. A planning system that provides greater certainty, supports investment and helps good development come forward more quickly is something our industry has been asking for over many years. Whether these changes achieve that will depend on how they work in practice.
For those of us trying to deliver large-scale regeneration, the problem has rarely been a shortage of ambition or ideas. The hard part is turning them into something viable, fundable and deliverable while bringing together land, infrastructure, planning, occupiers, investment and the interests of communities. When you’re working on projects that can take ten, twenty or even thirty years to complete, the ability to make decisions with some degree of certainty is hugely important.
There is plenty in the new NPPF that should help. Stronger support for development around transport hubs, better use of brownfield and underused land, clearer backing for economic development and strategic growth sectors, and a more strategic approach across local authority boundaries all make sense. So does the underlying principle that planning should enable growth rather than frustrate it.
At the same time, the framework is much firmer about what is expected from developers, particularly around affordable housing, accessibility, density, build-out and community benefit. Those requirements will need to be understood from the outset and reflected in what developers pay for land, how schemes are appraised and designed, the infrastructure they require and, ultimately, whether they can be delivered.
The ability to use viability to revisit obligations later has also been significantly tightened. I don’t necessarily see greater clarity as a bad thing. If everyone understands the rules from the beginning and, crucially, those rules are applied consistently, we can make better decisions about land, investment and design rather than revisiting fundamental assumptions further down the line.
The latest announcement on mayoral powers adds another interesting dimension. Under the proposals, mayors outside London would be able to call in applications of strategic importance, with thresholds including schemes of more than 150 homes or 15,000 square metres of commercial space. So we’re not talking about powers that would apply only to a handful of enormous projects; potentially, they could affect a sizeable proportion of the development needed to support growth across our major towns and cities.
From where we sit, there is logic in taking a more strategic view. The economic geography of our cities and regions has never respected local authority boundaries. People live in one authority and work in another, businesses draw employees from across whole city regions, transport investment changes the prospects of places miles away and the infrastructure needed to unlock major regeneration can have implications far beyond an individual site. Decisions about growth need to reflect that wider geography.
What’s particularly interesting is that the Government isn’t looking at planning in isolation. Alongside the proposed new powers, mayors are being given a greater say over how Homes England funding is directed. £1.3 billion from the national land and infrastructure fund has already been allocated to the seven most established mayoral areas, alongside further funding for brownfield development and housing acceleration, while mayors outside London are set to gain the ability to levy development to help pay for major infrastructure.
Anyone who has spent time trying to unlock a difficult regeneration site knows that securing planning permission is only part of the job. You can have an allocation, a supportive local authority and a perfectly good consent, but if the transport, utilities, remediation or other enabling infrastructure isn’t there, development can still sit on paper for years. Bringing decisions about planning, infrastructure and investment closer together could make a real difference, provided it removes barriers rather than creating another route through the system.
One of developers’ biggest frustrations with the current system is simply the time it can take. Too much red tape, rising costs and decisions that extend well beyond statutory timeframes can mean the market moves before a scheme is ready to proceed. Opportunities are missed, investment is delayed and, in some cases, projects simply don’t happen. Reform has to address that if it is genuinely going to unlock development.
Large regeneration projects don’t fit neatly into political or planning cycles, and they certainly don’t stand still for twenty years. Markets move, infrastructure requirements evolve, occupiers change and the mix of uses that made sense when a masterplan was first conceived may look very different by the time later phases are delivered. Giving strategic sites a clear consenting framework while retaining enough flexibility to respond as circumstances change feels much closer to the reality of how these projects are delivered.
There are obviously questions still to answer. Giving mayors greater powers should speed development up if responsibilities are clear, decisions are made in sensible timeframes and mayoral offices work closely with property owners, developers and local authorities. Nobody in the industry wants to see one lengthy process replaced by another, nor should a more strategic approach come at the expense of proper local engagement. The knowledge within local authorities and communities remains an important part of getting development right.
Resourcing is equally important. We can rewrite national policy and change where decisions are taken, but somebody still has to process applications, negotiate agreements and work through the detail. Planning departments have been under enormous pressure for years and, unless capacity is addressed alongside structural reform, there’s a danger the bottleneck simply moves rather than disappears.
As Scarborough Group International marks its 50th anniversary this year, we’ve inevitably spent time looking back at how the property industry has changed over those five decades. We’ve worked through different governments, planning regimes and more than a few economic cycles, and we’ve seen plenty of reforms intended to get Britain building. Some have genuinely helped; others have generated a great deal of activity without necessarily making it any easier to turn an ambitious plan into a completed development.
Perhaps that’s why the current direction is worth watching. Rather than one isolated change to planning policy, we’re beginning to see an attempt to connect things that have too often been dealt with separately: where growth should happen, who makes the decisions, how infrastructure is funded and how public investment can unlock private investment. The new NPPF already gives greater importance to mayors and Spatial Development Strategies, and the latest announcement pushes further in the same direction.
It’s far too early to know whether it will work. What developers will be looking for now is consistency and follow-through: clear rules that don’t keep changing, planning authorities with the resources to make timely decisions, infrastructure investment that unlocks rather than follows development, and a willingness across the public and private sectors to deal pragmatically with the issues that stop viable schemes moving.
If the Prime Minister’s reforms can bring those things together, there is a genuine opportunity to get more good development underway and more investment flowing into the places that need it.
That’s ultimately how this agenda should be judged: not by the number of planning policies rewritten or new powers announced, but by whether, a few years from now, we can point to more homes being built, more regeneration schemes progressing, more infrastructure being delivered and more businesses investing as a result.
