Planners - "Living in an ivory tower!"

Shadow planning minister Bob Neill has launched a bizarre attack on the planning system following the results of a Planning survey undertaken in the wake of the recently published green paper.

Responding to the survey result that 80% of planning consultants felt housing completions would fall if Tory proposals are introduced, Neill said:

“Under Labour’s regime of regional planning, house building has fallen to its lowest peacetime rate since 1924. Labour’s Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and Planning Act 2008 have broken the planning system.

This is why we need dramatic change and a new approach that rewards development. This will take away a comfort blanket from full-time planners, but they are living in an ivory tower if they think the current system of fantasy targets works.”

Neill ignores the fact that the survey sought opinions on the Conservatives’ recent green paper, not the current planning system.
Only two weeks ago Neill described the green paper as the start of a conversation. Now, in the face of a tide of criticism, the message seems to have changed to “we know better”.

National housebuilding figures show a decline, but this is hardly unexpected given the current economic downturn. The coalition believe that planning should allow local opinion rather than properly thought through decisions to dictate whether development proposals get the green light - heaven help housebuilding figures when the NIMBYs get their way.

As one planner pointed out, 'What goes around comes around – anyone remember Heseltine and his “planners locking up jobs in filing cabinets” ? What is it with the Tories and planning – are they ideologically opposed to the idea or just with the outcomes – it is hard to tell. Everyone in the profession should read their Green Paper and prepare to be afraid, very afraid – then again remember Nicholas Ridley – he didn’t like planning very much, did a lot to undermine it until someone wanted to build houses opposite his mansion in Gloucestershire – then he found that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.' !

Another planner remembers that the current housing crisis started in 1980 when the then Conservative Government cancelled the council house building programme that had continued successfully since 1890. At that time they believed that local decisions and the market would provide the homes we needed for our children and theirs to come. The result of this decision is 4.5 million on the housing waiting list, increasing homelessness, repeated booms and busts created by the undersupply of homes and a whole generation unable to secure a home for their future, that are therefore disconneted from society as they have nothing to look forward to.

The last government attempted to address the massive shortfall in homes, which is our nation's biggest social problem, but alas introduced a development plan system that hasn't really worked, leading to an ever falling supply of homes.

But the system, with amendments, has started to work. It still needs some change, but it had the basis to work. Now is not the time to introduce ill conceived political gesture planning that panders to the middle classes with their large homes thereby forgetting those on the council house waiting list, our homeless and our disconnected youth with no future of a home. We need the regional housing targets and we need council house building to deliver the social homes our children need. The planning commentator ended saying "I am ashamed as a town planner to be living in a society where we can not house our children and I can certainly not suppport a green paper that illustratesd so little knowledge of the planning and development systems".

The green paper is seeking to incentivise local authorities to take housing growth but this may further entrench the NIMBYs and undermine the impartiality of planning decisions.

It is a widely held opinion that the green paper is full of lofty ambitions with little understanding about how planning works in practice. Ivory tower indeed.