Consultation frenzy: three national planning consultations with deadlines this month
- Neil Homer
- Jul 1
- 5 min read
The Government has published a suite of ‘working papers’ on aspects of its planning reform proposals. We take a look at each to come to a view on how well they have understood the issues and how well their proposals might work, from a local community perspective.
Speeding Up Build Out - deadline 7th July
The ‘Speeding Up Build Out’ paper (deadline 7 July) sets out a robust diagnosis of the reasons why building homes after consent has been obtained can often take too long. It correctly identifies the problems stem as much from how the housing development market is structured and operates than from planning policy constraints. It also tackles the thorny issues of land banking and price-based absorption rates.
We agree that encouraging and enabling more SME developers to secure plan allocations and then permissions could make a difference, especially in towns and villages. Not only are they more interested in schemes of a scale that fit more easily with the grain of the existing settlement, they are not wedded to the type of ‘identikit’ pattern book designs of the volume builders. Communities tend to like this approach and will less likely object to their applications.
But, although this is one of its five strategic goals, the paper focuses on the development management end of the pipe, and not the earlier plan making end. Few Local Plans (LP) have met the NPPF 10% small sites target but almost all neighbourhood plan (NP) housing site allocations are SME sites. The generally lower cost to SME developers of promoting land through an NP helps and meaningful community engagement in site selection most often leads to very rarely contested applications.
We would therefore recommend Government broadens the scope of its intended actions to encourage LPs, NPs and the new LPA-led Supplementary Plans to allocate SME sites. This would require only some modification to the Planning Practice Guidance and NPPF to reconfigure and streamline the site allocation process (which inadvertently favours those with the deepest pockets). We would also urge Government to implement the provisions of the Housing & Planning Act 2016 (§150) to grant Permission in Principle for SME allocations in development plans. Given the extent to which that would de-risk site promotion.
Reforming site thresholds - deadline 9th July
The ‘Reforming Site Thresholds’ paper (deadline 9 July) forms part of the Government’s small sites strategy by redefining SME sites into ‘minor’ (<10 homes or < 0.5 Ha) and ‘medium’ (10 - 49 homes or < 1 Ha) housing development. Sites of 50+ (or > 1Ha) are then deemed major housing development. It also defines ‘very small sites’ of < 0.1 Ha that it proposes to address in the new National Development Management Policy, National Model Design Code and ‘Brownfield Passport’ regimes.
We generally welcome this approach to simplifying the development management system for SME developers. The proposals to exempt minor schemes from regimes like BNG, BSL and affordable housing are proportionate and necessary given their impact on supressing demand from the SME sector over the last few years. However, we would recommend that they are not exempt from the proposed LPA officer delegation scheme unless they have been allocated in a development plan.
For medium sites, we again agree that some minor exemptions on BNG etc could extend to these larger sites without harming the overall delivery of those outcomes. The proposal to increase the Permission in Principle threshold to include them may also work, but our preference would be to see this operate (and the LPA officer delegation system) as a result of the plan making stage, so as not to diminish the plan-led system. We also agree with proposals to streamline agreeing S106 obligations, but they should include making clearer the role of local councils where obligations involve the transfer of assets like open spaces.
In respect of major sites we agree that requiring volume builders to deliver mixed tenure housing schemes, both as a means of supporting SMEs and as a move away from the generic ‘estate’ design approach that can significantly harm the character of the existing settlement they will be attached to.
In making these distinctions it may be helpful for plan makers to be more prescriptive in allocating land if their policies could do the same. This might benefit from a modification to Class C3 of the Use Class Order to reflect the different nature of the scheme, much like HMOs and residential institutions.
Reform of Planning Committees - deadline 23rd July
The ‘Reform of Planning Committees’ paper (deadline 23 July) presents a fundamental challenge to the democratic oversight of the planning system, but not one that cannot be overcome, in our view.
Our starting point is our experience of decision making – at committees and through officer delegation – in relation to proposals engaging NP policies. On too many occasions officers have either misunderstood or misapplied those policies, whether the tilted balance applies or not. It should not be possible for an officer to argue a proposal conforms with an NP policy when the policy author argues it does not, or vice versa. This can therefore make a critical difference to the outcome and too often we have had to intervene for local council clients to require committees (and even the Secretary of State) to call in applications to decide. This is primarily a result of officers, of which there is a high turnover almost everywhere, not being trained in how to apply NP policies.
The principle of having a national standard of delegation is agreed with, as it is often unclear what rules apply, as is its two tier approach, which is commonplace. We agree with the Tier 1 delegation proposal, but only if it allows for a local council to be notified by the LPA officer of the decision he/she is minded to take on a proposal for minor residential or commercial development where the proposal has engaged one or more up to date NP policies, prior to the decision being made. This should allow the local council to consider (within a defined time period, say 14 days) if the officer has correctly applied the NP policies. If it does not, then the delegation scheme should trigger the decision to be made at committee.
The same principle should apply to the Tier 2 scheme, again with which we broadly agree and the draft criterion - “where the application raises a significant planning matter having regard to the development plan” – appears to make that provision. But in both tiers, if the officer and local council agree that a planning application for a housing scheme on a site allocated in an NP is in accordance with that policy then it should be delegated, pending the implementation of the Permission in Principle provision outlined above, which would avoid the need for a planning application in the first place.
For this same reason, we would recommend Government extends its mandatory training for committee members to officers in respect of NPs. Professional CPD on this subject has been weak for a number of years and both LGA (via PAS) and the RTPI could do more. Together with the proposals we recommend above this will crucially maintain the confidence of local councils in the effectiveness of their NPs. In return NALC and SLCC could commit to providing training, advice and guidance for local councils (committee members and clerks) on implementing planning policies to reduce unnecessary conflict.
We encourage proactive councils to engage with these consultations and make their views known.
What else can communities do? All of the proposed changes are designed to make planning decisions and build out of sites more quickly. This means the importance of local council getting their representations right, first time, has renewed importance. If you have any questions about the correct planning strategy to take for your area, please get in touch.
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