Bonfire of the Vanities: Gove reportedly puts Planning Bill on the scrap heap.
Over the weekend, the Telegraph published an article stating that the much anticipated Planning Bill, which was supposed to reinvigorate the English Planning System, would be no more. According to the article:
"The Levelling Up Secretary told MPs at a private meeting this week that he had decided not to proceed with a major separate piece of planning legislation to put the reforms into law.
Instead, more limited changes to planning rules will be incorporated as part of a Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, which will be set out in the Queen’s Speech in the spring."
The reforms which have reportedly been axed include:
- the introduction of a more 'zonal' planning system - with boroughs being divided into 'Growth', 'Renewal' and 'Protection' areas;
- the intention to front load public consultation towards plan-making and away from individual planning applications; and
- the adoption of a centrally set, mandated, housing target for local authority areas
The remaining proposals contained in the 'Planning for the Future' White Paper have reportedly been watered down and will, instead, be absorbed into the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill which is expected to be announced in this year's Queen's Speech - which is widely expected to occur after the local elections in early May.
The parts of the previous reform agenda that supposedly remain, according to hints dropped in the Levelling-Up White Paper, are limited to:
- proposals to digitise and simplify local plan making; and
- a revised version of the Infrastructure Levy.
Whilst this is not a surprise, it is disappointing on a number of levels.
Although I was not convinced by a number of the proposals in the Planning for the Future White Paper, it did fully acknowledge both the seriousness of the current housing crisis and the fact that radical changes to the status quo would be required to solve it.
In just under eighteen months, that sense of vision and resolve appears to have evaporated entirely.
Without even the courtesy of a consultation response, we have apparently moved:
- from a set of proposals that would constitute one of the biggest shifts away from 'localism' in a generation; to
- a draft bill which is rumoured to be doubling down on the status quo - which talk of legislating for "street votes" and "further greening the green belt"
I spoke last week about the difficulties that abandoning strategic planning has caused for the adoption of local plans. Well, it has also not helped the delivery of new housing or employment land.
Without regionally or centrally set housing targets, or an effective mechanism for navigating the complexities of cross border planning, it is difficult to see how the government can effectively deliver on its levelling-up agenda.
Against that background, it is really quite depressing to see the enthusiasm and resolve that inspired the, admittedly controversial, Planning for the Future reforms being sacrificed to political expediency.
If an eighty seat majority cannot deliver meaningful reform, then I suspect it will be a very long time coming.
What a difference eighteen months, and a lost by election, makes.
According to an article in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, Gove told 45 Tory MPs at a private meeting last week "that he had decided not to proceed with a major separate piece of planning legislation to put the reforms into law. Instead, more limited changes to planning rules will be incorporated as part of a Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, which will be set out in the Queen's Speech in the spring."
According to the paper, Gove also told the meeting that the growth zones are now "definitely not going to happen".
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