Salvaging the planning reforms

A decade ago, your former colleagues announced a ‘pause’ in Andrew Lansley’s planned reform of the NHS. In the weeks that followed, everyone piled in with their own special interests and accommodating these made the existing controversial proposals even more complex and unwieldy. We all know the consequences.

You must wish to avoid a similar fate as you review the difficulties surrounding the ‘Planning for the Future’ agenda. The Consultation Institute has no strong view on the fundamental issue – which is the extent to which your Government’s commitment to build far more houses is constrained by the way in which the planning system works in England.

But we DO have a view that curtailing the public’s involvement in spatial planning and limiting consultation with local communities is wrong.

The White Paper tried to argue that this was not the intention – and that early public involvement was assured in the brief six weeks in the proposed period of three years during which the new zoning process would be implemented.

To tell local communities that this would be their sole one-off opportunity to influence the location of Growth areas and thereafter to deny them any right to be consulted on individual planning applications was always going to be a politically hazardous mission. Your own Members of Parliament have proved the point.

But it is also wrong in principle. Extensive and meaningful public engagement is now an essential feature of this and other modern democracies. Indeed, in your own Ministerial career at DEFRA and elsewhere, you have made good use of public consultation to provide early warning of problems to policy-makers when experienced stakeholders’ views have been seriously considered.

One of the early steps you should take is to change the tone of the debate. The White Paper, intentionally or not, suggested that public involvement is welcome only if it supports development, with the suggestion that consultations are dominated by those who are ‘older, better-off, and white.’ It implied that engaging a wider and different demographic sample of the population would result in decisions more supportive of Development projects. This was grossly insulting to many communities and not factually evidenced.

It is also at odds with the growing use of new involvement techniques such as co-production, crowdsourcing, community conversations as well as the whole array of digital engagement techniques – all of which can secure the participation of those who are seldom heard in these matters.

The principle of public engagement and consultation must be confirmed for all stages of the planning system – and this includes granting approval to individual projects. Provided the consultation meets legal and best practice standards, there will be no reason for decisions to be delayed.

Finally, there was much criticism that the White Paper did little to support the net-zero agenda, and as many Citizens Assemblies have noted, the public seems ahead of their elected representatives in wishing to place high standards of insulation and energy efficiency front and centre of decisions to build new housing. Some of the ideas about public involvement in design codes have the potential to make improvements in this area, but not if the public are denied any say in their implementation.

We think there should be an overhaul of Councils’ existing Statements of Community Involvement so that your predecessor’s perceived preference of reducing and removing the community’s role in planning be emphatically rescinded.

All of this suggests to us that many aspects of the proposed Bill may need to be reconsidered. And you might start by looking closely at – and publishing the responses to last year’s consultation. The Government’s Code of Practice obliges Government departments to publish the output of consultations within 12 weeks. Mr Jenrick was already nine months adrift of this requirement, and it may be that this – as well as the inherent problems of the reforms themselves that have led to your appointment.

We hope that with your arrival in this role, wiser counsels will now prevail.

 

Rhion H Jones

Founder Director

The Consultation Institute

20 September 2021

 

References

To read about the Institute’s response to last year’s Planning for the future consultation – click here

To read the Institute’s Policy Statement – click here

To read our Briefing Note click here