“We will reform the planning rules to build the homes and infrastructure the country desperately needs.”
“We will improve public transport, transforming our buses and our railways to connect our country. We will bring rail services under public ownership and put passengers at the heart of our transport systems.”
– The Prime Minister 17th July 2024
A couple of weeks ago the new Chancellor announced that the government will “reform the National Planning Policy Framework, consulting on a new growth-focused approach to the planning system before the end of the month, including restoring mandatory housing targets.”
Yesterday we had the King’s Speech. Reading through the details of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill contained within the King’s Speech, we are told that the current planning regime acts as a major break on economic growth (don’t we all know it!), and that it should instead be an enabler of growth, refreshingly dealing with ‘how’, not ‘if’, development takes place.
We are promised a streamlined process to grant planning permission for more homes and major infrastructure, the headlines of which promise to modernise planning committees.
I am sure that many people can see numerous opportunities to modernise planning committees, and there must already be some exciting ideas flying around; one suggestion is potentially 300 more planning officers, while one of the least radical ideas that I have seen is reinstating virtual planning committees.
Whatever is done to modernise them, we are assured that it will result in a more predictable service to developers and investors, with improvements to the shamefully low 9% of planning authorities determining more than 70% of their non-major applications within 8 weeks (and only 1% determining 60% of their major applications with 13 weeks).
We share the frustration that these statistics cause for our clients, having experienced many of our projects being delayed, or unnecessarily going to appeal for non-determination, or more frustratingly, going to appeal because the committee voted against the professional and technical wisdom to approve.
Then there is the Better Buses Bill, which promises, unsurprisingly, to deliver better buses for all.
We are promised a reform of the bus system whereby local leaders across the country can franchise local bus services (so not just Royston Vasey providing local buses for local people), to provide non-car access to services and facilities – an essential benefit for all the new homes.
We are told in the King’s Speech that outside of London there were 2 billion fewer annual bus journeys in 2023 than in 1985, almost 300 million fewer miles driven by buses in 2023 than in 2010, and 6,000 fewer buses on the road between 2010 and 2023. Covid only added to this downward trend, and from the conversations I have had with bus operators, I don’t think bus patronage has bounced back.
With better buses, we will all benefit – environmentally, socially, economically, and from our point of view, professionally – as better buses will help to make new developments more sustainable and more palatable to the new modernised planning committees.
We look forward to seeing what the planning reform and the new NPPF bring us in the next few weeks.
By Tim Britton, Associate Director (Transport Planning)
