Planning practitioners have responded with cautious optimism to the Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill, formally announced by the Queen during the state opening of parliament today. The bill is intended to aid the government in reaching its target of delivering one million new homes in England by 2020.
While provisions that will affect the planning and compulsory purchase processes were welcomed, there remains clear scepticism that the one million figure can be met.
Carl Dyer, head of planning at Irwin Mitchell, said that the government’s target is “both light, and optimistic”. He said: “It is light because most studies suggest we need to build at least 250,000 homes a year simply to address the existing shortfall and the growth in household creation. It is optimistic because their own figures show that there were only 143,560 completions last year. That number was itself 6% up on the previous year (so is at least heading in the right direction) but the government needs to see next year’s figure up nearly 40% to get to where it wants to be. That looks very optimistic. Worthy, but optimistic; and still short of what is needed.”
Jay Das, head of the planning team at Wedlake Bell LLP, agreed that the “government crusade” of delivering one million built homes by 2020 is unlikely to be achieved: “Four years is easily lost in the preparation of legislation and policy making, not to mention legal challenges.”
He said the target will not be reached unless new towns and cities are built, adding: “Further changes announced in the Queen’s speech will continue the onslaught on the planning system to make it ‘faster and fairer’. Changes proposed under the Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill will mean that developers can start building as soon as planning permission is granted. Combined with changes introduced in the new Housing and Planning Act 2016 for permissions to be granted by development order this should remove a hurdle which often delays the start of many development schemes and see more spades in the ground once the bill has been assented.”
Dyer said that the new bill contains some useful provisions, adding: “At the micro level, councils currently make excessive use of pre-commencement conditions, often in circumstances where they are unnecessary, which delays development activity. We regularly see consents with more than a dozen such conditions, and sometimes a lot more. Since each must be signed off before a lawful start can be made, the developer is at the mercy of the least efficient council or stakeholder officer determining any one of the applications to discharge the conditions. But we will need to see the full legislation to see if it will be effective.”
In addition, Dyer welcomed the announced plans to make the compulsory purchase order process clearer, fairer and faster. He said: “Simplification of the compulsory purchase regime is to be welcomed; but by centring the reforms on the market price of the land, the government is missing an opportunity to speed it up much more: many land owners would sell up much more readily if they were simply offered a significant uplift on the market price – and the infrastructure schemes the government wants could come forward so much faster as a result.”
Duncan Field, head of planning UK at Norton Rose Fulbright, saw the compulsory purchase reform as the “stand-out measure” in the new bill. “Apart from a streamlined order-making process there is the promise of codifying more aspects of the assessment of compensation, which should result in the CPO process becoming more predictable and transparent,” he said.
Field added that there will be concern about suggestion that neighbourhood planning will be strengthened, which “some will see this as pulling in the opposite direction to the need to deliver more homes”. But he said: “From the detail we have in the background document it seems that this may be more limited and that the bill will focus on measures which offer practical help for communities to participate and on measures which address current concerns about keeping neighbourhood plans up-to-date and relevant once they are in place.”
