Planning for human welfare

This article originally appeared in the Municipal Journal.

Years ago I asked a planner what it would mean to develop a plan which prioritised human welfare. He responded by arguing that what his place really needed was some new humans because the humans they did have were too poor, too unqualified, too sick…which was why there were executive homes on greenfield sites, to “drive growth”.

I have been reminded of this conversation in recent weeks as planning reform has headlined Labour’s mission to boost economic growth. The current planning regime is being presented as a major brake on growth which needs reform in order to support the development of housing and infrastructure.

“cut it down to size”

But isn’t that what the Conservative government argued in their reform of the national planning policy framework back in 2011? Eric Pickles called planning a “drag anchor” to growth and promised to “cut it down to size”.  During the last fourteen years we’ve seen the ability of planners to negotiate social and economic outcomes including good design, affordability and infrastructure for communities systemically squeezed. At the same time the power of developers to get what they want has expanded – along with their profits.

The fact that this hasn’t materialised into the housing we need or the growth the new government want, in order to generate much needed tax revenues, is more to do with the way in which wealth has been extracted out of our economy than the flaws in the planning system. If anything, we need to rebalance the relationship between planning and development so that we can make sure that the wealth that our planning system generates through land and property development actually generates the benefits that communities so desperately need in a cost of living crisis.

“a land and property market that is failing”

Labour have pledged to intervene directly to support local authorities by funding more planning officers which will provide much needed capacity after more than a decade of austerity. However, we also need the government to “take back control” of a land and property market that is failing to deliver good outcomes for people, place and planet. Max Lock, the pioneering post war urban planner once wrote that “the purpose of planning is about human beings and their welfare”. But this is a lesson that we have long forgotten. Instead of human welfare we now talk about growth.

Simply cranking the dial further in the direction of market liberalisation isn’t going to deliver the ambitions of the new Government because it’s already been tried and found to be wanting. For fourteen years the UK government has avoided its responsibility to deliver when it comes to planning, preferring instead to pass the responsibility to the development industry and blaming planners for being too slow. But ultimately, the purpose of the development industry isn’t to build homes but to sell them, for large profits that can be used to reward shareholders and service debt.

“genuinely affordable homes and local infrastructure”

No one claims that the planning system is perfect but there is a lot going on at the local level to try and take back control so that the wealth that is created through development generates positive benefits for communities. In a forthcoming report on planning, CLES will outline some of what can be done at a local level with a bit of creativity and ambition. There is much the new Labour government, hellbent on growth, can learn from the experience of local authorities who have been trying to do a similar job. Despite ever decreasing resources, local authorities have leant into what little they do have, making effective use of publicly owned land and assets to deliver genuinely affordable homes and local infrastructure.

Focusing our efforts on creating well designed communities for people to live and ensuring that children are able to grow up in homes that are secure, warm and have access to decent amenities is surely the best way to ensure an economic future where our economy can flourish. This is about making the growth of human welfare the mission of our planning system.