Key Planning Related Proposals in Budget 2020 – Part 1

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced Budget2020 a few days ago and it had a lot in it about the Town & Country Planning regime in the UK. These proposals are wide ranging and have the potential to change the Planning landscape in significant ways for the forseeable future. There are 12 key themes that the Planning Resource magazine identified as follows:

Theme 1 – Comprehensive Planning Reforms

The government announced a set of “comprehensive reforms” to the planning system, including “firm consequences” for local authorities that “fail to meet their local housing need” and potential for greater Whitehall intervention.  In a section on housing, the Treasury’s Budget document said ministers will “explore long-term reforms” to the system, including “rethinking planning from first principles”. It added: “These reforms will aim to create a simpler planning system and improve the capacity, capability and performance of local planning authorities (LPAs) to accelerate the development process.  

Perhaps in simple speak – it means Whitehall will intervene more than it does already!

Theme 2 – Planning White Paper

The much talked-about and long-awaited Planning White Paper will come out sometime in spring. The Budget document said the white paper would be published separately to the proposed changes in the budget. And earlier in January, the Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said the government was looking at publishing the long-awaited Planning White Paper in the first half of this year. He said it would address “ways of accelerating the planning system, making it simpler and cheaper and promoting better quality design and unlocking more land for new homes to be built”.

But as anyone who follows these issues knows, it is not the planning system that is holding up housebuilding. It is well known that Local Planning Authorities have given planning permissions for over 1 million homes. Developers are sitting on those permissions and not building them out. But let’s not let facts get in the way of giving even more leeway to those who are holding back housebuilding.

Theme 3 – Oxford to Cambridge Expressway

 The government’s second Road Investment Strategy (RIS2) sets out the government’s funding commitments for England’s strategic roads. Chancellor Rishi Sunak called it “the biggest ever investment in strategic roads and motorway. Now, that is a lot of tarmac, over £27bn of it.

However, this publication states ministers “are now pausing further development of the Oxford-to-Cambridge Expressway while we undertake further work on other potential road projects that could support the government’s ambition for the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, and benefit people who live and work there, including exploring opportunities to alleviate congestion around the Arc’s major economic centres such as Milton Keynes”. 

It adds: “We will work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and local partners on the proposed Spatial Framework to identify the role transport can play alongside the proposed economic and housing growth ambitions for the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.”

Watch this space then. The commitment to the East West Rail may just be stronger.

Theme 4 – Oxford-Cambridge Arc Spatial Framework

One of nine recommendations made by the government’s infrastructure advisor the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) in a 2017 report which first set out a blueprint for the growth arc is the development of a spatial framework. The NIC report also suggested that one million (1 million) homes should be built in the growth corridor by by 2050 if the arc is to achieve its economic potential. Now, that is a lot of houses!!

The budget report stated that ministers would “develop, with local partners, a long-term spatial framework to support strategic planning in the OxCam Arc”. And that “This will support the area’s future economic success and the delivery of the new homes required by this growth up to 2050 and beyond.”

We would all like to know where these million homes are going to go and how they will be integrated into the local plans of all the local authorities along the arc.

Theme 5 – Four Development Corporations along the Arc

It would seem that there are already indications of where the government might want to build some of those million houses highlighted in the NIC 2017 report.

The budget report 2020 in paragraph 2.129 said that the government “is also going to examine and develop the case for up to four new development corporations in the OxCam Arc at Bedford, St Neots/Sandy, Cambourne and Cambridge, which includes plans to explore the case for a New Town at Cambridge, to accelerate new housing and infrastructure development“.

It is not clear just how many new homes each Development Corporation will be expected to deliver. As Cambridge is currently a city of just over 44,000 homes, this gives us an idea the scale of what might be involved.

Theme 6 – Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) Allocations

Government confirmed there would be new allocations from the HIF fund to the tune of £1.1 billion. This is in order to enable up to 69,620 homes to be built on brownfield sites across the country. the fund was aimed at “pro-development councils and ambitious mayoral combined authorities”.

Furthermore, the report stated that the government would shortly invite bids that “are ambitious and represent a significant increase in housing supply on brownfield land”.

As an example of what HIF funding supports, Cambridge City together with Anglian Water have been allocated £200m of HIF funding to move the Water Recycling Centre from North East Cambridge so this last brownfield area in the sub region can be re-developed.

These are the first 6 planning related themes in Budget 2020. Watch for the next six.