Concerns about the proposals in the White Paper: Planning for the Future are ratcheting up. Badly written, it was slipped out last August with little publicity. Most of those who persevered to the end could see merit in some of the ideas, but very few seem to think it is the answer to a planning system that undoubtedly could do better.

The housing need formula was the first element to face a backlash, not only with local authorities but also with Tory MPs who feared their leafy constituencies would be overwhelmed with new housing for which they would be blamed. The “mutant algorithm” (attributed by some to Dominic Cummings) certainly contained some baffling targets. According to journalist Simon Jenkins, house building in Newcastle would have fallen by 66%, Manchester by 37% and the north-east generally by 28%. In the south-east outside of London, development would have risen by 57% and in Kensington by a whopping 633%. Building around Cotswold villages would have roughly doubled. One theory is that ‘demand’ was interpreted as ‘need’, but whatever the rationale was, it had nothing to do with ‘levelling up’.

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