Planning reform alone will not deliver better places

The revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) issued on 17 August has been broadly well received by the industry. Mind you, if it’s solving the crisis of housing supply and affordability you’re after don’t expect too much. The streamlined system unveiled by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is overdue and welcome, but the problems were never just about planning.

I like to think that we in the design professions have played our part. At HTA Design, our published collaborations, often alongside fellow housing specialists Levitt Bernstein, Pollard Thomas Edwards and Andy von Bradsky, former Head of Architecture at MHCLG, have consistently argued for many of the reforms now being embraced by government. From Supurbia and Semi-Permissive Planning to Strong Suburbs, Street Votes and Placemaking Not Plotting, these publications aim to help shape the direction of today’s policy debate. 

We particularly endorse provisions for densification around rail infrastructure, exploiting air rights and recognition of the potential of small and corner sites 

There are several aspects of the revised NPPF that deserve particular recognition. As a Commissioner at Historic England, I welcome clarification on heritage protections, abolishing the obligation to use such absurd phrases as ‘towards the upper end of less than substantial harm’ in response to statutory consultations. It is also good to see more support for long term viable uses of historic buildings. Adaptive re-use is the key to overcoming vacancy and nothing is more deleterious to the nation’s heritage than empty buildings.

Beyond heritage, we particularly endorse provisions for densification around rail infrastructure, exploiting air rights and recognition of the potential of small and corner sites. These nationally determined development rights will force the pace of change, making unprecedented demands on the development industry to deliver on design quality. Planning departments must ensure places are properly planned, with more and better use of local spatial strategies, masterplans, design codes and design review.

That, of course, will place more demands on local planning authorities, whose skills and resources remain stretched after years of austerity. Given the patchy availability of specialist expertise across the country, the establishment of the Planning Advisory Service and MHCLG’s Regional Design and Place-shaping Networks and Advocates Programme is a positive step. By connecting place advocates across the nine regions, the initiative provides a valuable mechanism for sharing knowledge, building capability and promoting best practice.

As we know, there is more to come from the department this autumn and the publication of the NPPF’s companion Design & Placemaking Planning Practice Guidance is expected to provide greater clarity on what the government means by design quality. We contributed to roundtable discussions on proposals to develop this guidance from the National Model Design Code (NMDC). During those discussions, it became clear that while the NMDC represented a significant step forward, there was little appetite among housebuilders to follow it and no compulsion for them to do so. A stronger national framework for design quality, coupled with more consistent and rigorous Design Review processes, will certainly help.

So, if the economic constraints on housebuilding – the real reason for collapse in housing supply – do eventually lift, both developers and local planning authorities must understand the role of design in the process of quality placemaking. Speaking for the design professions with whom we have been preparing for these changes, I can say we will to be ready to make the most of new planning provisions. 

To meet these challenges in ways that don’t deter speculative housebuilders is the key to unblocking the nation’s housing logjam 

 The reality is that good placemaking is not accidental. Delivering biophilic environments at 50 dwellings per hectare with parking ratios upwards of 2:1 is a specialist skill. Integrating sustainable urban drainage with landscape and play is a matter of landscape design, not civil engineering. To meet these challenges in ways that don’t deter speculative housebuilders is the key to unblocking the nation’s housing logjam.

There remains one significant fly in this balmy ointment. We do need the Department of Transport (DfT) to wake up and smell the coffee. The DfT commissioned the Chartered Institution of Highways & Transportation (CIHT) in 2020 to revise and combine Manual for Streets (2007) and Manual for Streets 2 (2010). CIHT now apparently reports Manual for Streets 3 is ready for publication but, crucially, it cannot give a date.

Until DfT delivers a companion to the revised NPPF with similar clarity, placemaking will continue to suffer at the hands of Borough Engineers, many of whom hold on to an independent agenda not aligned with contemporary thinking.

Ben Derbyshire is chair at HTA Design