Insider Media Limited

The biggest issue on the agenda of all planning professionals, in the private or public sector, is ’localism’; a concept coined by Conservative leader David Cameron before the general election.

Its appeal as a campaign slogan was obvious; underpinned by the accompanying rhetoric that his party wanted to decentralise planning, and to return the decision-making process to local people.

However, months later, neither Cameron nor his coalition colleagues have explained the intellectual rationale, or the strategic thinking, behind localism.

We witnessed the immediate abolition of regional housing targets, but have not been told what will replace them, or how the country’s desperate need for new homes will be met.

I worked for David Wilson Homes, and Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council, before joining King Sturge’s planning and development consultancy team, in Birmingham, six years ago, so I believe I can see the issue from both perspectives.

Housebuilders trying to bring proposals forward can become frustrated by what they see as excessive bureaucracy, and often see the planning system as an obstacle to delivery.

Equally, planning officers are often under enormous pressure from their elected members to refuse schemes, especially in rural areas, and many of their departments were already short-staffed, even before the October spending review which will see more vacancies left unfilled.

Even with strategic housing targets in place, we saw marked differences in the attitude of local authorities to proposals for new housing.

In my experience, councils in the Birmingham-Black Country area usually respond positively to such applications, because they need the investment.

On greenfield sites, and in rural areas though, councils are typically less willing to proceed, partly because some councillors, and a vocal minority of their constituents, regard new homes as a threat to their quality of life and do not understand the economic benefits, for instance retaining local services.

Without strategic housing targets though, what exists to focus the collective minds of all local authorities on bringing homes forward; whether they are for general sale or rent, or in the affordable sector?

Housing associations and housebuilders are eager to work with councils, to devise innovative means of increasing home ownerships, perhaps through shared equity schemes, for example, but they too need to understand how ‘localism’ will work in practice.

I still think Labour’s concept of local development frameworks was a good idea, and could still work - if it could be made more flexible, and more responsive.

Those who see the new agenda as a means of preventing over-delivery - of city centre apartments, most obviously - should remember that under-delivery pushes up house prices, making them even less affordable, particularly for first-time buyers, and those on low incomes.

Nothing handicaps progress more than uncertainty, and the present policy vacuum creates uncertainty among planners in both public and private sectors.

I think it would have been better for the new government to have left the existing regional Spatial Strategies in place, until it had devised and introduced a structure to replace them.

We have been waiting since the Queen’s Speech in May to see the content of the decentralism and localism bill, and it is now expected later this month.

However, it has already been revealed that the right of third-party appeals - a key element of pre-election planning policy for both coalition parties - will not be included, to the approval of the planning industry.

Hopefully, other issues merely intended to appeal during the campaign will also be left behind, and this month will reveal the substance and the reality of ‘localism’ - so we can all begin to learn how to work within the new framework.