The disparate planning regimes

Martin Simmons, Viewpoint

How to engage with strategic spatial issues across the disparate planning regimes of London and the Wider South East

Addressing the issue of effective engagement with bodies in the Wider South East, we have to recognise the very different planning and development regimes which exist in Greater London and the wider region. In London, the GLA Act 1999 places a requirement on the elected London Mayor to produce a Spatial Development Strategy (which became known as the London Plan) setting out London-wide policy for housing and development, and to keep it under review and periodic replacement to reflect changing circumstances and needs. It sets out the framework for action by the London Boroughs – the 33 local planning authorities, with the Mayor having the power to intervene on strategic cases.

These powers contrast sharply with the situation outside London, where, since the 2010 incoming Conservative government abolished the Blair era regional-based planning structure in favour of a ‘Localism’ mantra where planning rested with district and unitary planning authorities subject only to a National Planning Policy Framework which sets out England-wide policy to be followed by the local authorities, such as the relative sanctity of green belts and the role of housing development targets. This situation persists today, although not without periodic interventions by Government (latterly the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) on how LAs should undertake their duties. An attempt was made by Johnson’s 2020 Planning White Paper to impose a more dirigiste system in LAs, but this was rejected by shire Tory MPs, who succeeded in pressing the need for local community involvement and reducing the status of housing targets to ‘starting points’ which could be reduced if a good case is made, e.g. in green belt areas. Catriona is far better placed than I am to describe the present situation: she refers to ‘3 years of uncertainty among LAs and across the planning sector, creating barriers to progress on Local Plan preparation’.

Given prevailing circumstances, how the new London Plan process can engage effectively with organisations in the Wider South East (WSE) will need to reflect their apparently very limited ability to do so. There have been liaison arrangements through periodic meetings between the GLA and organisations of LAs at a regional scale, but (as the Examining Panel into the last London Plan noted) these have lacked authority. I am unaware of whether they have continued to the present.

The question has become political. Assuming as incoming Labour government in autumn this year, Keir Starmer has indicated that increasing housing provision and its affordability will be a key policy issue, proposing a programme of ‘new towns’. We await the Labour Manifesto for more detail on how this could proceed. Our interest is in how this would play out in the WSE, and particularly what sort of effective spatial strategy could emerge. An article by Ian Wray in the current issue of Town and Country Planning explores options, including reviving the county scale, and a fresh pattern of regions.

I would argue the situation in the WSE is sui generis, such that spatial options could best be explored on a functional sub-regional basis, starting with ones which already exist or have been examined before; the GLA’s Outer London Commission’s findings would be worth revisiting. One existing sub-region is that extending from the City of London via Harlow and Stansted to the Cambridge Combined Authority area, the so-called Innovation Corridor. Corridors in sub-regional form relating London to the wider region in previous versions of the London Plan include the ’Western Wedge’ (west London to Reading and beyond) and the South Coast area, and would be worth revisiting.