UK government must play planning long game in ensuring new town projects survive

The comments come in the wake of a new report by Pinsent Masons setting out a series of recommendations to help the UK government deliver on its ambitious goal to create a series of new towns, and tens of thousands of homes, across England.

Earlier this year the government announced it was in consultation talks over seven potential sites for the new towns – significantly fewer than the 12 originally earmarked for development by the New Towns Taskforce last year.

Reza Newton-Sanders, a planning and development expert with Pinsent Masons, said that the development processes for ensuring the proposed new towns are completed would need to take a forward-thinking approach, given the lifespan of the projects would put them into realms beyond current legislative or technological thinking.

“These schemes are going to take decades to deliver in some cases,” he warned.

“There needs to be flexibility going forwards, no matter what planning route is used, with planning flexibility to allow them to come forward in ways that we can't envisage right now, or with types of housing or uses that we can't think of at the moment.”

Emma Barkas, a planning expert with Pinsent Masons, added that building that futureproofing approach into the processes around approving the new towns and other, similar projects was essential in order to ensure they meet future demand, rather than current expectations.

"It would be bonkers to lock in the affordable housing tenures you are going to have right now,” she said.

"You need to leave flexibility for that to be decided at a later date, and to be agreed and settled later down the line, because we don't know what the requirements are going to be in 10 years time or more.

"We might have a whole different host of affordable housing tenures that we can't envisage right now. Some things will require a variation application, obviously, but if you can build in as much flex as possible to avoid the need for it, that's the preference.”

The report builds on discussions with senior leaders across the public, private and third sectors to draw up a holistic view of the approaches needed to ensure the new towns projects can be completed – covering funding, planning and delivery structures.
In all it puts forward 39 recommendations, driven by industry expertise and insight, on how best to meet the challenges of delivering the new town projects.

One of the biggest among them is around planning, with significant changes intended for planning rules to speed up approval and support the long-term nature of the projects, including introducing legislation to enable special development and local development orders to be varied after coming into force.

The report also recommends giving greater flexibility to inspectors looking at local plans and strategic development strategies, in relation to making the new town projects viable.

Barkas believes utilising existing planning approaches could help mitigate the consenting duration, whilst spatial development strategies (SDSs) could be utilised to ensure political survival for the projects.

“One of the things I think could be very helpful to new towns are the SDSs”, she explained.

“You could use those as a lever if you need to, so they can't just be pulled away as soon as you get a new government in that decides it doesn’t want to go down that route.

“From a policy perspective, they offer a potential way of insulating against political change.”

For a copy of the full Pinsent Masons report, please contact Isla Cross.