Andy Cowan, Associate Director, Carter Jonas (Manchester) discusses how regional planning should change to best provide the homes that are needed?
The Chancellor has been clear about the development sector’s role in helping to kickstart economic growth. From a planning and development perspective, the commitment to regional development being regionally-led was received by many as positive, as were the further changes to strategic planning that emerged in the Devolution White Paper, revised NPPF and Planning and Infrastructure Act.
The White Paper sets a medium-to-longer term ambition to simplify local government structures, proposing that strategic authorities will cover all of England. These groups of councils would be expected to engage in regional planning and produce Spatial Development Strategies, which will be implemented following support from a majority of constituent members. (The word ‘majority’ may be important in the future.)
Mayors who, the Government suggests, will lead Strategic Authorities, will benefit from new development management powers and possess the ability to call in strategically important planning applications. This is significant because it has only occurred in London previously. Other combined authorities, such as Greater Manchester and West Midlands, have not benefitted from devolved planning powers to this extent. In future, combined authorities will also have the ability to charge developers a mayoral levy to ensure that new developments contribute towards the necessary associated infrastructure; this doesn’t currently take place outside London.
The Government’s proposal is that integrated ‘single settlements’ will be implemented for Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined Authorities from the 2025-26 financial year and for four further northern Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) from 2026-27. This dedicated regional funding solution is a step-change from the current experience whereby funding is sought from numerous different central government pots on a competitive basis.
Unlike the proposals in the White Paper and Planning and Infrastructure Act, the changes to the NPPF are immediate and require a step-change in planning for the delivery of housing and economic uses. The revised NPPF introduces new requirements for local authorities to dedicate more land for growth in their Local Plans and adds weight (alongside carrots or sticks, depending on your viewpoint) to decision-making on planning applications that support sustainable growth.
The overall ambition seems clear. The Government wants local authorities to achieve higher levels of growth through collaboration and, in return, receive greater autonomy to drive their own agendas.
Regional planning is a vehicle to achieve this and there are lessons to be learnt from experiences to date, some of which already appear to have been heeded by the Government.
A common challenge in policy-making is achieving political consensus. Even the successful Places for Everyone plan (formerly the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework) had challenges before being adopted in 2024. Work had begun a decade earlier, with an early draft published for consultation in 2016. Challenges around the amount of Green Belt release then required a radical re-think, further delaying its production and subsequently leading to the withdrawal of Stockport Council in 2022. Then, following adoption, Oldham Council requested to withdraw.
Stockport and Oldham Councils are currently in No Overall Control (NOC) politically, making consensus challenging. This challenge is especially prevalent in instances in which councillors have elected on a hyperlocal issue – more often than not, in opposition to housing development. According to the Institute for Government, there are approximately 100 local authorities across England in NOC, meaning this issue may come up frequently across the country.
For the next wave of regional planning to be successful requires politicians (both locally and regionally) and local authority officers to make compelling cases for accommodating growth and accompanying infrastructure. This would certainly be helped by the incentives proposed by the Government to support regional planning, including increased devolution and access to dedicated funding.
For combined authorities at an earlier stage in their formation, Greater Manchester provides an intriguing example of devolution, specifically of the effects of engaging with regional planning versus not engaging. Places for Everyone provides a good example of how devolved decisions are implemented in practice and it will be interesting to follow how Stockport accommodates its housing and economic growth independently of the regional planning umbrella.
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