Jenrick has unleashed a backlash over planning — led by local Tories
Robert Jenrick (PA Images)
Dividing lines are crucial in politics. They give definition against opponents – and if correctly drawn they give you ownership of a popular position. New Labour’s slogan “the many not the few” is a classic of the genre, reinforcing an “us and them” divide between voters and the Major government. Margaret Thatcher used a less nuanced approach, denouncing “the enemy within”. That too had a logic: defining yourself against an aggressor allows you to position yourself as a crusader for goodness and truth.
As Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has himself been a strong proponent of dividing lines, using the slogan “Get Brexit Done” to convert lifetime Labour voters into Tory supporters, and is attempting to embed a values divide between the “Red Wall” seats of the North of England and the metropolitan heartlands of Keir Starmer’s Labour. Not content with that, Johnson has sought to identify his own internal opposition to take on, and he has found it – in local authority planning committees.
In a flurry of activity over the summer, the government has already significantly eased planning controls around the change of use of buildings – allowing shops to become homes, which could bring welcome life back to high streets with too many shuttered premises, pound shops, and charity shops. The limits on what is called “permitted development” are also being relaxed, allowing property owners to make changes to their properties without requiring planning permission. These changes are promoted in the interests of increasing the development and supply of new housing.
The Boston politician, Senator Tip O’Neill, famously said that “all politics is local”. Anyone who has, like me, been a local councillor knows that this is nowhere so powerfully true as in planning applications. Small changes to a locality – whether residential or commercial – can create huge controversies. Balancing the competing interests and mapping a route for growth that respects local civic pride, generates new jobs and incentivises enterprise, is one of the most demanding – and satisfying tasks of a local politician. It really matters – not just because of the voters, but because it is your community too.
Into this delicate web of relations and negotiated settlements has stepped Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Under his new regulations, not only can high street shops instantly become fast food takeaways or tattoo parlours – there is no cap on the number that can group themselves together in one place. When this issue was raised with him by officials, Jenrick reportedly waved away concerns, asserting that “market forces” would prevent such an over-concentration. That, though, is small beer beside his other key loosening of planning controls – in England your neighbour can now add two storeys to their dwelling without any need to obtain planning permission. In most suburbs in the country, that would be regarded as overdevelopment, with a significant loss of amenity. The few backbench Tory MPs who commented, when the changes were slipped out at the end of the summer parliamentary session, welcomed any moves to increase housing supply, but seemed very nervous of anything that could cause such changes in development without any brake from democratic oversight.
This, though, was just the amuse-bouche. The main course was delivered over the recess with the release of a consultation paper on planning reform. The core proposal is to rip up the planning system that has been in place since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and which gives councils control over granting planning permission in their localities. In place of local democratic oversight would be England-wide zoning for land. Some, such as Green Belt or Areas of Outstanding National Beauty (AONBs), would be zoned Protected, the rest would be either Renewal areas “suitable for development” or Growth areas “suitable for substantial development”. The direction is clear – it’s “go go” time for developers.
The response to the consultation launch was muted (unusually for such a major change of policy, it wasn’t presented to Parliament as a statement) but there has been a steady drumbeat of opposition since. The change in policy has been positioned as the end of the last socialist nationalisation of the Attlee government. That is historically inaccurate – postwar planning policy can be traced back to work initiated by Baldwin in the thirties when, as Prime Minister, he was concerned about urban sprawl. A villain is always useful in politics. However, the depiction of English planning as a Left-wing conspiracy fails a more significant test: contact with reality. Outside English cities, in the towns and villages of rural England, planning is the responsibility of district councils – many of which are Tory-controlled. If there is an “enemy within” in planning and development, it is largely made up of Tory local councillors.
If successful, Boris Johnson is going to nationalise planning and remove local discretion from adapting or amending schemes. This is going to be an interesting fight. Most Tory MPs – indeed most MPs of all parties – accept the case for more housebuilding, both as a social need and an important economic stimulus. But enthusiasm for housebuilding is in inverse proportion to the distance to their own seats. When they discover that neither they nor their local councillors can influence development proposals – because their own Prime Minister has nationalised planning and removed local discretion through “zoning” – we may see a revolt in the shires, perhaps on the scale of the Countryside Alliance mobilisation against Tony Blair’s foxhunting ban.
