A landmark new twelve week consultation has been published this morning by the government, outlining how it intends to radically reform the planning system for the first time since 1947. In its foreword, the Prime Minister writes that this country’s “potential is being artificially constrained by a relic from the middle of the 20th – our outdated and ineffective planning system”, concluding that it is time for an entirely new streamlined system.

“Not more fiddling around the edges, not simply painting over the damp patches, but levelling the foundations and building, from the ground up, a whole new planning system for England.”

The consultation document draws heavily from Roger Scruton’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, with many themes from beauty to gentle density Back in June Dom Cummings told SpAds that planning reform was his biggest priority post-Covid…

The proposals in effect advance the democracy of planning, from controlling individual developments to setting a local plan by asking local communities to divide land into three categories:

• Growth areas where local communities designate land for building to go ahead. Outline approval for development would be automatically secured for forms and types of development specified in the local design code.
• Renewal areas where building can happen but subject to strict design conditions, set by local people.
• Protected areas, such as green space, where development is restricted.

Under the proposals, local people will set both the design codes: which areas can be developed, and which can’t. If this makes it into law, the Tories just might be able to acheive the hitherto impossible – more housing that actually looks nice…