Why the planning system needs urgent reform – and what needs to change

The UK planning system is under intense scrutiny, and rightly so. Not only is the application process excruciatingly slow but the default position seems to be to reject rather than approve.

Dialogue with local planning authority personnel is not encouraged, and most officers are so overworked they don’t have time to respond anyway. The result is a growing planning backlog that is hindering the building environment and stifling the country’s productivity.

It is not just new developments that are encountering problems. In 2019, there were 600,000 buildings recorded as empty or disused – that figure has since grown to 650,000, a worrying trend which shows a retro-fit first approach to planning is needed. So, how can these issues be resolved?

It is hard to overstate the current scale of the problem. Even when applications are being considered, although the system (quite rightly) appears to handle site-specific environmental considerations effectively, the same cannot be said in terms of the building’s technical design: the new Building Safety Act will only trigger technical review at Gateway 1 for high risk buildings.

The lack of proper consideration of wider, often sector-specific technical design issues, can lead to consent being granted for designs that may have oversights or flaws. Meanwhile, many applicants are assigned planning officers who lack the required design or planning experience, indicating a gap in technical competence.

In terms of potential solutions, the options are limited. We can either look at dumbing down the planning process, making it shorter or simpler to meet the bar of being the in the public’s interest, or add resource to aid the current process or create a new one altogether.

Ideally, we would add resources. However, we’re unlikely to be able to do so, not in the time frame required anyway, a reality which calls for a new way of thinking.

A fresh approach

I propose that instead of dispersing skills among local planning authorities (as is currently the case), we centralise these skills to create a talent pool that can build and maintain state-of-the-art, sector-specific expertise for engagement on major projects.

This will lead to better-quality buildings in the long-term, despite challenges such as a lack of funding and the skills gap. Put simply, we can take large strides forwards by recalibrating the expertise that already exists within the system.

Perhaps the Planning Inspectorate, as our national planning body, could have a new focus on raising and maintaining long-term, state-of-the-art competency for key sectors. This could easily be physically decentralised, with all major applications vetted by this authority for the sector in question, be it infrastructure, housing, transport, healthcare or education.

At present, most local planning authorities don’t have the technical competency to know whether a design is missing an opportunity or has a technical flaw. This new technical stakeholder could help ensure that all major projects are vetted on a like-for-like basis nationally, helping to remove inconsistencies in the system.

A sector-driven approach may also save the need to set up ad hoc design review boards like those overseeing HS2, LLDC and OPDC, and more importantly retain competency. As we’ve seen with CABE (now part of the Design Council), the loss of temporary or disbanded permanent bodies’ built-up knowledge has been immense.

Looking further into the planning process, alongside the centralisation of planning competencies, we should also consider the reintroduction of outline consent, followed by a full plan or detailed consent, once the design is technically resolved, building on the BSA but for all applications.

This solution may pose a challenge for local planning authority staff, not least because it would require the expertise of surveyors or architects to evaluate proposals. Currently, however, there aren’t enough architects involved in planning for this to happen. That needs to change moving forwards and is another reason that shifting to a centralised system of planning competencies is a good idea.

The building environment sector is faced with a big productivity problem caused by a perfect storm of cost pressures and skills shortages. By unlocking the talent within the planning system, we can start to reduce the immense backlog while developing a more consistent process, which will lead to better designed developments being green-lighted.