Neither of the main two political parties in the UK are prepared to deliver comprehensive planning reform. Labour’s King Speech contained no legislation for it, even though the party has a large majority in the House of Commons;Existing efforts to get around the planning system without primary legislationhave proven slow, expensive, and incapable of delivering new housing on the scale required to address the crisis;The principal barrier to proper planning reform is that neither Labour nor the Conservatives is prepared to implement a national overhaul that upsets its own MPs;Yet the most potent weapon in the Government’s arsenal has been under-utilised: issuing Development Orders under Section 59 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990;These allow the Secretary of State either to grant planning permission to a specific project, or to any project in a defined area that meets whatever conditions are attached to the Order;At present, this regime is used only to provide limited Permitted Development rights for home modifications and a few other uses, but it could be much more widely applied, including to both the ‘Grey Belt’ and New Towns proposals in Labour’s manifesto;A Development Order-led strategy would bypass many of the friction points that bake costs and delays into the planning system, allowing ministers to unlock higher volumes of more attractive housing at pace – and only where they can get away with it politically.
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Table of Contents
- Henry Hill 2
- The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect any views held by the publisher or copyright owner. They are published as a contribution to public debate. 2
- Copyright Adam Smith Research Trust 2024. Some rights reserved. 2
- Published in the UK by ASI Research Ltd. 2
- 23 Great Smith Street London SW1P 3DJ 02072224995 infoadamsmith.org 2
- Executive Summary 3
- Introduction 4
- Development Orders 6
- Potential Uses 8
- Mansards 8
- Proximate Station Development 8
- Industrial Land 8
- Bungalows 8
- Grey Belt 9
- Brownfield Passports 9
- New Towns 9
- The Alternatives 10
- No Alternative 12
- What about Local Development 13
- Orders 13
- Local Development Orders 13
- Mayoral Development Orders 13
- Slicing the Knot 14
- Certainty 14
- Diversity 14
- Celerity 14
- Specificity 14
- Conclusion 16
