Johnson’s obsession with levelling up risks neglecting the South

When my father was a local councillor he came home one day and announced, “It’s official, I’m the third most important person in the town.”

He’d just been made chairman of planning and by his reckoning, top was the boss of the shipyard and by far the biggest employer, next was the council leader, then came chairman of planning.

So critical was the role, he said, that it gave him a place in the nuclear shelter. Alas, as he delighted in telling us, the invitation did not extend to the rest of his family.

We never did get to test his claim, thank goodness, that he was destined to live while we would perish or fend for ourselves in the event of a missile strike, presumably from Russia. What we did notice, though, was that his workload increased substantially and that whenever we went somewhere, business folk would nod or say hello. My father was a teacher so they were not in his milieu, but seemingly they were now.

Planning goes to the heart of community life. Other aspects are standardised. Schools, law and order, health, social care – they all operate to centrally-dispensed and monitored procedures. Giving the go-ahead or not for a building development, despite attempts to apply uniformity, still comes down to discretion.

Those taking the decisions are prone to pressures which do not apply elsewhere. You can picket a police station or court, protest outside a hospital, and nothing happens. Inside, they’re applying strict criteria and following the book to the letter. In planning, yes, they are meant to do the same, but realistically it’s much harder to ignore the strength of feelings – very often those who shout the loudest get their way.

As a result, securing approvals can take forever. Not enough affordable new homes are built. Successive governments have failed lamentably to get anywhere near their housing goals.

Now, Boris Johnson says he is going to relieve the logjam. He wants to “level the foundations” of planning and create an entirely new system. The Queen’s Speech duly contains as a central plank the introduction of more certainty and speed. There will be a new Planning Bill designed to overhaul planning in England.

Ministers want to replace the case-by-case assessment of applications with new zonal designations. Councils will be required to classify all land as “protected”, or suitable for development. They will be expected to view favourably plans in these latter zones, and pre-agreed local plans would mean that schemes in areas assigned for “growth” will automatically receive outline permissions.

Residents would have their say in the long-term plans upon which the zones are based, but after that their ability to oppose individual proposals will be severely reduced.

These changes, along with a shake-up of section 106 agreements, design quality codes, greater use of technology and more easily readable plans, are aimed at dramatically reducing red tape and quickening the process, and helping the government reach its new house-building objectives. Ministers maintain that developers will be more prepared to invest in building, allowing targets to be met.

They’re also intended to shore up the Tory vote in those Labour “red wall” seats now turned blue. The aim is to expand home ownership in those “left behind” areas.

All of which is commendable – England’s planning laws date back more than 70 years, to the end of the Second World War. But in his rush to “level the foundations” to achieve “levelling up”, Johnson must be careful.

He has to avoid “levelling down”. With all the attention being heaped on the North and Midlands, the South and South-East are in danger of being forgotten. How are the new planning laws going to work in Labour-run London, for instance, where the housing shortage is most acute? People in London pay twice as much in rent and 40 per cent more on mortgage repayments than the rest of the country.

A town with lots of space upon which to build and to expand is a very different proposition from London. Where in the metropolitan sprawl are the new “growth” zones going to be? Ministers say the new measures will encourage people to live and work away from London, in those constituencies they so badly wish to retain.  

First, really? London is expensive but it is still streets ahead of anywhere else in terms of culture, dining, shopping, clubbing, job opportunities – it’s where people, young people especially, want to be.

Second, London and the wider South and South-East drive our economy. Once, it’s true, the North and Midlands acted as the engine room, with manufacturing, shipbuilding, mining and engineering. No longer. Today, our strength is built on our services and they are predominantly concentrated in the southern half.

Already, there are signs of London being ignored. Closely allied to housebuilding – as well as to planning and investing – is infrastructure. The government is earmarking billions for transport routes in the North and Midlands. In London, Crossrail is not completed and Hammersmith Bridge is shut, with no funding for its urgent repair and no date for its reopening. The joke among frustrated locals is that if Hammersmith was in Yorkshire they would have a replacement bridge by now. Except nobody is laughing.

It’s doubtful that amid the euphoria at winning Hartlepool last week whether Johnson paid close attention to all the returns. Overall, the Tories did well, but there were losses. Three county council results stand out: Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire. Why did the Conservatives lose in these shire strongholds, all in prosperous parts of the south of England? Because the councils were embroiled in rows over development schemes. They discovered the hard way that where planning is concerned, the people wield the ultimate sanction.

Trying to “level the foundations” to secure “levelling up” while “levelling down” – it has a distinctly prescriptive, Orwellian feel. Oddly un-Boris, in fact. It induces a sense of queasiness, of government dictating and manipulating.

This attempt at directing and reshaping is bound to end in controversies galore, if not in tears. Planning matters. Ask my father.