Planning revolution to boost new homes and high streets

By far the most promising part of Boris Johnson’s “New Deal” is the biggest shake-up of Britain’s planning system since the Second World War.

If the Prime Minister delivers on his radical assault on seventy years of entrenched planning laws, Britain could get an immediate boost to its dying high streets and a boom in new homes.

The new regulations – due to take effect in September – will give greater freedom for commercial property owners in town centres to convert buildings, including newly vacant shops, into homes without planning permission. Not only should these changes help revive the country’s town centres and brownfield sites but they will simultaneously take pressure off the green belt.

This would be a huge boost to Britain’s town centres, many of which are struggling with empty shops because of excess retail capacity. It is estimated that the country has about 30% more retail space than is needed, partly as a result of the over-expansion of retailers through the 1980s and 1990s.

The rules – which are to be included in a policy paper in July – will set out how more types of commercial premises will be given the freedom to be repurposed by reforming the Use Cases Order.

This would allow a building which, for example, is currently used as a shop, to be able to switch to opening as a cafe or an office without planning permission and local authority consent.

Property expert, Mark Robinson, and the new chairman of the government’s High Street Task Force, said: “ Given the scale of oversupply of retail space, a more flexible and dynamic planning system is an essential part of the toolkit to deliver change. The Task Force Board looks forward to seeing the details of the proposals.”

Robinson is one of many industry observers to hail the new proposals as transformative for the thousands of small shop-keepers around the country, already struggling but then brought close to collapse by the lockdown.

Anthony Breach, planning expert at the Centre for Cities think tank, says the changes could be one of the most dramatic improvements to the UK’s town centres and cities for seven generations.

“The narrative is that our high streets are dying because of the advance of Amazon and other online shopping sites. This is a factor but is not the only reason we are seeing our High Streets suffer.”

The real problem, he says, is that we have too much retail space and, for because of planning restrictions, local authorities have not been willing or flexible enough to make it easy to change their use.
What the new regulations will do is alter the power dynamic away from local councils and back to central government to be the referee on planning issues, allowing councils to concentrate on more strategic issues.

It’s generally agreed that such changes could result in the biggest and most positive shift in our town centres for generations as it will lead to a greater mix of retail, social, office and community based enterprises which increases footfall.

But fears that lifting restrictions will lead to a planning free for all with landlords are unfounded, says Breach, because the government is protecting certain types of usage such as pubs, libraries and village shops. While property developers will no longer have to jump through planning hoops, there will still be required to stick to high standards and current building regulations.

Critics will say regulations need to be more stringent and that greater quality control should be introduced to ensure that developers build homes that are not only of higher standards but of greater beauty. Quite how that is done is for another policy paper.

But for now, the impact of the new freedoms will act as a catalyst to property owners and landlords in town centres and high streets in the regions – hurt the most by falling trade and housing shortages – to switch usage. As Breach points out, there has been a significant uplift in the number of change of use planning applications in the wealthier south-east from commercial to residential than in the regions because it is more lucrative to do so.

Yet cities such as Blackburn, which have a big supply of affordable homes, do not have enough high-quality homes. These changes could – if properly handled – lead to more and better homes being built.

Other changes announced in the PM’s plan should also increase the housing supply, particularly the much-needed smaller flats and homes for single people or young couples. Builders will no longer need to go through the normal planning application to demolish and rebuild vacant residential and commercial buildings, so long as they are rebuilt as homes.

And home owners themselves ? What about planning relaxation to build extensions to their homes? So far, property owners are only going to be allowed to build above their properties – subject to neighbourly consultation.

As part of the planning revolution, the government will also be looking at its own land ownership to see how it could be better used to include house building.

Other measures announced today include a £12bn affordable homes programme for 180,000 new affordable homes for ownership and rent over the next 8 years. This will include a 1,500 unit pilot of “First Homes” houses that will be sold to first time buyers at a 30% discount which will stay in perpetuity, keeping them affordable for generations of families to own.

In another move, funds from the £400m Brownfield Land Fund have been allocated to the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region, Sheffield City Region, and North of Tyne and Tees Valley to support around 24,000 homes.

And small house-builders and developers are to be given access to The Home Builders Fund for new housing developments. Aimed at breaking the monopoly of the UK’s three big housebuilders, this fund is to receive another £450m and should allow the building of 7,200 new homes.