Following Labour Conference last week, the Conservatives have now set out their own emerging approach to housing, planning and development – and the contrast is becoming increasingly stark.
Kemi Badenoch used her conference speech to put economic growth at the centre of a future Conservative government, promising to “get government out of your way”, make homes cheaper to build and remove stamp duty on primary residences. But some of the most significant announcements for our industry came elsewhere during the conference. The Conservatives have proposed:
Replacing Section 106 and CIL with a single developer levy, intended to simplify the system and reduce delays.
Scrapping the Future Homes Standard and other requirements they argue add unnecessarily to the cost of new homes.
Abolishing Natural England and the Environment Agency, with their functions transferred elsewhere in government.
A much wider programme of deregulation aimed at reducing the cost and complexity of bringing forward development.
Perhaps most interestingly, Shadow Housing Secretary Katie Lam has been tasked by Badenoch with effectively rethinking the planning system from first principles.
A zonal planning system is apparently being considered, while there has even been discussion about whether the NPPF itself should ultimately be replaced. That is potentially a very significant change in direction.
Only weeks after the Government published its new NPPF, we now have the opposition openly questioning whether the framework underpinning the English planning system is the right model at all. There are obviously some big unanswered questions.
How would affordable housing and infrastructure be secured if the existing Section 106/CIL system disappeared?
What would replace the role currently performed by Natural England and the Environment Agency?
Would a zonal system genuinely speed up development – or simply move many of the arguments we currently have at application stage into the plan-making process?
What does seem increasingly clear is that housing delivery and the planning system are becoming a major political battleground.
Labours approach is increasingly interventionist – strategic planning, housing targets and a stronger role for government in driving delivery.
The Conservatives are beginning to articulate something very different: deregulation, lower development costs, fewer statutory barriers and a more fundamental redesign of the planning system itself.
For those of us working in planning and development, that makes the next few years particularly interesting.
The debate is no longer simply about how many homes Britain should build. It is increasingly about whether the planning system we have is capable of delivering them – and, if not, what should replace it.