local authorities and city leaders in england have far less autonomy from central
government than in europe or north America. there is a particular gap in strategic leadership across local authority boundaries, with england now the only advanced economy to have no strategic planning for homes beyond local level.114 city leaders have few incentives,
budgets or tools to build consensus in order to deliver the required level of building, either in the market or affordable sectors. As well as promoting an arbitrary inward focus, this lack of strong consensus means that general support for new house building can all too easily wilt in the face of site-specific opposition.
Incentives and rewards to develop are not strong enough
In principle, facilitating new housing supply is one of the few areas in which local authorities can exert direct influence. even while councils’ responsibility for other areas of policy, such as education and policing, have reduced, they have retained primary responsibility for land use planning. there is therefore a mismatch between the ability to align transport and social infrastructure provision with housing provision, which can create imbalanced supply and demand. however, political cycles that are far shorter than development timescales, combined with limited rewards and incentives can drive politicians and leaders to take a very cautious approach to development that can prioritise the preference of current residents over the longer term needs of the community and the economy. perversely, housing shortages push up house prices, which can increase homeowners’ desire to preserve asset values and hence their resistance to new homes, worsening the shortage.
when city and local authority leaders make the case for jobs growth or even transport there are clear political and financial rewards. however, making the case to build enough homes is much harder, with major political risks and few immediate economic rewards. In aggregate, this builds up a pattern of low house building and growing housing pressure. the government’s ‘new homes Bonus’ tries to address this flaw, but assessment by the national Audit office (nAo) suggests that it is simply rewarding current behaviour rather than incentivising behaviour change.115
Local boundaries don’t reflect economies
while current local authority boundaries are not entirely arbitrarily chosen they do not reflect the functional economic area in which they are located. people live, work, commute and seek services and leisure across a collection of authorities in their area. however, strict centralised departmental budgets are allocated to individual local authorities. In housing, the responsibility for need assessments and land use planning rests at the individual local authority level, when the reality is that people live and work across administrative boundaries. there is limited scope to pool resources, funding and powers across these boundaries. this means that even though spending on, for example, housing in one authority, infrastructure in another and employment in a third would benefit the region as a whole, spending may be fractured across boundaries between uncoordinated councils. If local authorities could capture more of the returns of their spending across a functional economic or “travel to work” area, it may incentivise those areas usually resistant to a certain type of development to coordinate.
114 Jrf, International review of land Use and planning systems, 2013 115 nAo, the new homes Bonus, march 2013
There is no real pressure to co-operate across boundaries
not only is there limited opportunity to coordinate between and direct funding across authority boundaries, the pressure for councils even to cooperate is limited. with the abolition of the regional development Agencies and the regional spatial strategies, the ‘duty to co-operate’ was introduced for neighbouring local authorities within the national planning policy framework. the duty states:“Public bodies have a duty to co-operate on planning issues that cross administrative boundaries... Local planning authorities should work collaboratively with other bodies to ensure that strategic priorities across local boundaries are properly co-ordinated and
” 116
clearly reflected in individual local plans.
evidence on the duty as a replacement to regional strategic planning is not comprehensive, but there is an emerging view that as currently constituted it is not strong enough to ensure sufficient strategic housing growth:
• A study within ‘Housing and Planning 2013’ undertaken by Building product reported that out of 16 heads of planning interviewed 15 were of the opinion that the duty alone would not address contentious cross boundary matters. the greatest tensions were found to be between constrained urban authorities and their adjacent rural neighbours.117
• The number of homes planned had dropped by 6.1% one year after the regional spatial strategies were introduced with larger falls in south east local authorities. 118
• A study of the Bristol city region found that “[in the Bristol city region] the new system has clearly allowed local authorities to significantly scale back proposed levels of development.” And: “whilst the constituent local authorities in the region have set up a variety of voluntary partnership arrangements, these have been seen as falling well short of collaboration at the city region level”. 119
ThE ImpAcT ON ThE gROUND
kpmg and shelter found in the west midlands that the duty to cooperate was not regarded as a strong tool to ensure sufficient housing growth across the city region. those we spoke to emphasised the need for joined up assessments of housing need and plans for cross-boundary growth, based upon economic or travel to work areas.
116 national planning policy framework
117 hepher, national planning policy framework (nppf): one year on, savills 2013 118 hepher, national planning policy framework (nppf): one year on, savills 2013
119 Boddy and hickman, the demise of strategic planning? the impact of the abolition of the regional spatial strategy in a growth region, tpr 84 (6) 2013