When Labour came into power in 2024, economic growth was at the top of their agenda. Central to their plans was the building of more houses and infrastructure, with planning cited as both the force for change and the primary barrier to progress.
The planning system in the UK is notorious for its bureaucratic nature, hindered by paperwork, delays, procedures and objections.
However, the problems with the planning system are not just administrative but also in the competing values that exist within the system. Conflicts between wanting to preserve the green belt but needing to build more affordable housing; between empowering communities but reducing time-delaying objections.
A new report from researchers Liz Williams, Meg Hennessy and Olexiy Pedosenko from the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE explores what people want from a new planning system and how we can get there.
“The planning system has gone through so many piecemeal changes over the years we now have all these competing values tugging in different directions,” says researcher Liz Williams. “We wanted to take a step back, look a bit deeper and ask people what they actually want from the system.”
In their research, the team concentrated on three central aspects of the planning lifecycle - community participation, land use and housing delivery. In doing so, they spoke to experts and held workshops to capture the nuanced tensions, perspectives and values on this area.
Housing delivery
Despite decades of interventions to increase affordable housing stock, this is still a major issue. As the researchers highlight: “In 2023, fewer than 250,000 new homes were built across the UK, short of the 300,000-target set for England. To give a sense of the scale of the challenge, even when combining England, Scotland and Wales the figure of 300,000 new housing units per year was last exceeded in the ten-year period 1961-1970 and even then, demolitions and other losses reduced the net gain to 234,000 per year.”
Fifty years ago, the average house price was four times the average annual income, making home ownership relatively accessible. Today, the ratio of house prices to annual income has more than doubled to around 8.8 nationally and 14 times the average income in London.
Young people are bearing the brunt of this with many struggling to get on the housing ladder or find suitable rental accommodation, particularly in London and the Southeast. This has a knock-on effect on productivity with younger people deterred from living and working in the capital.
Researcher Olexiy Pedosenko emphasises that problems with housing have been around for many years but have really come to the forefront and become more visible with younger generations.
“The housing crisis is causing overcrowding, homelessness and increased inequality. Public health is being hampered, and social mobility is severely limited. It’s a big social economic problem,” he says.
Through a series of workshops with 27 millennials aged 25 to 45 working as urban development academics and professionals, the researchers uncovered what this generation want from the planning system.
What do millennials want?
They found that while the Government is focused on home ownership and increasing the supply of affordable housing, millennials want affordable, reliable renting.
Indeed, one respondent questioned: “I think in the UK there's a sense of owning your house is like ultimate stability. But this is not necessarily the case in a lot of other countries. Could we just all rent?”
The participants called on the Government to implement rent controls and de-financialise housing, stating it should be recognised as a basic human need.
Further, the researchers found that while both the Government and the participants support the expansion of social housing, they disagree about how this should be done. The Government plan to create new social housing estates and protect new social homes from right to buy. However, the participants favour a more integrated approach with mixed communities and a more ambitious treatment of the right to buy – some support abolishing it to preserve the social housing stock.
While both the Government and the participants agree on the importance of sustainability to housing policy, Government plans are focused on integrating sustainability into new builds through strategic land use and transport planning. In contrast, millennials advocate for the retrofitting of existing housing and more ambitious environmental policies that tackle housing issues and the climate crisis.
Going forwards, millennials favour a decentralised approach to housing delivery, where local authorities are adequately resourced and empowered to address community needs. They support community led housing schemes to enable grassroots solutions and argue decision making should be undertaken by professional planners guided by local plans and national policies.
Community participation
In their 2024 manifesto Labour identified community participation in planning as a key barrier to achieving economic growth, arguing that it cannot be prioritised over economic aims. In a speech in December 2024, Keir Starmer sent a message to “the nimbys, the regulators, the blockers and bureaucrats” that “Britain says yes... whether you like it or not”.
However, the researchers highlight the difference between support for community power, outlined in the Government’s Devolution White Paper, and criticism of nimbys, showcasing the conflicting values placed on local people.
“There is a democratic need to have people engaged in the process,” explains researcher Liz Williams. “Instead of having this dichotomy, we need to work with communities. We suggest commissioning a review that looks at the different ways people can participate, the scope of their influence and the different stages of participation.” The researchers propose community assemblies as a helpful way to ensure integrated and meaningful community participation and avoid ‘token’ empowerment.
Land use
The final area explored in the paper looks at land as a resource, with the government’s planning agenda currently centring land as a key lever to kickstart the economy. As researcher Meg Hennessy notes: “the increasing competing demands for housing, infrastructure, biodiversity, climate change resilience, clean energy, food security, access and well-being, as well as financing, oblige us to reconsider how we manage land as a precious but finite resource.”
The researchers gathered data from 18 landowners and landowning organisations and found that while there is resistance to change there is also an acknowledgement that reform is necessary to meet society’s diverse needs.
Given the variety of landowners and the diversity of their needs, the researchers believe it is important to take a multipronged approach to reform that recognises the value of land for different landowners.
They suggest this can be done through several approaches including empowering smaller landowners, making sustainable land use viable and attractive; fostering entrepreneurship amongst landowners; and promoting a culture of change around how land is used.
Looking ahead, given the huge implications of planning policy on society, the researchers underline the importance of a holistic, inclusive approach to reform that brings everyone along with it through open and continuing dialogue.
Liz Williams, Meg Hennessy and Olexiy Pedosenko were speaking to Charlotte Kelloway, Media Relations Manager at LSE.
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