What do the UK political parties have to say about placemaking?

The publication of Reform UK’s manifesto on Monday 17^th June saw the last of the main UK-wide political parties release their proposed legislative pitch to the national electorate ahead of the General Election on Thursday 4^th July.

Now whilst much of the commentariat have understandably tended to hone in on the respective political parties’ plans for those policy areas polling highest amongst the public (i.e. health, education and immigration), we at Genecon have decided to indulge our more parochial (if not a little self-interested) side and examine what exactly the political parties have to say, if anything, about all things placemaking.

Having now trawled through each of the main UK-wide political parties’ manifestos, we are now in a position to present to you a digest of the key pledges we believe will be the most impactful on placemaking. Set out below in order of manifesto launch are what each of the political parties had to say…

Liberal Democrats:

Low Carbon Energy:

• Investing in energy storage, including green hydrogen, pumped storage and battery capability.

Building Homes:

• Building ten new garden cities.
• Encouraging development of existing brownfield sites with financial incentives and ensuring that affordable and social housing is included in these projects.

Regulatory Changes:

• Expanding Neighbourhood Planning across England.
• Allowing councils to buy land for housing based on current use value rather than on a hope-value basis by reforming the Land Compensation Act 1961.
• Trialling Community Land Auctions to ensure that local communities receive a fair share of the benefits of new development in their areas and to help fund vital local services.
• Introducing ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ planning permission for developers who refuse to build.
• Properly funding local planning departments to improve planning outcomes and ensure housing is not built in areas of high flood risk without adequate mitigation, by allowing local authorities to set their own fees.
• Ensure that all development has appropriate infrastructure, services and amenities in place, integrating infrastructure and public service delivery into the planning process.
• Enhance powers over community assets to help local authorities protect pubs, community farms, and other vital infrastructure.
• Introduce a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework to effectively balance competing demands.

Infrastructure:

• Placing a moratorium on net airport expansion until a national capacity and emissions management framework is in place, and opposing the expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted or London City airports and any new airport in the Thames Estuary.

Devolution:

• Decentralise decision-making from Whitehall and Westminster by inviting local areas to take control of the services that matter to them most.
• Give local authorities new powers to control second homes and short-term lets in their areas by:
  • Allowing them to increase council tax by up to 500% where homes are being bought as second homes, with a stamp duty surcharge on overseas residents purchasing such properties.
  • Creating a new planning class for these properties.
• Devolve greater decision-making powers and resources to local authorities in England to design public transport infrastructure around community needs, including powers to introduce network-wide ticketing as in London.

Our Summary:

The Lib Dem’s emphasis is heavily weighted towards regulatory changes as opposed to promoting/incentivising mid-large-scale regeneration projects. There is a desire to provide local authority areas with greater regulatory powers around planning, tenure and local level infrastructure delivery. Whilst at a national level there is a push to significantly ramp up the Net Zero agenda primarily through the introduction of new restrictions on fossil fuel-based energy generation and use and far more stringent sustainability requirements on industry and farming.

Policy Highlight: Building ten new garden cities.

Missed Opportunity: Little to say on the strategic economic value of national and regional regeneration initiatives.

Conservative Party:

Low Carbon Economy:

• Build the first two carbon capture and storage clusters, based across North Wales and, the North West of England and Teesside and progress the second tranche of projects in Aberdeenshire and the Humber.
• Scale up nuclear power, with the approval two new fleets of Small Modular Reactors to rapidly expand nuclear power. We will halve the time it takes for new nuclear reactors to be approved, by allowing regulators to assess projects while designs are being finalised, improving join-up with overseas regulators assessing the same technology and speeding up planning and environmental approvals.
• Deliver a new gigawatt power plant at Wylfa in North Wales and work with industry to deliver existing projects at Hinkley Point and Sizewell.

Building Homes:

• Raising density levels in inner London to those of European cities like Paris and Barcelona.
• Unlocking new urban regeneration schemes, by creating locally-led urban development corporations in partnership with the private sector and institutional investors. We will support the delivery of new quarters in Leeds, Liverpool and York alongside working with local leaders and the community to seize the opportunity of our ambitious Cambridge 2050 plan.

National Funding Schemes:

• Renewing the Affordable Homes Programme that will deliver homes of all tenures and focus on regenerating and improving housing estates.
• Provide 105 towns in the UK with a £20 million endowment fund for local people to change their town’s future. This includes extending our plan to 30 more towns who will benefit from funding that they can use on their priorities such as reviving high streets or bringing new housing to town centres.
• Extend our Community Ownership Fund to help more communities across the UK take control of vital community assets like pubs, music venues, libraries, green spaces, leisure centres and more.
• Extend the UK Shared Prosperity Fund for three years at the next Spending Review, before using this funding to support UK-wide National Service. Both schemes will involve funding community groups focused on increasing life chances, instilling civic pride and boosting people’s skills.
• Launch a Seaside Heritage Fund to support enhancements to our seaside heritage, preserving and restoring our coastal assets.

Regulatory Changes:

• Create more Freeports and Business Rates Retention zones. Freeports have already generated just under £3 billion in investment, which in turn will create thousands of jobs. We will extend this opportunity to more areas and set out an application round in the next Parliament. We want to replicate the example of Sunderland’s Crown Works Studios elsewhere in the country. We will enable councils to retain all business rates growth within a defined zone for 25 years, which they can use to finance the delivery of new infrastructure and invest in supporting burgeoning local industries.
• Continue backing Investment Zones across the country, giving areas £160 million to catalyse local growth and investment.
• Give our high streets a new lease of life and restore pride in place. We will change planning laws to support places to bring back local market days and regenerate defunct shopping centres. We will continue to make industry pay for removing chewing-gum from streets and raise the fines utility firms must pay when they create ‘street scars’ by not properly restoring roads and pavements after their works are completed. We will make fly tipping an offence that carries penalty points against your driving licence.

Devolution:

• Empower communities through devolution and new powers. By 2030, every part of England that wants one will have a devolution deal. We will offer our ‘level 4’ devolution powers to areas in England with a devolution deal and a directly elected leader, starting with the Tees Valley.

Our Summary:

Not entirely unexpectedly, the overarching strategic vision presented by the Conservatives’ is one of continuity in terms of the placemaking agenda, with pledges to expand and/or accelerate many of the existing national and regional-level initiatives to deliver on house-building, the regeneration of communities and development of low-carbon energy generating capacity. Regulatory changes around planning policy remain focussed primarily on the intensification of existing urban environments and in the catalysation of new concentrations of economic growth (i.e. Freeports and Enterprise Zones).

Policy Highlight: Continued push on devolution agenda.

Missed Opportunity: Commitment to planning policy reform does not go far enough.

Green Party:

Low Carbon Energy:

• Delivery of 80GW of offshore wind, 53 GW of onshore wind, and 100 GW of solar by 2035.
• Investment in energy storage capacity and more efficient electricity distribution.
• Communities to own their own energy sources, ensuring they can use any profit from selling excess energy to reduce their bills or benefit their communities.

Regulatory Changes:

• Require local authorities to spread small developments across their areas.
• Require all new developments to be accompanied by the extra investment needed in local health, transport and other services.
• Ensure that all new homes meet Passivhaus or equivalent standards and house builders include solar panels and heat pumps on all new homes, where appropriate.
• A community right to buy for local authorities for several categories of property.
• Ending the individual ‘right to buy’, to keep social homes for local communities in perpetuity.
• Rent controls so local authorities can control rents if the rental market is unaffordable for many local people.
• A new stable rental tenancy and an end to no-fault evictions so tenants are secure in their homes and don’t have their lives turned upside down on the whim of their landlords. We will also introduce a tenants’ right to demand energy efficiency improvements.

Infrastructure:

• Invest in an additional £19bn over five years to improve public transport, support electrification and create new cycleways and footpaths.
• Reimagining how we use streets in residential areas to reduce traffic and open them up for community use.
• Adopting Active Travel England’s objective of 50% of trips in England’s towns and cities to be walked, wheeled or cycled by 2030.
• A halt to the expansion of new airport capacity.

Devolution:

• Give local authorities control over and funding for improved bus services.

Our Summary:

Unsurprisingly, the low carbon/sustainability agenda provides the golden thread running through the Green manifesto which actually translates into relatively little actual placemaking in terms of significant pushes on regeneration or even on housing. What there is however is a strong desire to use the regulatory system (whether through prohibition, restriction or defining outcomes) to drive the sustainability agenda through the operation of the existing place environment and/or in the delivery of any new placemaking initiatives (e.g. house building).

Policy Highlight: Invest in an additional £19bn over five years to improve public transport, support electrification and create new cycleways and footpaths.

Missed Opportunity: No meaningful supply-side reforms or commitments on housing and infrastructure provision.

Labour Party:

Building Homes:

• In partnership with local leaders and communities, a Labour government will build a new generation of new towns, inspired by the proud legacy of the 1945 Labour government. Alongside urban extensions and regeneration projects, these will form part of a series of large-scale new communities across England.

National Funding Schemes:

• Establishment of a £7.3bn National Wealth Fund (capitalised over the cause of the next Parliament), from which they plan to allocate:
  • £1.8 billion to upgrade ports and build supply chains across the UK
  • £1.5 billion to new gigafactories so our automotive industry leads the world
  • £2.5 billion to rebuild our steel industry
  • £1 billion to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture
  • £500 million to support the manufacturing of green hydrogen
• Replace the business rates system. This new system will level the playing field between the high street and online giants, better incentivise investment, tackle empty properties and support entrepreneurship.

Regulatory Changes:

• Introduction of changes to forge ahead with new roads, railways, reservoirs, and other nationally significant infrastructure. New national policy statements will be set out to make major projects faster and cheaper. National planning policy will also be updated to ensure the planning system meets the needs of a modern economy, making it easier to build laboratories, digital infrastructure, and gigafactories.
• The immediate update of the National Policy Planning Framework, including restoring mandatory housing targets.
• Taking tough action to ensure that planning authorities have up-to-date Local Plans and reform and strengthen the presumption in favour of sustainable development. Supporting local authorities through the provision of funding additional planning officers and by increasing the rate of the stamp duty surcharge paid by non-UK residents. Ensuring local communities continue to shape housebuilding in their area, but where necessary making full use of intervention powers to build the houses the country needs
• Taking a brownfield first approach, prioritising the development of previously used land wherever possible, and fast-tracking approval of urban brownfield sites.
• Taking a more strategic approach to greenbelt land designation and release to build more homes in the right places. The release of lower quality ‘grey belt’ land will be prioritised.
• Bring forward further reform of compulsory purchase compensation rules to improve land assembly, speed up site delivery, and deliver housing, infrastructure, amenity, and transport benefits in the public interest.
• Prioritising the building of new social rented homes and better protect our existing stock by reviewing the increased right to buy discounts introduced in 2012 and increasing protections on newly built social housing.
• Introduction of a new statutory requirement for Local Growth Plans that cover towns and cities across the country. Local leaders will work with major employers, universities, colleges, and industry bodies to produce long-term plans that identify growth sectors and put in place the programmes and infrastructure they need to thrive. These will align with a new national industrial strategy.

Infrastructure:

• The development of a ten-year infrastructure strategy, aligned with our industrial strategy and regional development priorities, including improving rail connectivity across the north of England.
• The development of a long-term strategy for transport, ensuring transport infrastructure can be delivered efficiently and on time.
• A commitment to fix an additional one million potholes across England in each year of the next parliament, funded by deferring the A27 bypass, which is poor value for money.
• Securing the UK aviation industry’s long-term future, including through promoting sustainable aviation fuels, and encouraging airspace modernisation.

Devolution:

• Providing mayors with the power to create unified and integrated transport systems, allowing for more seamless journeys, and to promote active travel networks.
• Housing need in England cannot be met without planning for growth on a larger than local scale so we will introduce effective new mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning. There will be a requirement that all Combined and Mayoral Authorities will strategically plan for housing growth in their areas. Combined Authorities will also be granted new planning powers along with new freedoms and flexibilities to make better use of grant funding.
• There will be a widening of devolution to more areas, encouraging local authorities to come together and take on new powers. Towns and cities will be able to take hold of the tools they need to pursue growth, create jobs, and improve living standards. Local areas will be able to gain new powers over transport, adult education and skills, housing and planning, and employment support.

Our Summary:

Boosting housing delivery through a mixture of liberalisation of the planning regulations, the (re)introduction of a range of local authority performance measures and the granting of increased executive powers to national and regional authorities to drive the housing and infrastructure development agenda very much sits at the centre of Labour’s package of policies.

Policy Highlight: A pledge to build up to 1.5m new homes as part of a new generation of ‘New Towns.’

Missed Opportunity: Beyond a target pledge on additional housing, the is limited detail on outputs and delivery.

Reform UK:

Regulatory Changes:

• Legislate to ban all ULEZ and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. The bans on selling petrol and diesel cars will be scrapped as well as the legal requirements for manufacturers to sell electric cars.
• Initiate a review the Planning System to allow for the fast tracking of planning and introduce tax incentives for development of brownfield sites, including unused offices and vacant high street properties. Review system of Section 106 Developer Contributions for infrastructure such as schools and surgeries to accelerate house building.
• Scrap climate-related farming subsidies. This will allow productive land must be farmed, not be used for solar farms or rewilding. Replace current subsidies with direct payments.

National Funding Schemes:

• The creation of a Single Government Infrastructure Funding Stream through the merger the National Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure Bank. Simplify the funding process, save time, cut waste, boost funding and ensure accountability.

Our Summary:

With placemaking not particular high on the list of priorities for Reform, the most notable contribution to this area of policy is probably around the theme of de-regulation. This includes some modest proposals around streamlining of the planning system and a reversal of regulatory interventions designed to promote the low-carbon agenda.

Policy Highlight: The creation of a Single Government Infrastructure Fund.

Missed Opportunity: No commitments concerning the increase of housing supply or new infrastructure investment.

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