England’s Future – planning and politics in England
John Denham
And we will start probably about two minutes past the hour. Well, good evening and welcome to everyone who's joining us at this webinar organised by the Centre for English Identity and Politics at Southampton University. I'm John Denham. I'm the director of the centre. Tonight we're going to be talking about England's future politics of planning and I'm looking forward to a fascinating. And very topical evening with some great expert speakers at Labour's recent conference, Keir Starmer promised to back the builders not. Blockers and he promised a blitz on planning regulations coming from Southampton. The use of the term blitz in relation to urban planning is a bit unfortunate perhaps, but only two years and three prime ministers ago Boris Johnson attacked Newt, counting delays and suggested a now abandoned zoning system. To designate lightly regulated areas for development, we've got 3 speakers this evening to help us try to unpick the relationship between politics and planning, and to identify what the future might hold. And just to be open about my own history for this evening's purposes, I was the last Labour Communities Secretary and therefore briefly responsible for planning policy, and I was previously a Hampshire and Southampton councillor. Now, regular attendees at these webinars will know that we often have writers, practitioners and politicians. Our opening speaker manages to be all three. Nigel Moore is the author of England's future and put that in front of the camera. England's future this book. In it, he writes that the look and shape of England in the 21st century results from decisions made by politicians both at national level and at local level. In the 100 years that we've had planning controls. But Nigel also pursued a career as a professional town planner and was also a Conservative councillor. And Cabinet member for climate change and the environment. Doctor Nicholas Faulk has had a career as an economist, urbanist, and strategic planner. He's currently the executive director of the Urbed Trust, which researches the future of urban areas, and disseminate disseminates best practise. And Catriona Riddle is an independent consultant, head of strategic planning at Surrey. County Council and director of planning at the South East Regional Assembly, and she is also a vice chair and country for the Planning Association. So what's going to happen this evening? Firstly, if, as as the event goes ahead, you would like to suggest a question that I might put to the speakers, please use the Q&A function on zoom. Nigel is going to set the scene and look at some of the current challenges Nick will examine how we mobilise the type of development we want to see, and Catriona will explore the role. Or strategic planning in shaping England's future. So that's enough. By way of introduction. And Nigel, could I ask you to speak first, please?
Nigel Moor
Good, good evening everybody. I can hear me now. I've been asked to summarise the key conclusions to be drawn about the relationship between. Politics and planning and what changes a new government might make to the planning system in England. Just starting the video. Since the end of the Second World War, Britain has been predominantly A2 party state. Each of the major parties governing uninterrupted for long. Periods one after another. The Labour Party can be characterised as enthusiastic about change. The Conservative Party as suspicious. Planning as we know is about managing change and these contrasting views have caused immense difficulty for the continuity of the planning system.
Perhaps it's not surprising that the Genesis. Yeah, that's fine that that we stay with that. Perhaps it's not surprising the genesis for our modern planning system came from the coalition government during the Second World War. When researching my book, I marvelled at the vision and determination at that time. Emerging from then was Abercrombie's 1943 County of London plan, which provided the basis for the new town programme. Next slide please. Next slide please. Election victory for Labour in that no, stay with that first one, please. We've moved on, but could we go back please?
Nigel Moor
Thank you for speaking. OK. Well, we'll stay with that. Thank you. Election victory for Labour in 1945 provided the impetus for planning celebrating the Festival of Britain in 1951 with its futuristic architecture and the model Town Planning scheme that Chris Fleet in Popular London. The Conservatives, especially Churchill, dislike the festival. Suspicious on what was seen as an overuse of. State power. That set the tone for next 4 decades. Next slide, please. Most of the major policy advances came from labour. When in power. Conservatives have either repealed such legislation or refashioned it into something like acceptable to their core vote. The exception, of course, is Greenbelt policy. We go there to Duncan Sands, who in the circular 4253 gave firm backing to the greenbelts around. Number of the English conurbations. Next slide please. The new Towns programme continued into the 1970s and this can now be seen as a magnificent legacy of the Wilson government. I've been reading a recent book which has been reassessing Wilson's contribution and certainly the new towns are lasting legacy. That Wilson governments. Next slide please. At that time, listed building protection and conservation areas were introduced, a rare example of agreed political support. Next slide, please. In the Thatcher era, the suspicion of planning took on a deregulatory tone. Lady Thatcher was helped while the David Young and noted UK businessman, who once ennobled, became Secretary of State for employment in Thatcher's Cabinet. His White Paper lifted me above her. Helped to change the planning system, diminishing the status. Of the development plan. The chains ushered in a property room through the length and breadth of. The country and many regard as a lasting legacy to Thatcherism. New towns did not feature in this boom, but enterprise zones and developer corporations, especially in London and Liverpool, were the Tories favoured response. By the end of the 1980s, backbench Tory MP's and their shires were complaining of getting highly critical post backs from their constituents. Annoyed at the rapid pace of building. Lady Thatcher's declining authority in the debacle over the introduction of the poll tax and the introduction of Chris Patton as Environment Secretary, held in a significant policy shift. Responding to criticism by the Labour Party when he was introducing the 1990 Planning Act that there was a lack of commitments plan making, Patton went back to a previous planning system which endorsed the supremacy of the plan and decision making. Next slide please. Labour's victory in 1997 heralded a new enthusiasm for regional planning, but abandoned by the Conservatives. In 2010, it had some notable successes, particularly unleashing the power and the scientific brilliance of auction its sub region. I was a District Council in Oxfordshire at the time. Heavily involved with the Didcot Garden town and there was definitely a feeling of of of change and support for what was happening in Oxfordshire and of course, Oxfordshire really has probably become one of our major, major growth growth regions. This is not time to dissect the dissonance since 2010. I'll then to note the endless ministerial revolving doors in Whitehall, with no Secretary of State or minister able to demonstrate a command. Of the issues. What can we learn? From this, and what improvements? Can the new government make? My first suggestion is to enable the national infrastructure. To present to Parliament a detailed 5 year plan. Or costed infrastructure priorities, including new towns, housing and employment. This would be presented as a bill to both Houses of Parliament when finally voted on would become the statute and at last we would get the continuity which we so badly lacked over the last couple of decades. The second delivery. At the moment the sub national transport bodies are the nearest we have to regional agencies within the democratic governments. I served as deputy chairman of the Western Gateway, which basically stretched from Gloucestershire right through to to Bournemouth. And it was remarkable when when councillors who were sitting on the board, where there's some distance from their their constituencies or their their divisions, showed a remarkable vision and. I think that this governance is way forward. The board scrutinised transport investment in the holistic way. And have regard to local and adopted plans. They can also become plan making. And the interesting concept here is they weren't basically modelled on the on the old regional boundaries. They were essentially modelled on the corridors of movement. And this is the most important thing, because our economically success is going to be very much about improving connectivity. That is when one starts to think about, you know, getting down from Gloucestershire to the South Coast, how crucial that is. Next would be. Innovations that Boris Johnson endorsed and then ran. Away from the first was the streamlined planning process. Which John has. Already referred to. This would be local plans focused on designating 3 categories of land zoning growth areas where out on consent would automatically be granted for development specified in the new plan. In rural areas where some development would be permitted and those protected areas where development will be resistant, national parks, A&B's green belts and local green spaces. And also at that time, Johnson. Supported the idea of moving to a digital first approach, moving from a system which we have at the moment based on multiple large background documents which are so hard to navigate to 1 driven by standardised data or digital data streams where the evidence from recent information can be used. Next slide please. And of course, capturing that value Nick is going to talk about this and really I pose the question, can we get it right this time? It will be crucial. To the Newtown's programme. That's the. Next slide please.
Over the last 20 years, we we have not had a new towns programme. What we've had is a sort of multiplicity of small, small, developed developments. I tried to choose two of the best at Telford and Eddington in Cambridgeshire, but these are these are small. I mean no more than perhaps several thousand several. 1000 houses nothing on the scale that we had with the new Towns programme. We do need to build at scale. So what are my conclusions? A dominant two party system has produced a planning system that is almost by Zen time and its complexity and has lost the confidence of so many and that is. Perhaps the the? My biggest concern now I came into planning in the 60s. At the time when the Southeast plan, led by Professor Peter Hall, the late Peter Hall, there was a huge commitment, a huge enthusiasm and of course, that change that changed this. Country in a in a remarkable way. So many people now have lost confidence in the planning system and we've got to restore that confidence and and my advice to a new government is go back, go back to that coalition government during the wartime period when the bombs were dropping, they were planning, they were planning the New Jerusalem and so much good came out of that. But it was. It was a plan without complexity and I think what we've done is just load complexity on top of complexity to assist them, which very few people can understand on that agate. And as we've seen a great deal of confidence has been lost. Thank you, John.
John Denham
Nigel, thank you very much indeed. That's a a brilliant and very succinct introduction. And I again would commend to anybody who enjoyed that do do get hold of a copy of Nigel's book, England's future, the impact of politics on shaping the environment. It was it was that book that persuaded me we should do this webinar. In the first place, because I think it's quite a masterly history and and very provocative study. So thank you for that. I'm gonna go to Nick. Nick Folk now, Nick, over to you.
Nick Falk
Well, thank you very much, John. And I want to start by just saying how much I agree with what Nigel has been saying and how much I. Encourage people to read. The book, because it is such a clear view of what's been happening, but also with some very sensible recommendations for how to deal with a a new world which now faces not just the threat of climate change. But also huge inequalities and a very much weaker economy than I think people generally recognise, certainly in competition with other parts of Europe and Rise of China. I'm going to share my screen to help organise what I've got to say and if I do that I then open up this presentation and here we have the first slide. Here it's OK. So I'm talking about a better future, which is Nigel's theme, and I believe we under estimate the importance of. Land values and finance generally and tend to overrate the importance of planning policies which may work where there's a strong economy but don't work when we're in a weak situation. And as everyone listening to this call will know, house prices have escalated and with that land values.
OK, very good. Well, my first slide highlights the importance of land values and I'm going to be going back to this map in what follows next. The problem of high land values and unaffordable homes applies everywhere, but particularly in the area with the strongest economy, which is. The area around. And and and. The the Southeast there will be. I'm not saying that all this rosy, but there there are certainly is a a stronger potential for growth in the greater southeast and areas such as Southampton and Portsmouth next. The importance of land values. To uh, sorry, could I? Have the previous one please. Has been worked out in one of the entries for the Wolfson Economics Prize that I actually won with David Rudlin. And you can see the darkest brown where you can get up to £40,000 per plot and it looks to me as if your area comes within that. So it's a very important. Thing to consider when you're trying to consider how to finance affordable housing or local infrastructure and next. And this which is taken from a superb book which I do commend reading as it's free. You can download it for free from the World Bank Group. It shows how land value capture has been used throughout the world in order to help fund transport projects. And if you can see the diagram you will see that it argues that. And the value that often goes to the landowner for doing nothing should be ploughed back, either in the state or or in the local infrastructure, as it is, for example, in Portland OR in the states, which is one of The Pioneers of what's called transit oriented development. Next please. When we won the Wilson Economic Prize, we sure we wanted to show that it was feasible to build new Garden cities that were visionary, viable and popular, and we took possibly the most difficult situation because it's so controversial of oxy. And we reckon that Oxford needed to double in size over the next 10 or 20 years, and that growth could be achieved just in the edges of the city, not by building a whole new town in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, but actually just extending at the edges. And that forms a kind of series of snowflakes. The analogist to Ebenezer Howard's a great model of the social site.
And we were able to show that one could develop without impinging on the floodplain or areas of natural beauty, and it would take a little bit of the green belt, about 5%. And at that time that was seen as inviolable. But you may have noticed that Labour Party needs seen looks as though it's. Going to be a little more. Flexible about. About that, and I remember talking to conservative politicians who would have agreed to the principle if one could have just protected the existing villages which were being spoiled by unwanted proposals from volume house builders. And I think that should be part of the deal as well as securing higher standards where the green belt is used and also. By making sure that funds are put into making the. Green belt? Really. Great. Next. I then went on to show how this could be combined with a better transport system, the first priority being to make use of the existing railway lines and through what we call SWIFT rail based upon the sort of system that works in Switzerland or Austria or Germany where you get frequent suburban trains. And trains are running in the short distances between around the cities, midsize cities. And that was the first step, I might say. I thought it was going. To be easy. To bring to bring back the trains to Cowley because they have freight trains running every day. But even that has taken 10 years to get to the point where it seems to be serious. I mean so the the. Dismal slow rate of building in a thing in in this country is something we should be. But we then went further. We talked, we showed I suggested orbital bus rapid transit as the county was proposing, and then the money was be available to build a new tram line by tapping the land value in the periphery, not by giving the owners, who are mainly colleges, nothing. By giving them 10 times agricultural value, which will bring it up from 14,000 to 140,000 per plot, but not 1.4 million, not 100 times as land per acre. As land owners often expect. Next please. The model for much of what I've been saying can be drawn from the Netherlands, which has the same sort of challenges in terms of it's a very dense country and and and is scarce. And of course much of the land is underwater. But they've built. 95 sustainable suburbs or urban extensions? What they call their phoenix VIN. The X policy and if if one took that into a British context, that would mean as Netherlands as 1/4 of Britain size, building about 400 suburbs. So it's very sad that the most we probably built about 5 equivalents in the in the ongoing period. Incidentally, the Phoenix programme. Increased the housing stock by 7.6% almost 8% over a 10 year period and and the one on the right that or stinner mid sized town of Amersfoort is absolutely classic, and that was 10,000 homes. But typically they're they're about two or three thousand next. Financial devolution is absolutely crucial. We've got to get away from being the most centralised state in the civilised world and get to a state where local authorities and consortiums or alliances, local authorities, can take control, more control and I propose that this can be done through development. End charge following the Danish model where there is a land charge paid to the government as well as the equivalent of of Council tax. A similar policy also works in Pennsylvania. And used. We used to have something equivalent to that. Up to, I think 1996 land value rating is really called for because we've had no review of of the tax system since for many years since about 1996 and the Labour Party does seem at least committed to reform. Of the business rate and that's a good place to start. I would go further though and look at property taxes generally getting rid of, for example of VAT on refurbishment. And and looking at the higher bands in council tax to make it more fair and equitable, I think a lot of the value that's required can be achieved simply by from the wealthiest 10% of the population doesn't have to affect everyone. And one key thing to all the success stories, whether it be Germany, France or in. The Netherlands is a state investment bank. We've got the beginnings in the infrastructure bank and the British Business Bank, but I think there needs. To be a regional equivalent next. And and here I show the model that Nigel has already referred to development corporations, which have achieved a transformation in the London doctors. But that can be supplemented, I think by Community land trusts, they dockland Development Corporation very much disregarded the community, in my view is vital to provide some land. Over to people to do their own thing, and this is the picture on the left shows the example of Freiberg, which is generally seen as as utopia in terms of how to do develop. And that needs to be backed up their training and it'll be interesting to see what Catriona has to say because there's been a huge deskilling and reduction of the people who know what they're doing in local authorities and perhaps partial replacement by consultants. I think we need to train a new card of doers and urbanists and next. So I'm going to conclude, and I probably used up my 10 minutes by saying, have how am I done for time, John do. I have any.
Good. Well, let me be a bit more relaxed and talk about connected cities. This is if you Google connected cities without any space between the two. You'll get into the website of the Connected Cities initiative and you will see a lot of examples there of how the principles can be applied of developing along existing railway lines and building at higher densities around existing stations on potential new stations. And my final I can it be made any larger, Natasha? It seems to be terribly small that map. I don't know. Perhaps it's just on my on my screen, but anyway. OK well.
You'll see a. Lot of examples of this principle being applied and this is actually one from Gloucestershire where both Nigel and I live. And where in fact half the population live in the southern part, so typically as an arc which goes from Cheltenham through Gloucester and into the northern part of. Route and we used. To have little trains run by little steam locomotives pushing and pulling between and stopping every mile or so, and and that was done away with was about 2006. So it's something that's been done before and it's absolutely crucial in getting people off the roads. You just cannot expand the roads in the southern part because we. It's very hilly. And and it is indeed an area. Of natural beauty. But you can develop around the stations and there's lots of underdeveloped land. If we took the Danish principle, which has been used notably in Copenhagen, a pooling public land and bringing the land and by public land, I include all the former, the nationalised industries, railways, gas and so on and so forth. Which have been. With ties, but starting with that public land, also car parks and you will find there's often enough land to build much better towns and to bring life back to the town centres which have suffered because, of course, every so many people who are shopping out of town or on the Internet. So this sort of policy, it's not just about building houses. It's about building towns and cities that are much better places to live in what I call Smarter group. And I think that we may not have enough people to plan for everywhere, but if we just started on these particular places, I think we can make real progress and show some signs of improvement in Nigel in my lifetime.
John Denham
So that's thank you very much indeed, Nick. And again that that's both, as with Nigel's, both fascinating, but also quite upbeat about the possibilities of what we might do if we chose to do so. So I'm going to turn straight to our third speaker, Catriona.
Catrionna Riddell
Yeah, evening everybody last but hopefully not least, UM, I will. Be talking about strategic planning and I'm hoping most people in in the room will actually understand what strategic planning is, but I will do my best to explain it. I was asked recently by a Labour MP how to make strategic planning sound interesting and how how they could sell it much more. So I'm going to attempt to do that. Let's just get this on to slideshow. There we go. So yeah, so I am. I was asked also the same day, what if strategic planning isn't the answer and as a strategic planner who's been working in this sort of field for three decades, I've never stopped to consider that. So I thought about the problems that we're facing and we've faced primarily over the last sort of. Picked I would say and. And we started thinking about potential solutions and I'm afraid I came to the same conclusion that strategic planning is the answer. And I think that. There's some really strong, powerful arguments about getting this bit of the planning system right. It's the bit that sits in the middle. It's the bit that pivots between the national and the local level, and it's the bit, frankly, that we've been missing for the last 13 years. So if we start to look at this and get it right, we might actually have a chance of being able to fix some of the other parts of the. System that don't work. So when we do do it effectively, you know. The real benefits are around integration alignment, not just around the policy agendas around climate change, around infrastructure, around housing, around environmental priorities and natural capital, but also around aligning investment priorities and invest. Getting all the different. Actors, all the different players that are involved in place shaping to actually coalesce around shared vision and actually have all their infrastructure that their investment priorities pointing in the same direct. Action and one of the things strategic planning did before 2010 for decades was provide some real investor confidence. We had a lot of private sector investment to deliver, particularly infrastructure, but going forward, we're going to need even more of that. And I think we've lost that sort of ability to really provide some long term. Investor confidence, looking at places like the Oxford, Cambridge arc, you know one minute we're going to plan for a long term and. Growth of the area the next minute we're not. Look at high speed. Two, we're going to plan for a high speed system. We're going to shorten its route and then we're not going to do a lot of it. So you know it's we need to return to a planning system that helps us provide that sort of confidence. And as I said a minute ago, it is the essential pivot between national, local priorities. And in terms of geography, I always think it should be done at a level that is big enough to be able to reflect national policies, but small enough and on a geography small enough to reflect local context and circumstances. Even though I was director of planning at Southeast Region, I wasn't actually a fan of that scale and I think a lot of where we went wrong was that it was just too big. I think we need to look at areas that are that, that can be sort of managed better because you you understand them better. And I think when you look at the Southeast area, it was very diverse. It had very different. Problems, very different challenges and very different opportunities, and I think we need to try and rethink the geography that we plan strategically. And then just finally it and it gives you the bigger spatial canvas and I think we've got so many local plans now trying to direct development to the least worst area and not the best area. And I think having that larger spatial canvas that was provided by strategic planning just gives us more choice. It's as simple as that. What we've lost, I think, and I am primarily talking about last 13 years when we we haven't really had a a formal approach. We've lost the ability to use planning the planning system as a whole to deliver a fairer and more sustainable approach to growth than it's back to that better choice. These more choices to actually direct development to the best places and to streamline. Funding. We've lost the ability to positively proactively respond to increasing global challenges, particularly around climate change, economic competitiveness and technological resilience. We've lost the ability to maximise the potential of our assets, our economic assets, our infrastructure assets and our natural assets and. And as I said earlier, we've just we've lost the ability to secure that long term investor confidence which we're going to need going forward to to deliver anything frankly. And we've just lost the ability to use the planning system. In the way that it's meant to be. So the challenge is and I've got 2 main challenges, I think where we where we've ended up. The first challenge is that we are supposed to have a plan LED system. And if you see by these graphs, we clearly don't have a plan LED system at the moment. We've got about 30 percent, 35% areas across England with an up-to-date. Local plan 61 local planning areas or local planning authorities have officially delayed, withdrawn or stalled their local planning process because of the uncertainty, and these are the ones that we know about. These are the ones that have taken an official position. There could potentially be an awful lot more. So we haven't got plan LED system and it is getting worse by the day because of the uncertainty around what's expected. We've got a growing devolution programme and we've got several mayor combined authorities now, but we only have one combined authority that is actually doing any spatial planning and that's. The Liverpool City region. All combined, authorities have the ability to prepare a special development strategy if they negotiate that through their their devolution deal. Some of them have these powers but don't use them. The West of England around Bristol has attempted to use it and failed around and and that was largely to do with the fallout over. Housing distribution. But most of them haven't got any special planning powers yet. They're responsible for trying to deliver net zero for regeneration, for housing delivery, for infrastructure, for transport. And there's nothing. That they're responsible for that helps join up the pieces, and I think that is a a major lost opportunity in terms of the whole devolution agenda. The government has got commit has asked 35 sorry 20 of the largest towns and cities across England to deliver a 35% uplift over and above what their needs. This table I've prepared just simply shows the challenge that these areas have got the ones in the red are these. These are all the the 20 towns and cities, the ones in the red are the ones that have got nowhere near delivering 35% uplift in most cases. They haven't even started to look at that. The ones in the orange are the ones that are trying to do something. And trying to address it. But again are really struggling and we've got Manchester even though it's combined authority it's and it's got the powers to do a special development strategy. It's actually doing a joint local plan. Because they wanted to allocate sites, which you can't do through a special development strategy and. That it's been 10 years in the making, but it looks as if it might actually be getting to the final hurdle and it might actually have a joint plan approved within the next few months, which is great. But that's one out of 20. You know, we've got some significant constraints, nearly all of them are green built. But then if you look at other places, there's national. Works. Nutrient neutrality issues, water neutrality issues, lots of issues around the natural natural resources. So we've got some really big challenges. UM, if these areas are going to deliver more. These are just some examples of where we've got to. Leicester and Leicestershire has been very successful up until now and preparing its growth framework. It was primarily around transport infrastructure but very recently, just as Leicester submitted its local plan where they thought they'd got agreement with their local authorities. The local MP's for one part of the area have started to. Fight hard and are asking the local one of the local authorities to actually pull out of the agreement, so there's some trouble in Leicester and Leicestershire after a relative period of stability. The Oxford Joint Strategic Plan fell apart last year. The Black Country Joint local plan fell back. Fell apart last year, the West of England Special development strategy fell apart the year before. They had also previously attempted to prepare joint strategic plan and then every single one of these cases it's over housing distribution, not necessarily the overall amount, but actually where the housing goes. And this is where we are now on the sort of strategic planning picture. I think these slides are going to be circulated. So I won't go into detail, but when I started doing this math about five years ago, there was an awful lot more dots on it than there are now and there has been a lot of joint attempts to do something. Despite the system that have simply fallen apart because they hope don't have their a robust system to keep them together. So the second challenge is around governance and decision making. It doesn't really matter what system we have with strategic planning, we don't have the governance and decision making right then we are never going to sort this problem because it's just too difficult. We need some really robust decision making and some really strong. Accountability around this. And these are just two examples, one on the left is around the Midlands and one on the right is around the the sort of wider SE that's I'm afraid that's my attempt to try and map out all the different partnerships, all the different strategic geographies at play. And it's just messy. It's just very messy. There's no clear. Decision making structures. There's no real clear accountability. For what's happening, and pretty much every single one of these bodies has their own agenda, agenda and their own priorities. So we need something to make it simpler and we need something to get back to where there is a single body responsible. The only strategic planning. Area where there is one person responsible for decision making is London, and that's the mayor that has full accountability for the decisions on the London. Plan the if. If we look at the combined authorities, they have to have unanimous agreement from all Members, so Liverpool City region is preparing one, but it is one step forward 2 steps back because it is trying to keep all its partners together and and strategic planning inevitably that our winners and losers. So that's quite hard. So just finishing off what's needed, there's been several reports on this and I get back to the question I asked at the start. You know, what if strategic planning isn't the answer? Labour Party think it is and we've had some fantastic quotes from Matt Pennycook, the MP, the Shadow Minister for Housing and planning, over the last couple of months and more recently in the planning at the the the Labour Party Conference. Recognising that we need to get something. That to deal with strategic issues, not least the green bill that was a reference to Greenbelt, but more generally around. City growth and how we plan long term. So there's some really positive notes coming from the Labour Party, but there's several reports that have been published very recently that come to the same conclusion. We have to sort this out. This is the bit in the system that could solve an awful lot of our problems. So just some final thoughts. We've got to understand the role of strategic planning. I wish I could call it something different. For me, it's a long term strategic investment framework that has spatial implications and the word planning seems to generate some negative connotations. It's not a big local plan, and again, there's a lot of people that that think that's what strategic planning is. It's a very different product. And if we're going to look at New Times and new new towns. Programme. If we're going to look at levelling up seriously, then we need to have a system that supports that. Initially, a new government and I'm hope you know, I'm assuming it's it, it it will be a very different government next year when we have a general election, but they could look at priority areas for strategic plans. They don't have to start with full coverage. That would be the ideal ambition, but they could start with some priority areas perhaps around these 20. Cities and also make all combined authorities take on spatial planning powers as mandatory, so they wouldn't actually have a choice. And I think Devolutions got to play. I think we've got got to play a role in terms of how we fund and and how we would do this. But as as Nick said, we've got a really big issue around capacity and capability and we've got to rebuild a whole generation of strategic planners in most cases strategic planners. Our professional planners. But they are also relationship management experts. They're good communicators, and because they're working across partnerships, you're working across diverse range of organisations potentially with different views and to try and get them to coalesce around the long term vision. And a plan is a challenging process. So we need to re skill. And build our new strategic planning capacity. We lost a lot of these when we got rid of regional assemblies and before that structure plans because they provided very large mixed disciplined teams. So we had urban designers, we had transport experts, economists. Ecologists we had a wide range of experts, so it's not just the sort of professional planning rule that we need, but we've got to rebuild that capacity or it doesn't really matter what any government does, we won't have the ability to deliver it. Thank you.
Speaker 3
Thank you very much and thank you for exploring all of those. Issues. Wow, that's a a huge agenda. Now that we've got between the three contributions, could I just remind the audience use the Q&A function if you have questions to ask, which I'll put and otherwise I'll lead some discussion myself. I'm going to start with a question from Stephen Hockman who says would it be wise to extract land value by planning policy requiring via planning agreements developers to commit to build out within a certain period and to subsidise. Public facilities. So can we build more into the planning policy that ensures what has been promised to actually gets built? We don't need everybody to answer that one. I don't know. Nick, would you like to pick? That one up because you talk most about land value.
Speaker 2
I'll do. I'll do my best. I in in my TCPA policy paper, which is fairly comprehensive, I try to go into the different things that are required. There's no simple or single answer and it really first of all has to be focused on. The areas where there. Is high demand, high values and so on though. So that's only a relatively small part of the country. Secondly, the the single best way of of tapping the uplift and land values is actually to own the land. This is the. Conclusion of the World Bank report. I favour the sort of approach you get in the uh Germany or the Netherlands, where local authorities either normally do acquire the land or have the right to acquire the land or uh, so that you you put them in the driving seat rather than just being, uh, having to respond to unwanted development proposals. That's the second point. The Third Point is that you have to we we often think it's about getting the money off the developer and I'm afraid the developer doesn't really make any money until right at the end of the day, so we shouldn't be trying to get the land value at the beginning. Of the process. But rather when the houses are occupied and sold and. And that means you've got to. Be able to borrow. To put in the infrastructure in advance, which is why it's so important to have a state investment bank, BNG in the case of the Netherlands, funding the infrastructure, you'll find the developers who mostly house builders will prefer this because it takes a large part of the problem away from them and it means you can get a. A holistic solution you can look at energy and water and so on at the same time as you're dealing with with transport, I'd say that. The I I've mentioned the the Portland model. And what what's really exemplary about that in a in a country which on the whole believes you know in the freedom the individual to do what they like is that the communities saw that instead of building motorways it would be far better to invest in the rail system and they built. A whole series of light rail system. And this managed to secure investment in the downtown area. So whereas if you go to most American cities, you'll find there's a hole in the centre in Portland, you've got a lively town centre and conversely it restricted development outside there are. The the great. Retail sheds you tend to get generally. In in the States and. In British towns, so that's one shining example. You also, interestingly, introduced a Greenbelt in a hurricane. So they took one lesson from Britain, but I I would favour not green belts for green wedges as in Copenhagen. So it is a different approach to planning that we're talking about. And it's not just the fiddling around which you tend to get in Britain with the review of the. National policy planning framework, which is full of virtuous ideas, but to my mind, and I think this is where Katrina and I, hopefully in total, agree. You've got to reinvent rediscover strategic planning, and it's not. It's certainly not just about housing, it's about the economy, the environment and social aspects altogether. So I would talk about growth in general and I think that's something that Labour appreciates because they do see the importance of reviving. Rebuilding the economy. But I think you will do that not just by hoping that firms will grow, but actually doing things to the environment, for example, making it easier for engineering companies to attract skilled staff in places like in Cheltenham or or Gloucestershire generally where there are businesses which could grow. That they need to track staff who want to be able to afford to live there.
Speaker 3
Thank you, nick. I I, I must say I thought one of the most striking slides from all of the excellent presentations was one from Catriona showing how little was actually being done in the mayor mayoral combined authorities which have been sold to us for 10 years as leading economic growth in their area. And that that was I wasn't aware. Quite how weak that performance been in that area? Could I? Could I go now, Nigel, to you with a question from David Williams? He says is Nimbyism a real and serious phenomenon that you have encountered? If so, are NIMBY concerns and demands justified, and if not, what do you think ought to be done about them?
Speaker 1
Yes, in in my career and both as a planner and planning consultant, I've met him on a huge scale. At the outset I. Made that differentiation between Labour as a party. I think that basically welcomes change and the Conservative Party suspicion of change and so, so much of an indianism is a suspicious change. And very difficult to deal with because we're told that the answer is to better engage at the local level. And I agree with that. But This is why I was attracted to the proposals that Johnson, as I say, introduced and then ran away from. Which was essentially to front load. Public interest at the local planned stage so often local plan inquiries are essentially. Developers and their consultants and lawyers, basically pressing the local plan to incorporate land, which they've got options on. What we want really, is a local planning system which engages people at the outset in discussion and debate, so that when that plan is finally adopted, it has that weight and it means basically when you get to the planning application stage, there has to be there has to be a degree of of. Continuity and This is why this idea of the growth areas. Renewal areas and protected areas I think would be a big step forward. At the moment we have a situation where notwithstanding the adoption of a local plan, it's still open to local residents, local objectors to turn the whole thing on, its on its head to lobby the planning committee and a lot a lot of that is is raw politics. And so we could, we could take one step forward and two steps back and I think that's why I hope that a new government will really look at that whole approach.
Speaker 3
I mean, one of the things that you know also as a former councillor, which you you read in the media, there's a dialogue that sort of says you can have planning or you can have democracy, but you can't have both. And if you had the sort of and I'll ask any of the the speakers to come on this. But if you had the sort of. Land zoning approach that Boris Johnson put forward the the objection that came up from many politicians was simply the. That meant overruling local democracy, that you would never really engage people, and is there a way of doing this so that there is a greater local buy in? Or is it is it possible to get people to have this sort of strategic buy in at a very early stage and then let them live with the consequences? Nigel, go to you first, then ask Catriona and Nick if they've got.
Speaker 1
Yeah. No, I think you're absolutely right that you put your finger very well. Thank you, John. That where you sum that up, we have to get to a point where once those decisions are made at that local plan stage, those decisions then have to be carried forward. We can't have an opportunity where at the planning application stage you then turn that whole thing. On its head. And I I recall a wonderful at the time when the Milton Keynes development. Operation and the new town was was designated and the wonderful letter for I think our Permanent Secretary to the objectives we're basically saying, in effect, the decisions being made and we see no reason to change that position. You've got. You've got to get to a point where we really do believe in that decision making ability. We can't have this endless. Endless churn, which we've all experienced over the. Last ten years or more.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Catriona.
Speaker 4
Yeah, that's that's exactly right. I mean, I think localism sold local communities, A pup really, didn't it it it sort of said to local communities. We're gonna get rid of these big nasty, undemocratic, undemocratic, and and accountable bodies and let you make all the decisions and at the same time, we're going to for the vast majority of you. Quadruple your housing numbers and you know, and and we might give you a little bit of money to get a little bit of infrastructure if that's. At all possible. It was totally and utterly selling. Putting all the difficult positions and the heavy lifting to the local UM to the local level and the federal government have to taking all responsibility for decision making and you're looking at. Historically, central government has had to make some serious decisions in the interest of the greater good, whether we're talking about climate change investment. In infrastructure, whatever even more so today, if we're going to really tackle things like climate change, there needs to be a level of responsibility from central government. But when Pickles? Sorry, Lord Pickles abolished. The sort of the strategic component approach through regional strategies. In 2010, he made a big thing about it, getting rid of the blame game, but the blame game game worked because everybody knew where they were, what they were supposed to do and where they sat in terms of the the sort of order of decision making and whether we're talking about structure. Plans and regional planning, guidance or regional spatial strategies after the. That you know, there was decisions made in the interest of the greater good and the tier below that could blame the tier above it for it, but then they could positively get on and deliver the plans and then you know the the the local level it meant the engagement process in my experience was a much more positive. Process with local communities because the decision had been made elsewhere and it allowed the local planning authority to engage in a much more constructive debate with local communities. I think the other thing is just again managing. We don't always have very honest conversations with local communities in terms of our engagement process and local planning. We sort of give them a blank sheet of paper and say, you know what do you want. But actually when you look back to that diagram I showed of how messy governance is. Local planning authorities are responsible for just one small part of the bigger picture. There's a whole load of other organisations and partnerships that have the money that have the the role, the responsibility, not least the private sector. So when we're having conversations with local communities, we should be again managing their expectations and saying this is what we'd like to do. There are different ways of doing it. But we're not the only person in the room that can make this happen, and therefore we're going to manage your expectations and be really honest about what we can deliver and in what way. And I was very interested to hear when Keir Starmer was talking at the conference about local communities being engaged in how development happens. And I don't know if that was a very specific. Use of the words he didn't talk about where or when he talked about how. And that made me think maybe he's thinking the same thing. Local communities have a much more positive and sort of a productive approach to growth if they're brought into the process. But it might be that some of the what and the where decisions have to be made elsewhere first.
Speaker 3
Nick, do you mind, Nick, if I just move on the discussion on just a little bit after those two comments to really raise something that perhaps came out of your presentation. Well, all three presentations but. The separate is there potential in getting more local buy in by bringing together the planning process with the finance issues and the land ownership issues that you've talked about it it, it has always seemed to me that and the catchy owner ended up in this point really that planning is just. Part of one overall process. I just wonder what is the potential once you start bringing the the income from development gain back into the position of in the picture and finance from a some sort of state infrastructure bank or whatever to actually create incentives and not just top down decisions to get local communities. And indeed, local authorities to buy in to some of the decisions that need to be taken.
Speaker 2
OK, I think we suffer from the English language being very ambiguous and this term planning means all kinds of different things. And to me coming, I've worked for McKinsey and I, you know, I've been involved in business and so on and it's about strategic choice. It's about deciding, you know what to do. It's not about.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2
Trying to think about everything which is the British approach to planning and. Therefore it's about. Concentrating on relatively few places where change is likely to happen or needs to happen. That's why what Nigel was saying about choosing the generation areas renewal areas and. Protected areas and so on is so important and most of the country will not be affected. It's only perhaps 5% of an area that we're really talking about in any one time. I think it makes sense to then think about what's going to happen over the next 5 or 10 years and then what's going to. Happen thereafter linked. To uh, decisions about infrastructure, so it's. It's sort of what if, if we built this then such and such and it's getting away from, I'm afraid the the idea that property owners have the freedom to do what they like with their property, yes, they can do that. Perhaps in grouse smalls or what, you know, areas where the. Relatively few people living but in the grossly crowded areas. Then what happens to property has implications for other interests. So that's why we originally invented a planning system to look at the as the Katrina was pointing out, the wider public good, the longer term we've lost sight of of of that. So I think we just have to start with excepting the importance of strategic planning to do all the things we want. We you know to create a fairer world to prepare for climate change etcetera, etcetera, to create worthwhile jobs where people can earn enough to buy a house eventually that that's the first thing, it's fundamental. To that, that overrules the idea that everyone keeps arguing about everything. Forever more. Yes, there's a period for alignment of plans, and I found when we looked at European model. These took two or three four years to line the plans between the different interests, the transport undertakings and so on, and then they got on with it, whereas in Britain you never get to that point of saying yes, we've heard all the arguments we've brought all the interest together. Now it's a time for delivery and that has to outlive changes in political party. I'm afraid it cannot. You cannot have a situation where we have in Britain, where Parliament say we can't bind our successors for things that matter, like new railways or roads schemes or flooding defences and so on. You've got to think 20 years or century ahead. In fact, so I think that people, if they understood that there was this difference, which is why I use in French, French. There are two different words used iterator and planificacion, so they they don't try and cover it all with one word. So I would which is why I tend to call myself an urbanist or strategic planner. Rather than a planner as say it covers. Perfect.
Speaker 3
For nothing very much. Thank you. I'd like to move on to a question now from Isla Walker. I'll go to Catriona first. On this, she. Asked roughly how long would it take to rebuild England's capacity to strategically plan? And then she also asks the question about the organisation of local authorities, which perhaps I'll put to you in a different. Form and say. Do the combined local authority models in principle give us the right level the right structure within which strategic planning could take place? So how long will it take to develop the capacity and skills you've talked about? And are we gradually finding ourselves? Moving towards the sort of larger structures in which strategic planning could take place. So I'll ask you on that one, Catriona, and then go to Nigel for. His thoughts?
Speaker 4
Yeah, I mean, we're halfway there really in my view, if you looked at how we could do this quickly, maybe not, was that the they, they are perfect as the enemy of the good or the whatever it is. But basically, if we're looking for the best system, then we probably wouldn't start from where? We are but. In terms of actually making the system work, delivering a better strategic plan. Approach. We've got legislation for spatial development strategies through combined authorities. I've already talked about that. If the levelling up Bill makes it to the end of the process, we will have legislation to allow joint space development strategies across local planning authorities. With a couple of tweaks, shifting these all from voluntary to mandatory so that all combined authorities have to do one and the government actually sets out what special area. As local authorities need to work together to to prepare that, it wouldn't take much and I noticed in in another question and there was around sort of doing things through policy as opposed to to the through the statutory system. My preference was regional planning guidance rather than statutory regional spatial strategies. Because we tried to do too much through the strategy. And actually you could identify the areas that have to do spatial strategic planning through, for example, an annex attached to the MPF which sets out spatial priorities. Now the ideal system would be a national spatial plan that did that, but I think we're away quite a bit away from that, but we could use. National policy to identify where we want strategic planning to happen, at least at least initially, and how we're going to do it. And we've got pretty much the right legislation to do. In terms of capacity, we just need to start being less precious about having our own small teams and every local planning authority and start really shaving teams and building joint teams. RTP, I sorry royalty and plan institute for those that that that don't know published a report a couple of years ago based on. The French approach, which was planning agencies so it was effectively shared teams and not just planners, but all the other experts that go into making a strategic planning team. And these would be paid for by local authorities, perhaps with some government support. But they would be a shared facility to actually do local planning as well as strategic planning. Combined authorities have the one even Liverpool has got a very, very tiny resource. To do all this, so I think we need we, we just need to think constructively. Local government restructuring might help. But in the meantime, I think we just need to get on and do it and pull some capacity together and then use these teams to start rebuilding the new generation as well. You know, actually start bringing some younger people in and and rebuilding that capacity. But the first thing is just to to get some joint teams going.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Nigel, do you you mentioned sub regional transport bodies, but do you do you think the combined local authorities are moving us to the right sort of sub regional geography for many of these issues?
Speaker 1
Not entirely, no. And I think I was, I. Was attracted to this. National transport bodies. Because of this, this whole concept of connectivity, which I think is absolutely crucial, we've we've always been basically looking at the well basically after the thousand year boundaries in terms of shires and and districts and they. They don't always accord with really where we need to cope with that change. When one thinks Middle England, where so much growth is taking place, that is still basically much of that is still county and district. And of course, there we have the problem of a lack of resources and what I would like to see is the sub national transport bodies. They're staffing augmented so that they can work together on the on the transport and infrastructure plans, and I think also. What's not been commented on, although there has been this loss of capacity within the public sector, there has been this enormous growth in consultancy in in both town planning. And environmental work and there's. Local authorities have been very precious about whether or not to use consultancies and I think we have to accept that in the way that Katrina has explained these joint teams, those joint teams need to be augmented by by the consultant resource which is. Quite formidable now.
Speaker 3
Thank you. That, that that's that's very helpful. I think I I might have touched now, but I used to notice when I was an MP that lots of the people I'd worked with as planning officers were now consultants to the same local authorities they used to work for. But I'll I'll let that one pass. I I just. There's an interesting point here. I mean, Steven Hoffman asked a point about strategic planning powers. Would they require legislation? I mean. There is. A plus I could Katrin has commented on that, but I'd like to ask Nick and and Nigel about how much of this do you legislate for? I mean, one of the things that strikes me about the landscape we're at the moment. Is that actually the the combined local authorities have very. Very loose legislative basis based on all sorts of bits of regulation and each combined local authority is different. There's no equivalent for the combined local authorities. For example, the power of the Mayor of London and the Greater London Assembly, which is clearly set out in primary legislation. So thinking possibly there might be a new. How far should the new government rely on using its central government powers to deliver a new planning framework, and to what extent should it really be putting a new process, including devolved strategic planning bodies, into legislation? Because that's quite a big. As I know, that's a big strategic choice for. Any government and there is a tendency for ministers to say, well, we don't have to legislate, I can just be a good minister and set the right policy with the effect that the next Minister comes along and changes it all without anybody be able to stop them. So, Katrina, you you've mentioned that already, but Nick and Nigel, where do you think a government should should set the balance? Between legislation and policy.
Speaker 2
I I I think central government overrates its ability to change things through legislation and the amount of money it has to spend is always a fraction of the investment that. Is required. Main conclusion, I've spent a long time trying to learn from what works, that's why I've spent a lot of time looking at other European cities and some. So the first thing central government needs to learn is humility, and they need to get out and actually look at things on the ground. And see the differences between the standards set by European cities and what we would have in general in Britain. That's the first. Thing, the second thing is there are three principles I I found that really count. I call them the ABC. You've got to have ambition. You've got to have local people who want to make things better. You've got to have brokerage. There has to be some body or some team who have the skill to pull things together. That's where the politician is really. Important it's it and the you can see successes all round. This country, and you can see many more in Europe. I would point particularly to someone like Hinton from which lost 90% of its jobs overnight almost and has now recovered it to be a very successful industrial city and thousands. But C is continuity. The the most important thing of all is just sticking at something, and this terrible tendency in Britain to try something for a while and then try something else. And you know it's sort of pulling up the tree to see if it's growing rather than leaving things to get properly rooted. Which is why consultants I've been one, you know, I work at McKinsey. Were once thought. It was rather good. Thermal management consultants and I've, you know, set up my own business, which ran for almost 50 years.
Speaker
And the but.
Speaker 2
The truth is, consultants are no substitute for having good people in positions and spending time. There. Are you, a consultant, needs a client. So we've got to rebuild that capacity to procure. We've got to give people the flexibility to make mistakes. That I said. Which means, of course, that local authorities. Have to be able to borrow money. Which goes back to bonds and so on. I I do urge people to read. I mean, I've written masses of things and I and I've been working on a book called Cities of Solutions, which hopefully will provide all the evidence you'd ever need. But if you just read one thing, just read that TCPA pamphlet policy paper and it's probably available for nothing. Or you can get it on the Internet and and just see the different things you've got to do. And you've got to do all of them. But you don't have to do it everywhere. You you've got to focus then on the places with real growth or real regeneration problems.
Speaker 3
But presumably, Nick, these sorts of financing mechanisms that you talked about would need to be and the devolution of fiscal responsibility would need to be legislated for in in order to enable local authorities to use.
Speaker
I think you need.
Speaker 2
Legislative change on property taxation certainly introducing a land charge. Changing the plans for Council tax and so on, but I think that the money is there in the institutions, the legal and generals of this world, who can be reasonably fairly readily encouraged to put more money into local infrastructure if the land can provide the security. So if you can crack the land assembly problem, which means changing the compensation. Code which is a very straight and most of the things I've talked about. There's another report I did for the GLA called Capital gains, a better model for lenders and they're all very simple things. But they involve overturning the established interests and not listening to lawyers and all the vested interests who make lots of money at present. Out of a complex and overcomplicated system that cat trainers has described so. Well, we, we. I once had a mayor of Houston saying the trouble with some people is they cut red tape lengthwise and that's. What we do all? The whenever we face with the problem, we make it ever more complex by add. For something else. So for goodness sake, let's say we face an urgent problem like we did after the at the end of the war, like Germany's face. Now let's do some things which are going to work and to retrieve our position instead of looking as the sick man of Europe and being a laughingstock.
Speaker 3
What? What should we? What needs legislation and what needs changes in policy and practise?
Speaker 1
I think as far as changes in legislation. I don't think there's going. To be time. If we really aren't going to be. Deal with this urgently. So I think it's a question of looking what's actually on the statute books now and what can be and what can be used. It was interesting in 2017, Conservative government, I've seen very little. Mention of it. Introduced the the the idea of the locally LED Development Corporation. This was to overcome the criticism of the original development corporations. Overriding local interests and this is where local authorities can petition to Parliament the Development Corporation and of course, there are there was money attached to it as well. So it's it's things like that where I think, as Nick says, he's got to see just where the change has to take place and how that change can occur and what's. What's already there that can facilitate that change, and I think the the locally LED development corporations, certainly something worth looking at as far as I know, I haven't heard of one that's yet been instigated, but it's certainly there. Where local authorities together, it's not just one who come together and pursue that and it gives them that recourse to central government funding as well.
Speaker 3
Thank you. I'm gonna chip in a comment of my own if I may, because one of our questions is asked. What I thought of the parliamentary system of which I used to be passed. I mean, I think what I what I would say on this last discussion is that. There are cases where in strategic legislation is important. So for example. Couple Rdas were never perfect, but had they been owned by the local authorities in their regions and not the subject to the creation of Whitehall, I think after 2010. Eric Pickles would have needed to negotiate with those RDA's and say how do you evolve them to better meet meet the needs of the regions rather than simply be able to abolish them as a Whitehall? Decision. So I do think one of my reflections of my time is the inherent centralization of Whitehall actually is one of the the things that makes the system so vulnerable to change when there's a change of government politically, or even simply a change of ministers. As we've seen over the last 13 years, devolution. Has gone fast, slow, fast, fast, slow. Just depending on who's the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or who's the Secretary of State for levering up or whatever communities is now called. So I think that I do think that the inherent centralism of Whitehall is actually one of the things that creates. Everything that Nigel talked about in his his opening and the reasons why things have swung so wildly and we've not managed to produce a consensual system, now our numbers are beginning to fall off now. So I'm just going to. Have a quick. Round if I'm I, I should have warned people at this at the beginning, but I'm. Going to go around to each of our. Speakers in the order that they spoke and just asked them for one. One thing that whoever is the government after the next election, one change you would like the next government to introduce, either as a policy announcement or in its first Queen's speech. So in the order you spoke, Nigel, can I go to you first, please?
Speaker 1
A new Newtown programme.
Speaker 3
OK, that's very clear. Thank you, nick.
Speaker 2
I would give the Treasury the responsibility not for stopping or being a break on growth, but being the agent of growth by setting up a growth Commission within the Treasury, bringing together the NIC's, the infrastructure and Projects authority, the Public Works Loan Board and and creating something that has the equivalent. Role of the French Cuesta de Peru or the. Dutch BNG Bank and so on. I so I and I. I think I would start by just. Shoving them on. A bus or. Or Eurostar. And getting them over to look. Collectively, not individual consultants. Not not one minister. Every minister I've ever sent over to Freiburg has come back transformed like soul at Tarsus and and but then they, you know Nick Boles, Oliver let, when they all see the light. But they can't convince the others. So you've got to shove them on a bus as. I did in Cambridge. In developing the Cambridge Quality chart of a growth and then when they've seen that things can be done differently, you'll find.
Speaker 1
They will work.
Speaker 2
Differently together, so time for thinking we'd never spend enough time. People always want to rush on and do something without spending any time. Thinking and and then we get disasters or fiascos like high speed too, because we haven't thought it through. So growth Commission and a bus.
Speaker
OK.
Speaker 4
Make special development strategies mandatory, whether through combined authorities or or join with local authorities. But and government needs to set out where these should be prepared at least as a sort of an initial prioritisation. But I would make every combined. Priority one thing we haven't touched upon, which is for another conversation, but we've got new county combined authorities which will be very different sort of bodies and one of the big problems with them is that they because they don't include districts, they haven't got any planning functions and have been told they can't have any planning. Functions. So that's again a potential lost opportunity to make space development strategies and mandatory in that bigger geography.
Speaker 3
Fine. I'm going to thank you all very much for it. I I thought that was a fascinating evening. I what I really thought was interesting was how overwhelmingly the three lines of analysis complemented each other and doesn't make the problems that. We face seem quite as daunting as they did an hour and a half ago. When you look at some of the discussion in the so again to commend Nigel's book, but also the work of all three of our experts here this evening, sorry for a couple of people I didn't get your question. And then.
Speaker 2
John, you should be producing your own reading on the subject and and because it needs anyone who's ever exercised some power to be saying it's it's the same thing again and again and again. So we actually get real devolution rather than the mockery.
Speaker 3
Well, I do. I I do my bits and pieces on that, but the planning thing the planning system is not something I've engaged in, but I think you give me a good idea now about how it fits into a genuinely devolved system of English. Local and sub regional governments. So thank you to the audience. Thank you tremendously to the to the speakers, we will be we'll post the video in due course on the website and we'll circulate everybody who registered including.