Labour ministers were soon off the mark on their manifesto commitment to reform England’s planning system.

These reforms aim to revive the economy and tackle our acute housing shortage, while also protecting valued green open space. Unfortunately Ministers have misunderstood the environmental challenges they face. In doing so, they are missing opportunities to deliver their promise of 1.5 million new homes in 5 years, in ways that could be a lot more popular, as well as more environmentally sustainable.

It seems that Labour’s view of the environmental challenge they face is that they need to build a lot of much-needed new housing – an average of 821 homes every day! – while assuring the nature lobby that they will protect the green belt as far as possible. Unfortunately, they have hardly thought about how these homes could worsen our ever-growing dependence on motor vehicles – or how that risk might be averted.

What does ‘good’ look like?

The good news is that there are ways to build more homes on less land, with more sustainable transport – and thus encountering fewer objections. We need to learn from countries like Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, and start building very differently from the way we have done it for the past 6 or 7 decades.

During that time, our cities have been scarred with high-rise horrors, while the countryside has been covered with soulless low-density housing sprawl. The latter consumes a lot of green open space – and much of that land is just for parked cars. This car-parking space becomes essential, because these disconnected developments are not planned to have schools, shops, doctors and dentists, public transport or green open space within a short walk of people’s homes. So the residents have to jump in their cars to get pretty much anywhere.

It is hardly surprising that motor traffic growth in Britain has almost doubled since 1980 and has increased 10-fold since 1950. Worse still, the Government is projecting that motor traffic in England and Wales could grow by up to 54% more by 2060. Does anyone really want to live in a world with 54% more motor vehicles on our roads – even if they are all electric vehicles?

The alternative is to build at what the think-tank Create Streets terms ‘gentle densities’. That means building apartments, typically of around 6 storeys, around shared areas of green space, in and around existing urban areas. In a recent report for the sustainable transport charity Sustrans, Create Streets have shown that the ‘gentle densities’ approach could take up just 40% of the land normally needed for the same number of typical-UK houses. Building Labour’s 1.5 million homes in this way that would save a land-area the size of the Isle of Wight.

It’s an approach that works stunningly well in countries like Sweden, Germany and France. Their local authorities are able to buy up land, draw up plans for new housing, then commission house-builders to build it while ensuring that good public transport is provided at the outset. Building at ‘gentle’ densities ensures that the public transport is frequent and well-used. That greatly reduces the need for people to own private cars – though car-sharing arrangements are also an important part of the solution.

There are also a few great examples of ‘gentle density’ new housing in Britain, such as the Marmalade Lane and Eddington developments in Cambridge and the Climate Innovation District in Leeds. Yet sadly they are currently the exception. If we are to avert the crises of congestion, air pollution, inactivity-related ill health, lack of opportunities for those who cannot drive, and of course the climate crisis, this approach has to become the norm.

Getting the vision right

The transport chapter of the Government’s draft new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), currently out for consultation, proposes that transport and land-use planning should be guided by a “vision-led approach”. However it does not spell out what kind of ‘vision’ local councils’ policies are expected to be led by. Unless this is clarified, local authorities or developers will be free to put forward whatever vision they like – and they will all be equal in the eyes of a public inquiry inspector.

The Government therefore needs to clarify that their proposed ‘vision’ is one with at least no increase in motor-vehicle traffic, and preferably a decrease, especially in or near existing urban areas.

That in turn will require new developments (or development locations) to:

• Be well served by public transport, from the moment the development opens;
• Include high-quality provision for walking, wheeling and cycling;
• Have key destinations – such as schools, shops, doctors and dentists, public transport and green open space – within an easy walk of people’s homes;
• Be built to ‘gentle densities’ – high enough to support good public transport services, while still having plenty of public and green open spaces, children’s play areas etc;
• Minimise the need for car parking space (rather than aiming to maximise it, as is currently normal).

Setting sensible housing targets

This all means the Government needs to radically rethink its approach to housing targets, and how it distributes them to local authorities. The draft NPPF proposes to reinstate a process, first introduced by the previous Government, where house-building targets are set according to an algorithm, outlined in Chapter 4 of the draft NPPF. This starts by assuming that each local planning authority needs to build extra housing in proportion to its current housing stock. It then adjusts this assumption, depending on whether there is a mismatch between average wages in the area and average house-prices. If local house-prices are disproportionately high relative to local wages, the algorithm assumes this means that local house prices are too high, hence there is an extra need for more housing in the area.

However, this algorithm doesn’t reflect the possibility that, in an area like Surrey, house prices will be high because many of the people living there work in London, or have retired. The idea that Surrey needs more house-building will not be at all popular with those who live there – nor will it help people from more deprived areas of the country. Nor does this process take any account of the availability of public transport or brownfield land in the area.

A better approach would allocate housing targets at a regional or sub-regional level, making the assumption that new housing will be concentrated in or around existing Principal Urban Areas, or new-town locations which have excellent public transport from the outset.

Making more homes more popular

Meanwhile, the Government needs to prove that it can deliver a lot of homes quickly. If they want people to love these new homes, they need to be designed to become real communities, with good transport connections that don’t rely on driving. After all, people who live on lightly-trafficked streets have more friends and acquaintances in their immediate neighbourhood than those living on busy main roads.

Hence the aim of our #CloseKnitCommunities campaign. If new developments are planned so that schools, shops, doctors and dentists, public transport and green open space are all within easy walking distance of people’s homes, they are far less likely to need to drive all the time. Reducing our dependence on cars would be good for our physical and mental health, as well as that of our communities and the global environment.

What’s more, it would also be popular, reducing the likelihood of objections. For a government that wants to deliver new housing quickly, that has to be worth something!