Zachary Spiro is a policy fellow and consultant. He writes in a personal capacity.
The planning and development decisions made during the last three years of the Conservative government actively limited the UK’s economy. They have also ensured that new homes built in this country will be smaller, darker, uglier, more expensive, and – most importantly – fewer.
The most significant housing decision of that period – during Michael Gove’s tenure as Housing Secretary – was dropping mandatory housing targets, designed to appease a Conservative rebellion during the passage of the Levelling Up Act. In practical terms, this retreat was implemented through a change to the National Planning Policy Framework, a government document that councils must regard when preparing plans for their local areas.
These were enacted in December last year, and consultancy Lichfields estimated that the changes alone would bring the annual number of houses built in the UK down by 77,000, reducing employment by 386,000 jobs and costing the UK economy £34 billion in annual economic value.
Given that the British tax take is roughly equivalent to 37 per cent of economic activity, this choice took £12.5 billion out of the Treasury’s coffers every single year – enough to have funded yet another 2 per cent cut in National Insurance, or more than double the estimated cost of the expansion of free childcare. It is therefore unsurprising that the new Government is consulting on re-introducing them.
In addition to the government-wide national planning policy, the then-named DLUHC blocked billions of pounds of investment and economic activity. In London, Gove overrode his own department’s advice to stop the redevelopment of the Oxford Street M&S, which would replace a decaying 1920s building with much-needed office and retail space – a decision since overturned by the courts.
Conservative junior ministers in the department blocked plans to create tens of thousands of square metres of office space next to the Shard, prevented new houses from being built in Kent for not being “sensitively designed”, and got in the way of £2.5 billion being invested in a new data centre in Buckinghamshire.
All of these individual decisions pale in comparison to the move by the Conservative government to cancel the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, which the National Infrastructure Commission estimated would have boosted the UK’s total economy by five per cent – or £121 billion – on its own. Gove, when asked about the scheme, reportedly “mimed… sitting on a lavatory and pulling the chain”.
But stopping new houses, data centres, and offices from being built and blocking hundreds of billions of pounds in economic activity isn’t the end of the story. In addition to ensuring fewer homes of every kind were built in this country, new regulations also made the ones that will be built less attractive.
Document O, approved in December 2021, placed strict maximums on the window area that can be built in houses across England to limit overheating. Small windows might well be useful for avoiding the sun but, given that air conditioning has existed for well over a century, future generations growing up in dark rooms are unlikely to be grateful for the former government’s civic-mindedness.
Moreover, these limits are far below typical period properties – which will continue to be in high demand for decades to come.
But the document goes further: it effectively banned all new homes from having openable sash windows. Gove, surprised at the “needless red tape” signed off on during his tenure, was said to have launched a review into his regulations twelve months ago.
Sadly, however, no changes were forthcoming before the election – notably, this is despite the department managing to complete the initial consultation and implementation of Document O in less time.
It’s difficult to overstate the impact this regulation is having on the UK’s built environment. As a result of rules passed in the last three years, almost every single kind of popular period style – whether Queen Anne, Georgian, Victorian, Arts and Crafts, or Edwardian – as well as almost every residential property in every conservation area anywhere in the country, is illegal to build today.
However, banning large windows wasn’t the only way that building beautiful was made harder. A new rule was introduced requiring a second staircase to be included in all new buildings above 18 metres.
This rule – coming in at approximately six storeys – would make medium-density terraced housing functionally impossible to build. Whole swathes of the UK’s most admired architecture, of the style seen in London neighbourhoods like Pimlico, Kensington, and Belgravia, have been made quite literally irreplaceable by a stroke of the ministerial pen.
Despite the Conservative manifesto’s pledge to “raise density levels in inner London to those of European cities like Paris and Barcelona”, these new regulations mean it would be almost impossible to build existing British architectural designs that could do so.
This regulation has the purpose, in the words of the department’s press release, of “further enhancing the UK’s world-leading building standards”, and has been framed as a fire-safety precaution.
But the department’s own Impact Assessment of the regulations shows that the rule’s introduction will have only a minimal impact on safety: there would need to be at least 40 major fires in 18m+ buildings before even a single minor injury was avoided by the presence of a second staircase.
That is because these staircases are mostly superfluous in a fire since emergency service advice is largely to remain in place. As the Government’s assessment noted: “[Fire and Rescue Services (FRS)] either instruct the majority of the residents to ‘stay put’ (not to leave their residence), or they assist with the evacuation”, and in any event “in these instances, the FRS has been able to evacuate everybody via a single stairwell”.
Yet this regulation comes at an enormous price: then-DLUHC estimated that the net impact of the regulation would be to cost the economy a total of £2.4 billion; the annual cost to businesses of compliance will be an astonishing £282 million per year. This expenditure will be recouped by businesses through higher prices or smaller flats – people buying or renting these properties will be the ones that ultimately lose out.
All of this could, perhaps, be overlooked if the past three years had resulted in significant reform to the planning system. Instead, the only major piece of planning legislation passed in the last parliament – the Levelling Up Act – remains largely unused, waiting in a cupboard for the new Secretary of State to give it attention.
This includes Street Votes, where individual streets could vote to give themselves planning permission: carving out NIMBY councillors and neighbours from the process altogether. Despite passing Street Votes into law in October last year, and the consultation having closed in February, nothing was done.
The Levelling Up Act also included powers to cut the red tape of Environmental Impact Assessments, which routinely run into thousands of pages for housing development. The consultation on replacing those ended more than twelve months ago. As with National Development Management Policies – another Levelling Up Act measure that would allow the central government to overwrite anti-development Local Plans – there was nothing but silence from the department.
The irony is that Gove – even while in office – recognised that the planning system needed fixing. His final pre-election address to officials noted that “there is more that we need to do” to build homes, calling on them to “show the greatest level of ambition”.
The same day as his speech, official statistics were released showing a decline in new homes every single year he was in office.
Zachary Spiro is a policy fellow and consultant. He writes in a personal capacity.
The planning and development decisions made during the last three years of the Conservative government actively limited the UK’s economy. They have also ensured that new homes built in this country will be smaller, darker, uglier, more expensive, and – most importantly – fewer.
The most significant housing decision of that period – during Michael Gove’s tenure as Housing Secretary – was dropping mandatory housing targets, designed to appease a Conservative rebellion during the passage of the Levelling Up Act. In practical terms, this retreat was implemented through a change to the National Planning Policy Framework, a government document that councils must regard when preparing plans for their local areas.
These were enacted in December last year, and consultancy Lichfields estimated that the changes alone would bring the annual number of houses built in the UK down by 77,000, reducing employment by 386,000 jobs and costing the UK economy £34 billion in annual economic value.
Given that the British tax take is roughly equivalent to 37 per cent of economic activity, this choice took £12.5 billion out of the Treasury’s coffers every single year – enough to have funded yet another 2 per cent cut in National Insurance, or more than double the estimated cost of the expansion of free childcare. It is therefore unsurprising that the new Government is consulting on re-introducing them.
In addition to the government-wide national planning policy, the then-named DLUHC blocked billions of pounds of investment and economic activity. In London, Gove overrode his own department’s advice to stop the redevelopment of the Oxford Street M&S, which would replace a decaying 1920s building with much-needed office and retail space – a decision since overturned by the courts.
Conservative junior ministers in the department blocked plans to create tens of thousands of square metres of office space next to the Shard, prevented new houses from being built in Kent for not being “sensitively designed”, and got in the way of £2.5 billion being invested in a new data centre in Buckinghamshire.
All of these individual decisions pale in comparison to the move by the Conservative government to cancel the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, which the National Infrastructure Commission estimated would have boosted the UK’s total economy by five per cent – or £121 billion – on its own. Gove, when asked about the scheme, reportedly “mimed… sitting on a lavatory and pulling the chain”.
But stopping new houses, data centres, and offices from being built and blocking hundreds of billions of pounds in economic activity isn’t the end of the story. In addition to ensuring fewer homes of every kind were built in this country, new regulations also made the ones that will be built less attractive.
Document O, approved in December 2021, placed strict maximums on the window area that can be built in houses across England to limit overheating. Small windows might well be useful for avoiding the sun but, given that air conditioning has existed for well over a century, future generations growing up in dark rooms are unlikely to be grateful for the former government’s civic-mindedness.
Moreover, these limits are far below typical period properties – which will continue to be in high demand for decades to come.
But the document goes further: it effectively banned all new homes from having openable sash windows. Gove, surprised at the “needless red tape” signed off on during his tenure, was said to have launched a review into his regulations twelve months ago.
Sadly, however, no changes were forthcoming before the election – notably, this is despite the department managing to complete the initial consultation and implementation of Document O in less time.
It’s difficult to overstate the impact this regulation is having on the UK’s built environment. As a result of rules passed in the last three years, almost every single kind of popular period style – whether Queen Anne, Georgian, Victorian, Arts and Crafts, or Edwardian – as well as almost every residential property in every conservation area anywhere in the country, is illegal to build today.
However, banning large windows wasn’t the only way that building beautiful was made harder. A new rule was introduced requiring a second staircase to be included in all new buildings above 18 metres.
This rule – coming in at approximately six storeys – would make medium-density terraced housing functionally impossible to build. Whole swathes of the UK’s most admired architecture, of the style seen in London neighbourhoods like Pimlico, Kensington, and Belgravia, have been made quite literally irreplaceable by a stroke of the ministerial pen.
Despite the Conservative manifesto’s pledge to “raise density levels in inner London to those of European cities like Paris and Barcelona”, these new regulations mean it would be almost impossible to build existing British architectural designs that could do so.
This regulation has the purpose, in the words of the department’s press release, of “further enhancing the UK’s world-leading building standards”, and has been framed as a fire-safety precaution.
But the department’s own Impact Assessment of the regulations shows that the rule’s introduction will have only a minimal impact on safety: there would need to be at least 40 major fires in 18m+ buildings before even a single minor injury was avoided by the presence of a second staircase.
That is because these staircases are mostly superfluous in a fire since emergency service advice is largely to remain in place. As the Government’s assessment noted: “[Fire and Rescue Services (FRS)] either instruct the majority of the residents to ‘stay put’ (not to leave their residence), or they assist with the evacuation”, and in any event “in these instances, the FRS has been able to evacuate everybody via a single stairwell”.
Yet this regulation comes at an enormous price: then-DLUHC estimated that the net impact of the regulation would be to cost the economy a total of £2.4 billion; the annual cost to businesses of compliance will be an astonishing £282 million per year. This expenditure will be recouped by businesses through higher prices or smaller flats – people buying or renting these properties will be the ones that ultimately lose out.
All of this could, perhaps, be overlooked if the past three years had resulted in significant reform to the planning system. Instead, the only major piece of planning legislation passed in the last parliament – the Levelling Up Act – remains largely unused, waiting in a cupboard for the new Secretary of State to give it attention.
This includes Street Votes, where individual streets could vote to give themselves planning permission: carving out NIMBY councillors and neighbours from the process altogether. Despite passing Street Votes into law in October last year, and the consultation having closed in February, nothing was done.
The Levelling Up Act also included powers to cut the red tape of Environmental Impact Assessments, which routinely run into thousands of pages for housing development. The consultation on replacing those ended more than twelve months ago. As with National Development Management Policies – another Levelling Up Act measure that would allow the central government to overwrite anti-development Local Plans – there was nothing but silence from the department.
The irony is that Gove – even while in office – recognised that the planning system needed fixing. His final pre-election address to officials noted that “there is more that we need to do” to build homes, calling on them to “show the greatest level of ambition”.
The same day as his speech, official statistics were released showing a decline in new homes every single year he was in office.