Why flexible planning consents are essential for development at scale

How can the planning system support the delivery of large‑scale new communities over decades of change without undermining trust and certainty?

In this episode of The SCOPE, Graham Munday is joined by James Scott (Urban&Civic), Michael Parkinson and Alex Jones (Stantec) to explore how flexible planning consents can unlock large-scale development. 

Together, they discuss why traditional planning approaches struggle to keep pace with long-term change, and how greater flexibility can support the delivery of new communities and strategic sites.

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Transcript

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Super strategic sites. The only way the UK meets its housing needs and targets is delivering at scale. Scale means creating new communities and new towns, identifying appropriate super strategic sites, creating the infrastructure, engaging the community and shaping places people can identify with. But communities are scale, evolve over time. The question today isn't whether large scale developments need flexibility. That's widely accepted. The real challenge is how flexibility can be designed into planning consents in a way that protects trust, certainty and confidence over decades of change. Casting a keen and expert eye on this challenge, I'm joined by James Scott, group director of strategy and planning for Urban and Civic, a leading master developer of 20 current large scale strategic sites. Michael Parkinson, director at Stantec, leading the company's strategic land and development sector, and Alex Jones, planning director at Stantec and currently advising on planning consents on two strategic developments in south east England. I'm Graham Monday. Welcome to The Scope, a podcast from Stantec, a global leader in sustainable engineering, architecture and environmental consulting. The need for housing is well rehearsed. The numbers 1.5 million by 2029. Achievable or not? It's ingrained in our consciousness. One reason often quoted for holding us back in building the homes we need is the inflexibility of our planning system. Let's just start by discussing why. What are the blockers? James, if you could kick us off, maybe. Sure. Well, look, I think the big point is that when you're dealing with the super strategic sites that you talked about in the intro, there is a recognition that they need flexibility once you get into the detail of them. But the starting point is that we don't actually have any mechanisms that recognize the differential of super strategic sites within our planning system. We're still operating under an NPS and a GDPR, which effectively differentiates between minor and major applications at ten units. Now, we need to be able to recognize that these sites are different, they're bigger, and therefore we need to be able to incorporate the approaches that are reflective of the fact that they're going to be going on for ten, 15, 20, 25, 30 years or more of development under a single operational consent. And therefore, you can't nail the tent pegs down, as you might do for a 250 unit scheme on day one. It's quite a change, isn't it, really, or quite a situation in terms of its catering from the small to the large. And we're not we're not provided that flexibility. It is. But it's not to say that the system can't do it. I mean, the beauty of the English planning system is that there is ingrained flexibility within it. There's enormous discretion. We're not dealing with the zoning parameters that you see elsewhere. You've got the ability for the decision maker to make the appropriate decision and to create the frameworks that that work well for it. But too often there is not enough recognition that those conversations need to be had early in the process, and you end up with promises being made which become inflexible down the line. And a promise made that's inflexible is a promise broken, and a promise broken diminishes trust. And that's what we just need to be very, very bright eyed about when we're going and having these discussions, both as developers but also in the wider stakeholder community. Michael, do you want to come in as well on this in terms of why local planning authorities are cautious? Yeah, I think you're exactly right, James, that, you know, the system does allow that flexibility. But what we find often is that there is a fear within planning authorities to apply that flexibility and trying to understand why that might be. You know, they come under pressure from the general public, don't they? They may come under pressure from members. You know, our political and planning cycles are short, which don't allow those longer term objectives often, often to be met. So we do need to recognize that there is sometimes a pressure on those planning officers to apply that flexibility. We also, I think, are rooted in a world where certainly a lot of our technical assessments, people expect us to bottom down everything at day one as part of an application. Well, on these sites. James, as we know, it's impossible to be able to do that. And, you know, we've talked about the changing world, and I've seen so much change over 30 years in this sector, yet we're still assessing developments based on criteria from the from the past or from the present day and not looking to the future. So although that's changing, it needs to change quicker, I think, to to be able to pick up the delivery. Yeah, I was just before we move on and going to pick up on that point. We're still using assessments. That's based on what's happened as opposed to what might happen. Yeah, a couple a couple of examples on that. So take a transport assessment for example. You know, we're using trip rates which are based on historic development data. We're still being asked to apply traffic growth. Yet the trends are demonstrating that, you know, travel distances and behaviors are changing, but we're being required to build in that growth from from the outset. Even today, with the announcement on heat pumps for new houses, were still applying historic energy demands for for houses. Well, of course that's going to change, isn't it, in the future. But we're not not able to build that flexibility. And at the moment, often, James, just before I move on and observation from yourself as a master developer on this point. Yeah, I mean, actually, I was going to reference back to when Michael and I first met, which was in the early days of Orchid Brew Weald, which we were bringing forward as the first site that Urban and civic acquired 15, 16 years ago. And at that time, the A14 was a massive uncertainty as to whether it was going to be jeweled and the congestion that had bedeviled it for years and years and years was going to be solved. And we were trying to bring forward this huge 5000 unit, 3,000,000 square foot site on a Cold War airfield in an absolutely ideal location for a new settlement. But I remember the naysayers saying, oh, you'll have to wait. You'll have to wait until we have the A14 resolved. And Michael and the team worked with us in order to develop what we called monitor and manage, which was a great adaptive certainty system. So rather than predictive certainty, it was adaptive certainty. And what it did was it looked at over time by ongoing monitoring of the transport situation, what solutions would need to be brought forward five, ten, 15 years hence, rather than trying to make a prophetic judgment on day one, that we would need that junction improve to this capacity at that time, and the monitor and manage system, which has been adapted and evolved over time, fitted in brilliantly into our flexible planning consent structures that we really evolve through that experience at all. Cumbria and then Halton. Okay. We're going to pick up on a bit later on in the podcast on looking into the future. But let's, let's, let's talk about policy first. We're recording this podcast after consultation is closed on the proposed changes to the National Planning Policy framework. And the government is now going to be in the period of reviewing responses and with further announcements to come. Let's focus on that for a second. What do we want from this and indeed future policy reform? Alex, talk to us a little bit about how you see NPF, the national planning, the policy framework at the moment in terms of where we stand. Well, there's so many positives in the consultation draft on the NPP, but the flexibility needed for these larger sites needs to be signaled. Now. The markets need to be down now so that it gives the officers and the decision makers the confidence in applying that. In practice, change takes time and building trust with offices that flexibility can deliver better, not worse, outcomes is really important, and time also needs to be spent with members, bringing them up to speed on how this can work, and the way in which large scale developments need to be approached differently. And having that clarity in our national policy framework is going to be hugely helpful for those trying to bring forward these developments of scale that we're going to need, if we're going to meet the housing targets that the government wants us to. So, so this is positive. These potential changes are positive. James, when we when we did a briefing call on this, you remarked on this was quite a moment in your career. Yeah. I mean look it's it's a it's a big thumbs up really in the sense that this is the first time we have seen a national policy document actually begin to identify a fundamental differential for what we call super strategic sites, and which the NPF consultation document encouraged a discussion around whether a specific designation was required. Policy 13 and four to some degree within the NPF are actually used. The term flexibility in the context of large scale schemes. The reason I think we do need the designation of super strategic sites is that when you then go through the rest of the NPF, there are about 4 or 5 different ways they describe large scale schemes. Multi-phase, you know, is in thrown in from time to time as well. And so the difficulty that may emerge from the NPF is that there is still a bit of confusion, whereas if you have a singular designation that policymakers have to keep coming back to and address policy specific in the context of, then I think that would be fantastic. And we can talk about the different areas that they might need to look at for that. But no, I was utterly delighted, really delighted. You've talked before about the fact that some of these things are brands, aren't they? The Garden city, it's like that. Explain, explain that to our listeners. So, so very much. What I said at the beginning was that you have the fundamental differential in policy between minor and major developments, and there has been a consultation out as to whether you extend the range of definitions. But the focus has really been on smaller scale sites and and chopping the chopping the site up into maybe ten, 20, 50 units rather than going to the other end of the spectrum. And that's where I, I push for this differential in policy, because you're right, we have had references to large sites, we've had eco towns, we've had garden insert scale of settlement here, as I like to joke upon, whether it's village, town, you name it. But then you've also got new towns. Now they are really branding exercises that the policy document has come out in favor of and encouraged, but they haven't changed the dynamic in the way in which decision makers are forced to, or encourage to consider the appropriate mechanisms for the determination of those sites and the long term operation of those sites, rather than a smaller scale site of 250 units, maybe between being between 5 and 7 years. We keep coming back to the fact that these are going to be even over periods longer than the local plan in which they may have been been approved. So that's where I'm going with it. Branding is all well and good, but we need to have the mechanics. I think it's really interesting, James, because, I mean, you and I could talk for a long time about how you structure these permissions, but I think getting the structure, getting the definition correct then allows you to then set the best ways in which you structure those permissions. And it is different to the way in which you would do a small scale development, and particularly getting the conditions and the obligations right, so that they're adaptable and that they allow these schemes to evolve. So you get those optimum outputs. And I think I've had a bit of an unlucky experience with one of my sites in the southeast. We were brought in when it already had consent, and so the structure was sort of halfway there, not quite how you would have had yours done, and we were very unlucky that we had. I came onto that site in 2018. We then had Covid and then we had water neutrality in very quick succession, and that made it very difficult with that permission, to really deliver and meet the triggers within the conditions, the time limit triggers. And I think, you know, we were lucky that the government intervened on Covid. We got a bit of a relaxation on those time limits, not the case with water neutrality. That was left to the developers to sort out. And we worked very hard with them to come up with ways in which you could sort of retrofit adaptability into the permissions and also strategies for getting homes on the ground, you know, with water neutrality. But it made it really, really challenging. And I think we'd be very unlucky for those two specific things to happen in the way that they did again. But there's always something around the corner. You know, my fear is that water is always going to be an issue, particularly in the southeast, and we just need to make sure that we've got the flexibility within the permission at the outset that allows you to adapt and evolve to those situations as they come up. And so before I move this on, just to clarify the these policy reforms, will they address some of those issues or is that still a request from yourselves as experts, if you like, in this area? I think recognizing that these sites are different and categorizing them in a different way is a really good starting point. It's then learning from best practice and examples of how they've then been brought forward. And it's educating officers and members and local communities that actually having flexibility and adaptability at the outset will get them a better outcome in the long term. We're not trying to be flexible so that we can take things away from them. It's the opposite. Well, that's a good cue to move us on to something we touched on, actually, which is around acknowledging that we need to adapt long term behavioral, economic, climatic change as well. And to ask the three of you about your advice for major developments for super strategic sites. How do you go about this, and how do you give assurance to all the stakeholders that you understand this and within established parameters for a site, you can accommodate this. James, talk to us a bit about this in terms of how it's hard to predict, isn't it? Ten years, 20, 30 years, etc. and yet that's what a super strategic site is going to be. It's going to be evolving over that long term time frame. It is. And I mean, Alex hit the nail on the head earlier when she was talking about just the differentials that have happened over the last 15 years. I mean, you can take retail hierarchy as a, as a as an element. You can take transport as an element. We've moved from the idea that you build roads for solely for peak times capacity to this concept of sustainable transport planning. And, and you know, those are big changes for me. I think the, the essence is to say, right, you need to be able to establish a consent which establishes at its heart principles and processes rather than predictive absolutes. And that is fundamental. That's not going to be necessarily changed by policy in the way that the NPF is doing, but the policy will recognize it and will encourage local authorities to go about approaching these sites in a slightly different way with a different mindset. And then you can begin to tailor policy specifically for it. So it's a big step. I, I've often worked, tried to work through how best to achieve this, and I really settled on the idea that we needed we needed to have a proper designation last year in order that this could be the framework around which other discussions could happen, but, crucially, that local authorities and national government could keep addressing these sites as being different. And the fundamental point is that if they do address them as being different, that it doesn't then create a cross-contamination to smaller scale sites. It doesn't set a precedent in a way that I think we've all seen local authorities get particularly nervous about. Well, if I do that for you. Why can't the developer of a 200 units, like come along and say, hey, what about me? Why can't I have that? And so that that differential I think is key from that perspective as well. And briefly just putting you on the spot. How is a developer. Are you thinking about long term changes. Well, okay. So in the last 15 years we've had four general elections. We've had five prime ministers and we've had more housing ministers than years that we've. So, you know, you have to accept that there will be change. And planning is at the sharp end of that. The way we're addressing it is that we approach a scheme as really a series of phases, and that what we need to do is that as each phase comes forward, we need to be able to learn from what's gone before and also what's adapted and changed around us so that we don't just keep repeating in a cookie cutter fashion the same thing, regardless of the world. Now, it would be mad to do that in practice. And that's where the level of self-interest, developer self-interest also comes into it, which is quite helpful sometimes when you're talking to local authorities to say, look, the reason we want to do this is we want to keep making the place better. But that does come from a master developer mindset of a long term alignment with the site. Not it doesn't really work where you end up with multiple owners of a singular site who don't have a coordinated vision. So this isn't going to work for everything. And that element of having the master developer long term alignment is a critical component of it, and will help allay the concerns of a local authority, justifiable concerns that they are. And Michael, there's also an important of listening to and respecting the views of the people who are actually living on these developments, particularly they evolve around them. Yeah, I think exactly right where, you know, as a society, we're in a in a period of massive change. The pace of change is unbelievable and it's only going to continue. So having that continual consultation and engagement with residents, future residents, I think is essential. I'm a great advocate of creating, you know, champions for a for for these new, new developments. And they then become the voice for, for us who are trying to deliver it. They can live and breathe as the development, you know, evolves and changes over time. So the consultation and engagement doesn't stop when you get permission. It continues all the way through. And as James was saying in it for the long haul. So you've got to continue talking to people. I mean, to all three of you, it really strikes me what an exciting opportunity is for anybody considering planning and development as a career in terms of where we are at at the moment, with the scale of development that's required and this kind of engagement and shaping the future changes. Oh God. Yeah. I mean, 100%, yes, because the range of things that you can get involved with when doing these large scale, super strategic sites is just so diverse and so exciting. Just before we were recording this, I've just come off our all staff call whereby we had two of our team based in Halton, Ellie and Sonia, talking about the 100 year heritage of that site and the exciting things that they are doing to imbue that sense of heritage into the place that's coming forward. So the future is being built on the past and the two are being brought together, and that's in just the community liaison side. But it's also represented in the physical side in the reuse of the grade two listed building school there, and also in down to street names as well. So it's so exciting. It it properly is. Exactly. I mean, you know, how exciting is it to be able to create a new town for your children or for your grandchildren, or in my case, my great grandchildren? Probably. I just want to come in and just say, you know, planning has never not been exciting. Graham. So. Quite right. Of course. Okay, let's move this on slightly. So one of the other aspects that people always talk about in terms of, you know, consenting frameworks and flexibility is design quality and infrastructure and indeed affordable housing as well. What lessons can we learn from schemes that evolved over time? James, I've heard you talk previously about the importance of taking local authorities on the journey with you and actually helping them to see how other places have developed over time. Yeah, I mean, I think, Michael, you might have even come with me on some of these early tours that we took round councilors and officers, and we used to call them the good, the bad and the ugly tours. And we used to go and have a look at what had been developed over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years before we started delivering because we wanted to learn the lessons. There's a really good example from that, which is schools and the idea that if you just give a local education authority the land and the money and you expect them to deliver the school, they will deliver a very good, functional school, but it won't be welded into and knitted into the community. And one of the things we used to see from these tours is you'd see narrow pavements outside schools with the security fencing and gates, and you'd see pram wars outside the school on in the morning and the evening, where people with smaller children were going to pick up. Their older children are jostling for space to be able to see their kids at the gate. And we just thought, no, that's, that's wrong. That's just not going to be the sort of thing that you need from a community glue perspective. So instead of doing that, what we tended to do was we said, right, you can have the land, but we want to create a public space in front of it. And we did this very successfully at our school, at all Cumbria and then at Halton. And that then provided congregation space and nearby playgrounds that you could then go and have playdates with younger or older children before or after school with it. And so those are the lessons you've got to keep looking at seeing, learning and then embedding within future phases as you as you move forward. My good example, I always look back on in my career, I worked on some of the large scale new communities in Peterborough. So these were consented in the 90s. And one of the first things that got built was an out of town shopping center with a massive car park. So what does that do? That ingrained behaviors that people will drive to the shopping center and then then trying to retrofit a public transport scheme around that. Years later becomes even more difficult. So, you know, you need to look at how you set these new communities up to make sure the behaviors of residents are ones that we're trying to promote around the climate and movement agenda. And Alex pick up as well for us, if you may, on on the importance of design codes as well, in terms of there is a nervousness about this sale of parcels of land. Yeah. I think when you when I work for a master developer, it's much easier to build trust with the local offices, the local communities and members because they know that that develop is there for the long haul. Where the nervousness comes is where you have third party developers coming in who are going to build, say, one, 50, two, 50 homes and then they'll they'll be out of the site. And so it's having those control documents or those structuring documents. So the design codes, the biodiversity net gain and landscape strategies that give the master developer and the local authority the sort of the driving force behind the design quality of these sites and making sure they're delivered. And I think one point that, you know, those documents become really important is where you're going to have change over the course of these 20 year developments. You're very unlikely to have the same offices, the same people on the developer side as well. And so having those documents that set the tone, that learn the lessons from the earlier phases, like James has said, and they're there for reference when the personnel change is really, really important. Now time moves on everybody. So I want to get a very quick question in before a wrap up, one, if I may. So this this could be an entire podcast on its own. I've got a feeling when I mentioned the Worst Homes England, but can we just briefly touch on it? I think there is a link with infrastructure here as well. Some of the financial challenges, the super strategic sites and the role of Homes England and indeed other public private funding as well. How important that is. James, do you want to give us a quick bit of context on that? Look, you need to be built to handle the upfront time and capital that is needed in order to get these super strategic sites going. Equally, you've got to be very honest and open that they have significant upfront heavy lifting. We're experiencing now probably 60,000 pounds per plot in terms of infrastructure and section 106 requests coming in for these sites. And that's before any affordable housing. So you've there is there is a balance, and there's always going to be a balance with these sites that they're either not going to get built because the ask is too big and too heavy upfront, or that actually you can proportionately manage that spend over time. Homes England I have to say, I know they have their critics, but I am a fan. I think they have done a phenomenal job over the last ten years, in particular at evolving the type of infrastructure, acceleration, finance, loans that are needed in order to support these super strategic sites in delivery. And we have taken a loan per site from Homes England in order to be able to do that. And they've got very efficient with that process. So it's a big tick in the box from that. The challenge now is actually with interest rates climbing, what you really need those loans to be flexible again and to turn into revolver type facilities that you can draw, repay and then redraw rather than keep drawn. Otherwise they go back to Treasury. So I think there's a stage of evolution to come. But we've now got the National Infrastructure Bank and the housing Bank and the controlled by and under the auspices of Homes England. And I think they're aware of this. And so again, we've just got to keep pushing the realities and the fact that market failure comes in because the commercial lenders are not prepared to lend for long enough terms. Yes. Against the type of site that you're dealing with, which will be going through cycles. And there's nothing you can do about that. And briefly, Alex, if I may just turn to you, I know without naming them in the southeast, you're working with a major private investor. Any perspective there in terms of how that relationship is going? Yeah, I mean, obviously with that site within the permission, we've got a viability review mechanism. And that's something obviously, James has talked about how the developer will fund things, but then it's obviously giving the certainty to the local authority as well that when the viability position does improve and that may be ten, 15 years in the future, that there is a mechanism in place that the local authority potentially can realize some additional benefits from that. When I've been asked for a viability review mechanism on a 40 home brownfield site with a three year implementation period, which was just ridiculous, and it goes back to that small scale sort of mindset, but the opposite way round. Whereas actually for these large scale projects where you're going to go through multiple local plans, multiple political cycles, economic cycles, there are really important tool to give the confidence to the local authority and the decision makers around viability. Okay, right. It's wrap up time, folks. It's that kind of one thing you would do moment. If flexibility is essential and trust is non-negotiable, what's the single most important thing that the planning and development community needs to get right to deliver at scale, as we've been discussing. Alex, if I may go with you first, I think a willingness to approach this scale of development differently, and that's at all levels. So that's planners, members and being able to explain it to local communities, being transparent from the outset of what what we're trying to achieve, and then working collaboratively across public and private sectors on how we're going to go about achieving it. James, I would say you need to properly enshrine flexibility is better than prophecy within the structures and processes of the consent that you establish at the outset, recognizing that you will be managing a consent through that 20 to 30 year period, rather than just ticking off the boxes as you go, because things will change. And Michael, well, for me as an engineer, this is quite difficult for me to say. I would work with the technical, particularly the technical stakeholders, to convince them that it's okay not to have all the answers from the outset. Things will change. Well, that sounds a really good wrap up to me in terms of developing at scale, which we've been talking about. You're not going to have all the answers immediately, and that flexibility is really important. Thank you all. James Scott, thank you for joining us from Urban and Civic. Alex and Michael, thank you as well. And thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, please make sure that you like, share and subscribe to The Scope on Apple and Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts, and you can find all of our episodes on the Stantec website.