A national housing and planning illusions unit

The last time a Labour government took power, in 1997, it began with big ambitions to unite policy on planning, the environment and transport through a super-ministry overseen by deputy prime minister John Prescott.

His Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions achieved great things in the four years of the first New Labour Parliament. Its Urban Taskforce and other work led to strong urban, rural and transport white papers, with environmentally strong ambitions unmatched before or since.

Bizarrely, it was torn apart in the days following New Labour’s second landslide victory in 2001 by a row over which minister should have which top job and Tony Blair’s lack of interest in domestic policy.

This gave a chance to hard-right economic interests working, then as now, through HM Treasury to strike. With Prescott’s mega-ministry out of the way, they appointed economist Kate Barker to review housing policy. She quickly had interim and final reports on housing prepared, making the extraordinary claim that building vast and entirely unrealisable numbers of market homes would iron out all the regular ups and downs of the UK economy.

So the Treasury commissioned her to write another report, this time on planning, which began its ongoing 20-year campaign to smash up the planning system and enrich land speculators, developers and volume house builders and, er, turn the UK into the economic equivalent of a petrostate. Perhaps, however, the environmental equivalent of a petrostate would have been a more likely outcome.

Now, as the environmental movement and communities nationwide brace themselves for a further 1,000-bomber raid on planning this week, Dame Kate Barker has emerged with another interim report, this time from a “commission” commissioned by megalawyers, Shoosmiths.

I won’t bore you with its recommendations, some of which are sound, but one in particular did strike me – reviving her pet National Housing and Planning Advisory Unit (NHPAU).

This was one of Dame Kate’s favourite ewe lambs last time. It was supposed to “provide independent advice and strengthen the evidence and analysis on improving housing market affordability available to the regional planning bodies throughout the planning process“. But the reality was very different.

I know this because I still have the minutes of the “Joint ODPM/Treasury Barker Steering Group” which I eventually wrestled out of a furiously resistant Treasury under Freedom of Information in 2006. The Group included Barker herself and a shadowy body called the No. 10 Delivery Unit which was supposed to lend Tony Blair’s authority to the control over domestic policy wielded by “the great clunking fist” of chancellor Gordon Brown. In reality, however, as I subsequently discovered, the Delivery Unit was located in the office under Brown’s in the Treasury and quickly became a Treasury driven body.

Many of the prejudices now being wheeled out again over planning were formulated by the group. But I’d like to pick up on the supposedly “independent” NHPAU which the Barker Commission is touting once again.

An October 2004 meeting of the Group noted decisions on how translating a national affordability goal into regional targets would affect how the NHPAU was set up.

“The intention was for the NAU to be seen as independent, which would imply that its views would be published – though the questions of the scope of those views and the timing of any publication remained,” say the minutes. “But there was a need to consider the role of the NAU in a situation where proposed regional targets did not ‘stack up’ as required, to contribute to the national goal.”

Note that “required”.

A December 2004 meeting of the Group was told consultations on the group had been “not entirely positive” – Whitehall speak for the furious response from planners and local authorities to the idea. So the Group wondered whether the Unit should be a formal quango or merely in-house experts.

“Group members discussed the merits of the two options, with the first option generally finding favour as it was felt to be likely to have the advantages of greater credibility and to be seen as more independent,” say the minutes. “Kate Barker said that she felt that the perceived independence of the NAU was critical. It was crucial for the NAU’s advice to be independent – but not binding on RPBs.”

Note that “perceived”.

Members of the confidential Group questioned whether either would be seen as independent.

“The issue of housing growth was considered to be extremely controversial and the ‘test’ of the NAU’s perceived independence might be the extent to which its advice was seen to be critical of, or widely at variance with, the Government,” says the minutes. “But the opportunities for this would be limited by the fact that the advice required from the NAU would be ‘in support of’ the Government’s affordability goal. Whilst there might be some opportunity for the NAU to express a view different from Government’s – for example taking a different view of how housing growth should be balanced across the country – it would not be free, for example, to ignore affordability in favour of a greater emphasis on environmental issues.”

Note that “required” again.

The planning ministry, ODPM, worried about the cost of a quango but was sharply reminded by their bosses at the Treasury that they held the purse strings and just you worry your little heads about how to make the Unit appear independent.

“The Group agreed that it was important for the NAU to be set up in a way that would be perceived as independent as possible,” says the minutes. The Treasury got its way and the full quango option – with its perception of independence – was recommended to ministers.

A March 2005 meeting produced a clash on the issue of environmental sustainability, with ODPM arguing that failure to consider wider goals would undermine the NHPAU’s credibility, and the Treasury arguing that could distract from its central mission to advise regional bodies on “affordability”.

Eventually, when it was set up, the Unit’s remit took no notice of the environment but it did take one opportunity to show its advice could be “critical, or widely at variance with, the Government”. Its 2007 report on a “target range” for annual new homes in England took issue with the then green paper target of 240,000 – by suggesting second homes be included to bump the figure up to 270,000. That’s still a common Yimby/Tufton Street whinge to this day.

So it was independence, but not as we know it for the NHPAU which was abolished by the following government.

Now Dame Kate is recommending its resurrection, along with many of her other recommendations. In a memo to housing minister Matthey Pennycook she says; “The abolition of the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit and its regular review of the market is particularly frustrating as this was having a positive impact.”

But then she also claims that most her reviews’ recommendations “enjoyed broad support”. They certainly enjoyed broad support from house building interests and neoliberal economists; they also enjoyed “broad” opposition from almost everyone else.

Now, as in 1997 and 2001, we have a newly elected Labour administration. As then, we have a deputy prime minister, seen as the Cabinet voice of Labour’s radical wing as the minister in charge of planning.

On Tuesday, Angela Rayner is set to announce proposals for yet another National Planning Policy Framework. Is she meekly going to give in to the Treasury, to intense lobbying from Tufton Street apparatchiks in her party and to the ever-so-powerful development industry to further trash the environment and secure a huge flood of planning consents for the wrong homes in the wrong places?

Or is she prepared to work towards a sustainable future in planning, transport and environment and secure housing to meet actual need?

We’ll see.

Jon Reeds