Legislation finds place for RTPI view

Planning, 10 August 2007

At last, the RTPI policy team is beginning to get its head above water. Just as the heavens opened recently and flooded parts of the UK, the sluices of government - intent on resolving the housing crisis - have deluged us with policy.

While the waters from above have been unwelcome, much of the policy flood is flowing in the right direction. The government has dropped the pretence that its legislative programme belongs to the monarch by for the first time consulting on measures to be introduced after the summer recess. It has also recognised the need to respond to the growing sense of crisis around housing by issuing a green paper.

The legislative programme makes for a busy year in our sector, with a planning bill to deliver white paper commitments, a new homes agency and possible legislation on the planning gain supplement (PGS). The housing green paper has responded to RTPI signals that the PGS in the form it was last consulted on would be likely to prove unworkable. Instead, it reflects our proposals for a system of infrastructure planning in development plans and wider use of tariff approaches, showing a refreshing willingness by the government to adapt legislation to ensure that its proposals will work.

We have seen a significant and necessary uprating of housing targets, implying the delivery of 70,000 more homes a year. This is an important, stretching goal on which landowners, planners, house builders, infrastructure providers, financiers and communities must work hard together to deliver.

As a welcome step in forging this partnership, the housing green paper and processes such as the Callcutt review have moved away from the mantra that blamed planning as the sole blockage in the pipeline of housing delivery. The government is now dealing with the issue in the round, in response to the RTPI's June myth-busting housing report.

But while the RTPI was called on to respond to these initiatives across the media, with appearances on BBC2's Newsnight, the World Service and Channel 4's Dispatches, the rain kept on falling. How, the interviewers asked, could the government countenance further construction on flood plains even when millions of new homes are needed?

This was bait to which we did not rise. Planning must respond prudently to flood risks as it does to the other environmental risks it manages. We must not leap to ban development on flood plains, which includes historic settlements such as London, York or Gloucester that have been exposed to flood risk for millennia. Millions of people expect to be protected from predictable, controllable risks and we need the budgets and measures to do so.

Alongside this, we must avoid creating liabilities and protect hitherto untouched land where development would be unsustainable. We must enable flood plains to operate properly on a catchment-wide basis, without generating unduly expensive risks. We must deliver houses and we must integrate flood management considerations to do so sustainably. That is, after all, what planning is about.

Rynd Smith is policy and communications director at the RTPI.