The All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Housing Market & Housing Delivery is a cross-party group of MPs and Peers dedicated to improving the UK housing market. It has published a report called ‘Hacking housing: nine supply side hacks to fix our housing system error’ (link below) and the recommendations include changing the narrative around new development; a ‘grown-up conversation’ about Green Belt and incentivising LPAs to plan positively.
Most eye-catching though are these recommendations.
"Making planning sexy
- Bring back the chief planner because going to work and designing communities that will last hundreds of years is actually a pretty cool job.
- Sub-regional spatial strategies which is possibly the least sexy sounding document around, but genuinely one of the most useful – a framework for strategic development, unencumbered by the constraints faced by Local Plans.
- More resources for planning teams, better paid planners because our planners are overworked, underpaid and unloved.
- More routes into planning so that we can meet demand with conversion courses, apprenticeships, visas and prestigious degrees.
- Whitehall shuffle: make the planning ministry sexy by elevating the role to cabinet level, having reporting lines from junior ministers in each government department, and placing the role in the Cabinet Office."
The Housing Market & Housing Delivery APPG is chaired by Ben Everitt who kindly gave up some of his time back in June this year to record a conversation with Sam Stafford.
Their conversation takes in many of the themes that underpin the report, as well as the role and standing of the planning profession, how Ben got into politics and Sam's old geography teacher…
Some accompanying reading.
‘Hacking housing: nine supply side hacks to fix our housing system error’
https://www.appghousing.org.uk/
Sam’s Green Belt blog
https://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-green-belt-what-it-is-why-it-is.html
Some accompanying listening.
The Only Fools & Horses closing theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxOEhc960Bc
Some accompanying viewing
Jerry Springer’s Final Thought on British politics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-90FGJFrW1U
50 Shades T-Shirts!
If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning you will have heard Clive Betts say that...
'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'.
Sam said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt and it does. Further details can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2021/07/50-shades-of-planning-t-shirts.html
50 Shades of Planning
50 Shades of Planning is Sam Stafford’s attempt to explore the foibles of the English planning system and it's aim is to cover the breadth of the sector both in terms of topics of conversation and in terms of guests with different experiences and perspectives.
50 Shades episodes include 'Hitting The High Notes', which are a series of conversations with leading planning and property figures. The conversations take in the six milestone planning permissions or projects within a contributor’s career and for every project guests are invited to choose a piece of music that they were listening to at that time. Think Desert Island Discs, but for planners.
Sam is on Bluesky (@samuelstafford.bsky.social) and Instagram (@samuel__stafford), and his blogs can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com (from where you can also sign up for his newsletter and buy a t-shirt).
The 50 Shades platforms are expressions of Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers.
50 Shades of Planning is by planners and for planners and so if you would like to use the podcast or the YouTube channel for sharing anything you think that the sector needs to be talking about then do please feel free to get in touch with Sam via [email protected].
Why Fifty Shades? Well, planning is not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between....
