Government needs to think big on planning, not have another tinker

摘要

Successive governments have made changes to the planning system because they have acknowledged it has held back development. But have they merely tinkered with the system, rather than taken a fresh long-term approach to proactively support economic and sustainable growth? With the 2015 election upon us, will a future government finally act to align policy priorities for housing, transport, energy and infrastructure? Labour reforms between 1997 and 2010 focused on three issues: reducing the time taken to decide planning applications for major infrastructure projects; addressing the need to build houses to satisfy national demand and making developers pay more of the cost of infrastructure related to development.