It's wrong to counterpose localism to statism. Both are needed to ensure a truly effective planning system
Planning, national and local, has been good for Britain. It has delivered green belts – avoiding the sprawl characterising North America and parts of Europe – created a string of new towns, underpinned green belts, helped deliver decent housing courtesy of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and much else besides.
The political message behind that pace-setting legislation – 'before you build...a plan' – is now under threat, along with much of the post-’45 social settlement. The hard-right heirs to the anti-statists in the press and parliament 65 years’ ago, bent on tearing up the planning system as we know it, are on a roll: growth at seemingly any price, no matter the environmental consequences?
What I find hard to rationalise is the criticism levelled at those, who treasure the best in planning and dare take a stand against a government determined to change the planning regime so dramatically that ‘presumption in favour of development’ – any development? – must be a guiding principle. Why? Because businiess knows best.
Those critics seem bent on putting ‘localists’ and ‘statists’ in opposing camps. Thus: support for a truly local planning system, endorsed by cities, towns and maybe parishes, must be the antithesis of national planning. Actually, the two are mutually inclusive.
I admire a system, the norm in parts of mainland Europe – such as France and Germany – where strong communes, cities, conurbations and regions go hand in glove with a strong state. Why? Because a strong state delivers – say – a decent high-speed rail sytem, be it ICE expresses in Germany or TGVs in France. It broadly ensures state planning, on an industrial scale, to maintain a manufacturing capacity, the envy of the UK which has given up any pretence of being an industrial power.
But in these strong states – and, yes, Germany also has powerful regions; France less so – ‘localism’ also thrives. Municipalities are strong; they have revenue raising powers our councils can only dream about; I booked a hotel in Bordeaux this week and, presto, was charged an additional few Euros as a tourist tax. And why not? If it helps fund that city’s modern tram system, I’m well-pleased. That’s localism.
Those commentators who rail against us ‘localists’ need to address reality. Of course, we need a stronger state. Of course – and I certainly part company with the ultimatist ‘localism’ of Sir Simon Jenkins – we need national services and standards, from health to welfare. Of course, we need some form of industrial policy, which recognises the importance of manufacturing and delivers a decent banking system to support it - but I fear, sadly, that time is long-passed in the UK. And, of course, we should have kept a British National Oil Corporation which ensured that the state – as in Norway – had a strong stake in North sea oil and gas output. But Mrs Thatcher put paid to that.
Certainly, we still need a national housing policy, targets and all, with building levels dismally failing to meet household formation. But – and here’s where I part company too with David Walker, a PF contributor – we also need well-thought out new settlements and urban extensions, in the manner of new towns, rather than plonking them miles from anywhere. That’s called planning.
