Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill: Final judgements
Levelling Up, i.e. bridging the gap between the economic performance of the north and south of the country, was always a vague, ambiguous aim. While I do indeed agree that the northern question must be tackled, thus far I haven’t seen anything to convince me that it’s little more than political appeasement and a potential bargaining chip to dangle in front of northern Tory voters in the so-called imaginary “Red Wall” when election time rolls round. Even as a tool of political manipulation, I haven’t even seen any cash on the table so as far as I’m concerned, it exists in rhetoric and nothing else and I hope that voters see that whenever our next election may be (could be much sooner than we think).
Now that this iteration of Government has collapsed, what happens to Levelling Up remains to be seen but likely it will be shelved once and for all, at least in its current guise. I could write angrily and bitterly about Levelling Up funds being used to fund housing in the stockbroker-infested greenbelts of Surrey instead of improving lives in the most forlorn and impoverished corners of post-industry, but I will desist for now.
But let’s look at what the long-awaited Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill actually means for planning in practice.
1. What does beauty actually mean?
Apparently the new planning system will be based on the principles of “beauty, infrastructure, democracy, environment, and neighbourhood engagement.”
Not sure if this is a citation of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote to Augustus Caesar that good architecture must include “utilitas, firmitas, and venustas” – utility, strength, and beauty – but indeed I have no idea what to a Tory mind, beauty might look like.
Some people (popular among fascists…) think rationalism is beautiful. Others see beauty in brutalism (normally the same British leftists who worship Orwell). Personally I love Bauhaus and some types of modernism but many would argue against it on the grounds of pretentiousness (and they would have a point). Pomo could be beautiful to some. Baroque, especially of the English and German variants make me want to puke but I don’t think that opinion is shared across the board. Beaux-arts, Art Deco, Gothic, English Renaissance all have their merits. And the list goes on.
What I’m trying to say is this: beauty is wholly subjective. How can that be a principle upon which to base a modern planning system? How do we measure beauty? And will National Design Codes actually hamper aesthetically pleasing towns and cities?
2. No mention of the climate crisis
This is particularly astonishing. A government in 2022 should absolutely NOT be allowed to publish something as central to climate change mitigation as planning of the built environment without a clear, and detailed plan about how it aims to phase out fossil fuels and transition to carbon neutrality. What is their problem? The science is there. Other countries around the world are making at least token gestures (very slow and still we face a huge existential threat). But no mention. We should be making massive changes to our cities to reduce manifold public health crises and climate change induced problems with increased flooding events, biodiversity loss, and in the south extreme heating events. Where is the renewables plan? Where are the savings from the construction industry, one of the biggest contributors to the UK’s carbon emissions? Any ideas around biophiic design and expansion of green spaces? Carbon sinks? The time for imaginative ideas and learning from others around the world is now.
But here we just get a wilful radio silence.
These are not serious people.
3. No mention of cost of living crisis.
A toxic combination of Brexit and the war in Ukraine has had a terrifying upward spiral on prices in the UK. Food and heating in particular are impacting households across the country, but also the spiking costs of building materials will lead to a deflation of the building boom soon. The White Paper was published after both of these factors became the top headlines of the day. And still, nothing.
How do we address affordable housing?
How can we combine tackling climate change with the cost of living crisis?
Can we develop land to start cultivate land for urban farming?
How will we feed our people as the crisis deepens?
So many huge and life-threatening questions. So little imagination.
4. Roman Emperor-style dictatorial clauses disguised as “democratic decision-making;”
Street votes?
Nomenclature of streets and statues?
Really?
Granting the Secretary of State more centralised powers over seemingly trivial but local-level affairs while pushing fairly major and significant tasks to resource-strapped local authorities seems a bit backwards. Also, this government have shown time and again that they are out-of-touch and cannot be trusted to implement things effectively and competently so expanding their powers in areas where they really have little to no knowledge is a major risk in my book.
5. Less democratic
No realistic plan for community involvement or participatory planning.
It’s not rocket science. Participatory planning practices have been well implemented in major cities around the world, from Barcelona to
While partipatory planning hasn’t always been perfect and can also present as tokenistic (in Madrid, for example, it’s simply a portal where residents can vote “yes” or “no” on decisions without putting forward any qualitative suggestion.
However the LURB makes no mention of a shift to the post-2010 world. It feels outdated, uncreative and ineffective. One of the few elements of the current planning system that allows the public to make their voices heard is in planning consultations, and these are notoriously ineffective. With a bit of focus and attention, their format could easily be improved, upgraded, and better resourced to allow proper and effective community engagement.
All of this is ignored.
6. Quick-wins galore without addressing structural problems.
Which is indeed this government in a nutshell. This is largely what the design codes and new powers to auction leases for vacant properties on high streets is all about. As always, they prefer to address the symptom than the root cause and then wonders why everything continues to go to hell.
7. Where’s the money?
What I find most staggering is how the austerity agenda continues to permeate.
The new Bill puts so much additional pressure on council planning departments, who have already been decimated and stripped off much of their autonomy. There’s no mention of increasing resource, or training, or funding other than a bit of the new Infrastructure Levy fund which replaces CIL and S106. This is likely to be a tiny drop in the ocean in comparison with 1). The deep cuts and violently suppressed budgets of the past 12 years; 2). Scale and complexity of social, economic, political, and environmental crises facing the country; 3). Levels of responsibility and additional tasks forced on to local authorities.
Without properly taxing the rich and improving public spending to restore some form of adequate state (which currently functions as an outsourcing platform for a wild and unregulated profiteering private sector), we will sink deeper and deeper into the mire.
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TL:DR final words: Too shallow, too light, too vague and more undemocratic than ever before to make any real difference and certainly no antidote to our aged, anachronistic, fragmented and stretched planning system unfit for a modern state.
Kinosthetica 