Planning must reflect how we live

The Office for Place is designed to embed `beauty’ into the planning system but this concept did not prevent the new Planning Bill being seen as a potential pathway to swathes of Chilterns countryside being covered in homes.

I believe there are further problems ahead for the government unless it addresses the imbalance between changing lifestyles in the UK and a lack of planning for employment land.

With e-commerce having leaped by 10% to at least 30% of the UK’s retail market during the last year, CBRE has identified a series of factors that are driving e-commerce demand.

The UK’s high percentage of urban population, growing mobile sales, high credit card usage, a digitally skilled population and good broadband coverage are reasons why we are ahead of the rest of Europe in e-commerce – although the continent is catching up fast.

Planning experts Turley argue that in 2020 the ratio of warehousing needed per home had risen to 73 square feet from 69 square feet in 2019, and suggest that in England alone almost 22 million square feet of warehousing each year would be needed to maintain this ratio.

And Savills reports that in the medium term, supply chains are likely to shift from operating `just in time’ to a `just in case’ model, meaning retailers will hold more inventory to satisfy growing demand, again requiring more warehouse space.

But time and again the logistics world finds a misconception among central government and local planning authorities about the importance of warehousing to the population’s day-to-day living, its environmental credentials and role in job creation.

For example, there is a lot of debate about the number of vans needed to satisfy local e-commerce deliveries, but very little about the amount of travel to and from shops by car to buy the same goods.
The misunderstandings deepen when we get down to the detail of circulation, loading, height and accessibility.

So, I was pleased to see the British Property Federation publish its excellent `Employment Land Manifesto’ in July, setting out a 10-point plan to support growth and explain how planning for employment land can be improved.

Among the good ideas were:

• A presumption in favour of logistics development, with key criteria attached: easy access to the strategic highway network, a site capable of accommodating large scale buildings in terms of both footprint and height and sites proven to suit a future occupier’s needs
• Industrial and logistics-friendly design codes: The Planning Bill so far only appears to be applicable to residential development, and it is crucial that policy-makers understand the functional requirements of the warehouse world
• Enforcing Planning Policy Guidance for logistics more robustly, with Local Plan inspectors having a role in ensuring compliance
• Adding a `Long-term growth’ sub-set within the `growth’ zones outlined in the Planning Bill which will help to accommodate large-scale regeneration sites or urban extensions
• And crucially introduce an `Employment Land Delivery Test’ similar to the Housing Delivery Test which ensures that a commensurate amount of employment – including warehouse – land is brought forward to counterbalance new housing supply.

There is currently a disconnect between the UK’s national planning system and the population’s lifestyle.

The pandemic has shown us that logistics are a crucial part of the UK’s national infrastructure, facilitating everything from deliveries of drugs and PPE to everyday groceries.

The quicker existing and draft planning legislation is amended to reflect how people in the UK now live their lives the better.

Supply chains are complex, integrated and cover regional, national and even international geographies. They don’t respect local authority boundaries so a national approach and policies are required from government.

Article first published in Property Week in September 2021