Boris Johnson promises 'most radical planning reforms since World War Two'

In a wide-ranging speech in Dudley the Prime Minister described the coronavirus pandemic as a flash of lightning which had left people waiting "with our hearts in our mouths for the full economic reverberations to appear".

As part of his efforts to "tackle this country’s great unresolved challenges of the last three decades" including the country's glaring regional inequalities, he promised to build "at a pace that this moment requires".

But his speech was described by the think-tank IPPR North as "deeply disappointing", with director Sarah Longlands saying it "merely reheats existing announcements and does little to ‘level up’ power and resources across the UK".

A senior Yorkshire councillor said the PM had "only listened to the developers and business who simply want to gut the [planning] system to remove local decision making and accountability".

And the IPPR think-tank said his proposal to loosen planning restrictions so commercial properties can be converted to residential homes "puts the future delivery of affordable homes at risk and will accelerate the hollowing out of communities and the decline of the high street".

Mr Johnson told the audience in Dudley that his infrastructure revolution" would help end the long-term failure to build enough homes.

He said: We will build fantastic new homes on brownfield sites and other areas that with better transport and other infrastructure could frankly be suitable and right for development and address that intergenerational injustice and help young people get on the housing ladder in the way that their parents and grandparents could.

"And it is to galvanise this whole process that this government will shortly bring forward the most radical reforms of our planning system since the end of the second world war."

Few details were offered in his speech of what this would involve, but Number 10 says new regulations will give greater freedom for buildings and land in town centres to change use without planning permission and create new homes from the regeneration of vacant and redundant buildings.

Under new rules, existing commercial properties, including newly vacant shops, can be converted into residential housing more easily, in a move to kick start the construction industry and speed up rebuilding.

A building used for retail, for instance, would be able to be permanently used as a café or office without requiring a planning application and local authority approval.

But pubs, libraries, village shops and other types of uses essential to the lifeblood of communities will not be covered by the new rules.

These changes, which are planned to come into effect by September, include wider range of commercial buildings being allowed to change to residential use without the need for a planning application

Builders will no longer need a normal planning application to demolish and rebuild vacant and redundant residential and commercial buildings if they are rebuilt as homes

Property owners will be able to build additional space above their properties via a fast track approval process, subject to neighbour consultation.

In his speech, Mr Johnson asked why the UK was so much slower than other European countries on completing building projects, with Germany, France the Netherlands much faster.

He said: "I tell you why - because time is money, and the newt-counting delays in our system are a massive drag on the productivity and the prosperity of this country.

"So we will build better and build greener but we will also build faster and that is why the Chancellor and I have set up Project Speed to scythe through red tape and get things done and it is this infrastructure revolution."

The speech contained £5bn of spending commitments which he said was designed to speed up promises already made in the Tory manifesto for last year's General Election.

And the PM said: "Next week, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak will be setting out our immediate plan to support the economy through the first phase of the recovery."

After months of lockdown and the catastrophic impact on the economy, he said the nation must act now in "this interval" to plan the response to the coronavirus crisis and fix the problems "most brutally illuminated in that Covid lightning flash".

He said: "We all knew when we went into lockdown that there would be huge economic costs, we could see what would happen and yet we did it, the United Kingdom, in a display of solidarity not seen since the Second World War.

"And so today we must combine that energy and drive and that concentrated burst of collective willpower that protected the NHS and controlled the virus and saved literally hundreds of thousands of lives and we must work fast because we've already seen the vertiginous drop in GDP and we know that people are worried now about their jobs and their businesses.

"And we're waiting as if between the flash of lightning and the thunderclap with our hearts in our mouths for the full economic reverberations to appear.

"And so we must use this moment now, this interval to plan our response and to fix of course the problems that were most brutally illuminated in that Covid lightning flash."

He listed these as the social care system and the parts of Government "that seemed to respond so sluggishly".

Reacting to the speech, Sarah Longlands of the think-tank IPPR North said it was "deeply disappointing for anyone who hoped that it might set out an ambitious programme of change to tackle our regional inequalities".

She said: "In the face of the biggest challenge ever to face these islands, it merely reheats existing announcements and does little to ‘level up’ power and resources across the UK. The North deserves better.

“Given the economic crisis facing our regions, we need far more than rhetoric. We need ambition, investment and action at pace and scale to help people and communities who have been hit hardest by our regional divides, by austerity and by this pandemic.

"These divides haven’t happened by accident, but as a result of our uniquely centralised political system. It’s a system that has proven itself unsuitable to respond to crises. The Prime Minister completely failed to recognise this in his speech today."

Meanwhile Jonathan Webb, IPPR Research Fellow, said: “The Prime Minister's announcements fall woefully short of what’s needed. It does seem deeply ironic that the £12 billion re-announced today, as part of speech billed as ‘build, build, build’, actually represents a cut in the support for the delivery of affordable homes with the funding now being spread over 8 years rather than 5 years.

“Loosening planning restrictions so that more commercial properties can be converted to residential homes puts the future delivery of affordable homes at risk and will accelerate the hollowing out of communities and the decline of the high street. A proper blueprint for town centres is needed."

Liberal Democrat Nigel Ayre, City of York Council's Executive Member for Finance and Performance, said: "The PM is right that the planning system needs change, however he has, as expected, only listened to the developers and business who simply want to gut the system to remove local decision making and accountability. This is another wasted opportunity for real change.

"The planning system, as a result of decades of being undervalued is too top down, too focussed on speed, process and arbitrary house numbers at the expense of quality of place, quality of living and community rights.

"Rather than tinkering around the edges to cut out local decision making and accountability, just to force poor development proposals through, the Government should be asking why it is difficult - all too often the issues are poor design, a lack of infrastructure and services alongside development or delays from developers that want to keep prices high. The PM’s proposals do not address the root causes of this issue, but rather just the symptoms of a broken system."

Thangam Debbonaire MP, Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary, said: “A real terms cut in funding for affordable housing shows where the Tories’ priorities really lie: slashing planning regulations for their wealthy developer backers, not building good quality, environmentally sustainable and truly affordable housing for workers.

“It’s no wonder that Government wants to scrap planning regulations: the evidence from the Robert Jenrick cash-for-favours scandal shows us how desperate they are to help billionaire donors abuse the planning system and ride rough-shod over local people."