REBUILDING BRITAIN
Planning for a better future
Hugh Ellis and Kate Henderson
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Policy Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK Tel +44 (0)117 954 5940 e-mail
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Policy Press 2014
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ISBN 9781447317609 epub
ISBN 9781447317616 Kindle
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Readers Guide
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Cover design by Andrew Corbett.
Front cover illustration kindly supplied by Clifford Harper
Other photos kindly supplied by the TCPA, David Barnes and Paul Glendell.
For Samuel, Bethan and Owain
Contents
Hugh Ellis is head of policy at the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) where he is responsible for the Associations work on climate change and planning reform. He has been involved in providing expert advice and analysis of British planning policy and legislation, including the National Planning Policy Framework and the Localism Act 2011, regularly appearing before government select committees.
Hugh leads the Planning and Climate Change Coalition, a group of over 50 cross-sector organisations and individuals, which campaigns to ensure that the planning system makes a full contribution to meeting the climate change challenge. He has been closely involved in a number of TCPA-led European projects on climate change adaptation and mitigation and he regularly delivers officer and elected members training.
Prior to joining the TCPA, Hugh was senior planning adviser to Friends of the Earth for 10 years and held a teaching and research post at the University of Sheffield.
Kate Henderson is chief executive of the TCPA and a visiting professor at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London.
At the TCPA, Britains oldest charity concerned with planning, housing and the built environment, Kate leads the Associations efforts to shape and advocate planning policies that put social justice and the environment at the heart of the debate.
She has raised the TCPAs profile through a range of campaigns and policy initiatives, most notably around Garden Cities, affordable housing, poverty and climate change. Kate has been involved in a number of government panels and independent commissions including the governments 2016 Zero Carbon Taskforce and the independent Lyons Housing Review.
The idea for Rebuilding Britain comes out of multiple collaborations and research projects that the authors have worked on together at the TCPA. These projects include the Associations ongoing Garden Cities campaign and Planning out Poverty, a year-long research project which explored how planning can more effectively deal with social exclusion.
This book was only possible because of the support, love and above all tolerance of our family, friends and colleagues. Without their encouragement it would simply never have happened. We would particularly like to thank Samantha Wood, Hannah Henderson, Julie Dixon, Fiona Mannion and Chris Ellis, whose detailed edits and comments were not only helpful but brought much-needed laughter.
We are profoundly grateful to the Town and Country Planning Association for inspiring us to explore our heritage and for the opportunity to draw on multiple collaborations and research projects that we have had the opportunity to work on together over the past few years. Thanks to all of our amazing colleagues at the Association who have kept the fire of the British utopian tradition alive in hard times, and especially to Nick Matthews for his help with illustrations. We would like to thank all of the TCPA trustees and particularly Peter Hetherington and Lee Shostak for their support and comments. We owe a special debt of gratitude to the late Professor Sir Peter Hall whose encouragement, generosity and wisdom were invaluable.
Many thanks to Policy Press for supporting us in writing Rebuilding Britain ; Emily Watt has been an enthusiastic and supportive commissioning editor.
Our special thanks to James and Ceri for all their love and generosity. This book is dedicated to Samuel, Bethan and Owain in sincere hope that it is not too late for utopia.
Peter Hetherington
We are a nation beset by growing social inequality and by intensifying environmental crisis, but unlike many other advanced economies we seem to have forgotten how to think about and plan for our collective future. This is a striking position for the country that pioneered comprehensive planning, and has centuries of utopian thinking to build on. Britain in general, but England in particular, seems singularly incapable of planning itself to deliver the economic, social and environmental progress it deserves. The last five years have seen the process of deregulation intensify despite the clear evidence of our need to plan effectively for more housing and to deal with the kinds of flooding chaos driven by climate change.
As the authors of Rebuilding Britain make clear, we live in a small island and we have to find a fair and efficient way of distributing growth. Talk of a northsouth divide is over-simplistic; low-wage Cornwall, after all, bears many of the physical and social post-industrial scars associated with the north; ditto east Kent and pockets in the south east. But we have to recognise that a nation obsessed with lavishing so much on its capital the lions share of transport funding, new powers, powerful mayor and a regional authority is failing to release the potential of all its parts. High growth areas also show the signs not just of environmental and infrastructure stress but the uneasy relationship of super-rich and the abject poor whose life chances are now dangerously divergent.
Eight years ago the report of a cross-party commission I chaired (serviced by the Town and Country Planning Association) produced a lengthy report to address the countrys economic and spatial challenges. We called it Connecting England. Why? Because England was (and is) anything but connected. In the preface, I wrote that the country wasnt working to its full potential because it lacked a strategy to guide key infrastructure projects and national programmes.... Nothing has happened in the intervening years to address our woeful lack of foresight. In fact the abolition of the strategic English planning system has simply made things worse.
