The post-war history of planning in the UK hinges on the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, which replaced a patchwork system of development plans for new housing areas with today’s ‘discretionary’ system. The 1947 Act effectively nationalised the right to develop land, giving Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) discretion to approve or deny what is termed ‘planning permission’ in the UK planning lexicon for proposals based on an indicative plan together with national and local policy, plus other considerations as supported by case law. These restrictive powers must be viewed in the context of the New Towns Act 1946, which allowed government to establish New Town Development Corporations to assemble land (until 1961 at current use value) and develop new urban settlements. Indeed, it is argued that the negative planning powers created in the 1947 Act were predicated on the positive planning powers designed in the 1946 Act (Hall and Tewdwr-Jones, 2011). Development control in the UK has not fundamentally changed since World War II, with incremental adjustments since made to consultation (1968), the nature and role of the local development plan (1968, 1990, 2004, 2011) and an oscillating policy on land value capture throughout. The major change to planning since World War II concerns the decline of the positive function of planning following the winding up of the New Town Development Corporations from 1979.

Since 1999, when devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were established and given responsibility for planning, there has been no UK planning system. Rather, there have been four different planning systems. Three of these are overseen by the devolved governments (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). The other (England), according to the UK’s asymmetrical division of powers, is overseen by the UK parliament, giving politicians representing areas within Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the opportunity to contribute to policy affecting only England. As such, each planning system within the UK has its own national planning policy and hierarchy of plans. Fundamentally, the relationship between land use plans and property development works in the same way across the UK – each system having the same origins – but different policy emphases and contrasting attitudes to strategic planning, in particular, prevail.

Each constituent territory of the UK to which planning is a devolved competency has its own national planning policy and associated documents. In every case there exists national policy that is not in itself legally binding, but which interprets legislation for application by local authorities, and a development plan is produced by local authorities indicating spatial and other preferences and expectations of the local area. Excepting these commonalities, broad differences in approach are taken.

England

In England, land use planning currently sits alongside housing and local government within the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Four legislative acts underpin the operation of the planning system there: The Town and Country Planning Act 1990; The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004; The Planning Act 2008; and The Localism Act 2011. Planning and its governance in England have long been characterised by a dynamic process of change, with approaches to strategic planning and the governance of regions and sub-regions, in particular, subject to continuous and at times radical reform (Lord and Tewdwr-Jones, 2014). No national or regional strategic planning is presently undertaken in England, though a National Infrastructure Delivery Plan establishes central government planning and delivery of transport, energy, communications, flood defence, water and waste, scientific research, and public investment in housing with reference to National Infrastructure Statements issued by government departments with responsibility for energy, transport and the environment. This plan is limited in its spatial content, preferring written references to places, to maps and indicative diagrams.

Land use planning is entirely the province of national and local government, with national policy setting out what must be taken account of in local development plans, as well as indicating how national policy must be applied in these. National planning policy for England is contained within the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), introduced with some controversy in 2012 and revised in 2019 as a means to simplify plan making and development control (Davoudi, 2011), with additional direction given in Planning Practice Guidance and Technical Guidance to the NPPF. There is no intention to revise the NPPF at standard intervals. The NPPF places a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ at the centre of the English planning system. This means that, except in defined protected areas and in cases where the negative impacts outweigh the benefits of development as interpreted in the round and according to the NPPF, plans and policies must provide for development according to assessed need. Where there is no plan in place or where the plan cannot demonstrate that it has allocated sufficient land to meet the assessed housing need for the following five-year period using the nationally determined ‘standard method’ for the calculation of housing need, planning permission is granted.

There is no strategic planning tier in England and, outside of London, strategic planning is optional, though the NPPF stipulates that local authorities have a ‘duty to cooperate’ with neighbouring authorities in land use planning and can achieve strategic aims through the inclusion of policies addressing matters concerning other local authority areas within local plans. Greater London has functioned as a strategic planning tier since 1999 while, since 2011, eight Combined Authorities at city regional scale have formed, all but one with an elected mayor. While powers and funding differ for each according to separate agreements with central government, all have strategic planning and transport powers. Since 2018 there have been two possible routes to the production of a statutory strategic plan. Greater London and the Combined Authorities, where these have an elected mayor, may produce Spatial Development Strategies, which contain policies on land use and spatial development alongside a key diagram. To date the only adopted Spatial Development Strategy is the London Plan, which predates recent changes to legislation allowing Combined Authorities to produce strategic plans. Outside of the Combined Authorities, groups of neighbouring authorities may produce a Joint Strategic Plan under the 2004 Act, though as yet none have been adopted. Perhaps significantly, those attempts at producing a Spatial Development Plan (Greater Manchester) and a Joint Strategic Plan (West of England) that have come closest to fruition have floundered due to disagreements between constituent local authorities regarding incursion into green belt land in Greater Manchester and overall housing numbers and their distribution in the West of England.

The planning frameworks in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland differ from that in England in two respects. First, while development plans must follow national planning policy in each, the absence of an up-to-date local plan does not mean that development control decisions are taken only based on national policy. Second, in addition to a document setting out national planning policy, each devolved territory also has a national strategic plan setting out with spatial ramifications how policy is to be realised. As much as national planning guidance has long been issued in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, only upon devolution did planning in the devolved territories begin to formally diverge from that in England.

Scotland

Planning in Scotland is under the control of the Local Government and Communities Directorate of the Scottish Government. Two legislative acts underpin planning in Scotland: The Planning etc. (Scotland) Act 2006 and Historic Environment (Scotland) Act 2014. The Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, not yet in force, will alter the picture somewhat, primarily by incorporating Scottish Planning Policy within the National Planning Framework (see below), thereby combining spatial and thematic policy. Scottish Planning Policy (SPP) is a statement of the Scottish Government’s aims and priorities with regard to land use. Two overarching policies on sustainability and placemaking frame SPP. Sustainability is heavily couched within an agenda of growth and development that gives weight to economic gains alongside environmental benefit. Placemaking is a policy aim that has been increasingly incorporated within planning policy in Scotland since the devolution of planning powers to the Scottish government in 1999, albeit place quality in new developments is still seen as being substandard (White et al., 2020). Alongside SPP at the national tier is the National Planning Framework, which functions as a national spatial strategy, expressing the Scottish government’s economic aims in spatial form and locating major infrastructure needs and developments. The NPF does not, however, include a key diagram or map showing intentions for future change. Development plans must take into account SPP, the NPF and three additional documents: the policy statements Creating Places (Scottish Government, 2013) and Designing Streets (Scottish Government, 2010), plus the Planning Circulars (Scottish Government, 2021) which set out how legislation should be implemented in plans and procedures. Between the national and the local, Scotland has four Strategic Development Plan Areas covering the largest city regions of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee, while the rest of the national territory has no strategic planning. Strategic Development Plans (SDPs) set out a vision and a spatial strategy for their area, conveying in concise fashion issues and developments at the city regional scale and guiding the production of local development plans. SDPs are due to be replaced in late 2021 by Regional Spatial Strategies produced for the whole of Scotland.

Wales

In Wales, planning is the responsibility of the Welsh government’s Department of the Economy, Skills and Natural Resources. Welsh planning is legislated for in The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and The Planning (Wales) Act 2015. While the former two Acts were established in UK law, the Welsh government has the power to issue secondary legislation stemming from these within Wales. Planning in Wales is comprised of Planning Policy for Wales (PPW), the Wales Spatial Plan (WSP), and Technical Advice Notes offering detailed guidance. PPW establishes the national context for planning in Wales and determines the broad content of development plans. The WSP, due to be superseded in early 2021 by a National Development Framework, uses a key diagram to spatially articulate national policy and must be heeded by development plans. Regional planning in Wales has been limited in scope, with much discussion over how the national space might be split into regions. This may be due to change, since The Planning (Wales) Act 2015 gave the Welsh government powers to identify Strategic Planning Areas while the draft National Development Framework identifies three regions and sets out discrete development strategies for each.

Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, responsibility for planning sits with the Department for Infrastructure and is legislated for in The Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011, alongside the Strategic Planning (Northern Ireland) Order. Strategic Planning Policy Statements (SPPS) are the Northern Irish government’s means of setting overarching planning principles to be taken account of in development plans. The Regional Development Strategy 2035 is a spatial development framework similar in approach to the WSP in its drawing on the European Spatial Development Perspective’s visual metaphors in its articulation of territorial space. Northern Ireland is unusual in its only recently having decentralised responsibility for development plan preparation to local authorities, this having previously been undertaken by the divisional offices of the relevant government department.

The key document in the planning systems operative across the UK is the local development plan (termed the Local Plan in England, the Local Development Plan in Scotland and Wales, and the Development Plan in Northern Ireland) prepared by the Local Planning Authority (LPA), while the key decision-making capacity in development control also rests with the LPA. Unusual and almost unique to the UK, there is a separation of the development plan from development control. This stems from the fact that the local development plan is not a legally binding document that uses maps and legends to establish land uses and scope for development. Rather, it is a list of policies with written descriptions as to how and where they are effective, together with an associated indicative map and legend showing the LPA’s intended pattern of land use change and scope for development. Plan preparation varies across the UK’s four planning systems but follows broadly the same procedures, with LPAs being required to review and/or replace local plans every four to five years in all nations and plan-making systems. Public and other stakeholder representations can be made at three stages: once notification that plan preparation is due to commence; when a draft plan is consulted on; and when the plan undergoes independent examination. Local Plans are subject to a Sustainability Appraisal, which encompasses the Strategic Environmental Assessment while also accounting for social and economic understandings of sustainability. In England and Scotland there is now a requirement for local plans to contain a sufficient quantity of allocated land to meet the need for housing arising over the subsequent five-year period within the plan area. This, in the context of a largely passive and regulatory mode of planning – as opposed to a more interventionist form – has been criticised in the English case as the reduction of land use planning to a ‘numbers game’ (Bradley, 2021).

The system of development control that operates across the UK is not a matter of conformance with the plan but with what are termed ‘material considerations’, alongside the discretion of the planning officer. Planning decisions must be made in accordance with the ‘development plan’, which comprises the suite of statutory plans produced at all scales, unless ‘material considerations’ determine otherwise. ‘Material considerations’ include any matters that must be considered in development control decision-making, which range from government policy in non-planning areas to a proposed development potentially reducing the level of natural light for neighbouring developments. The concept of ‘planning permission’ is key in UK planning, as permission must be individually granted for almost every form of development and signals the moment when development rights are conferred. The primacy of the local development plan has been reinforced since the insertion of a reference to a ‘plan-led’ system in the 1990 Act. UK planning systems are, however, plan-led only relative to a past in which plans were not always published and when published plans were not always adequately heeded in development control decisions (Cullingworth et al, 2015). Urban change in the UK is therefore arguably led more by development proposals than by plans, which is to say that it is a ‘performative’, rather than a ‘conformative’ planning system (Janin Rivolin, 2008). In some instances, usually for larger or otherwise contentious proposals, the elected members of the local authority decide to review a decision over the heads of planning officers, while decisions that have an effect on the wider region or nation may be ‘called in’ to be made by central government.

Owing to the discretionary nature of development control, the responsiveness of the LPA to development proposals is a crucial matter and, for more complex proposals such as large housing schemes, much negotiation between the developer and LPA takes place. Timeframes vary widely according to scheme complexity but in England are between eight and 16 weeks, though negotiations, extensions and appeals can further delay decision-making. Consultation must take place not only on plan preparation but also on development proposals, with public consultation undertaken alongside consultation with statutory consultees such as environmental bodies and infrastructure providers. Public consultation in England is by public advertisement and direct notification of neighbours, though requirements differ across the UK, with applicants being responsible for neighbour notification in Scotland (Cullingworth et al., 2015). Written objections are expected to be received by English LPAs within 21 days, while decisions taken by a committee of local elected politicians are undertaken in public.

Some forms of development are excluded from the development control process by virtue of effectively being granted planning permission ex ante, on the basis that the development proposal accords with a specified set of rules. This includes various changes of use within specified categories according to the Use Classes Order, alongside a broader category of changes of use and lower order physical development such as the construction of agricultural buildings under the General Permitted Development Order (GDPO). Since 2013 in England Permitted Development Rights under the GPDO have broadened in scope to enable the conversion of office, retail, light industrial, storage, agricultural and associated sui generis uses into residential use. This change has been controversial, and the quality of housing produced following this process has been found to be questionable (Ferm et al., 2021).

There are further means of circumventing the development control process that more closely resemble the right to develop conferred by the publication of a legally binding land use plan as occurs under zonal planning systems. Simplified Planning Zones (SPZs) enable LPAs to ‘zone’ parts of their plan area such that proposals that meet SPZ requirements (which might be development of a specified land use or at a specified building height for example) are granted permission by right. SPZs are a part of planning policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but have been superseded in England by Local Development Orders (LDOs), which may be issued by LPAs to cover certain parts of their plan area or certain sorts of development across their plan area. SPZs have been little used across the UK (Cullingworth et al., 2015), though the number of adopted LDOs in England has steadily increased following their promotion alongside wider government efforts to liberalise land use and development since 2010. While LDOs (as with SPZs more generally) have typically been used to encourage commercial development, they are increasingly being used in the case of residential development, with one recent example in Cherwell, Oxfordshire, using an LDO in combination with a design guide to simplify the development of self-build housing on a local authority owned and master-planned site (PAS, 2018).

A recent innovation in English planning is the introduction of ‘neighbourhood planning’. The Localism Act 2011 enabled a town or parish council (these being historical entities predating the local authority and which have comparatively limited powers and duties) or, where neither exists, a ‘neighbourhood forum’ of local residents and/or workers which must be validated by the LPA to produce a Neighbourhood Development Plan which may become a part of the local development plan. Crucially, the neighbourhood plan cannot plan for less development than is already allocated in the extant local plan. The neighbourhood plan must be approved in a local referendum, must gain approval by the LPA, and must additionally pass independent examination for it to become active as a part of the local plan (Sturzaker and Shaw, 2015).

Please see the appendices.

The major issue facing planning and development in the UK is the concentration of economic and population growth in the southeast of England. While this is problematic in its effects on territorial cohesion (ironically having arguably manifested itself most powerfully in the 2016 EU membership referendum result) it is most evident within planning policy debate via a focus on increasing the rate of housebuilding. Inevitably this has been most prominent in English planning. Although increasing attention has been paid to the role of the public sector in land development through the actions of Homes England, a non-departmental government body active in land assembly and development, the main focus has been on planning reforms aimed at giving LPAs cause to grant more planning permissions. This has been an increasing focus within UK planning since the mid-2000s and has generated substantial controversy since then with respect to the effects of new housebuilding on congestion and impact on land consumption, though LPAs are bound to encourage the re-use of previously developed land and to take into account economic and other benefits of agricultural land.

Since the early 2000s a number of non-statutory spatial frameworks based around ‘soft spaces’ have come into being. The soft space identified by Allmendinger and Haughton (2009) in their formulation of the concept was the Thames Gateway, a central government-led initiative to foster growth east of London that transcended administrative boundaries and standard governance arrangements. The Oxford-Cambridge Arc represents a more recent example of a central government sponsored spatial development strategy that does not fit within administrative boundaries. Other examples of soft spaces are based on sub-regional initiatives to coordinate planning that have, by dint of their non-statutory status, survived the abolition of regional planning. In these cases, attempts to coordinate planning for housing across local authority boundaries has at times been at odds with local authority strategies.