British local authority planners, planning reform and everyday practices within the state
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076720904995 |
| Author | Ben Clifford |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
2022, Vol. 37(1) 84 –104
Special Issue: Decentred State
British local authority
planners, planning
reform and everyday
practices within the state
Ben Clifford
University College London, UK
Abstract
Reform of the planning system, and the local authority context in which it operates, has
been high on the political agenda for all governments in the United Kingdom in the
21st century, reflecting common broader international trends under New Public
Management and neoliberalism. Whilst such reforms have been subject to a great
deal of academic attention, much of this work has focused on central government
perspectives and understands these reforms based on policy documents and
Ministerial statements. Whilst revealing important contextual, ideological and inten-
tional imperatives, such perspectives can overlook the way in which reforms are medi-
ated by frontline professionals as they implement them. Drawing on extensive empirical
data with British local authority planners considering their reaction to a host of recent
reform initiatives such as changes to plan-making, performance targets, austerity and
deregulation of planning controls, this paper outlines the importance of a focus on this
everyday scale of governance. Arguing for a decentred approach, understanding the
situated agency of professional planners, the paper concludes that policy implementa-
tion remains a messy process and that notions of professional identity and narratives
about what it means to be a ‘good planner’ remain important in understanding reform
specifically and ‘the state’ more generally.
Keywords
Decentred governance, planners, planning reform, policy implementation, professional
identity, United Kingdom
Corresponding author:
Ben Clifford, Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place,
London WC1H 0NN, UK.
Email: ben.clifford@ucl.ac.uk
Public Policy and Administration
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0952076720904995
journals.sagepub.com/home/ppa
Clifford 85
An age of hyper-reform of the planning system
The planning system helps create sustainable communities by influencing markets to
promote more positive outcomes for society. But, over time, the planning system
became ossified and inefficient – and so we embarked on a major programme of
planning reform. (Prescott, 2006: 2)
We also need a responsive planning system and a business-friendly environment ...
Unfortunately the top-down, bureaucratic planning system we inherited from the
previous Administration met none of these requirements ...That’s why we wasted
no time...radically reforming the planning system. (Pickles, 2015)
Reform of the planning system in the United Kingdom has been high on the
political agenda. Whilst illustrating slightly contrasting views of the purpose of
planning, the above quotations from the UK government ministers responsible for
it under previous Labour and Coalition governments illustrate the determination
at the centre of government to reform planning in recent years. During this period,
we have seen a suite of reforms pursued by both the UK government (responsible
for the statutory planning system in England) and the devolved governments of
Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales: Haughton and Allmendinger (2016) talk of
a ‘state of near perpetual reform’ (1688). Concerted processes of planning reform
have also been seen in many other countries in recent years as well (Grange, 2014;
Gurran et al., 2014;Inch, 2010).
In the UK, these reforms have sought to rescale and rescope planning, changing
the way plans are produced (at the local government scale) to encompass not just
land-use regulation but also consider the broader spatial implications of public
policy and be more delivery focussed; the introduction of new strategic spatial
plans (at the regional/national scale) for Greater London, Northern Ireland,
Scotland and Wales; and the introduction (under Labour) and abolition
(under the Coalition Government) of regional spatial plans in provincial
England. The reforms have also sought to make planning more participatory
and responsive to its ‘customers’ (for example through new methods of community
engagement under Labour and the introduction of micro-scale community-led
Neighbourhood Plans in England under the Coalition government) and to make
it more efficient and economically responsive (Allmendinger, 2011;Clifford and
Tewdwr-Jones, 2013). More recently, a concerted effort of deregulation has seen
increases to ‘permitted development’, for example the ability to convert office
buildings to residential use without needing planning permission from the relevant
local authority (Clifford et al., 2019;Parker et al., 2018). These planning reforms
have sat alongside a suite of reforms to the local authority context within which the
statutory planning system primarily sits in the UK, including ideas about modern-
ising local government (particularly the introduction of numerous performance
indicator targets under Labour) and the implications of austerity (particularly
2Public Policy and Administration 0(0)
To continue reading
Request your trial