It’s house-building but not as we know it: the impact of neighbourhood planning on development in England

The policy intention behind the state launch of neighbourhood planning in England was to overcome community opposition to house-building. It was anticipated that neighbourhood plans would increase the number of sites allocated for housing by giving communities more influence over the shape of development in exchange for their compliance with a pro-growth agenda. By the end of 2015, with over 100 neighbourhood plans in place and a further 1700 underway, the government announced the success of the policy in increasing housing allocations by more than 10 per cent. Far from ending a system that pitted communities against developers, however, the policy of neighbourhood planning had, if anything, exasperated this conflict. The volume house-builders and their agents characterised neighbourhood plans as protectionist and mounted a series of legal challenges against them. This paper explores the antagonism between neighbourhood plans and developers. Drawing on a range of case studies, it argues that neighbourhood planning is emerging as a political lobby for systems change in the English housing market; one diametrically opposed to the speculative approach of the volume house-builders.