Northern lights: Town planning’s moral revolution? 

Sick of NPPF consultations? The real future of planning is in Sheffield, says the TCPA’s Director of Policy, Hugh Ellis.

The 2025 BBC Reith lectures by Rutger Bregman dare to talk about Utopia and the need for a moral revolution in our society. His argument that naked self-interest and corporate greed need to be replaced by a new sense of the collective good and social justice feels like a fair challenge in our current political confusion.     

A moral debate 

In the built environment it has been so long since there’s been a moral debate about outcomes of the development process that we don’t even have a common language to start the conversation. And that should matter because planning is the most powerful expression of how society wishes to develop.  

Planning is the most powerful expression of how society wishes to develop.  

Who we care to house, whether we offer hope for future generations, whether decision-making is democratic, and how far our system will go to redistribute land wealth are all essentially moral questions.  You cannot ‘reform’ planning without first addressing them. 

But we are collectively much more comfortable fixating on planning procedures than addressing the real question of why we plan and in whose interest? Perhaps it is simply that those questions have been asked and answered with such clarity in the latest planning reforms that the matter is rightly seen as beyond debate.  

For private or public good? 

Our current planning system in England is clearly designed to support GDP growth, and to do so in a way which overwhelmingly favours the needs of the development sector over key public interest issues such climate or health.   

The breath-taking complexity of the new planning system is in fact in nobody’s interests.

It is true that the breath-taking complexity of the new planning system is in fact in nobody’s interests. But most of the high-profile changes to radically centralise and de-democratise planning and marginalise environmental considerations support the view that planning is designed for the private not public good. Make no mistake, and despite any warm words we might find in policy, that is the Government’s clear goal.  

Values driven planning 

That leaves organisations such as the TCPA with a problem. Our conception of good planning is explicitly value driven. Our interest in the statutory planning system is simply as a means to pursue progressive outcomes in a democratic context. The roots of the Garden City movement, and indeed of the whole English planning system, are tapped into ideas of social justice, of equality, of the importance of nature; all of which are expressed through the creation of ideal communities in which citizens have a full measure of power to shape their own future. 

The roots of the Garden City movement, and indeed of the whole English planning system, are tapped into ideas of social justice, of equality, of the importance of nature.

None of that moral and practical ambition has played any part in the Government’s latest round of planning reform. Indeed, any attempt to focus on outcomes rather than simply more processes have been comprehensively squashed.   

Instead, decisions such as reducing affordable housing targets and axing key healthy design standards in London or the current proposals to prevent the Environment Agency from objecting to housing in flood plains are all justified as a pragmatic response to support the struggling development sector. Which is slightly puzzling because the big players in that sector are making record profits and paying record bonuses.  

Corporate and personal needs cannot, it seems, flex when market conditions change but the needs of those for a decent, safe and affordable home can be endlessly deferred to support artificially high profit margins. It may be speculative pragmatism, but it is also deeply morally wrong.    

Shaping an inclusive future 

Town planning was invented as a means to exercise our collective moral imagination to shape an inclusive future. It was a values-based activity, even if those values were broadly and generously defined. It had power as an idea because it expressed values which resonated with people and because, in Bregman’s terms, it was a force for social good. Without such a clear moral compass, the town planning movement is dead, and the sooner we recognise this the sooner we can all stop going to planning reform conferences. 

Town planning was invented as a means to exercise our collective moral imagination to shape an inclusive future.

Remaking progressive planning 

The question is whether there is redemption? Is there a relevant moral purpose to what we do?  It is that question that we are addressing at an event at the University of Sheffield in January.  

Based on conversations with students and staff we are asking whether we can rebuild the planning movements progressive mission. What should our purpose be, and what kind of ethical code would the profession need to genuinely support the public interest?  

What should our purpose be, and what kind of ethical code would the profession need to genuinely support the public interest?  

So, while we all begin to write our responses to the NPPF consultation in the new year it’s worth reflecting that the real questions about the future of planning lie elsewhere. We trust there is enough wisdom and courage in Yorkshire to move beyond the moral bankruptcy of our current system to lay the foundations of social justice, democracy and cooperation upon which our collective future depends.