The High Street is dead, long live the High Street.

(upbeat music) Hello listeners, I hope that you're well. Thank you for downloading this episode of the 50 Shades of Planning Podcast, which is brought to you in association with BECG, the Built Environment Communications Group. My name is Sam Stafford, and I'm talking to you from home in Rippenden, in what today is the very wet and the very miserable South Pennines. I have, though, today listeners, a topic of conversation and three expert contributors more than stimulating enough to warm the coolest of cockles. Vital and viable, the good practice guidance that accompanied the old PPG-6, included a large survey of planning authorities. A fifth of town centres in 1995, it was reported, were then thought to be declining, with only a few metropolitan cities and historic towns, thinking of themselves as vibrant. What would the results of such a survey be now? Oasis, warehouse, debanums, and Cath Kidston, much to my wife, Shagran, have filed for administration, and between M&S, John Lewis, Boots, and WH Smith, 14,000 jobs could be at risk. According to the OMS, online sales in March were up 13% year on year, including a substantial 52% growth in sales of household goods. OMS data up to the 26th of July showed that footfall in UK high streets, retail parks, and shopping centres was 60% of what it was a year previously. On the one hand, with just one in six workers back in the office and two thirds of chief executives predicting a move to low-density office usage, the prospects for city centre, sandwich shops, and bars that rely on lunchtime and after work trade look bleak. On the other hand though, the prospects for independent businesses in the towns and villages where former commuters might be spending their money look rosier. Can the high street be saved? Should the high street be saved? What indeed do we even mean by the high street? And what role does the planning system have in answering these questions? Let me introduce then listeners, three experts who have kindly taken time out of their busy days to discuss this with me. Let me go first to Worrington and say good morning to Ian Jenkinson. Hi, Ian. Morning, Sam. Good morning. Ian listeners, for those that don't know, is senior director at CBRE and leads the UK planning business. Ian has spent 20 years advising private and public sector clients on city and town centre regeneration projects. You're very welcome Ian, thank you for taking the time. Let me head from Worrington to South London and say hi to Rebecca Trivellian. Hi, Rebecca. Morning, Sam. Good morning to you. Rebecca, co-founder of Social Enterprise Library of Things and advocate for community-powered neighbourhoods and Rebecca co-authored the Grimsy Review COVID-19 Supplement Report, build back better. Thank you for taking the time, Rebecca. And let's head back north just a little bit to St Orbans and say good morning to Bill Grimsy himself. Good morning, Bill. Good morning, Sam. Bill, as many listeners will know, a career retailer known for his leadership at Wix, Iceland and Focus, arguably the most high profile makeup advocate for our high streets, publishing reports in 2013 and 2018, as well as the recent COVID-19 update that I just mentioned. Thank you all for taking the time. Bill, let me start with you. I'll invite you all to set out some opening thoughts and we'll take the discussion from there. Bill, you have said the progress has been made since your reports of 2013 and 2018, but not as fast or indeed as radical as needs be. Can you put please the impact of coronavirus into that context? Why, for example, the need for a supplement report and how much further or radical, if you like, are the recommendations of that supplement as a result of the pandemic? Well, Sam, I think it's important just to start off by saying the questions that you asked in your intro, can the high street be saved? Should it be saved? It's the important one because it's a obsession with saving the high street is taking up too much energy. Saving as what is the question? We've historically, through the second half of the last century, been high streets and town centres of principally places to go to shop, and they, therefore, been predicated in the back of a retail proposition. In 2013, it became abundantly clear to me on my retirement that we were staring over the cliff looking into the abyss because habits were going to be changed immeasurably through the introduction of technologies that we were going to move from the cardboard culture of the wild century into the mobile culture of this century, and that would change our habits and behaviours tremendously. In which case, we needed to rethink the places that we go to as human beings, to socialise, communicate with each other, interact, enjoy life, and indeed get great experiences. Now, that spawned the 2013 review, which just basically said to the whole world, stop worrying about shops, start thinking about your town centres as community hubs based on health, education, entertainment, leisure, arts, crafts, and all this kind of stuff, and community at the heart of it, libraries at the heart of it, and let's just reinvent these spaces as places you want to go to for other reasons, and then when you go there, there will be some very successful shop because the foot traffic will be out. That was repeated in 2018, that message hasn't changed, and we were able to highlight some places that had actually done some of that stuff, and then the COVID review to answer your specific question was put together as a result of a request from people that would be right one, but more specifically, my personally had a sort of road to Damascus moment, if you like, because I'm in that age bracket, which is not a great place to be if you get this thing, and I said to my wife, you know, you work hard all your life, you put together some resources that means you can do the stuff that you wanted to do, and you could get a cold and be dead in five weeks, and that's kind of sobering, and it makes you look at your life and your expectations, and in fact, I think the whole nation did that, and we all sort of woke up and smelled the fresh air, as to say, the whole world was in a different place, and now habits that have changed as a result of it, are huge. Online shopping is up above 40%, we've seen all of these retailers using the COVID situation as a reason for making the changes that they have, but they were gonna have to do that anyway. So in a nutshell, COVID has done in about six months, what was gonna happen in the next 10 years anyway, and it accelerated it, and it's kind of come as a big shock and surprise to people, and a British retail consortium, or on the other day, saying, "Oh, this is changes that I'm "presidented, it was going to happen anyway, "and we are going to have to plan our places in a completely "different way, and I look forward to it, "because I think it's very exciting, "and I'm looking forward to hear what my colleagues "on this podcast have to say." - Excellent, Bill, thank you for that, and certainly we'll come onto that. I'd like to focus a discussion on the role of the planning system in managing those changes. Rebecca, Bill talked about the need for potential of community-based uses, which I see and read a lot about insofar as the possibility of repurposing redundant space and so on is concerned, which obviously sounds great, but the square that I struggle to circle is that high street properties are most often in private hands, most often investment vehicles, and even when the public sector does own large parts of retail frontages, those same commercial metrics will apply. That need for a public body to hold assets for a value other than a financial one, requires quite a cultural shift. - It does, and I think now post-COVID is actually a really exciting opportunity for local authorities to start investing in properties as platforms for community benefit, and not just as a route to earn and collect rents as an additional revenue stream. I think the challenge, as you say, is often a language one. It's helping particularly traditional teams within local authorities, whether they're property or legal teams to understand the social value, the monetary value, if you like, of the social and environmental value that can be created by people coming together to run businesses and services beyond just the standard high rent-paying businesses. And so if we can find a way of translating, look, the value that these urban farms and community centers and event spaces and affordable studio spaces and collaborative childcare hubs can bring beyond just rent payment and really help councils to understand that. And then I think we could get somewhere very exciting for our towns and city centres. There are precedents. Bristol, for example, Bristol Council owns 90% of shop units in the city, which is way more than the percentage of most other local authorities. And in Bristol, you see this profusion of thriving independent businesses that are a whole mix of different sectors and abilities to pay. And it just makes a huge difference to the feel of and the makeup of the local economy in Bristol. - Excellent, thanks Rebecca. Yeah, now I was going to ask you initially about the use classes order and the white paper of a couple of weeks ago. But we'll perhaps come back to that. Just perhaps invite you initially. Just to set up your perspective, 'cause it just occurs to me introducing you just then, you know, working for the best part of 20 years in town and city centres. It seems to me it's been a, almost a traditional model of town centre regeneration that would be anchored say by pre-let shopping centres, privately driven, 60% pre-let, you know, an anchor retail tenant, maybe some office development. And then that would be seen as almost no pump priming those secondary kind of locations. Given everything that's going, I mean, is that fair, I guess, first of all? And secondly, that model would almost appear to have instantly kind of just drifted away, which means not only is there a kind of cultural imperative for change, but there's then a financial one. And that also seems quite a shift in local authority thinking. Thanks Sam, a really, really interesting question and one that, I guess, the whole sector is grappling with. I mean, there's a couple of points, I think, first. One, you know, no town is the same. Each town, each high street has its kind of uniqueness and its distinctiveness. And all, although it's an easy criticism sometimes the mate that there's a kind of common-paced plan that's often delivered for many of the towns, which now looks fundamentally broken. There are nuances to each and every town in circumstance. So it's not a blanket by any stretch of the imagination. And I also, it also does sit uncomfortably with me, that actually, whenever something goes wrong, we lurch to another thing entirely. I think the shades of grey between the commercialities of what is being delivered is far more refined and maybe people appreciate and the kind of equity-driven move to create new kind of retail centres that we've all lived through. That was part of a part of the history of development and planning in this country. But many of those developers are probably not appreciated for how much they have always embedded social value, sustainability into their thinking, into their plans. And you see it now, some of the clients that we have, the bigger reeds, there's pens aren't raised on a new plan for any town centre, without the social value principles being baked into whatever's going to come forward. So in light of COVID, I'm fully agree with Bill's comment that this is COVID as accelerated a lot of changes, also shown a light on the way things are done. We shouldn't kind of dismiss the commercial, the equity sector as fully part of the problem. They're also a really important part of the solution, as is the community sector, as are occupiers and tenants and as are the new system. The planning system is there to hopefully facilitate that change. But I think if we sit here today and the bit I liked about sort of Bill's last report really was a lot of likes, a lot of Bill's last report, but the bit that stood out was actually if anyone thinks that this isn't now a revised way of, and the need for a revised way of doing things, then we're already setting off on the wrong foot. But I think those actors and agencies that we've all, they've all been part of this, still have an important role to play in regenerating our towns and cities, a really important role to play. And it's about the common script, I think, is what it comes down to. And that for me is the exciting bit around the planning system and what the planning system could, the role it could play in the regeneration of our towns and cities. And we'll probably come on to that later on. Excellent, three really good introductions. Let's delve a little bit deeper into some of the themes that you've raised. [MUSIC PLAYING] So what are the themes that I picked up from the supplement report? Was this question of local leadership? So I'd like to dwell on that for a moment if we may. I wonder what actual kind of wriggle room almost, a local authority leader actually has to foster this kind of transformational-- well, initially, a management of a place building and building on from the transformational change required when it seems to me-- and this is my roundabout question to you all-- that locally leaders are hamstrung insofar as business rates are concerned, property rates generally. It can take 12 months or more to unlock funding support from the town's fund or the future at high streets fund. And then there's this question of ownership of these-- ownership of these places. Of the places-- I mean, Billy, you said in your introduction that some places have done good stuff. How important is this question of local leadership? And to what extent do you think that leaders that want to do things are hamstrung by the environment? They have to work in. I'll put that to you first, Bill. Well, the question of local leadership is vital. I mean, you will not get things done unless you've got exceptional leaders who are able to have a vision, share that vision, and work collaboratively with all of the stakeholders involved, bringing them together for a common purpose. And that includes the community and that sort of consultation, and make it happen. So the leadership issue is key. And where we saw that, in space, was in Stockton on Tees and Neal Schneider, who's just retired as a chief executive up there, had transformed a town in one of the most deprived economic areas of the country in a radical way, encompassing all of the stuff that we spoke about earlier about this community hub perspective on a town, and engaging with the public and private sectors and bringing everyone together under a common purpose. And it works. I mean, it is about radical change. I hear what Ian said earlier about all these towns are different. There are nuances of differences between them. But fundamentally, they've been based on a retail proposition for the last 60 years. And that's been a starting point for all of their planning. And that retail proposition has been the same up and down the country. I was part of it to that. I was a chief executive of retail businesses. And we cloned every town in the country, made them all up the same. So with good local leadership, we can unlock the heritage that is out there in our history of our towns. We can unlock the local people and engage with them, create local economies that fundamentally work in a different way. In Stockton on Tees, the local leadership was able to make that change and didn't accept that he was hamstrung by the restrictions that he had and found ways to get round it. Now, that shouldn't be the case. And we should remove those barriers to progress. But that's a massive political change up and down the country. And we need a new political structure. And we need it to change radically. But I don't see that happening, particularly under this government, which is going to centralize things more and more in my view, rather than decentralize them and let the local people get on with it. But if you get good local leaders-- and I'm talking about a different animal to the chief executives of today-- if you look at the chief executive that's just gone into John Lewis, who's not a retailer, who's just produced a strategic vision for John Lewis that make old retailers like us eyes pop out as to how visionary she is being about it, you can tell that if you get good leaders, you don't necessarily have to have a total background in it. So growing a chief executive through the local authority route is not necessarily the place to go. Go look in the commercial well and get those leaders to come to bring together all the stakeholders. And this is where I want to see a fundamental shift from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism, so that all the people that are investing in that place care about it and care about the results. Thanks Bill Ian. Let me put that point to you. Again, this might be an unfair misconception on my part. But it seems to me maybe that in those kind of the JV type arrangements for city centre master plans that local authorities here to have perhaps been the junior partner given the cloud, if you like, the influence that because of these issues around funding and ownership are concerned, that it's those developer partners that hold the upper hand and it's the person that cares the least in a relationship that has all the power. Is that fair? No, I don't think it is. The point around local leadership-- now, you can probably appreciate the towns and the cities and the high streets that my organisations has advised across and the local authority engagement, particularly over the last five years, has been front and centre. And it's not. It's not. Yes, you talk to the Chief Executive, but it doesn't come from the Chief Executive. It's not a civil service thing. This is actually your first conversation is usually with the local elected leader and what he wants to say. And he's elected by the people he serves. And when it comes to intervening, we've seen a number of local authorities actually seek to get control of the town centres. And that's a big question for them when they've got to find 30, 40, 50 million pounds in the near of austerity when they've got other massive competing challenges, even before COVID, even before Brexit really gathered pace. That's a big ask. And they have to do it following clear set rules in terms of justifying to the council to themselves, to the auditors. The first rule is always investment. Does it make an investment sense for them? The second rule is regeneration. And actually, what's really strong leadership is actually when you fast forward to where we are now and the failures of rental payments being made to sometimes local authority assets, which they've paid some tens of millions to acquire. That's local leadership in being resolute and-- and actually saying, yes, this is what it's about, but we still got to deliver real transformational change in our town centre. So those authorities that did by shopping centres actually have done so under a position of duress and stress in the town centre. That was abundantly clear in men. The more north you get, the more you see that. But actually, when you used to look at where things are at now, the challenge is even greater for those local authorities. There's those local authorities that carry the burden. Where it comes to-- so that's real leadership for me, actually-- is actually when the going gets tough. The real leaders are the ones who come to the fore amongst the local authority, Koho. When it comes to the JV partners, there are lots of good JV partners for local authorities to partner with. Increasingly, though, it's not the developer partner that is calling the shots. The developer partner is often working with the local authority who's got the ownership, who's got the ability to fund and finance. It's not uncommon for a city town centre, regeneration plant, to have a viability gap of-- upwards of 30%. That's how much the challenge it is. And actually, it's the public sector that's probably stepping in to address that viability gap. And again, that's real genuine leadership. And there are a number of examples up and down the country of where that has been the case. And that, for me, is a shift in the power that actually it's not necessarily the private sector that has the final say or the control, the private sector, the developer community is almost acting like. The advisor or bringing the sets of skills that can kind of stitch these things together, because that's one thing that local authorities aren't blessed with, is the resources to deliver themselves and the argument, the philosophical argument, there is, is, should they be delivering it themselves? So partnerships between proactive, strongly leadership led councils using third-party funds from a variety of sources that are out there with its central government, whether it's leaps, its combined authorities, whether it's their own funds, their own covenant strength, together with a good developer is absolutely part of the solution. Even more importantly, it's what the plan is. And making it as specific and as bespoke to that particular town, or that particular high street, as possible, is got to be the key ingredient of success. Brilliant, thank you Ian. Rebecca, would you like to add anything on the leadership point? I mean, if the successful places or the transformative places that you refer to in your introduction, I mean, they're successful, the successful hinge on being embedded in the community, but to take those big decisions and make them happen will require a certain kind of leader at the council. Do you see that? Yeah, absolutely. I do think strong leadership, whether it kind of elected councilor level or the senior leaders in the civil service, can drive real change, community led or otherwise. And I do think to an extent they are slightly hamstrung, particularly when it comes to funding. And I do think perhaps slightly contrary to what you are saying, that actually developers often do have more power or can have more power in that JV than the council partner, because they have the funding, because they can pay the expert consultants to advise on the planning process in a way that other types of stakeholders in a place really can't. So I do think it's fair to say that developers can hold immense power just because they hold. They can bring a lot of funding to the table and definitely seen that in areas of South London. Though I think on the positive side, the believers that I've seen good council leaders use are taking proactive decisions in terms of planning. Taking proactive decisions when it comes to how they use their own properties in Barking and Dagenham, they just declared that they were going to become a kind of community led borough that they've partnered with an organisation called Participatory City. They've given over six of their properties to use within for with Participatory City and starting to adapt the planning system to serve the people in that place. And yeah, that is coming from the top and it is the conversation. It is the CEO driving those different types of leases through the council's property and a legal team which can often cling on to the traditional leases that from yesterday, rather than something say turn over based which can support a local economy. Thank you. Let's move on from leadership and let's talk about planning. This is order, which feels quite light touch as a policy initiative, but it seems to me unlike much of the white paper which was published a couple of weeks ago at the time of recording, this use category form is actually happening and it seems to me have the potential to be absolutely huge. This is, as we record, listen as it's the end of August and the new use classes order come into force. I think I'm right in saying on the first of September. Now, I'm intrigued by this element of the build back better COVID-19 supplement, deregulating the use class system and giving local authorities the opportunity to develop an appropriate proposition to attract people to live, work, play and visit a unique town. Are these not mutually exclusive, though, I wonder? Because in creating this new use class E, and let me get this right, use class E subsumes existing class A1, shops, class A2, financial and professional services, class A3, restaurants and cafes, and class B1, business, office uses all subsumed into a new class E. So I just wouldn't do it and I'll put this to all of you. I'll come to you first, Bill. Does this deregulation not just give away an authority's right or ability to provide the stewardship over the kind of uses, not just the kind of uses, but how they then present themselves to the street and then make that kind of blend of uses, the stewardship of the place, that bit harder. Well, I think it's important that the local authorities in their planning have the flexibility to use the buildings in their town for the purpose of generating an exciting place, an economically exciting place for the local community. Abroadening the way of doing it is a two-edged sword. So you're right. I mean, in the one hand, you've got flexibility and on the other hand, you don't want to find yourself in a situation where people are assuming that they've got a property that's class E retail today. I can just turn it into an office tomorrow without any kind of report. We don't want that, but I think the most important point to make about planning and the public and private sector is that unless we start working together in a local level without central government interference and this reference that you always get, you people can appeal to a national inspector over a planning application. I think needs to be taken away. I've seen evidence of that up and down the country where local authorities have refused planning. They then go for an appeal to the national inspector and they grant planning. And that's withdrawing from the local community and just saying, look, I'm central government and you'll get what you're given. We can't have that. So we've got to get to this localism on steroids and we've got to allow the local communities and all of the stakeholders to come together to make it work. And just just pinging back a bit on this issue of the private developers and the local authorities. I mean, about three years ago, Intu is flying high, okay? Intu is not here today. There is a partner who is irresponsible, filled a company with debt and has now left the rubble that's behind to an administrator in the local authorities. So we've got dangers as we go forward, which is why we need to have people who are investing in the places, aren't just investing in one part of it, i.e. the property or I'm a retailer. We've got to find a system which keeps engagement for all so that they care. And there's no doubt, in my mind, that there are ads to landlords who don't care about those buildings they own and they leave them empty forever. So having flexibility with planning, having more powers to do stuff locally is absolutely important. And we've got to stop this reference to a National Peel Centre which can override everything and impose stuff if they want to. - Interesting, thank you Bill. I'll go back to that point about Peels and Master Plans, maybe within in a minute. But Rebecca, at this stewardship point, where do you sit on this? Because on the one hand, an occupier is looking for the flexibility and I saw your great Twitter thread about, which I'll put in a link to in the description of the podcast, about the kind of uses that can make high streets more interesting places to be. But trying to squeeze some of those into some of the old use classes orders would just, you know, would boggle the mind. And is probably not insignificant hurdle to occupiers looking at taking on space. So flexibility, yes, on the one hand, but on the other, some kind of curation of these, it seems to me that the most successful places are quite well curated in creating a balance of harmonious uses that sit well alongside each other. But where do you sit on that? - I think that's an excellent summary, Sam, to be honest. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if the market decides and there's complete free reign, then I do worry that your town centre reflects only the ability of only services for people who can pay. And so every kind of unit becomes occupied by, I don't know, expensive pizza joints or, you know, another cafe, another cafe. And it's just boring. We've got to have more than just places to eat and drink. And yeah, I do, so I do think, I do think we need that curation to keep it vibrant and a mix and a healthy ecosystem of all sorts of places to exercise and feel healthy and grow food and create, and sort of incubators to create local business. So absolutely, that curation is key. I don't know whether that's like a community, a local community board, if you like, that advises on these decisions. But, yeah, as you say, on the other hand, the inflexibility of the current system doesn't work either as an example, a entrepreneur creating affordable yoga studios for people who are recovering from long-term illness in East London was shopping around, or that's the wrong word, but looking around for an affordable studio space in Hackney and was just thwarted by this shopping conservation district that meant that everything, every unit in this particular area had to be a kind of a one retail unit. And she just said, "Well, look, I can't go through this, I can't take the risk of paying to grand and going through this application process and possibly to change youth class and then possibly getting a no at the end of that." So, yeah, a combination of curation and flexibility, absolutely. - Thank you, right, so let me put that point and another one to Ian. Let's get into the nitty gritty of planning Ian because I know you love that so much. On the possible side, you've got the concept of these renewal areas in the white paper, whichever one is scrappling around, trying to work out what they and growth and protection areas means, but taking Bill and Rebecca's points about both certainty and local buy-in, seemingly those renewal areas would come alongside, what you and I might describe as an SPD almost. The master plan for that area that sets the uses that subject to consultation and local involvement. So that on the face of it, if that's what transpires, that could be quite positive, but let me put something else to you at the same time about the use classes order. It seems to me and I might be wrong, but I think the government of perhaps, I said the government in somebody, has looked at Bill's points about flexibility in the use classes order insofar as they relate to high streets, taken that on board, but then the use classes order doesn't just apply to the high street, it applies to absolutely all of these uses anywhere, it applies to secondary tertiary and even out of town locations, such that whilst you're carefully trying to curate and steward a range of complimentary uses in an area that you want people to congregate in, those uses might be being tempted to be moving out of town because of the deregulated and use class freedom applies equally on the ring road as it does in the centre, which seems like quite a counterpoint to that idea of control in the centre and the absence of control elsewhere. There are two questions in there somewhere, I'll leave you to try to pick them out. What do you think about that Ian? - Thank you. This could be the longest answer I've ever given to anything, but I'll try and keep it succinct and clear as possible. It's important to kind of think about planning reform in terms of the chronology of what's happened over the recent months. And if we take sort of the prime ministers sort of starting on the bill, bill, bill speech where he set out that economic stimulus through the construction to the construction sector, whether that's direct, fiscal stimulus, whether that's changing permitted development rights to speed up planning and the third sort of led to it was really this wholesale replacement or proposed replacement of the planning systems we know it. But firstly, in terms of the PD rights, they permitted development rights, they themselves break down into a number of areas. One, there is this new use class order system, which I'll come on to, but there's also, there's permitted development rights around change of use from commercial to residential town centres. There's also encouragement to bring empty buildings back into residential use. There's also open extensions of existing residential blocks and commercial buildings. So there's a lot going on in this planning space before we even get to the planning reform white paper. But if you know, one of the early initiatives that has been live for the last couple of months was that latter point at the bottom of the extensions. And certainly some of my London colleagues, this was becoming quite regular in terms of clients coming to look at what this could do. But actually when you work through it, you came back to the fact that actually the permitted development right is one thing. But the subjectivity around it all on behalf of the decision maker still didn't go away. And you'd start to see this and this will come back to sort of build and Rebecca's point really in terms of curation about having a plan, about knowing the local authority, the high street, the town centre, whatever it is having a clear plan. And that will become an important theme throughout this answer. But you can already start to see that actually just because government launches one initiative or one change to the regulation or one tweet to the planning system doesn't necessarily follow that it will deliver what it intends. And I think unintended consequences around what's been proposed today is a real risk. And you've touched on that some earlier in terms of this is not just about town centres or high streets, this is actually across the country. But when we look at use classy, it was clearly designed to give local authorities more, local planning authorities more flexibility in decision making. Now flexibility in the planning world has significant implications, significant legal implications, but practically speaking, what they were trying to do was to look at giving local planning authorities, local communities, owners, freedom to respond to a very dynamic market. And undoubtedly, the big plus to that is that flexibility is a great thing when you consider how fast some of these high streets are declining, how fast some of these town centres are declining. And therefore, the response needs to be fast. So it's flexible in that sense, but actually you come back to this, what's the plan point? Because if you've not got a plan, and if you've not got a plan that's got ownership, and ownership amongst a number of actors and agencies, whether it's real estate developers, whether it's investors, whether it's the community, whether it's the local authority to themselves, unless you've got that in place, it's very difficult to retain some degree of control over what you want to see happening in these town centres. So there's a huge, I mean, the youth classes comes into play next week, I think. But there are huge pluses of minuses to all of our, on the flip side to the kind of positivity around flexibility. This will become a massive issue for licensing within local authorities, for instance. It will have a massive implication for evaluations, and how do we value an asset when the youth classes is actually so wide and flexible? So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. It will become, as I think has been alluded to, without that plan in place, without that SPD, this elementary planning document, which itself is tied to the local plan, which I'll come on to. But without, you know, we would call them a strategic regeneration framework or a plan. The biggest issue is, in the absence of something like that, nobody's going to have the ability to control it. And when we're trying to, and I think the answer in terms of the new world is for greater community involvement, the control is just not there without a plan being in place. And the only intended consequence, you know, I've heard that before some, in terms of, you know, I think the RTPI have been right to say this, that actually what you could see with the youth classes order. It's not just about town centres, but out of town business parks becoming out of town, something else. And when you're trying to build a plan around footfall and activity and creating excitement in the place, you could end up dissipating a lot of that energy, a lot of that focus, away from those areas that you've actually trying to address. So youth classes is effectively here, youth class change effectively here and now. But then move on to sort of planning reform, and this is your point around, your question around renewal areas, and the white paper, planning reform, white paper, has been out for the two weeks. It's seismic, it's seminal. As the Prime Minister said in his forward, it's intended to be the biggest reform since the Second World War. And I guess what we've seen over the past two weeks is, and there's lots of, I think, missing the points from many commentators, as those who are, you know, outright aggressively negative towards these proposals from a cohort of people who, I think, you know, it pays to have a complicated system. And then you've got the kind of the cohort that says, well, you know, we could have done this anyway, the powers are there, and they're a bit indifferent towards it. To actually those who think there's some real positives in what's been proposed. Now, I'll definitely be part of my hand, I'm in the latter camp, actually, that there's a lot in the planning reform, white paper that's actually, I think, part of the future, or could be part of the future, which we play, we plan for town and city centres. And as I said before, I think a lot of what is intended by the government's white paper, or the biggest reform to planning since the Second World War, jams with, as I said before, with Bill's review. And if we think the old order is the way of doing things, we're already starting off very much on the wrong foot with this. But what does planning reform mean? I mean, think of this in threes, at least, changes to the local planners, building beautiful, and how we capture development value from infrastructure or development plays. And within local plans, there's three allocations proposed around growth, around renewal, which, in an earlier draft, was called opportunity, and around protection. And the attention is the whole of a local authority will be covered by one of those three allocations, growth, renewal, or protection. So in terms of that renewal based area, there's-- now I should say that the white paper is a consultation paper, and it's out for three months at the end of October. So it's proposed, rather than anything definitive. But undoubtedly, that whole piece around the local plan is the standout thing from the planning reform. And that's the bit for me. It's pretty right. You and I got into planning in the first place. Sam was-- actually, it makes it much more of an art of planning, less doing things by numbers, and actually empowering the professional to work with local stakeholders to work with the community to develop plans, as we know them. And that becomes the local plan by which decisions are judged. But what this does is it frontends a lot of that through the local plan system. And the proposals are that a local authority's got 30 months to prepare one of these local plans in which one of their areas will either be growth, renewal, or protection. Of which, within that 30 months, the six months to get those plans together and formulated. And the government is specific in the white paper that actually those plans have to involve a significant degree of community involvement. Those plans have to be owned by the community, which I think is a step change from the way things have been done in the past. So it's no more about the non-statutory ad hoc plans that are prepared out with the planning system. Everything that we've talked about today, the intention is that that gets baked into the way local plans are delivered in the future. So in terms of renewal areas, once that designation is made through the local plan, the renewal area means that it will be suitable for development. That's not an automatic permission unlike in the growth area, but it's a presumption favor of consent at that point of which that plan is adopted. And if it's contrary to that plan, then there's a high bar for any exceptional circumstances test. And there's an important role for design within that piece. And there's more to come in terms of further consultation on what that means through the national design code and how national design codes work locally with local design codes. So there's a lot to come out of out of this space in the future. But I guess the answer in terms of renewal areas, it's tempting to think that all the town centres we're talking about fall within these renewal areas. But we don't actually know that. And you're going to have some city centres that have similar challenges to town centres that may very well be growth zones. So there's some clarity needed in terms of the definition around what we mean by renewal or growth. And that needs to come through the next iteration of the government proposals. But if you power out that with the stronger towns fund program, which many will be aware of, and the 101 towns that were designated by the government back in October last year for a specific dedicated program of renewal, you can see that a number of those towns would fall into that renewal. Most of those towns would fall into that renewal category. And so the policy presumptions would apply there. But if you're in Wolverhampton say, and we've just held to Wolverhampton to submit their investment program for the towns fund, Wolverhampton's a large city. And so it's kind of powers under this kind of foreseeable new way of working are going to be different to another town anywhere else in the country. So again, there's clarity needed there. Because in Wolverhampton, you're pretty much there in automatic presumption of consent. And with the pluses and minuses that come with that, that actually was the control, was the plan was the plan that has community buy and right from the outset. So there's lots to kind of consider. There's lots of moving parts. But as just come into a conclusion at this, the key thing really is to have that plan, that strategic framework, that master plan, and to start thinking about this now. Because for many of our most struggling town centres, and we've done this exercise with PDVC and with the Institute of Placement Management, we looked at the readiness of the 101 towns to deal with this. And you can only really point at about 25 or so of those towns that actually had a planning place. And when I say a planning place, I mean something that is probably less than three years. Well, that's if you've got a plan that's three years old from this point, you can probably appreciate it way out of date. So there's a need for kind of local communities and stakeholders actors and agencies to really keep on top of this, to have fresh up-to-date plans. And there's no reason to start thinking about this next year when planning reform proposals become planned legislation, become actually for real. It should be happening now as a matter of course. And unfortunately, in those areas of probably greatest deprivation, of areas in which the kind of the place factors that make places work, it's those areas that unfortunately are less police prepared now for dealing with these forthcoming planning changes. Ian, it was a long question. It was a long answer, but it was a comprehensive one and a very good one. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] Right, we are-- we're first approaching the hour that we've got booked with producer Ben. But I'm sure he won't mind us. I'm sure he won't mind us just continuing a little bit longer because I wanted to ask you all one final question before wrapping up. So I'll put this to you first, Bill. And I'll come to you Rebecca and Ian. What will the places that thrive in the future have in common and on the other side of the coin? What will the places that don't thrive in the future have in common? Bill, some final thoughts from you on that, please. The future for this is a key that they have in place. A plan, as Ian has just said, and our 2013 review said stop messing about with the margins government. There's radical change coming down the track. And you need to get your local authorities the methodology and the process to produce plans that will accommodate the changes that are coming down the track. And they didn't buy that in 2013. And if you look at the plans around the country, whether they're local plan-- do you know I get so confused as to what plans are in place? And I have to say listening to Ian's answer. No wonder planning is such a professional subject, because your eyes glaze over, don't they, in turn? Understanding what the hell going on. At the end of the day, you're running a place that's competing for people to live, work, and play, and visit. And you make it a vibrant economy. You don't have to over-complicate things with restrictions the way that have done. And often, these restrictions spawn masses of consultants that pour all over this stuff. And you get nowhere. So the first thing is they need to plot that plan. And it has to be a visionary plan. It has to look out 10, 20 years. You can't-- and it's not out of date in three years' time. It needs updating in three years' time. Because if a plan is out of date in three years' time, that suggests that everything you've given permission to during that period that's going to have the last of the next 50 years was wrong. So we know that that's not the case. So we need regular updated plans that are taking account of the pressures and changes that are coming on communities and economies to make us successful and build a place where our grandchildren can live, work, play, and visit. And it works. So the plan is the first thing. The towns that will make it happen will have great leadership, which will spawn from all sorts of places. But in my view, it should spawn from the local authority. I'm not an advocate of the leader of the council being the visionary leader. These are voted in politicians. I'm an advocate of good, solid chief executives that are well rewarded. I think the chairman, the leader of the council, the elected chairman, and the elected members to act as non-executive directors in that town PLC. And the strategic plan should come from the executive to those people should be challenged and checked. You shouldn't be electing people to come up with plans. You should be paying qualified people to come up with plans. And those elected people on behalf of the public to challenge them. And that model would work. So that's what would happen. In the towns that are going to be left behind-- and I do mean left behind-- they're already there. And it's got to do with economic pressures. They're going to be there, because they're not going to get the funding from central government, because this notion that you can put together this town's fund 101 towns-- well, there's 1,500 towns up and down the country, not just 101. And the selection of towns-- a spirit that best, in a sense, if you look at them, many of them are marginal seats. So there's a political pressure come in there. So the left behind towns will be-- because they don't have the leadership. They don't have the funding. They're not doing the planning. They're not bringing their community together, and not facing into the 21st century economic challenges, which are not obsessed with consumerism and retail. Because behind all of COVID and this acceleration of change is still the climate change. And so unless we address that and doing this conversation, we haven't talked about young people. And in the COVID review, we're calling upon the government to introduce curriculum for 11-year-old plus to a community engagement, even an O-level and A-level in it, so that we get people understanding that the future is about embracing technology, creating spaces that work by the community, for the community, and making the whole of the economy collectively will be very successful as a result of that. I see manufacturing coming back to the UK because of climate change. I see fast fashion changing hugely. I think the fresh food worldwide network of distribution will crash. I don't think our grandchildren will want French being flown in from Kenya on a jumbo jet every day, a process which I was fundamentally one of those six retailers in the '80s that introduced, which now needs to be unpicked. So there's lots of challenges out there. And then hidden behind it is all that complication of this planning motion. And so the successful towns will be the lucky ones that get the funding. We'll have great leaders, a good plan. They'll engage with their community, and they will create a local economy, which is thriving, but it will be based on heritage and cradle to grave. It will engage the young people right up to the old people. And then it will work. Limey, follow that Rebecca. Well, I was just going to say, there's not a lot I'd add to that, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, other than to say that I think it's not just a question of those in official positions of leadership, local authority, or otherwise, who need to be taking action in those places that are-- there will be taking action in those places that are thriving. I think it will also be that they are managing to collaborate with networks of local businesses, with communities that live there, with landlords that own properties there. And it's the kind of collaboration between those networks that I think unlocks that will unlock opportunities for people to live and work and feel like they have some ownership and say over the future of that place. And I think that's what brings the vibrancy and vitality that we've been talking about. So yeah, leadership, but in the broadest sense of the word, not just in those in official positions of power, but also those running bids or community improvement districts or landlord networks. I think funding, as Bill says, funding is also a make or break between those that will thrive and not. And I'd love to think creatively and see councils think creatively about how else they can access funding for development other than through central government, because that's obviously a finite part. Excellent, thank you, Neil. Final thoughts from you, Neil, what will a successful place look like in the future, do you suppose? When we haven't touched on type of activity in places or how these places even look, we haven't touched on public realm, for example. Well, it's having an adult-minute statutory planning local plan. I've actually been having a local planning place. There's too many places, actually, that don't have that. And it's basics. So how can a local place that may be in distress or otherwise communicate to anybody about what it needs are? And I think there's a real need. And Bill summed it up. This is a dynamic plan outside of the statutory plan. The opportunity is to take that locally determined plan that has people get behind it, local population gets behind it and bake that into the planning system. That's quite exciting. So having a locally determined planning place is absolutely essential. One that's got pride, people buy into it, as I said. And the third point is around it's not one agency or actor or another, it's the collective that will make the change happen. Excellent. Thank you, you three. Let me just reach under my little boy's bed in this makeshift studio of mine to drag out Sam's soapbox, which regular listeners will know that I climb on from time to time at the end of these episodes. I've been invited listeners to contribute to the RTPI Northwest Room 101 series, something for you to look at. And I'm minded to propose that save the high street to be consigned to town planning oblivion. It makes for a good campaign slogan. There is something seductive and perhaps through the Brexit prism sentimental about it. The basis, of course, to save anything plays upon the fear that the future won't be as good as the past. But the high street to be saved, the one with butchers and the baker and the green grocer, is no more relevant to modern Britain than old maids bicycling through the morning mist a holy communion. Times change, move on. Whilst perhaps unintentional, the youth class reforms might see off the notion of a high street as a narrow linear concept. But perhaps that is no bad thing anyway because it's surely better to think in terms of a city, town or village centre anyway. The centre as the heart of the place and what does a heart do? It pumps life-affirming material around the whole. The nature of commercial activities in our settlements have changed, are changing, and will always change. But the desire for places to have communal activities that bring us together remains a constant. That, as with many issues that bind us together as a society, requires more planning, not less. All centres are vital, and there are some, the metropolitan and the historic, for example, that still don't have to work very hard to be vibrant. All need to be viable, though, which means having a vision fit for the 21st century, not the 20th, which I think is a much better slogan. Thank you all for your contributions to this episode. I have really enjoyed that, and I hope that our listeners have done too. Your reward, such that it is, for taking the time out of your day, is an exclusive 50 shades of planning mug. 2020s must have home office accessory, which should you say, design one, I will get one to you as soon as possible. All three of you are on Twitter. Would you like to share your handles, Ian? @Ean with two eyes, I-A-I-N, underscore Jenkinson. Thank you, Ian, for your contribution. Rebecca's on Twitter as well. @a-travalion, T-R-E-V-A-L-Y-A-N. Thank you. I'll put these all in the description of the podcast, and Bill is as well. Yeah, I'm @Bill Grimsey, capital B, capital G, @Bill Grimsey. Thank you, thank you, you three. Thanks to producer Ben at podcast.co, we have gone a bit over time, thanks Ben, and thanks also to Ashley Bellinger at B-E-C-G for his editing skills. If you have enjoyed that episode listeners, please do feel free to leave us a nice rating and a nice review. If you haven't enjoyed it, obviously, please don't. And as I think Ian alluded to early in our discussion, planning is not and never is a black and white and never there are indeed 50 shades in between. Thanks for listening, there'll be another 50 shades of planning podcast along very soon. Bye for now. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)