National Spatial Planning and Political Discretion

Chapter 1 set out the ways in which spatial planning and land-use management has been stretched in all directions over its history to accommodate disparate agendas, changing needs and political preferences. Chapter 2 then went on to consider the different drivers of change as they presently affect land and land demand, and the trends likely to occur over the next three decades in certain substantive fields such as economic growth, transport, infrastructure, energy and water supply and the land-use consequences of those trends. Governments have consistently employed land use and spatial planning to intervene in the management of the land and to give shape and direction to change. Indeed, the planning system was first created statutorily by central government over a hundred years ago in order to address key problems relating to housing problems in inner-city locations, the welfare and health of citizens and to avoid overcrowding and high densities. But, interestingly, in the early 1900s Parliament itself did not award itself direct powers to plan. The power of intervention, new state housing development and the regulation of private housing development was handed over to local government, even if Parliament itself had recognized the need for the state to become involved. In the following decades, central government did acquire planning powers of its own but only as a consequence of World War II and the need to rebuild cities, infrastructure and the economy in the national interest. Since 1945, central government has retained these powers, allowing a minister of the crown to set out legislation, make policy and to take decisions on key development projects, while also permitting the monitoring of local authorities in their operation of the planning system. These powers have changed dramatically since the mid-1940s and have ebbed and flowed according to political ideology, the fate of planning more generally, and the changing role of government and the relationships between different arms and layers of the state (Tewdwr-Jones 2002).