Chairs and speakers:

Keynote contributions: Dr Michael Bingham, Interim Chief Planner, MHCLG

Speakers also confirmed: Patrick Clarke, Director, Masterplanning Lead, UK & Ireland, AECOM and Mike Derbyshire, Partner, Head of Planning, Bidwells.

Key areas for discussion:

• securing benefits of streamlining – practicalities of getting projects off the ground more quickly by simplifying information requirements and approvals frameworks, and speeding plan-making stages
• scaling up housing delivery while maintaining build quality:
  • how to ensure that shorter consultation periods remain effective, and support cost reductions and affordable housing
  • priorities for policy and stakeholder action to squeeze poor quality build design out of the system
• meeting policy reform concerns – strategies for retaining community input and involvement as well as necessary red tape, and ensuring that stakeholders are held to account across the process
• reform to land use and management and overcoming sustainability challenges:
  • options for safeguards so that accelerated approvals do not weaken green belt protections and that brownfield sites are fully utilised
  • how best to sustainably implement the Government’s growth and renewal metrics for planning approvals
• environmental protection across the planning process:
  • ambitions the Environment Bill around achieving biodiversity net-gain and how the needs of natural conservation and planning stakeholders can be balanced
  • next steps for sustainable and low-carbon home construction, following the Future Homes Standard consultation
• tackling barriers to major projects – looking at options for:
  • easing evaluation and approvals requirements on a national level
  • providing quicker tools for consent with local decision-makers
  • scaling up cooperation with delivery partners to address national infrastructure deficits
• addressing biodiversity risks and ensuring reform translates into net gain:
  • identifying key development impacts on the environment
  • the scope of new responsibilities and obligations for developers
  • opportunities for creating nature-based improvements in conjunction with scheme delivery
• sustainable housing rollout – latest thinking on energy efficiency by design, standards setting, and engaging stakeholders across the development process
• supporting project development at a local level – accelerating local plan design and delivery, and best practice and key steps in local economic recovery and supporting local stakeholders:
  • creating more certain and secure approval commitments, increasing support for design best practice, and how best to identify area-specific needs and improvements
  • involving local business and supply chains – local authority engagement and project funding, supporting direct relationships with supply chains, and fostering local jobs and skills creation
  • delivering the levelling up agenda across England – public/private joint working, widening shovel-ready project consents, and shifting key decision-making powers to regional and local groups