It has become clear that the so-called ‘Yimby Movement’ has captured the hearts and minds of those at the top of Government. Senior Labour politicians everywhere are shouting from the pulpit, “build, build, build”. A new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has been the flagship reform, bolstered by wider reforms like English devolution, better funding for local authorities and affordable housing, promises of ‘New Towns’ and reforms to streamline environmental damage mitigation.
The idea behind the Yimby (Yes In My Back Yard) movement is essentially thus: “for too long the Government has spoken about building stuff, let’s stop talking and just build it”. But this on its own is a platitude. If we want to build things, be they homes, datacentres or nuclear SMRs, we need to do more than say that we are going to build it. And it is this gap, the gap between being pro-development and developing is where Yimby-ism’s next challenge lies.
Why the next steps are vital
Whatever planning reforms we push through and however many Development Consent Orders are approved, it all means nothing if we are not immediately thinking about the next steps. There is a huge skills gap across the entire housing/infrastructure pipeline. Local planning authorities are vastly understaffed and propped up by agency workers. Sustainability experts are few and far between (and because of their scarcity, they can often afford to become expensive consultants rather than in-house experts). Fewer people are entering construction pathways than are leaving the industry year on year. Once infrastructure is developed, we will see huge shortfalls, especially outside of London, of people with the green skills necessary to take up the newly created jobs. The ‘green skills gap’ is growing – more green jobs are being created year on year than there are people qualifying for them.
On all counts more building projects will only widen these gaps further. Resources for development will only become more scarce and construction will become more expensive. This will not ease constraints on developers but increase them. It will leave SMEs lacking the upfront capital and the access to contractors to actually do any of their developments, irrespective of planning permissions, while already dominant large corporations with in-house construction/planning teams only increase their market share.
A similar story will unfold in the planning sector. Planners will have even less incentive to work in the public sector, where they face higher workloads at low pay, while external consultancies, which pay better, expand teams to meet the increased demand. The silver-bullet answer, paying public sector planners more and hiring larger teams, seems unlikely to happen, so the brain drain to the private sector will only continue.
Green skills gaps - no incentive to grow
Another major challenge is that there is an overconcentration of green skills in London and the Southeast. There are no obvious incentives for these new graduates with sustainability-backed credentials to move away to regions where green skills are needed, while those who already live locally lack the educational provision and career support to easily get into these higher skilled professions. Those already in the industry have incredibly limited access to reskilling, as well: in Port Talbot, for example, the Tata Steel/Port Talbot Transition Board’s Employment & Skills Fund is only eligible for those made redundant by the Steelworks, or its contractors and subsidiaries. Those still working in the sector (although their roles remain under threat) do not have access to the means to qualify for the very green roles that are offsetting their current jobs.
None of this is a reason (or an excuse) not to build. Rather, it is a signal that if we want developments to be a) successful and b) popular with the people affected by them, we need to have more depth to our development policies than just planning approvals.
Thinking about the long term
The Government has done incredibly well to enact planning reform, far more than any recent government, despite having only been in office since July. An updated NPPF, the creation of Grey Belt designated land and devolution legislation which allows the strategisation of regional development are just a few of the ways the Government has improved the planning process. But this is just step one on the journey to 1.5 million homes. Next the Government needs to be talking about how we put shovels in the ground, and doing this requires more than just sentiment, but expertise as well.
This is urgent stuff: it takes several years and considerable expense to train as a planner, so work shortages there will take a minimum of two years to even start addressing – and an industry being propped up by new graduates is not a strong one. Likewise, while entry to construction roles is quicker to address in that apprentices can be involved in work from day 1, this means that our promised 1.5 million homes get built by 16-24 year olds with extremely limited working experience. At the senior level, this means overstretching teaching capacity, which is already scant, and it will mean the Government expecting private companies to take on huge numbers of apprentices they might struggle to resource – and of course the time needed to train apprentices is itself a cost.
All of this creates a macroeconomic picture where ‘growth’ policies will only be as good as the deeper-level policies which surround them. That is to say, we cannot ‘go for growth’ just by approving developments, we need to create a planning, construction and operations workforce suitable for these developments to work.
