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Richard Patient, Managing Director of Thorncliffe | Your Shout, said:

Recently we have seen Reform-led planning committees becoming more sceptical of officers, as members grow in confidence and also begin to be approached by objectors who want to lobby them. Up to now we have seen this in deferrals for “more information”, but we expect to start seeing some refusals.

Disappointingly for the keener among them, there haven’t been many opportunities to advance Reform’s policy agenda through planning committees. One which is likely to have an impact is dropping net zero targets, which will have an impact on planning policy and on renewable energy schemes. At the very first meeting of a Reform UK-led committee in West Northants on 27 May, a solar farm application sailed through unanimously – we’re not sure it would do so now.

One problem for them is most of the councils they control are county councils which only decide ‘county matters’ applications, and don’t have large planning departments. Reform may have highlighted asylum hotels when standing for election to Kent County Council, and the county council leader may demand action, but his council does not actually have any involvement in them.

We have looked around for any moves on planning policy and not seen any. When Durham’s cabinet looked at the government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, some cabinet members liked parts of it “specifically around reducing the bureaucratic burden and the removal of barriers to new developments and infrastructure” – although not its restrictions on planning committees.

All North Northants seems to have done on planning is to agree to have a cross-party group advising the cabinet on the new local plan. In there and West Northants, the council was in the middle of producing a local plan at the time Reform UK took over, but there is no public indication of the way the new cabinet member is guiding officers about any shift in approach. (There is nothing Reform UK can do to change policy in Doncaster, where Labour still controls policy.)

More impactful is the likely impact of Reform’s ‘DOGE’ unit: if they look for savings, they are likely to find planning departments are potential targets. However achieving any real savings would have to take the form of reducing departmental headcount, which would hurt performance.

Central government is already looking carefully at Reform-run councils to make sure they meet their statutory obligations, and if any of them start to get a poor record on planning or start losing lots of appeals, then don’t expect any delay before the MHCLG steps in to take their powers away.

Richard Patient, Managing Director of Thorncliffe | Your Shout said:

Our guess is that Reform will be fairly NIMBYish, but we can’t be certain.  Reform UK didn’t put out local manifestos and their election leaflets are heavy on generic pledges to be accountable and improve services generally. Planning isn’t high on the issues motivating them.

The Reform UK general election manifesto last year was very strongly pro-development: “Reform the Planning System: Fast-track new housing on brownfield sites and infrastructure projects to boost businesses, especially in coastal regeneration areas, Wales, the North, and the Midlands”.   However, many of their local leaflets tend to be anti-development – one Staffordshire candidate says “Oppose all developments in South East Stafford on open countryside and prime agricultural land”.  Others pick on individual planning controversies to attack council administrations. They have also criticised developers trying to get out of affordable housing contributions.

Experience of UKIP and other similar parties is that they do very little to get their councillors to agree a common line. It’s only if there is a link to an established party policy – for instance renewable projects – are they likely to vote together.

Most of the Reform UK councils are upper-tier counties, where planning powers are limited. It’s only Durham and the two Northamptonshire unitary councils where they will have real planning powers.

This year’s round of local elections was already the least important of the four year cycle, with the fewest numbers of councils up for election and most being county councils which have only limited planning involvement, before the government stepped in and made it even less important by postponing many of the county council elections.

The Conservatives were doing very well when these seats were last fought (it was Boris Johnson’s ‘vaccine bounce’), and not under challenge from the radical right. This time they may struggle: we doubt the Conservatives will hold on in Cornwall. 

The two Northamptonshire councils may be vulnerable to a shift of Conservative voters to Reform UK, but our tip for a surprise result is Buckinghamshire. Although this has the largest Conservative group of councillors anywhere, they won on a small vote share in 2021 and have been under pressure; they may lose their overall majority.

Labour may be able to regain control in Durham, and possibly do better in Northumberland than it did in 2021. It is having to defend very hard in Doncaster where Reform are making a push.

Information Security Policy

The Board and management of Thorncliffe Communications Ltd (“Thorncliffe”), are committed to preserving the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all the physical and electronic information assets throughout their organisation in order to preserve its competitive edge, cash-flow, profitability, legal, regulatory and contractual compliance and commercial image. Information and information security requirements will continue to be aligned with Thorncliffe’s goals and the Information Security Management System (ISMS) is intended to be an enabling mechanism for information sharing, for electronic operations, and for reducing information-related risks to acceptable levels.

Thorncliffe’s current strategic business plan and risk management framework provide the context for identifying, assessing, evaluating and controlling information-related risks through the establishment and maintenance of an ISMS. The Risk Assessment, Statement of Applicability and Risk Treatment Plan identify how information-related risks are controlled. Deborah Paterson, our head of compliance, is responsible for the management and maintenance of the risk treatment plan. Additional risk assessments may, where necessary, be carried out to determine appropriate controls for specific risks.

In particular, business continuity and contingency plans, data backup procedures, avoidance of viruses and hackers, access control to systems and information security incident reporting are fundamental to this policy.

All colleagues of Thorncliffe and our third party suppliers are expected to comply with this policy and with the ISMS that implements this policy. All colleagues and relevant third party suppliers will receive and be required to provide appropriate training. The consequences of breaching the information security policy are set out in Thorncliffe’s disciplinary policy and in contracts and agreements with third parties. 

The ISMS is subject to continuous, systematic review and improvement.

Thorncliffe has established a Board-level steering group, chaired by the MD and including the head of compliance and board members to support the ISMS framework and to periodically review the security policy.

Thorncliffe is committed to complying with industry standards to ISO27001.

This policy will be reviewed to respond to any changes in the risk assessment or risk treatment plan and at least annually. 

In this policy, ‘information security’ is defined as:

Preserving the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of the physical and information assets of Thorncliffe.

Preserving means that management, all full time or part time colleagues and third party suppliers have, and will be made aware of, their responsibilities (which are defined in their job descriptions or contracts) to preserve information security, to report security breaches (in line with the policy and procedures identified in Section 16 of the Manual) and to act in accordance with the requirements of the ISMS. All colleagues will receive information security awareness training.

Availability means that information and associated assets should be accessible to authorised users when required and therefore physically secure. The computer network must be resilient and Thorncliffe must be able to detect and respond rapidly to incidents (such as viruses and other malware) that threaten the continued availability of assets, systems and information.  There must be appropriate business continuity plans.

Confidentiality involves ensuring that information is only accessible to those authorised to access it and therefore to preventing both deliberate and accidental unauthorised access to Thorncliffe’s information, proprietary knowledge and its systems (including its IT network, websites, intranet, and e-commerce systems.

Integrity involves safeguarding the accuracy and completeness of information and processing methods, and therefore requires preventing deliberate or accidental, partial or complete, destruction or unauthorised modification, of either physical assets or electronic data. There must be appropriate contingency including for the IT network, websites, and data backup plans and security incident reporting. Thorncliffe must comply with all relevant data-related legislation in those jurisdictions within which it operates (the UK).

The physical assets of Thorncliffe including, but not limited to, computer hardware, data cabling, filing systems and physical data files. 

The information assets include information printed or written on paper, transmitted by post or shown in films, or spoken in conversation, as well as information stored electronically on servers, websites, intranet, PCs, laptops, mobile phones and PDAs, as well as on CD ROMs, USB sticks, and any other digital or magnetic media, and information transmitted electronically by any means.  In this context, ‘data’ also includes the sets of instructions that tell the systems how to manipulate information (i.e. the software: operating systems, applications, utilities, etc).

Thorncliffe and such partners that are part of our integrated network and have signed up to our security policy and have accepted our ISMS.

The ISMS is the Information Security Management System, of which this policy and other supporting and related documentation is a part, and which has been designed in accordance with the specification contained in ISO27001:2013.

A SECURITY BREACH is any incident or activity that causes, or may cause, a break down in the availability, confidentiality or integrity of the physical or electronic information assets of Thorncliffe.

Document Owner and Approval

The Head of Compliance is the owner of this document and is responsible for ensuring that this policy document is reviewed.

A current version of this document is available to all colleagues on the server. It does not contain confidential information and can be released to relevant external parties.

This information security policy was approved by the Board in February 2025. It will be reviewed in February 2027.

ISMS

• Our business objectives are to ensure we have adequate security controls in place designed to support the ISMS and an upfront clarification of these – across the business – is vital.
• Identifying information assets (such as electronic documents, hardware, software, paper and people) – our key information assets are as follows:
  • Employee data on Microsoft and paper-copyClient data on MicrosoftResident data in hard-copyResident data on Nationbuilder

• We have secured organizational commitment – project’s objectives need to be understood and endorsed throughout the organization. Cross-functional organizational participation and management engagement is important.
• Developing an asset-based risk assessment and treatment plan – By prioritising information assets and correlating against potential threats, an idea of the perceived risks can be developed during the ISMS design process. 
• Considering compliance requirements (legal/statutory/regulatory) and contractual agreements – External factors must be translated into the ISMS implementation’s design. Compliance requirements such as SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) 404, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), GLBA (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), and DPA (Data Protection Act) are common these days and could become impossible to assimilate if not factored into the early stages of ISMS design.
• Engaging third parties/partners – Entities involved in business processes need to be advised, monitored and controlled as part of ISMS design and implementation stages. Too often, security control implementation can be delayed thanks to third party ignorance.

This is a government committed to building 1.5m new homes by 2029 and anyone with any knowledge thinks it a challenging target – especially when it isn’t the government that is actually going to be building most of these homes.

So on Tuesday, the last day before Parliament’s summer break, Angela Rayner emerged from seclusion with the big announcement on ‘Building the homes we need‘.

The government has many answers to the question “What changes to planning will most help developers to build housing” and the most important are all to force councils to allocate development land, and grant permissions there when applied for. Hence the decision to reimpose housing targets and make them mandatory, using a new formula the government considers realistic.

Having boldly taken on the Green Belt before the election, Rayner has gone for it and ordered councils to review green belt boundaries and find the poorly performing sites (already developed land, on the edge of settlements, and so on) for release. This is still sensitive enough for the government to insist any ‘grey belt’ site must achieve 50% affordable housing and have appropriate infrastructure.

Any changes to planning policy and targets can take years to be seen but Rayner wants to significantly speed up plan-making and also give Mayors powers to set development strategies which unlock more sites. Some next generation New Towns are also coming as the government’s own contribution – they will be in addition to local targets, not part of meeting them.

On a smaller level, Rayner is going to bring in national rules about delegation of planning decisions, so planning committees only decide “the applications that really matter”, and also don’t have to reassess a site which is allocated for development in the local plan.

Rayner’s reforms aim to make the ‘discretionary’ planning system we have had since the 1948 Act deliver housing consents; it isn’t a move away towards a zoning system as proposed (and then abandoned) by Boris Johnson’s government. In fact on renewable energy there is more discretion as onshore wind schemes up to 100 MW and solar farms up to 150 MW will go for local decision, not to National Infrastructure Planning.

The politics so far have been good for the government, with many newly-elected Labour MPs having signed up to a ‘Labour Growth Group’. There is, as yet, no significant internal opposition in Labour.

What about external opposition? Kemi Badenoch, replying for the Conservatives, seemed to be arguing any major increase in housing delivery was doubtful because the Conservatives had tried the same approach. Robert Jenrick as a leadership candidate is committing to stand for “more homes in our cities”, hoping to channel opposition to greenfield development while accepting there is a housing crisis.

Many Labour politicians are more worried about opposition from other parties on the left, and here the new policy helps. There are no more staunch opponents of building on green belt sites than local Liberal Democrat councillors, and a lot of the green belt now has Lib Dem MPs. A big punch-up over housebuilding will help Labour shore up its vote where it is defending urban seats suffering from housing shortages – and the same goes for the Green Party.

So these changes will happen. But hitting housing targets needs more than just a supportive planning system. To pick the three most crucial, it needs a stable housing market, easy finance for developers, and capacity in the construction industry. Planning policy is easily controlled by governments but a favourable wider economy depends on much more. Are government, developers and the nation’s needs now aligned?

More:

Letter to housing industry stakeholders (pdf)

Tracked changes of the NPPF (pdf)

The new government’s King’s Speech has the Planning and Infrastructure Bill as one of its flagship measures. It’s point two out in the ‘ten things to know from the King’s Speech’ put out by Number 10.

A fight about reforming planning to build more homes is one the Labour government is very keen to have. It contrasts with topics such as women’s or trans-rights, where any challenge will get closed down very quickly. There will be a full day’s debate on planning, green belt and rural affairs in Parliament today (Friday).

When the Planning and Infrastructure Bill appears (it isn’t immediately ready), it is likely to be mostly technical. Arrangements for re-imposing housing targets may not need the Bill, as the government can change the National Planning Policy Framework without needing to change the law. Michael Gove did not remove the requirement for a five-year land supply, just disapplied it for most; Labour can just reapply it.

In the briefing notes for the King’s Speech, the Bill will include “improving local planning decision making by modernising planning committees”. What that means we will wait to see.

The Bill is also going to use development “to fund nature recovery where currently both are stalled”, a proposal which sounds like a Panglossian idea from a think tank but may be made to work; it shows the government is still sensitive on environmental issues, after Labour in opposition insisted on keeping bio-diversity net gain requirements.

Other parts of the King’s Speech will have a major impact. The English Devolution Bill is likely to replace the ad hoc arrangements for the combined Mayoralties with something more consistent and more powerful: they will get more strategic planning powers. It isn’t clear how this applies to London where the Mayor already has almost complete control.

Some restrictions on landlords in the Renters Rights Bill may affect the rental market, with possible knock-on effects on financing build to rent and co-living schemes. There is also a draft bill to end the leasehold system, a reform which many Labour MPs representing urban constituencies will ensure is not dropped and which will affect developers of flats.

Nowhere to be found in the King’s Speech briefing notes was the phrase “Green Belt”. Rather than indicate rowing back on the approach of reviewing Green Belt locations to identify ‘grey belt’ development opportunities, this is because no law is needed, but it does show a degree of sensitivity.

A government with a working majority of 180 will have no problems getting its legislation through, and almost none of it is controversial within Labour – so far. The many new Labour MPs elected in seats with housing pressure and covering parts of the Green Belt all remain on board, most knowing their voters were people who want more homes built.

That will be important because this is not a light legislative programme, and if any of the Bills hit problems and had to be reconsidered, delays might be difficult to accommodate.

David Boothroyd, Head of Research at Thorncliffe