What are the political parties planning promises for farming?

“Ambitious” is the word most commonly used in reaction to the main parties’ manifesto commitments to house building, which range from 300,000 new homes a year, to 1.6m through the next parliament.  

“Lacking in detail” runs a close second, in general reference to the planning reforms proposed in the documents. 

Infrastructure planning and delivery is generally seen by the parties as key to improving national economic performance.

References in the manifestos to speeding up infrastructure projects is likely to affect farm land and farming operations close to major developments of this type.

See also: Councils gain compulsory purchase powers without paying hope value

In this respect, reduced compensation for compulsory purchase (CP) is in the sights of some parties.

Most recently the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act gave local authorities the power to use compulsory purchase to acquire land without accounting for any hope value in the compensation paid to the landowner.

However, this applies only to land destined for social and affordable housing purposes, or for educational or health uses.

The Country Land and Business Association has condemned the Liberal Democrats’ explicit plan to allow councils to buy land for housing based on current value rather than hope value.

This will not help solve shortages, and is tantamount to asking farmers to bear the cost of fixing a housing crisis they didn’t cause, says CLA president Victoria Vyvyan.

Labour’s document also makes commitments to further reform compulsory purchase rules in order to speed up housing and infrastructure delivery, although with no detail.

Of this, Michelle Quan, director of planning consultancy Boyer, says:

“However, the reality is that this process is so complex and its application is so limited that its ability to be transformational in terms of future delivery would require some fundamental changes.”

Labour’s plan to fund more planning officers is good, says the CLA’s planning adviser Shannon Fuller. “But it’s important that they [planning officers] have the right skills – many do not understand agricultural and rural issues.”

The CLA welcomed the Liberal Democrats’ ambition to encourage the use of rural exception sites, which are small housing sites, usually on the edge of villages, for affordable housing, and which would not normally be given permission for residential development.

Diversified farm businesses, and those with plans for holiday enterprises could be detrimentally affected by policies which seek to restrict holiday accommodation use in certain areas in order to provide more housing for local people. 

Labour

The main planning pledges:

• Reform the planning system to build 1.5m new homes in the life of the next parliament.
• Take a brownfield first approach to planning.
• Restore mandatory housing targets for local planning authorities (LPAs).
• Ensure planning authorities have up-to-date local plans.
• Reform and strengthen the presumption in favour of sustainable development.
• Fund additional planning officers by increasing the rate of the stamp duty surcharge for non-UK residents.
• Intervene locally, where necessary, to ensure the houses needed are built
• Stronger planning obligations to ensure new developments provide more affordable homes.
• Implement solutions to unlock home building affected by nutrient neutrality, without weakening environmental protections.
• Preserve the Green Belt but take a more strategic approach to this designation and release land to build more homes in the right places. Priority will be given to permission on lower quality “grey belt” land with “golden rules” to ensure development benefits communities and nature.
• New towns to be built, part of a series of large-scale new communities across England.
• Reform of compulsory purchase compensation to improve land assembly, speed up site delivery, and deliver housing, infrastructure, amenity, and transport benefits in the public interest. For specific types of development, landowners are to be given fair compensation rather than what Labour terms “inflated prices based on the prospect of planning permission”.
• Develop a 10-year infrastructure strategy, including improving rail connectivity across the north of England.
• Development of nationally significant infrastructure such as new roads, railways and reservoirs to be made faster and cheaper by cutting red tape, with a new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority to set strategic infrastructure priorities and oversee design, scope, and delivery of projects.
• Update national planning policy to service a modern economy, making it easier to build laboratories, digital infrastructure, and gigafactories.
• Double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030 – while these come under the party’s energy policy, they may have planning implications.

Conservatives

The main planning pledges:

• Reform the planning system to deliver fast track permissions for farms. infrastructure projects, for example glasshouses, slurry stores, grain stores and small-scale reservoirs.
• Promote tree planting by streamlining processes and permits in certain areas identified for tree planting.
• To deliver 1.6m homes in England in the next parliament.
• Developers to pay a one-off nutrient mitigation fee to ensure no net additional pollution.
• Deliver record number of homes each year on brownfield land in urban areas by enabling a fast track planning route for new homes on previously developed land in the 20 largest cities.
• Require councils to set land aside for local and smaller builders, lifting Section106 burdens on more smaller sites.
• Cast-iron protection for the Green Belt.
• Give councils powers to manage growth of holiday lets.
• Make the planning process simpler for those who want to build or commission their own home.
• Create more freeports and business rates retention zones.
• Continue backing Investment Zones.
• Speed up infrastructure delivery, reducing the average time it takes to sign off major infrastructure projects from four years to one.
• A further attack on access to judicial review is also likely, with a pledge to amend the law so that what the party terms “frivolous” legal challenges that frustrate infrastructure delivery do not waste court time.
• To seek democratic consent for onshore wind, striking the right balance between energy security and the views of local communities.

Liberal Democrats

The main planning pledges:

• Deliver 380,000 houses a year.
• Require up to 100% biodiversity net gain requirement for large developments.
• Build 10 new garden cities.
• Allow councils to buy land for housing based on current use value rather than on a hope-value basis by reforming the Land Compensation Act 1961.
• Address funding issues by allowing local authorities to set their own planning fees.
• Ensure housing is not built high flood risk areas without adequate mitigation.
• Encourage the use of rural exception sites to expand rural housing.
• Trial Community Land Auctions which would see landowners asked by LPAs to offer land for development and state what price they will accept for it. In turn, developers submit bids for the land to the LPA, which keeps the difference between the landowner’s price and what the developer pays, using this to provide local services and community benefits.
• Provide financial incentives to encourage development of brownfield sites, ensuring affordable and social housing is included in these projects
• Introduce ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ planning permission.
• Immediate requirement for all new homes and non-domestic buildings to be built to a zero-carbon standard.
• Give local authorities powers to control second homes and short-term lets, allowing them to increase council tax by up to 500% for second homes, also creating a new planning class for these properties.