Josh Dickerson, Director of Place, BWB Consulting
It’s 1974. Labour’s Harold Wilson is Prime Minister, the best-selling car is the Ford Cortina, and people are spending their lives filling in forms, calling from home telephones and travelling to a bank to take out cash to spend in the shops they visit. And local government across England has just been reorganised.
It’s 2025. Labour’s Keir Starmer is Prime Minister, the best-selling cars include electric vehicles, people buy online and pay by smartphone. Yet local government in England looks pretty much the same as it did 51 years ago.
It’s a structure from a different era that’s under increasing strain. On top of challenged finances, services like planning have struggled to balance the national need for growth with local concerns about development.
So government has decided the system needs an overhaul. It’s already introduced Mayoral Combined Authorities like EMCCA to ensure decisions about investment across a regional economy are more joined-up (and not taken in Whitehall), and now wants to strip out a layer of councils – the districts and boroughs who develop local plans and take most planning decisions.
Government’s approach is motivated by much more than the need to update an ageing local government structure. It wants the system to operate more efficiently, and it’s already made clear that planning in particular needs to overcome perceptions that it can be a NIMBY’s charter – blocking or delaying development in a way that’s driving up costs or frustrating infrastructure projects and job creation.
It has also said that it wants to tackle some of the resource issues that also contribute to delays, investing in the training and recruitment of more planners and increasing planning fees to help finance it.
There’s a lot to unpick here. Rebuilding local government planning capacity won’t happen overnight – it lost a quarter of its capacity over a decade and many former local authority planners are now in the private sector. And the lack of spatial frameworks in England has combined with planning processes that leap straight from local to national to allow piecemeal development which neither reflects the shape of a regional economy nor addresses community needs.
The solution to this unhappy compromise doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game in which people’s views are elbowed aside in favour of growth. Refreshing the planning process presents an opportunity to ensure it responds to a more holistic picture of the places where development happens.
It makes much more sense to design places around the people, businesses and organisations who use them, enabling development which not only meets need but fosters health and prosperity – a missing link in previous approaches to planning. We call it healthy placemaking, it takes in everything from active travel and clean air to health and education provision, and it will be a critical component in EMCCA’s strategic ambition for inclusive growth.
What does healthy placemaking look like?
- It’s a system that listens, involving and empowering communities.
- It replaces what can feel like tokenistic consultation with a system which understands the geography of change – who thinks what, and where they are.
- Listening and engaging is balanced with an evidenced-based need to deliver.
- It understands that effective planning contributes positively to people’s quality of life.
- It recognises that health is deeply connected to the places where we live, work and play.
- It is supported by strategic planning which maps need and improves the coordination of services like health and care at scale.
This isn’t about replacing one set of red tape with another. Healthy placemaking should ensure greater long-term value from investment, and development that clearly aligns with regional ambition and community need. It’s what inclusive and sustainable growth looks like because it is by and for people.
Government’s decision to reorganise local government is a key part of this process, so what will happen in the East Midlands? In a few weeks’ time, councils here will have to submit their initial list of options to Whitehall about how the local government map might be redrawn. Right now, we’ve got nine local authorities – Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham City Council and seven districts and boroughs. The initial discussions suggest we might end up with two – a county and city, or south Nottinghamshire and north Nottinghamshire councils.
These discussions won’t be easy – they’ll include debates about whether the boundaries of financially troubled Nottingham City Council need to expand – but council leaders have committed to working together and they’ll have to come up with a preferred option to submit to government in the Autumn.
This process is about so much more than changing the shape of councils. It’s a chance for leaders to shift the fortunes of a region. The East Midlands should view this as a transformational moment and use this opportunity to become a pioneer in creating places where people not only live, but thrive.