This is the pre-publishers proof version of a paper accepted by Environment and Planning C in January 2016. The final published version is available here: doi 10.1177/0263774X16629677

Think tanks and the pressures for planning reform in England

Graham Haughton (University of Manchester) and Phil Allmendinger (University of

Cambridge)

Abstract

This article examines how advocacy think tanks have sought to influence the remaking of

the English planning system. Pressure for planning reform has come particularly though not

exclusively from the political right, which has sought to portray planning as a form of

bureaucratic regulation, out of touch with the needs of modern, global economies and the

needs of society. This research involved 27 interviewees, the majority of whom have worked

in think tanks, whilst others worked in government or in advocacy and professional groups.

We explore how despite years of critique and many reforms to the planning system, it is still

portrayed as failing. Drawing on ideas around the experimental state, we seek to develop a

better understanding of the dynamics behind the process of continuous calls for planning

reform before turning to some of the implications for both planning and our understanding

of how think tanks seek to influence policy.

Key Words: think tanks; Polanyi; planning reform; advocacy groups; markets; experimental

state

Acknowledgements: This study received no external funding. We are indebted to Ed

Shepherd for research assistance on this project and for comments on an earlier draft to

William Wallace, Helen Wallace, Stephen Hincks and Dan Slade. We are also grateful for the

helpful comments provided by this journal’s anonymous reviewers. Responsibility for any

errors of fact, interpretation, and omission lies solely with the authors.

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Think tanks and the pressures for planning reform in England

Our planning system is fundamentally broken. It was created as part of a drive for a

socialist utopia in the 1940s and is clearly not working. (Morton 2011, p.92)

Planning policy has proven to be one of the most resilient pillars of the post-war

command-and-control state. … [It retains] an unswerving faith in the ability of a

bureaucratic planning process to achieve superior outcomes to those achieved in the

spontaneous order resulting from voluntary action. (Papworth 2012, p.8)

Introduction

The English planning system has gained a reputation over recent years for having undergone

a rapid succession of reforms (Waterhout et al. 2013, Allmendinger and Haughton 2013), in

part as central governments have sought to respond to combative critiques from the political

right in particular that the planning system is archaic, largely unreformed since the 1947

Town and Country Planning Act and a relict of ‘command and control’ style government.

Despite such claims, regular reforms of English planning have become the norm since 1979,

transforming the role of the state in regulating land and property markets by selectively

rolling out more market supportive forms of planning. It is in this context that we examine

how think tanks have sought to frame planning as a problem in need of being fixed and how

they seek to insert this worldview into the policy arena.

The role of think tanks in planning is a surprisingly under-researched topic, given their recent

prominence in the debates about the future of English planning. Whilst there is a substantial

political science literature on the emergence and impact of think tanks in broad terms (James

1993, Stone 2000, Pautz 2014), it has recently been criticised for being overly focused on

issues of categorisation, leading to calls for a greater awareness of how think tanks operate in

relation to their wider context of policy formulation and policy coalitions (Shaw et al. 2014).

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This article therefore addresses two important gaps in the academic literature, the role of

think tanks in planning and how think tanks work within wider systems of policy advocacy.

English think tanks have grown in number and diversity over recent decades, in part

reflecting the general view that they have become influential in shaping national policy

debates, albeit that some of the claims of think tanks about their impact may not hold up

under close scrutiny (Denham and Garnett 1996, 1999). With the increase in numbers of

think tanks has come a growing diversity in styles of operation, size and ways of seeking to

influence policy, with some think tanks operating as small, shoe-string operations, whilst

others are more substantially resourced. It is possible to make a distinction between those

think tanks which have attempted to develop a more ‘academic’ and technical reputation, for

instance the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR), and those which

are more advocacy-oriented, for instance Demos (Stone 2000, Pautz 2014). Advocacy-

oriented think tanks focus on generating ideas and stimulating political debate, typically

based on broad overviews of available evidence rather than producing weighty tomes based

on new empirical research. These broad categories, however, disguise what is in reality a

much more fluid and variegated set of practices, so for instance if funding is available then

advocacy think tanks will undertake more substantive pieces of research with which to

underpin their proposals. It is worth noting that in some cases there is not much difference in

approach between think tanks and others involved in policy advocacy and analysis.

Our focus here is on advocacy think tanks, reflecting that most think tanks making

interventions in planning debates broadly fall in this category. Most think tank interventions

on planning have focused on the national planning system, given the hierarchical nature of

the statutory planning system, our analysis is focused primarily on the national scale. For this

reason our emphasis here is on the national scale. It is worth emphasizing too that in line with

other areas of national policy, national planning in England has become increasingly open to

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external input, including a tendency to commission expert-led, external reviews to provide

advice on planning reforms (Craft and Howlett 2013; Morphet 2013). Other contextual issues

include the declining reputation of planning and planners, tarnished by association with

unpopular post-war comprehensive urban redevelopment schemes (Ambrose1986, Hall

1988). Linked to this has been a succession of reforms intended to make the planning system

more market-oriented, for instance giving private sector-led Urban Development

Corporations planning powers for their areas. Against this background, professional bodies

have struggled to get positive messages about the achievements of planning picked up in the

media. Nonetheless, the professional bodies have continued to enjoy behind-closed-doors

access to government ministers and senior civil servants. The result is a system more open

than ever to diverse voices seeking to influence the future of planning, in a series of debates

that now takes place both in the public domain and within the corridors of government.

The aim of this article is to develop a better understanding of how advocacy think tanks in

particular have sought to influence national planning policy over recent years, an important

issue given that think tanks appear to have become influential in England, not least in the

planning arena (Pautz 2014, Spiers 2012, 2013, Wiles 2015). Following Schlessinger (2009),

we understand think tanks here as institutes which self-define as think tanks and which act as

independent bodies seeking to influence government policy.

Since aligning with individual political parties would conflict with their charitable status and

claims of independence, advocacy style think tanks typically seek to emphasise their

distinctiveness by providing a clear ideological basis for their work, for instance free-market

libertarian or pro-devolution (Stone 2000; Pautz 2014). Despite such attempts to assert their

political neutrality, there are widespread concerns that funding has tended to favour right-

leaning think tanks over others, with a lack of transparency around funding sources in some

cases leading to debates about whether this has distorting effects on public policy (Monbiot

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2011a; Shaw et al. 2014). In the planning arena, the main policy focus for think tanks on the

political right has been on making the planning system more market-oriented, whilst those on

the centre-left have tended to focus more on devolution, in particular the city-region agenda,

and housing policy.

It is important to note that whilst think tanks have become particularly vocal in planning

debates in the past three decades, they are not alone in seeking to influence the direction of

future planning policy, joining business groups such as the Confederation of British Industry,

professional bodies such as the Home Builders Federation and Royal Town Planning Institute

(RTPI) and advocacy groups such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the

Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA). In an attempt to situate the influence of

think tanks within the wider set of actors seeking to influence policy, the present work draws

on interviews with 27 actors from within think tanks, professional and advocacy groups in the

built environment sector, and key actors in the policy community, including a former

planning minister, the chair of a major independent review of issues in planning, policy

advisors and senior civil servants. Some interviewees had been in multiple roles during their

careers: of those we interviewed, 15 had worked in think tanks at some stage, six had worked

in professional or advocacy groups broadly related to planning and the built environment, and

nine people had worked within central government.

Constructing market utopias and deconstructing planning utopias

The combination of the proliferation of think tanks and their success in attracting media

coverage has meant that they have become prominent participants in, and indeed instigators

of, national policy debates (James 1993; Bentham 2006; Pautz 2014). Of particular interest in

terms of planning debates has been the rise of high profile right-leaning think tanks since the

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1950s, most notably the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the Institute of Economic Affairs

(IEA) and the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) (Denham and Garnett 1996, 1999; Stone 2000), all

of which garnered considerable media coverage for their combative critiques of the welfare

state and big government, and advocacy of more free-market, libertarian alternatives. Such

was the success of these organisations in giving the impression of having influenced

government policy (James 1993, Denham and Garnett 1996), that new think tanks from a

range of ideological positions have since emerged. These include organisations that might be

broadly classified as being on the centre-right, such as the Policy Exchange, Reform and

ResPublica (Pautz 2013) and those positioned on the centre-left, such as Demos and the

Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) (Bentham 2006, Denham and Garnett 1999).

One of the reasons for the public perception that think tanks have become increasingly

influential in political circles is that there have been a number of high profile career leaps

between think tanks and careers in government and another is that incoming new government

tend to have strong links with one or more think tanks (Stone 2007, Morphet 2013). These

links were evident in the New Labour era with IPPR, the Smith Institute and Demos in

particular (Bentham 1996), and more recently with the Policy Exchange and the Cameron

governments (Pautz 2013). To give a sense of how this process works, one of the founders of

the Policy Exchange, Nick Boles, went on to become a planning minister, whilst Alex

Morton, Policy Exchange’s lead planning commentator in the early years of the 2010-2015

Coalition government, went on to become a planning and housing advisor to the Prime

Minister. Understandably perhaps, such appointments have led to some disquiet about the

influence of the Policy Exchange in particular on planning policy (Monbiot 2011b, Spiers

2012, 2013, Inman 2013). It should be emphasised that the Policy Exchange is one of several

think tanks to publish recent reports calling for planning reforms: see for example, Policy

Exchange (Hartwich and Evans 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Leunig and Swaffield 2007; Morton

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2011, 2012, Policy Exchange 2013), IPPR (2011, 2012), IEA (Niemietz 2012), CPS

(Boyfield and Ali 2013; Boyfield and Greenberg 2014), ASI (Papworth 2012, 2014) and the

Bow Group (Cuff and Smith 2009).

The IEA is interesting as a long-standing free market think tank often credited with providing

the intellectual underpinning of Thatcherism, drawing inspiration particularly from Hayek

and Friedman (Denham and Garnett 1999, Jackson 2012). Reviewing the IEA’s first 60 years,

its education director recently reflected on key areas of success in influencing national policy:

A case where the argument has been won is land planning and the housing market, but

there has so far been no change in policy at all. So we should not think that this is a

story of unqualified success. There have been victories but also setbacks and even

reversals. (Davies 2015, http://www.cityam.com/218227/sixty-years-why-battle-free-

society-still-yet-be-won)

The claim here is that the critique of planning has been successful in terms of gaining

widespread currency, but that successful policy reforms have not followed.

Of related interest is the Policy Exchange, which holds a clearly articulated philosophical

position in relation to planning:

Policy Exchange’s views continue to be that Government intervention in planning

should be limited to where there is real market failure, that compensation should flow

to localities where development takes place, and that people should have a real say

over development. (Communities and Local Government Committee, 2011, pg.Ev

99).

For its opponents, this position is problematic. Particularly revealing is a long-running

dispute between the CPRE and the Policy Exchange, with CPRE publishing a report

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specifically to critique the Policy Exchange (CPRE 2006). More recently in response to a

newspaper report on the 10th anniversary of the Policy Exchange, the CPRE’s Chief

Executive expressed his concerns about its impact on planning:

Whatever the question, liberalisation is the answer. The planning system was created

"as part of a drive for a socialist utopia in the 1940s" and therefore needs to be

dismantled. Those living close to developments should be given cash to persuade

them to accept it: planning out, bribery in.…

In their enthusiasm for dismantling the planning system the bright young men in

Policy Exchange remind me not of sober, pragmatic Tories, but of the ideologically

driven Trots I encountered in my youth. Driven by messianic zeal, they skew the

evidence to fit their world view – policy-based evidence making, not evidence-based

policy. All this would be fun if it wasn't for the fact that Policy Exchange has had a

big influence over the government's thinking on planning. (Spiers, 6th March 2012,

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/mar/06/policy-exchange-half-baked-ideas?

CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)

How then to explain the continuing claims from right-leaning think thanks and others that

planning has barely altered since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, whilst others

complain that the system is continuously being reformed in ways strongly influenced by the

right leaning think tanks?

In seeking the answer to this question it is important to understand the role of libertarian

economic thinking in informing UK government policy since 1979, not least in planning. The

proponents of this approach tend to envisage a form of idealised market utopia, drawing

selectively on neoclassical economics to argue that markets, left to their own devices and

working ‘naturally’ to abstract economic laws, will produce efficient outcomes that generate

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and distribute wealth more effectively and equitably than could be achieved by state directed

attempts to guide the market. For the free-market libertarian, the market evolved

independently and exists separate to government, leading to policy prescriptions based on an

idealised world in which governments should not distort the market by altering its ‘natural’

autonomous processes (Gamble 2009, Peck 2010). This worldview provides the broad frame

for the analysis of the ‘problem’ of government regulation as a burden on business and

restricting individual choice.

An alternative starting point to thinking about how markets operate lies in Polanyi’s (1944)

work on situated economies and market societies, which recognises how markets evolve over

time and operate always as complex and contingent state-market-society hybrids (Peck

2013a, 2013b). Polanyi’s work insisted that markets are always embedded in rules, theories

and institution, and that even the most radical free market proposals do not disembed

markets, rather they become re-embedded in new institutional arrangements (Block and

Summers 2014, p.214). From this perspective, planning exists as part of the cultural, social,

political and institutional embeddedness of markets. The neo-Polanyian concept of ideational

embeddedness (Somers and Block 2005, Block and Somers 2014), goes further in suggesting

that certain ideas are sufficiently powerful that they can shape, structure and indeed change

market regimes, normalizing particular understandings of how economies work. Ideational

embeddness suggests that the making, shaping and regulating of particular forms of markets

emerges out of competing knowledge frames that seek to transform and normalize political

and public ideas about how markets operate and how to construct appropriate regulatory

regimes (Block and Somers 2014, p.155), including those for land markets. Whilst there are

dangers in such accounts of over-determining the role of ideational practices, this approach

does usefully highlight the importance of seeking to better understand the ideational work of

think tanks.

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Most right-leaning economic libertarian think tanks regard big government as inherently

problematic, subject to vested interests seeking to shape state funding and regulation after

their own interests rather than the common good. This critique also takes aim at big business,

portrayed as hungry for state subsidy and special favours. Added in to the list of institutional

problems are those who protest against reform, in particularly professional and advocacy

groups which are portrayed as seeking to preserve their privileged position in society

(Niemietz 2012). From this perspective, the role of government is to protect and regulate

competitive free markets against market failures and distorting influences, but when it moves

beyond this limited role it can become a problem, leading to sub-optimal outcomes which

distort markets. However, as Peck (2010) argues, this vision of ‘pure’ markets is entirely

theoretical and never achievable in an impure world with its sedimentations of histories,

geographies and institutional memories, resulting in a succession of experiments in creating

compromised, messy state-market hybrids.

This leaves those arguing for economic libertarian reforms forever frustrated at not achieving

their idealised outcome, yet still willing to try again on the basis that any failures were simply

experiments that went wrong. It is important in this respect that attempts to change market-

state relations are often presented as a laboratory-like succession of experiments which must

proceed until a successful outcome emerges (Peck 2010). This has led to a form of

experimental state emerging in Britain since 1979, with successive piloting of new reforms.

However, when they fail to achieve their intended outcomes:

It is never the framing of the experiment that is wrong. That is not a possibility. What

is needed, rather, is that the experiment be properly conducted and that the framing be

more thoroughly applied. (Law and Williams 2014, p.7)

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In summary, it is important to understand the ideological and intellectual underpinnings of

economic libertarian think tanks which lead them to want to change the terms of political

debate, inserting their own preferred reading of state-society-market relationships. To

understand how these efforts to change the political landscape feed into the process of putting

parts of the state regulatory apparatus under continuous critical scrutiny, we next examine

how think tanks view themselves and how their exhortations are received by policy-makers.

Unsettling behaviour: how and why advocacy think tanks seek to perform radical

interventions

Many of those working within government, particularly the three ministerial policy advisors

we interviewed, told us that external influence was most likely to succeed not just because of

the persuasiveness of the argument, but because they came at the right time. If an idea was to

succeed in capturing the political imagination “all the stars have to be aligned” (interview:

policy advisor 1), requiring a combination of good politics, in terms of timeliness, strong

evidence-based arguments and the availability of a slot in the parliamentary legislative

calendar. These findings resonate well with Kingdon’s (1995) notion of ‘policy windows’,

that is the coming together of three policy streams which he labels problems, policies, and

politics. Problems in this interpretation are not simply out there, but emerge out of the

framing of a particular issue as a problem, whether by interest groups, think tanks, academics,

the media or some combination. Policies may emerge as proposals from officials, think tanks,

or others, but need to resonate with the political mood of the time about what is desirable and

indeed possible. Politics might reflect a changing in government, or the success of particular

interest groups singly or in coalitions in influencing the national debate in favour of new

understandings of both problems and desirable solutions.

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Think tanks can play a role in shaping all three of Kingdon’s policy streams and help create

‘policy windows’, as our interviews revealed. However, their goals and tactics in seeking to

shape national debates often varied substantially. Whilst some think tanks were clearly active

in seeking to address short-term political issues, sometimes at the invitation of policy

advisors or ministers, for most of those we spoke to the bigger prize was in changing political

thinking about what was feasible and what wasn’t. One interviewee told us that this in part

reflects an influential concept associated with Joe Overton, who had worked in the Mackinac

Center for Public Policy, an economic libertarian think tank in the US:

There’s a great phrase in the think tank world called the Overton Window… what he

said was, any think tank that is worth its salt should be proposing things that are

basically ‘thinking the unthinkable’. If all you are doing is suggesting minor tweaks to

existing policy, you are not doing your job, you need to shift the window of what’s

acceptable. (interview: think tank 15)

The Overton Window suggests that it is not enough for think tanks simply to advocate a

particular policy, since some times the political climate is not right for a new idea: instead,

the role of think tanks should be to change the political climate so that in time the proposed

policies would come to be seen as logical and appropriate. This idea still resonates in UK

political circles as a way of understanding the importance of moving the centre-ground of

politics in one direction or another (Jones 2015). In practice, most UK advocacy think tanks

adopt a pragmatic approach to this issue, combining an aspiration to change the political

climate whilst also engaging in policy advocacy around more immediate issues. Nonetheless,

many of our think tank interviewees drew attention to differences in approach in

foregrounding where they saw the balance of their own activities.

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Regardless of whether a think tank was operating to shorter or longer timescales, there was a

widespread acknowledgement that there was an in-built dynamic amongst advocacy think

tanks towards producing radical critiques and radical policy solutions, as they sought to

catalyse debate and be seen as the source of new ideas:

I would say that we are trying to do is produce fairly radical policy proposals…

broadly speaking take a, you know, ‘tear up the existing system and start from

scratch’ kind of approach. We have to acknowledge that the reality of that is

somewhat unlikely. However, even if they don’t fully implement our new and

different policy that we are proposing, by proposing something different it may draw

them somewhat in that direction. (think tank 9)

In effect there is a form of ‘requisite irony’ to the work of some think tanks, as they often

deliberately publish radical critiques and proposals knowing that they are unlikely to be

accepted by the government of the day. For those on the receiving end of these proposals, this

would sometimes lead to frustration about public debate being generated around ideas that

are unlikely to be implemented, as one former civil servant told us:

you’ll go there and someone would describe this perfect system, this shining city on

the hill…. But of course the real question is how do we get from where we are now to

that shining city on the hill. You know, what’s the route?”

In similar vein, a ministerial adviser and a former planning minister both revealed concerns

about whether the ideas of think tanks were presented in a form ready for implementation:

Think tanks are trying to change the big picture, they don’t tend to be good at

implementation (policy adviser 2).

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They simply chase the media headlines... actually scratch the surface of their reports

and the analysis isn’t very deep, the policy thinking isn’t particularly innovative, their

top line is designed for the headline rather than policy implementation. It’s a

sweeping criticism but there is a danger of that. (politician 1)

This relates to one of the other drivers of the radical impulse, that the think tank world has

become increasingly crowded in recent years. For most of the think tanks we interviewed,

getting media exposure for their interventions was seen to be critical, based on an expectation

that would lead politicians and their advisors to take note. In order to stand out from others

and with a view to changing long-term debate rather than achieving a short-term incremental

change in policy, think tanks would sometimes deliberately set out to provoke a debate by

making what they accepted might be seen at the time as outlandish comments:

“Someone’s got to fly the kite there, someone’s got to be out there 20 years ahead of

their time saying ‘here’s an idea’…. So, sometimes you’ve just got to be ahead of

your time, and that’s kind of good, and it’s quite headline grabbing.” (think tank 9).

Our interviews also revealed that formal, in-house publications often provided the primary

vehicle for making a policy intervention, typically followed up by press releases, interviews

with the media, and a public report launch, ideally with a minister making a speech. This

might then be followed up by public debates, including sessions at the annual conferences of

the major political parties. Some think tanks also sought to get their work noticed by

responding to public consultation documents, for instance on draft legislation or calls for

evidence made by parliamentary select committees. In short, there are a number of ways in

which interventions can be made, but having a publication to spin off from is often the

starting point.

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If there is a formal consultation, then you have an open door opportunity to answer all

the questions in detail and append a copy of the report. If there is not a formal

consultation… then you approach the politicians directly. (think tank 9)

One think tank however took a different line, arguing that they would never directly approach

ministers or civil servants and that their most effective interventions involved the media,

whether generating publicity for a new report or responding to the work of others:

simply beating the drum for free enterprise; being prepared to go on television and

radio every day, being prepared to answer journalists and put the case for free

enterprise, and just do it remorselessly and assiduously (think tank 2).

Many think tank interviewees expressed frustration with those who stood in the way of their

reform proposals, opponents who ranged from civil servants to lobby groups and professional

groups, with single issue groups singled out for opprobrium by one policy advisor with strong

links to think tanks:

It’s unremitting and it’s usually very conservative… defending the status quo, and

they are often defending economic rents (interview: ministerial policy advisor 2).

Whilst the interviewed professional bodies all acknowledged that think tanks played an

important role in stimulating debate, they felt their own position required that them to take a

more measured approach to engaging in public debate, not least since they needed to be

accountable to their membership and to maintain credibility with ministers and civil servants

over the long-term:

think tanks can have more fun, you know, floating kites, thinking the unthinkable, not

worrying about whether the evidence supports it. Because actually they are not about

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evidence based policy-making, they are about ideas-influencing and they are very

good at, as a result, influencing…the debate. (professional and interest group 4)

Another professional group interviewee argued that precisely because they had regular

contact with ministers and civil servants, their approach tended to be different to the think

tanks, drawing primarily on the credibility associated with the experience of their members:

we can draw on all of that knowledge – what works, what doesn’t work and what

could work better. And so coming up with blue sky thoughts is not really our role in

life… What we try and do is ensure that the policies that the government want to

implement are practical, achievable and viable… We don’t necessarily try and change

what they want to do. We’re apolitical, so we’ll work with any government because

you can’t spend five years out in the cold waiting for another government to come

round. (professional and advocacy group 5).

Whilst think tanks are not the only source of critical ideas about planning, they were seen as

prominent contributors to such debates:

our life would be much easier if there weren’t all these think tanks coming up every

five minutes with ideas that are not substantiated, which appeal to particular political

mindsets of either side… because we have had to spend too much time… defending

basic concepts… But then, maybe that needed doing. Maybe that challenge is

necessary. (Professional advocacy group 4).

There is evidence that even those within government sympathetic to the constant calls for

change have started to become weary of claims that planning needs further reform. After a

recent period of intense reform, one planning minister went so far as to declare, tongue-in-

cheek, that:

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if anyone comes to me with an idea for new planning legislation I am going to shoot

them (Planning Minister Nick Boles, Speech to National Infrastructure Planning

Association, May 2013, http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1181757/boles-

says-hell-shoot-anyone-suggests-further-planning-changes).

The interviews revealed a fairly fundamental split between those who felt the planning

system was unfairly under-attack for things it had no responsibility over, and those who felt

that planning represented a barrier to enterprise and development. A former political advisor

under New Labour had struggled to reconcile these two points of view, in particular the more

recent initiatives of the Coalition government (2010-15):

I don’t really know what they are trying to solve. What is the government trying to

solve by smashing the planning system? Planning isn’t really the problem... Most of

the time its poor propositions, its lack of finance... Planning is an issue in some cases,

but in most cases it’s not the issue. (ministerial policy adviser 1)

This related to a fundamental issue driving forward the critique, money and the role of those

with vested interests, which raised important issues of balance for almost all of our

interviewees who had worked in government, best summed up by a former planning minister:

The alignment of think tank fire power is quite unbalanced. You have got these right

wing organisations that are funded secretly really by private money that isn’t properly

disclosed and isn’t properly accounted for... with much greater resources and fire

power than you have in some of the think tanks on the centre left... that’s unhealthy.

(politician 1)

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Putting forward compelling critiques and proposing radical solutions for reforming

planning

One of the topics that has most exercised think tanks operating in the planning area in recent

years is house building. This debate has been prominent in the media for at least a decade as

part of a wider debate about low housebuilding rates and housing affordability. For many

centre-right and economic libertarian think tanks, the greenbelt is a totem of the problems

they were trying to expose within planning, involving entrenched interests of various kinds

keen to defend their own amenity by protecting the countryside. For think tanks critical of

green belt policy, the problem was seen to be that it reduced house-building in high demand

areas, leading to increased house prices and ‘town-cramming’ in built-up areas, often with

poor quality housing (e.g. Morton 2011, Papworth 2015). Whilst accepting there is a national

problem in terms of house building completions, supporters of the green belt by contrast

argue that it is a valuable policy that protects the countryside from urban sprawl, and that low

house building rates are actually the result of issues such as land hoarding by developers and

changes to mortgage lending practices (e.g. CPRE 2006, 2012). In short, there are widely

diverging interpretations of the problem and how best to fix it.

We examine two sets of related debates here, the first of which concerns the National

Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) (Rutter 2012). The draft NPPF became a highly charged

political issue at the time, leading the relevant departmental Select Committee to decide to

hold an inquiry into it. As is usual practice for House of Commons Select Committees,

alongside its final report the committee also published all the evidence submitted and a

transcription of the public debates held. Select Committees typically start by making an open

call for submissions on their subject matter: of more than 130 written submissions to the

Select Committee on draft NPPF, only two were associated with think tanks, with the rest

sent in by a mix of advocacy groups, local government, private companies and individuals

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(Communities and Local Government Committee 2011). However, it is the transcript of the

oral evidence of witnesses called before the committee that is most revealing of the faultlines

between those who see the planning system as succeeding but under threat from ‘economic

rationalists’ and those who view the system as in need of radical reform. In one session Dr

Hugh Ellis, chief planner of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) starts off

with an impassioned defence of planning, followed by Alex Morton, representing the Policy

Exchange:

Dr Ellis: I think the planning system has made an outstanding contribution to the

nation…. There are benefits in planning that deal with things that go a long way

beyond price... In England we are obsessed with changing our planning structures on

an ever increasingly speedy turn around. That has led to a system that is now in a very

difficult state...

Alex Morton: The planning system has two possible reasons for existing: one is to

correct market failures... There is a second reason why planning could exist. Planning

as an overarching vision; it is a 1940s command economy with central planning. We

would argue that the current planning system mostly resembles the second… We do

not agree that the planning system is serving us well. (Communities and Local

Government Committee, 2011, pg. Ev11).

Following a series of vexed exchanges around how a more market-oriented approach might

benefit planning, the TCPA chief planner sets out his concerns about the terms of debate:

Dr Ellis: I think there is a real step choice between a planning system that I think has

delivered real benefits and a new kind of economic rationalism. That economic

rationalism is unproven. I dispute a tremendous amount of the data behind it. (House

of Commons, 2011, pg. Ev21).

19

The second instance of public confrontation between opposing philosophies involved

proposals to provide financial incentives to encourage the release of more land for future

housing development. This is an idea with some pedigree, but which had not until recently

been seen as one which any government would want to tackle for fear of opposition. One of

those responsible for an early intervention in this field set out the rationale involved:

We published a paper way back in the eighties… in which we made the suggestion in

a few experimental areas we should try the policy of proposing a development in an

area and offering compensation to those affected in the area… and have them vote in

a referendum as to whether to go ahead. (interview, think tank 2)

However, as we noted earlier, sometimes proposals such as this are made with little realistic

prospect of being implemented at the time, but with the hope that they might find favour at a

later date. By 2012, two think tanks prepared to broach the subject again, producing

proposals that attracted considerable media coverage in the process, including some wry

commentary on The Guardian newspaper’s website about the role of think tanks:

Watching two of the better-known right wing think tanks prime their intellectual

cannons and bombard the same target is an impressive, if stomach-churning, sight. In

the past week the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Policy Exchange, both of

which have the ear of No 10 and No 11 Downing Street, have taken aim at the UK's

planning laws. (Inman 2012)

Within a year government proposals emerged to provide communities and local authorities

with financial incentives to accept new development proposals, proposals which were widely

seen to have been influenced by the work of the two think tanks (Wintour 2013; Planning

Resource, 2013).

20

The proposed reforms followed the lack of success of earlier suggestions to increase house

building by removing government targets, targets which Policy Exchange had long argued

against (Hartwich and Evans 2005a, Morton, 2011). As a later report acknowledged,

however, removing housing targets did not achieve the desired outcome of increasing

development activity (Morton 2012) and a new approach was necessary. In effect, when one

set of market-friendly reforms failed to deliver, rather than question the underlying premise,

new proposals soon emerged for a different kind of market-friendly planning reform, very

much fitting in with the experimental state thesis (Law and Williams 2014).

At a fringe session at the 2014 Labour Party conference, Shaun Spiers the chief executive of

the CPRE confronted these issues, arguing: “Policy Exchange has been the most effective

advocate in the area of planning for the last 10 years and has been hugely effective in

weakening the planning system. But you are still not getting homes built” (Carpenter 2014).

The Policy Exchange head of planning research, Chris Walker, in turn characterises planning

as operating in terms of “Soviet-style command and control.”(ibid.). The accusation of

planning being socialist, Stalinist or Soviet-style is one frequently mobilised by right-leaning

think tanks (see opening quotes to this paper), Conservative ministers and sections of the

media (e.g. Daily Mail, 2010), a form of discursive tactic that portrays the supporters of

planning as committed to a system that is outmoded and authoritarian.

The planning minister at the time, Nick Boles, made light of the radical nature of the

Coalition government’s experiments in the marketization of planning, explaining that under

his reforms, 25% of revenues from any agreed community infrastructure levy would go to

local communities to “spend on what the hell you like”. He went on to refer to his proposal as

a “bribe” to communities, adding that “I wanted to call this the Boles bung” (Wintour 2013).

21

What we can begin to see in the debates around the marketization of planning is the way in

which planning reforms are a form of experimentation, involving a first step in which ideas

are ‘tested’ through being entered into the media debate, sometimes but not always involving

think tanks, before being announced as possible policy reforms that ministers might want to

pursue, followed by an internal process of scrutiny and drafting of legislation involving civil

servants and ministerial special advisors (SPADs), with major legislative packages usually

put out to public consultation and entering into the parliamentary process of political debate

and scrutiny. Though sometimes labelled as pilots or pathfinders, in the case of planning,

reforms are rarely if ever officially framed as ‘experiments’. However, in the world of think

tanks, the notion of experiments certainly resonated. One interviewee explained how his

organisation saw themselves in this process as engineers rather than scientists, helping design

experiments rather than generate the theory:

What you are doing is that you set out the principle and then you look for the

supporting evidence. Like a scientist does. A scientist doesn’t start with the

experiment. A scientist starts with the theory that the experiment is designed to test…

we always used to say we were engineers rather than scientists. The pure scientists

were Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek ... people like that. (Think tank 2)

It is worth emphasising that think tanks do not always get their ideas taken up and that among

policy makers in particular we found a healthy scepticism and willingness to differentiate

between think tanks. As one former planning minister explained to us:

You can even distinguish between think tanks that are good at getting headlines and

think tanks that are good at influence. Those that command press coverage for some

of their so-called research and reports and those that command, and can evidence, a

significant policy influence. Part of the froth of the think tank world is the media

22

coverage... that is the pay off for the commercial backers... It’s important to bring

quite a critical eye to some of what passes for high profile and high influence

(politician 1).

In general, policy makers told us that they were influenced most by reports that were

evidence-based rather than ideology-based, with particular respect reserved for those who had

professional experience in the area that they were making proposals for.

The people who did have an influence on me… [were] not so much the think tanks

but the professional bodies... they had evidence and experience so they were quite

good to bounce things off in a confidential way…and I wouldn’t ever have done that

with a think tank because the kind of people in think tanks just don’t have the right

background. (Chair of an independent review)

The issue being alluded to in the final sentence relates to a recurrent issue raised by some of

our think tank interviewees as well as those involved in policy-making, namely that some

think tanks were perceived to be populated mainly by ‘bright young things’ with little or no

professional experience in the area they were seeking to advise on. In the eyes of more

seasoned politicians and professionals, this was seen to be generally an issue as it led to what

were considered to be naïve proposals, designed as much with an eye to provocation as it was

to implementation.

Whilst some ministers and policy makers were seen to be adept at differentiating between the

different sources of advice they received, there was an acknowledgement that this was not

always the case. A related issue was the perceived diminishing capacity of the civil service to

advise minsters as a result of government cuts. Whilst some (but not all) think tanks decried

civil servants as one of the barriers they faced, since they would potentially advise against

23

particular reform proposals, some professional and advisory groups raised concerned about

the impact of government cuts to the civil service:

if you don’t have the powerful voices there saying “you know Minister, this is about

as bonkers as it gets”, then it is very difficult. (professional and advocacy group 3)

Despite the many concerns identified during our interviews, seen in the round, think tanks

were generally felt to be a good thing, since they contributed to the pool of ideas in

circulation and brought welcome critique, but with some important caveats around the need

to examine carefully their evidence base and their funding sources:

I think they are important. I don’t think they are a problem but I think that their

evidence base should always be looked at closely. (professional and advocacy group

3)

Good for democracy? If you asked me for a one word answer I would say it’s good.

On balance the more ideas that are in play, the wider and more encompassing debate

around public policy and politics the better. My qualification to that is you can’t treat

them the same. You have got to treat, not just their ideas, but the source of those ideas

with a certain sceptical criticism. If we are going to make an argument for think tanks

in the public interest then the question of who they are and who funds them and what

is their particular project or purpose is really important (politician 1).

Conclusions

24

This paper has provided fresh insights into the significance and influence-wielding tactics of

think tanks in relation to planning policy, in particular the role of centre-right and economic

libertarian think tanks in portraying planning as antiquated and in need of reform, and the

normalisation of the idea of the marketization of planning through providing financial

incentives to encourage development. In addition we have been able to demonstrate how

professional and advocacy bodies in the field are drawn into the ideological debates raised by

such think tanks, and also how policy makers view the work of think tanks with a cautious

welcome, albeit sensitive to issues around use of evidence and funding transparency.

Our work raises important issues about how national planning systems are shaped by external

interests and whilst it takes just one cut into this issue it suggests the need for a concerted

programme of research to address how national planning systems become the subject of

political debate. We throw new light on the ways in which think tanks seek to influence

policy debates, revealing that many think tanks perceive that the best way to change policy is

by advancing radical proposals. The result is a near permanent state of claims about planning

'crisis', backed up by alarmist rhetoric linking claimed failings to a range of damaging

impacts, for instance on economic growth and housing affordability.

This leads us to the second main concluding point. Given the constant atmosphere of

criticism combined with political short-termism, English planning finds itself in a state of

near perpetual reform. It is not surprising that such a state creates instability and helps feed

the atmosphere of crisis that economic libertarian think tanks thrive upon. There is a real

danger in this frenzied atmosphere of anti-planning rhetoric of what might be termed

‘seepage’, after some of the debates about how the language and arguments of climate change

scientists adapt defensively to the constant critique of sceptics (Lewandowsky et al. 2015). In

the case of planning, seepage might help explain why planning advocates occasionally seem

willing to accept at least the basic premise that planning is the problem, lacking a clear

25

alternative conceptual armoury for arguing otherwise. One way forward for those wishing to

argue for alternatives to market fundamentalism (Block and Sommers 2014) in relation to

planning might be to engage with alternatives ways of conceptualising state-market relations,

one which situates planning as a necessary part of ensuring that markets work effectively to

achieve long-term socially just outcomes for society as a whole. This could provide the

starting point for diagnosing problems within actually existing state-market hybrid forms of

regulation and for proposing alternative visions for how planning systems might better

address the statutory goal of English planning, which remains to support the pursuit of

sustainable development.

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