New Towns at RICS – Planning & Development Conference 2025

Hot on the heels of the New Towns Task Force’s selection of its preferred locations, the RICS Planning & Development Conference chaired by Faraz Baber (Lanpro and Land & Natural Resources PGP) took place at Great George Street on 7th October 2025. In anticipation of this delayed announcement the programme included a session on new towns. Being able to identify the twelve sites just added greater immediacy to the discussion.

In addition the opening address given by Chris Curtis, Labour MP (Member of House of Commons Planning Committee) and native of Milton Keynes, probably the most successful English new town reinforced government’s intentions. Coincidently the town centre of Milton Keynes was designated a new town, which some in the audience though rather peculiar.

Maintaining the Business Case for Development

RICS members are typically concerned with ensuring conditions for delivery are in place. Ben Aspinall FRICS (Aspinall Verdi) who advised on a number of the chosen sites at various times, underlined the fundamental importance of understanding the upfront cost of infrastructure, particularly where new town developments are starting from scratch. Phillip Barnes FRICS (Savills) concurred having spent much of his career acquiring large sites for the UK’s largest housebuilder. He also observed that many of the new town sites have been in various stages of promotion for some time. Based on research he is carrying out on new towns David Mountain (RTPI) sought the lessons to be learned from UK and international experience to accelerate new town delivery.

Relentless Planning Reform

Since coming to power the Labour government has been pursuing widespread reforms to the planning system, encouraged by the sector to make it work better. RICS has not agreed with all of its proposals particularly on CPO compensation. Virginia Blackman FRICS (Avison Young and Chair of RICS CPO Expert Group) explained RICS’s opposition to the removal of an element of market value from compensation in certain circumstances. RICS supported the introduction of Spatial Development Strategies. But listening to comments from Sam Stafford (LP&DF) it sounded like it could all get very complex, very quickly with the preparation of local plans out of sync with production of spatial strategies. Samer Bagaeen Professor of Planning at the University of the Built Environment has not been in favour of proposed planning committee reforms a measure RICS supported. His other role as an elected councillor in Brighton gives him a unique perspective on the balance to be struck between the technocratic and democratic aspects of planning.

Legal Changes

Meeta Kaur, planning lawyer and partner at Town Legal provided a comprehensive review of the extensive legal reforms being introduced. But she also referred to the repercussions of the Supreme Court decision on Hillside affecting the ability to amend planning decisions. This particularly applies to large scale, multi-phased developments which still needs addressing.

Realistic Expectations

When we talk about government building 1.5 million dwellings, what we really mean is government presiding over a complex system to enable the ‘development sector’ to meet the government’s target. Alan Mace (London School of Economics) opened up an important discussion on the elongated link between national government policy formulation and on the ground implementation. Potential for mis-alignment between various delivery agents is considerable, having regard to the political cycle of policy making and the commercial cycle of housing development.

Making sense of BNG

Policy making on bio-diversity from both MHCLG and DEFRA makes for an increasingly complicated regulatory regime. Robert Barker (Stolon Studios) presented research he recently carried out on the strengths and weakness of a number of BNG assessment tools. Applying some of these to optimise BNG value and development value on a number of hypothetical schemes provided very informative results on achieving BNG on site in urban areas.

Political fragmentation

If the national political scene seems fraught, the 2026 local elections are predicted to produce even more fragmentation. Nick Kilby political adviser (Cratus Group) provided a range of interesting insights and speculations about the shifting mood which may determine the control of local councils and their attitude to more housebuilding. Not to mention that a new government might wish to introduce a completely different set of reforms. Political risk in planning never seems too far away adding further cost to development.

The March of AI

Inevitably the expectations for improving the planning system using AI are sky high with the Prime Minister’s announcement during the summer of further breakthroughs in extracting data and information from planning files. Discussing this were sponsor Andy Williams (LandClan), Nikos Papapesious (Knight Frank), Stefan Webb (TPXImpact) and Peter Kemp (GLA). An interesting challenge was laid down to professions who may have a protectionist view of their territory. The arrival of such a powerful tool without boundaries, requires professionals to understand how AI tools can be harnessed to meet clients’ and society’s needs better, rather than resist them.

1.5 million dwellings by 2029?

Bringing all these strands seamlessly together the chair conducted a panel discussion on the prospects for government meeting its housing delivery target with Fiona Fletcher-Smith (L&G), Lord Gascoinge (Chair House of Lords, Built Environment Committee), Simon Radford (Bluecastle Capital), Ben Cooper (Fabian Society).   Although panellists were reluctant to pour cold water on ambition, there seemed to be an almost unanimous view that the 1.5 million target was unattainable.  Realistic expectations seemed to settle somewhere below 1 million.

The Labour YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) group’s Adam Allnut who contributed to the opening session was much more buoyant. Fresh from the party conference he was still clad in his Magalike red hat emblazoned with the slogan ‘Build Baby Build’. I am sure experienced developers in the room wished it were as simple as that!