Embracing Change and Difference in Planning Reform: New Labour's Role for Planning in Complex Times

Abstract

Over the past two decades at least, local government functions have diversified from direct service provision to a much broader range of activities involving regulation, leadership and enabling. New Labour has promoted an agenda of state infrastructure revitalization, decentralization and local responsiveness, cooperation and partnership with civil society, together with social responsibility. The planning reforms, introduced within the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and the Planning Reform Bill, are set within this wider context. Planning is now charged with coordinating the spatial aspects of a range of policy agendas being brought to bear at the local and regional levels, and to provide a mediation forum for various interests that is responsive and flexible to changing conditions. As such, the reformed planning system under New Labour reflects both continuities with and radical departures from the past. It suggests that planning can no longer be understood as a single entity but as turbulent, fluid and adaptable processes and frameworks. This paper charts the evolution of New Labour's manoeuvring of planning and of the context of planning through three terms of office, and suggests that what we have today are diverse activities of intervention, coordination and delivery that vary geographically and politically. These planning activities embrace flexibility and difference but also serve to raise further uncertainties.