Think tank Policy Exchange is calling for beauty to be at the heart of Labour’s proposed planning reforms.
The group has published a report that calls for high-quality design to be at the centre of the reforms being made to the National Planning Policy Framework, consultation on which closes late next month.
The paper is in direct response to secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, Angela Rayner’s suggestion that beauty is too subjective to be included in planning policy.
This followed the announcement that the words “beauty” and “beautiful” were to be effectively stripped out of the NPPF and were no longer to be strategic planning requirements for new housing.
Backed by senior former Labour MP Jon Cruddas, Policy Exchange argued that Labour should retain the tradition of building beautiful buildings for the next generation to enjoy.
Cruddas said: “Solving the housing crisis is arguably the most pressing socio-economic challenge Britain and its new Labour government faces. The government has responded to this by placing the construction of more homes in Britain at the centre of its policy programme for this parliament, pledging to build 1.5m homes over the next five years.
“By outlining key messaging for all those involved in the development of our built environment, this inspiring Policy Exchange paper offers the government a strategic blueprint for how beauty can help Labour use its socialist heritage to solve the housing crisis.”
Report author Ike Ijeh, head of housing, architecture and urban space at Policy Exchange, added: “In its understandable rush to build, the new Labour government is now faced with two crucial choices and which one it decides upon will affect not just our lives and futures but those of our families, communities, built environment and national wellbeing for potentially generations to come.
“As history has taught us time and time again, and particularly demonstrated with the failed council estates of the 1960s and 1970s, need gives no license to negligence and it would be an utter betrayal of those most in need if the new living conditions devised to meet that need eventually, through the erosion of quality and the subsequent evisceration of neighbourhoods, end up making those conditions worse.”
Key arguments in the Beauty & Socialism: How the Left can put Beauty back into Britain report include the role of good design in getting community buy-in for planning and the commercial benefit that good design brings.
The think tank has also called for a new polling mechanism to establish the public popularity of new buildings.
It claimed the poll, which would only be on large, completed buildings, could be a “vital tool in getting Britain building”.
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