If the planning system’s not working then, well, the planning system’s not working, right?
From the Sec of State:
Further measures to streamline the delivery of energy projects will be included in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the Plan stipulates. These will include changes to environmental impact and outcome reporting.
…
Another key change is that onshore wind will be added back into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime in England after it was removed under David Cameron. This is touted as a means of easing the delivery of projects of 100MW or larger.
As well as energy generation assets, the Plan emphasises the need for planning changes for transmission network infrastructure, stating that a far higher level will need to be under construction by 2026 if enough new renewables are to be added to the grid by 2030.
An admission, an agreement, that the current planning system makes it near impossible to actually do anything.
From a Governor of a state:
Gavin Newsom is scheduled to ease building restrictions for victims of the Los Angeles wildfires – part of a reconstruction effort that he said on Sunday would need a California version of the Marshall Plan, the US-led effort to rebuild western Europe after the second world war.
The interesting point about both actions is the admission contained. The current planning system doesn’t allow anyone to actually do anything. Therefore, in order to get something done it is necessary to - for some time, for some projects - abolish said planning system.
But, of course, this being politics they’re getting the lesson wrong. Largely because being politicians they’re getting the economics wrong. Economies do not grow - a synonym for people being able to do things - by large projects. That’s Soviet thinking, Virgin Lands (or Groundnut Scheme) thinking. Economies grow by marginal tinkering. Taking a second hay crop off the water meadow, the hot dog stand hiring some bod to be there when the pubs clear out, the addition of a mansard roof and so another floor of dwellings in a city centre. And on - all economics happens at the margin, it is those small, seemingly trivial, margins that then produce that growth that market economies are so good at. As - and as we so enjoy continually pointing out - Bob Solow insisted provided 80% of the 20th century growth in the market economies. It’s the little bits here and there that, in aggregate, make us so much richer.
Further, those grand projects can afford the costs of fighting to be allowed to do something. A £100 billion railway scheme - however stupid it actually is - can afford a few hundred millions on lawyers and applications. A mansard charged more than a few hundred pounds for such permission simply does not happen. Nor the experiment of selling meatish tubules to drunks if there are upfront costs to the attempt.
That is, the actual growth that market economies provide cannot afford the weight and costs of a strict planning regime. Which is why we’re not having such growth. As both the Sec and the Gov are admitting when they say that in order to be able to do anything those planning systems must be ignored.
Our economies are constipated by the rules that insist upon permission to be able to do anything. The answer is a purgative, an emetic, for the system. Abolish that planning, permissions, system altogether. The most important part being to abolish it at the small scale, at that margin where economic advance actually happens.
Yes, such clear outs can be messy, smelly, even sometimes embarrassing if they take effect untimely. But here’s the point about laxatives - they do actually work.
Tim Worstall