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A political minefield
14 January 2025
While it seems like its all about housing, is the new government putting logistics and employment back on the agenda? Liza Helps investigates.

BE UNDER no doubt that planning is political, especially so at the local level – as evidenced by the number of applications recommended for approval which get turned down by councillors sitting on planning committees.
Right now, in Northampton the there is a major furore brewing over an application by DHL for a 1. 3 million ft2 industrial and logistics scheme near Towcester. The scheme which would see DHL secure an initial 250,000 ft2 BREEAM Excellent distribution centre has garnered more than 1,100 letters of objection as well as objections from Towcester council and a further 16 parish councils, the British Horse Society, and Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE).
Planning officers from West Northamptonshire Council have recommended it for approval as it will support the local sub regional economy to the tune of £50 million a year, and will provide 1,300 full time equivalent jobs. They said the level of economic growth in this location is supported by the development plan and other council adopted strategies, as well as the NPPF.
Literally there is no reason not to approve the application.
That is not to say that it will be given the go ahead – the campaign against the development, as well as securing huge local support, has garnered backing from the newly elected Conservative MP Sarah Bool as well as a number of councillors, one of which directly criticised the planning department calling them ‘inadequate’ and ‘useless’.
This is not unusual and can be found - not just in affluent areas, but - all over the country as evidenced by Basingstoke & Dean Councillors firstly approving then rescinding planning on the Newlands scheme at Junction 7 of the M3 motorway then rejecting approval despite recommendation a further time leading to a third application on the same site. Logistics Matters reports regularly on schemes and sites that only secure planning on appeal. These have included in the last two months a 550,000 ft2 two unit scheme in Worksop as well as a 1.5 million ft2 scheme known as Enderby Logistics Hub in Leicestershire.
The new Labour Government secured support from business and the country at large on the back of promises to “Get Britain Building” – admittedly that focus was on housebuilding – some 1.5 million of them in the course of this parliament.
But you cannot provide housing without providing the jobs and services they need, and it has been proved that every home in the UK creates a requirement for approximately 110 ft2 of logistics space. That means the Labour Government’s housing ambitions will generate a demand for a further 165 million ft2 of logistics space over the course of the next five years.
If that were not enough for the logistics sector to deal with, there is already a shortage of Grade A modern space anyway. A report by the British Property Federation and Savills published in 2022 called: ‘Levelling up – The Logic of Logistics’, noted that demand for industrial and logistics space across England had been underestimated in planning policy for a decade with future demand (at the time) thought to be at least 30% higher than past levels owing to changes in the way consumers shop, the evolution of the supply chain and need to upgrade existing stock in order to reach UK carbon net zero targets by 2050.
The report noted that warehouse supply-demand dynamics had been distorted since 2011 with annual take up averaging 34 million ft2 net over that period, 48% higher than the net delivery of new space.
With growth at its core, luckily for the Government there is one thing they can do that will technically sort out the issues – the reform of the planning system. “This is a key policy focus [for the government],” says developer Prologis UK head of planning Caroline Musker.
So much so that it has already written a draft revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF24) and has it out for consultation with the expectation that it can be implemented within the first 100 days.
Musker says: “The proposed changes for economic growth in the revised NPPF that’s out for consultation, represent a shift in thinking and recognise the need to adopt a more holistic approach to planning than seen previously.”
While the NPPF has fixated on the drive to provide more housing with even the once sacrosanct Green Belt under fire, the overhaul also focuses on the provision of land for the ‘modern economy’ which includes laboratories, gigafactories, data centres, digital infrastructure, freight and logistics.
Lichfields senior director, head of economics Ciaran Gunne-Jones observes: “Many of these uses are comparatively land hungry, each have their own specific locational requirements, and are urgently needed. The government is, rightly, concerned about the opportunity cost of not adequately planning for them, which is the UK lagging well behind other leading economies.”
Musker says: “Until now, logistics, a sector which at its core acts as a driver for and enabler of sustainable economic growth, has been conspicuously absent from the policy framework, despite its role as part of the UK’s critical infrastructure. Now, there are explicit references to the sector, the £84.9 billion gross value added it brings each year, and the 1.2 million jobs it supports.
“The revised policy recognises that logistics development, along with gigafactories, laboratories, data centres and strategic infrastructure works, are key to delivering growth.”
Law firm Charles Russel Speechlys planning associate Sadie Pitman adds: “The consultation [also] acknowledges that the freight and logistics sector depends on a national network of storage and distribution infrastructure which in turn facilitates operations at local, regional, national and international level.”
To that end NPPF24 proposes to expressly require local authorities to identify appropriate sites for industrial and logistics as well as laboratories, giga factories, data centres and digital infrastructure.
“If that were not clear enough,” says Musker, “following the release of the draft NPPF, communications were issued almost in parallel from the Department for Transport highlighting the positive inclusion of freight and logistics as a growth industry – this is clearly a government which is engaged and focused on change.”
The wheels of government turn slowly and it will be interesting to see if changes to planning can actually come about in order to fulfil these ambitions.
Fisher German partner and head of industrial & logistics Rob Champion says: “Resolving the problems of the planning system is clearly high on Labour’s to-do list because it is and has been a huge barrier to progress.
“Recruiting 300 new planning officers will help to determine planning applications more quickly but I’m not sure how easy that will be to achieve in practice, and we need to revert to a presumption in favour of development rather than against it so that stalled applications in suitable locations can move forward. This requires a national mandate which is genuinely implementable.
“Incentivising local authorities to get on with assessing applications is going to be important because a major application should take 13 weeks to determine, but currently, they seem to be taking at least six to nine months, if not significantly more, so there is a constant backlog. “There are no easy to access ‘teeth’ in the system to hold local authorities to account over their timescales of delivery and so applicants are generally being forced to accept the delays which are, in the main, blamed on a lack of resources. The draft NPPF does not appear to seek to tackle this issue specifically.”
In addition to the dearth of planners one of the other big issues is the methodologies used to predict the amount of future employment land. Lichfields notes that current methodologies are based on techniques last updated in 2004 – Amazon only arrived in the UK in 2012.
While there is up to date methodologies to predict future supply of deliverable housing land there is none for employment land. This was identified as a barrier to adequate provision of employment land in the BPF and Savills Levelling Up - Logic of Logistics report where Savills head of EMEA Industrial and Logistics Research Kevin Mofid warned that ‘that these outdated methodologies are significantly underestimating the future demand for good quality and well-located premises’.
Savills head of planning David Jackson commenting on the NPPF24 consultation concludes: “This “mission led” Government has made clear that economic growth is not only a mission in itself, it is the means by which other missions will be achieved.
“It is only with increased revenue flowing into the exchequer that Government can fulfil its other missions for investment in things like the NHS; education and addressing crime.
“Planning reform is seen as central to boosting economic growth. How many times have we heard the PM, the Chancellor and other Ministers cite planning reform as the key means to be “builders not blockers”? “Changing regulation is a relatively cheap way to stimulate investment and economic activity and it can be put in place relatively quickly. Hence revising NPPF is in the Government’s 100 day plan.”
It certainly seems that the commitment is there - now to see it put into action with employment and logistics playing an integral part.
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