Planning and Circular Economy

The Problem

Britain has the slowest planning system in the developed world. The average decision now takes 318 days, more than double 15 years ago. Major infrastructure projects routinely take a decade. Housing targets are missed every year, not because we lack the population that needs homes, but because the system is structured to delay. Meanwhile our glass recycling is a fraud: we collect 76% of glass packaging but only 30% goes back into new bottles. The rest is downcycled to road aggregate. The glass industry has lobbied successfully for decades to keep recycled content low because virgin glass is marginally cheaper to produce. The environment pays the difference.

A. Hard Statutory Time Limits With Deemed Approval

Local planning authorities have a fixed time limit to decide an application. If they fail to decide within the limit, deemed approval is granted automatically, subject to statutory environmental and safety standards being met:

• Householder applications (extensions, conversions): 8 weeks
• Minor development: 12 weeks
• Major residential or commercial: 16 weeks
• Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects: 12 months

The time limit is hard. Not a target with an exemption. Not a target where a formal extension can be agreed. A deadline with a consequence. Applicants who meet all statutory requirements and submit a complete, valid application receive deemed approval if the authority fails to decide in time. The authority can still impose conditions, but it cannot block indefinitely.

B. Environmental Survey Reform

Currently, applicants commission their own ecological surveys, often from consultants who know that slower, more extensive surveys prolong fee income. A developer wanting to build 200 homes can be required to commission surveys for species that may not exist on the site, in seasons when the species are active, over multiple years. Forge mandates standardised surveys with defined scope, defined timelines, and defined conditions that trigger mitigation rather than refusal.

• Standard ecological survey format prescribed by Natural England, not bespoke per application
• Survey season requirements based on actual habitat type, not maximised to extend timeframes
• Where protected species are found, standard mitigation measures are pre-approved. Surveys trigger mitigation, not indefinite re-survey
• Major survey failures that delay projects are compensated from a national ecological mitigation fund rather than halting development entirely

C. Digital Planning

Planning applications submitted digitally in machine-readable formats. Documents searchable, accessible, and auditable. A single national portal replaces 300+ separate local authority planning portals. Objections submitted online with structured fields, removing the cottage industry of vexatious and repetitive paper objections. Planning decisions published in a searchable national database so legal precedent can be properly assessed and applied.

D. Sewage and Utilities: Capacity Before Permission

Housing developments are currently granted planning permission and then cannot be connected to the sewage network because treatment works are full. The homes are built but cannot be occupied. Forge requires that utility capacity (water, sewage, electricity grid connection) is confirmed available before major residential planning permission is granted. Utilities that cannot confirm capacity within 12 weeks of a pre-application query must provide a funded expansion plan. Housing development and infrastructure capacity are aligned, not sequenced with a gap of years between them.

E. Dutch Flood Defence: Room for the River

The Netherlands stopped building higher concrete walls decades ago. Their Room for the River programme created managed flood absorption zones: wetlands, floodplains, and overflow areas that hold water during storms and support wildlife the rest of the year. The approach costs less to maintain than concrete barriers, works better in extreme events, and creates habitat rather than destroying it.

• Designate natural flood absorption zones in every major river catchment. Farmland in Flood Zone 3 purchased at market value and converted to managed wetland
• Ban new housing in Flood Zone 3 entirely. If the land floods, it is a floodplain. It is not a building site.
• Mandatory sustainable drainage (SuDS) for all new developments: permeable surfaces, rain gardens, and water retention systems. No more runoff from new estates overwhelming Victorian drains
• Funded partly from insurance savings: the UK currently pays billions on flood damage and insurance payouts. Prevention is consistently cheaper than recovery

F. Housebuilding Targets: 300,000 Homes Per Year

Britain builds approximately 200,000 new homes per year. The consensus target across all parties is 300,000. The gap between these two numbers is the planning system. Brownfield sites with planning permission sit unbuilt. Land with outline permission does not progress to detailed application. The viability system allows developers to renegotiate affordable housing obligations after permission is granted. Forge addresses the specific blockers rather than announcing a target and hoping.

• Use it or lose it on planning permissions. Any full planning permission not commenced within 2 years expires automatically. The land bank problem, where major housebuilders hold land with permission without building, is ended. Recommencement requires a fresh application at current standards.
• Affordable housing viability reform. Developers can currently renegotiate the affordable housing component of a Section 106 agreement after full permission is granted by claiming the scheme is no longer financially viable. This provision is abolished for all schemes with full permission granted after the Act. The obligation agreed at permission is the obligation that must be delivered.
• Public land release programme. Central government, NHS, MoD, and Network Rail hold significant quantities of surplus land. A single National Land Register publishes all publicly-owned land over 0.5 hectares. Local authorities have first refusal on disposal at use value, not hope value. Land for affordable housing, schools, and healthcare is sold at cost rather than auctioned to the highest bidder.
• Small sites fast-track. Sites under 25 units get an 8-week determination guarantee with automatic approval on deemed compliance with design codes. Small and medium builders, who build faster and more responsively than national housebuilders, are the most constrained by the current system. Removing the 8-week barrier for small sites releases this capacity immediately.
• Design codes replace aesthetic objection. Local design codes specify materials, heights, and massing. An application that meets the design code cannot be refused on aesthetic grounds. The current system allows planning committees to refuse applications because a councillor personally dislikes the design. This consumes years and produces nothing. Design code compliance is a pass/fail test, not a matter of opinion.

G. New Towns and Urban Extensions: The Garden City Model

Britain has not built a successful new town since the 1960s. The model worked: Milton Keynes, Crawley, Stevenage, and Harlow are functioning towns with good housing stock that would not exist without the new town programme. The reason we stopped is political: nobody wants a new town in their constituency. Forge changes the incentive structure:

• New Town Development Corporations for up to 10 sites over the parliament, each targeting between 5,000 and 25,000 homes. The Corporation has its own planning authority, which bypasses the local planning system entirely. The local authority receives the council tax and business rates revenue from the new town for 20 years, creating a genuine financial incentive for the host authority to support rather than resist.
• Infrastructure first. New Town Corporations are funded to install roads, sewage, schools, and healthcare before a single house is sold. The infrastructure deficit that has made large-scale development politically toxic for a generation is addressed at the programme design stage.
• Community ownership stake. 10% of the land value uplift from new town designation goes into a community fund controlled by elected local residents. Benefits flow to the community, not exclusively to landowners and developers.

H. Regional Planning: Economic Development as a Planning Purpose

The current planning system has no mechanism for taking regional economic development into account in planning decisions. A logistics hub that would create 2,000 jobs in a deprived area faces the same planning process as one in an already-prosperous area. Economic contribution is not a material planning consideration in the way flood risk or heritage impact are.

• Economic development designated as a material planning consideration. In areas designated as economic development priority zones (covering the 50 lowest-productivity local authority areas), economic benefit is given explicit weight in planning decisions alongside environmental and heritage factors. This does not override environmental protection. It ensures that economic need is not invisible in the calculation.
• Priority Planning Zones for left-behind areas. The 50 local authorities with the lowest GVA per head automatically receive additional planning permissions, faster processing, and fee waivers for commercial and industrial development. They also receive a share of the property tax redistribution fund specifically earmarked for planning department capacity, ending the situation where the poorest councils have the fewest planners and the slowest decisions.
• Compulsory purchase reform. The current compulsory purchase compensation system pays hope value, which means the public sector pays speculative future development value to acquire land for public purposes. Forge moves to current use value plus 25% for all compulsory purchase. Public bodies can then afford to assemble land for infrastructure, affordable housing, and economic regeneration without being held to ransom.

F. Circular Economy: Mandatory Glass Recycling Content

The UK recycles around 76% of glass packaging by weight but only 30% goes back into new bottles. Most of the rest is downcycled to aggregate for road construction. Germany achieves 90% bottle-to-bottle recycling. The UK glass industry has lobbied successfully for decades to keep recycled content low because virgin glass is marginally cheaper to manufacture. The environmental cost is borne by everyone else.

• Mandatory recycled glass content for new packaging, phased: 40% by Year 2, 60% by Year 3, 75% by Year 5. Manufacturers can use recycled glass certificates where local supply is genuinely unavailable, but the content must be real
• Deposit Return Scheme by Year 2. A 20 pence deposit on every glass bottle and aluminium can sold, refunded on return to any retailer. Germany, Norway, and most US states already operate this with return rates above 95%. England's scheme has been delayed and delayed. Forge delivers it.
• Plastic and aluminium targets. The EU mandates 25% recycled PET content by 2025. Forge: 50% by 2028, 75% by 2030 for plastic bottles. Similar mandatory content targets for aluminium and steel packaging.
• Right to repair extended to 10 years. Manufacturers selling electronics, white goods, and small appliances must provide spare parts at reasonable cost for 10 years after sale, repair instructions publicly available, and standard tools used where possible. Planned obsolescence treated as consumer fraud under the Corporate Accountability Act (Section IX).
• Replaceable batteries mandated. Phones, laptops, and tablets sold in the UK must use replaceable batteries within 5 years. Repairable beats disposable.