Planning and urban regeneration since 2010: a recipe for conflict and dispute?

Summary Both parties to the present Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government came to power in 2010 with a decentralised, localist policy agenda in planning. In power, the localist agenda has been implemented in part through the establishment of procedures for neighbourhood planning. The benefits of neighbourhood planning look limited, however. Moreover, the main policy priority has been to promote growth and development. That priority has led, in turn, to repeated conflict- with the traditional establishment keen on conservation, with Conservative supporters living in the suburbs and countryside, with local authorities and their national organisations eager to maintain environmental and amenity standards and finally with the supporters of urban regeneration, concerned with the future of areas in decline. Taken together, the range of opposition expresses widespread unease about the implications for social justice and the quality of life.