APPG UPDATE: SUBURBAN TASKFORCE

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for London’s Planning and Built Environment met in December 2020 to discuss the emerging findings of the cross-parliamentary Suburban Taskforce, for which the APPG provides the Secretariat, ahead of an Update Report which was launched in February 2021.

Update by Jonathan Manns

The cross-party Taskforce was established, with the backing of the Government, to shine a light on the suburbs in order to identify and secure the clear, long-term and properly resourced policies needed to support thriving, sustainable and inclusive suburban areas. It has spent since March 2020 reviewing evidence on the state of Britain’s suburbs in order to make recommendations to the Government in Summer 2021 on policy initiatives to enhance them. It is co-chaired by Dr Rupa Huq MP and David Simmons MP, assisted by UCL as Knowledge Partner and with an expert Advisory Board chaired by British urbanist Jonathan Manns.

Jonathan began by setting out the Taskforce’s purpose and programme before summarising progress alongside UCL’s Dr Lucy Natarajan and Dr Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros. They suggested that the analysis suggests suburban areas can be seen as clearly distinct from urban or rural locations but cautioned against a one-size-fits-all approach. They instead put forward the proposition that it may be more appropriate to understand them against a spectrum of characteristics and highlighted the continued relevance of long-established ‘suburban debates’ about their relationship to urban centres and management of growth pressures, in addition to the potentially transformative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Members of the Taskforce then heard feedback from some of the respondents to the “Call for Evidence” which ran from August-October 2020. This included Prof Laura Vaughan (UCL), Georgina Day (LB Enfield), Richard Stacey (Evoke Transport Consultants) and James Mitchell (Axiom Architects). They collectively touched on matters from the importance of local culture and identity, to variations in built form and key local concerns such as the nature of change and perceptions of travel and congestion. Commenting on the update, Dr Rupa Huq MP stated: “Since this research began, suburban society has changed in ways unimaginable at the time with working from home for white collar staff, a new appreciation of space, and lockdown all subsequently normalised. This provides a solid basis for the next phase of this groundbreaking work to build on... and I personally can’t wait.”

Jonathan Manns is a Board Director at Rockwell Property, and a London Society trustee.