Keir Starmer and the Brownfield Passport

Even Keir's good ideas happened far too slowly

Keir Starmer is done. And bad ideas and poorly thought through plans are a big reason why.

But another failure mode of the Starmer government is underdiscussed. There are a handful of policy areas where Starmer did have the right idea and was moving in the right direction. The trouble was they were being implemented at a glacial pace.

The Brownfield Passport is announced

Most governments say that they want to prioritise brownfield development when building new homes. Partly because its popular, but also because it’s a good idea, building more in cities is better for the economy than building in the countryside, all else being equal. Labour put some very vague words to this effect in their manifesto:

Labour will take a brownfield first approach, prioritising the development of previously used land wherever possible, and fast-tracking approval of urban brownfield sites.

Keir Starmer did the same in his first and penultimate conference speech as Prime Minister:

And because we have started the hard yards of planning reform. Because we are facing up to decisions ignored for years. Because we are introducing new planning passports that will turbo-charge housebuilding in our inner cities.

This was a couple of days after the housing department MHCLG announced a working paper on what a ‘Brownfield Passport’ could be.

The basic idea of a Brownfield Passport was to make the default answer to planning applications on previously developed urban land “yes”, provided they met clear rules on principle, scale and form. Done properly, this could have meant more rules-based certainty for developers, whether through stronger wording in the National Planning Policy Framework, National Development Management Policies, or Local Development Orders.

A Brownfield Passport is a good idea. But planning rules changes take time to be implemented, it takes time for councils, developers and planning inspectors to work out what they mean and what can now legally be done. And it also takes time to actually build a house. So if you want planning reform to deliver results before the next election you need to move fast. Duncan Robinson at The Economist notes that a PM’s most impactful policy changes typically come in their first 100 days. Ideally Labour should have had a firm idea of what they wanted to do on day one in power. But having something workable 3 months in was hardly disastrous.

Now we play the waiting game

When the MHCLG paper was announced they invited feedback, but were keen to point out this was not a ‘formal consultation’. And then… nothing happened for a very long time. Then a whole 15 months later (around two-thirds of Keir Starmer’s total time as Prime Minister and 25% of the whole parliament) in December 2025 the government announced some potential new changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, a key document where Ministers decree what can and cannot be built within the bounds of existing planning law. While the term Brownfield Passport was gone, the actual policies announced would achieve almost exactly the same result.

The consultation closed at the start of March. In theory, they could have responded soon after (and put the policies in place). Yet, the response was delayed. Twice. A response was expected before Summer Recess. This is unlikely now with a new PM and Housing Secretary.

Starmer had basically the correct idea that probably would have been helpful for his political project in the long run. But he was simply too slow at implementing it for it to make any real difference before his premiership collapsed.

Why was Keir so slow?

The civil service (my former employer) is a deeply imperfect organisation. However, working on something the Prime Minister had personally announced is pretty prestigious. It would not have been that hard to get enthusiastic, ambitious civil servants to work on brownfield passports.

And if progress was too slow, a good minister working to achieve the Prime Minister’s objectives should have been able to make clear that this was a priority, set deadlines, demand regular updates, and remove obstacles. If something is genuinely a Prime Ministerial priority, the system normally notices. Teams get attention. Senior officials ask questions. Ministers chase. Capacity is found. Trade-offs are forced. Even our sclerotic system can usually move when the centre of government really wants it to.

But did the Prime Minister actually care? I’ve not found any record of Starmer mentioning this policy in public during the whole of 2025. Nor is there any evidence he was pushing for it more strongly behind closed doors. Of course, if the Prime Minister has a clear overarching project of which this policy forms a coherent part it may be possible that people would implement the PM’s preferences without him pressing on it directly. That was not the case for Keir Starmer.

It wasn’t just Brownfield Passports

Something that may end up being a major legacy of Keir Starmer are planned changes to Nuclear Regulation. The Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce he commissioned has the potential to speed up and massively reduce the cost of new nuclear in the UK. Their report is almost unimprovable and understandably it took some time to assemble the necessary experts and for them to write the report.

But since the report’s release in November 2025 implementation has been slow. Only 2 of the recommendations of the panel have been completed, while 11 are already off track, watered down or have been abandoned entirely.

A Nuclear Regulation Bill was included in the King’s speech, but the reforms weren’t expected to be complete before the end of 2027 even before the Prime Minister announced his resignation. They are simply too slow to implement policies to speed up the delivery of a notoriously slow technology.

This inability to see through change is part of why Starmer will not be remembered as a successful PM. But on housing and nuclear in particular, he did at least start the process of moving policy in the right direction. He was unable to turn speeches and well written reports into action. However this failure has left Andy Burnham something he can pick up and turn into more homes and cheaper energy.