Professor Tony Crook, Emeritus Professor of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield, and Professor Christine Whitehead from the London School of Economics have won the Sir Peter Hall Award for Research Excellence at the 2020 Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Awards. The result was announced at an online Awards Ceremony on Monday 7 September 2020.
The paper, entitled Capturing development value, principles and practice: why is it so difficult?, examines the debate around how far ‘unearned increments’, particularly those arising with planning permission, should be taxed for the public good, establishes three principles to judge appropriateness (promoting efficiency, equity and public finance principles), examines how far the current system matches these principles and considers modifications to the current system to better achieve desired outcomes and the case for more fundamental reform.
Congratulating Professors Crook and Whitehead, judges Jan Bessell FRTPI, Jim Birrell MRTPI and Nick Gallent FRTPI said: “The judges considered this to be an excellent piece of new and innovative research, of critical importance to contemporary planning debate. Drawing on English experience, it provides transferable lessons and will no doubt be a key resource for understanding value capture generally and planning-based value capture in particular.”
Professor Crook said: “It is a great honour for myself and Christine to be recognised in this way especially as the award is in memory of Professor Sir Peter Hall whose own research had profound and long lasting impacts on public policy. The award is also a tribute to the support and contribution of the many colleagues who have worked on the issue of land value capture with us over many years and over many projects so we want to acknowledge the debt we owe them all: it is their award as much as ours.”