Harriet Churchill (2011), Parental Rights and Responsibilities: Analysing Social Policy and Lived Experiences . Bristol: Policy Press. £26.99, pp. 256, pbk.

Allmendinger highlights the difficulty of pinning down New Labour’s ideology and the distinct periods which can be seen in New Labour’s approach to planning. He also highlights competing discourses which circulated at the period, some of which were actually in direct tension. This was not unique to planning. Chapter 3 helpfully outlines new institutionalism, the approach adopted here to understanding planning under New Labour, focusing particularly the work of Vivien Lowndes and Vivien Schmidt. Chapter 4 looks at Labour’s urban policy and offers two case studies of King’s Cross and Norton Radstock (near Bath), arguing there were good intentions but poor delivery due to a reliance on an out-dated planning system. Chapter 5 examines Spatial Planning, which Allmendinger calls ‘an enterprise of great pith and moment’ (p. 88). Somewhere between 2001 and 2004, an idea emerged – the book doesn’t pin the source down – that development planning should be radically altered to become a new form of ‘governance glue’. The conclusion is that the concept is vague, undermined by the implementation failures of the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, and its failure to become a new paradigm for planning. Chapter 6 turns to the obsession with speeding-up development control through targets, and incentives through the Planning Delivery Grant. The result, as elsewhere in the public sector, seems to have been strategic manipulation, which meant application processing was sped-up, but without improving customer satisfaction due to a series of negative consequences resulting from a focus on process over outputs. Chapter 7 considers the attempts for a ‘winwin-win’ solution to the longstanding issue of how to fund infrastructure and capture some of the uplift in land value that arises from planning permission being granted. Predictably, New Labour’s proposed Planning Gain Supplement failed to meet any of its objectives. Returning in his conclusion to the frameworks from Chapters 2 and 3, Allmendinger argues that planning policy during this period can best be understood as ‘neoliberal spatial governance’ which has paved the way for further reforms from the current Coalition Government. This is a compelling argument. Indeed, if I was to make any critique of this book, it would not be to dispute its central message, but to wish for more of it. At just 208 pages, this book could have easily held my attention for another 100 pages, and in doing so perhaps the author could have considered some of the topics related to the New Labour planning story which seem absent, or vastly under-considered here, particularly the attempts to make planning more participatory, the attempts for a general ‘culture change’ and the rescaling of planning (including the rise and fall of the regional level). I also came away feeling the author is too pessimistic about the potential of ‘Spatial Planning’ as a concept. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating, well written, and in places pleasingly provocative, read which tells us as much about contemporary governance as about planning.