Housing: Construction – Parliamentary Written Answer

Theresa Villiers: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will seek to amend planning rules to encourage the building of homes with gardens in response to the covid-19 outbreak.

Christopher Pincher: The National Planning Policy Framework encourages local planning policies and decisions to ensure developments create places that promote health and well-being with a high standard of amenity for existing and future users. The supporting National Design Guide recognises that well-designed shared and private amenity space, including gardens, can promote quality of life for the occupants and users of buildings, and are flexible to adapt to the changing needs of their users over time.

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2020-06-01/51697

Government Lays Down Planning Rules For Future Housing

Councils get an easier challenge to poor quality and unattractive development and communities a greater voice as to how developments should look and feel under new government guidance. To help tackle unaffordable house prices in many areas across the country, the framework sets out a new way for councils to calculate the housing need of their local community-  including different forms of housing, such as retirement homes. The LGA has described it as “hugely disappointing” that the rules didn’t reflect its concerns over nationally set housing targets. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/government-lays-down-planning-rules-for-future-housing/

Former Housing Minister Finds Current Planning System Not Fit For Purpose

Existing planning rules in England should be scrapped as it is no longer able to produce the kind of homes that people need in terms of affordability, health and well-being, according to a new hard hitting report. Former housing minister Nick Raynsford, who chaired the review into planning by the Town and Country Planning Association, says that decades of tinkering to try to make the system more viable and effective have not worked. Launching the report in London, Raynsford described the current system as being ‘built on the back of assertion rather than evidence’ and the result is poor outcomes. He called for a radical, root and branch reform of planning at a national level. Read more on the Property Wire website.

https://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/former-housing-minister-finds-current-planning-system-not-fit-purpose/

May To Offer More Security For Renters

A major shift in Tory housing policy in favour of people who rent will be announced by ministers this week as Theresa May’s government admits that home ownership is now out of reach for millions of families. In a departure from her predecessor David Cameron, who focused on advancing Margaret Thatcher’s ambition for a “home-owning democracy”, a white paper will aim to deliver more affordable and secure rental deals, and threaten tougher action against rogue landlords, for the millions of families unable to buy because of sky-high property prices. Ministers will say they want to change planning and other rules to ensure developers provide a proportion of new homes for “affordable rent” instead of just insisting that they provide a quota of “affordable homes for sale”. Read more on the Observer website.

Highrise Britain!

Planning rules could be overhauled to axe limits on building heights as the Government scrambles to tackle the housing crisis. In what would be one of the biggest overhauls of planning law in 70 years, the CLG could end a ban on new homes being built taller than surrounding property. A white paper on housing policy is set to outline new policies that would demand five year housing quotas from local authorities is set to be published within weeks. The intention is to encourage more three or four storey tenement blocks rather than high rise apartments. Read more on the Daily Mail website.

Why Affordable Housing Is Finally Set For Investment

New-build affordable housing has long been a challenging area for construction, with build volumes from registered providers – housing associations and local authorities – squeezed by political indifference, changeable funding frameworks and planning red tape. Research shows this is changing and that affordable housing now represents a significant area of opportunity for the industry. Three crucial factors now underpin expected growth;

·         First, there are new routes to funding for registered providers that give greater freedom in how they manage their finances.

·         Second, evidence of a more favourable planning regime is starting to show.

·         Finally, political will to get homes built is now behind the housing sector as a whole.

Read more on the Construction News website.

Osborne: 'Building Doesn't Come Easy’

George Osborne has used his party conference speech to reaffirm the Conservative policy toward housing. He said to supporters in Manchester: “Building doesn’t come easy and especially when it comes to new homes and infrastructure that the country needs. We are going to get many more homes built for families to buy, we’re sweeping away planning rules on brownfield sites, this autumn we will direct our housing budget towards new homes for sale. We will give housing association tenants the right to buy. We’ve had enough of people who own their own home lecturing others about why they can’t own their own one too.” Read more on 24dash.

Councils Seeks Clarification on ‘Office-To-Residential’

Permitted development rights (often referred to as ‘office-to-residential’) were introduced in May 2013 to fast-track the conversion of offices to homes, but can result in sub-standard housing and undermine new jobs and economic growth – according to London Councils, which represents the city’s 33 local authorities. The rights, which allow developers to bypass existing planning regulations, are due to expire in May 2016. However, the government has indicated they might be extended and that current exemptions – including Canary Wharf and east London’s Tech City – may be removed. Cllr Claire Kober, London Councils’ Executive member for infrastructure and regeneration, said: “The negative impact of permitted development rights in London is stark and we urge central government to clarify its position on making these rights permanent and removing existing exemptions for central London and many town centres.” Read more on the Housingnet website.

Charities and Businesses Evicted Under Government Planning Rules

A government plan which was intended to bring empty offices back into use has led to some existing business being served with eviction notices, town hall leaders have warned. In some areas new planning rules have brought vacant offices back into use but in others the majority of applications have seen offices which were either partly or fully occupied being turned into flats, a survey by the Local Government Association has found. Office space and affordable housing will be reduced and infrastructure will be put under strain if the temporary changes to permitted development are made permanent, it warns. Read more on the LGA website.

Housing Boom on Horizon

A new housing boom could be on the way - with a relaxation of planning laws prompting a surge in the number of large housing estates being forced through by developers, a study claims. England’s local authorities approved 195,000 planning applications over the past year, which is a 9 per cent rise on the average before legal changes came in promoting sustainable development. The figures come as a Conservative peer said hundreds of thousands of homes must be built on 800 square miles of British countryside where there are ‘big, open, flat fields of no agricultural merit’. Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise said the Government must allow construction on greenfield areas - and added that he does not believe the country is already over-developed.  Read more on the Daily Mail website.

'Beds In Sheds' Warning from Private Landlords Over Benefit Changes

Private landlords have claimed that more people could be forced into poor quality 'beds in sheds’ unless benefit restrictions on new shared housing for young people are eased. The Residential Landlords Association, which represents over 20,000 private sector residential landlords in England and Wales, warned that planning rules are making it difficult to provide the new shared homes needed to keep up with demand. A survey of RLA members found that 55% thought there were insufficient shared homes to cope with the benefit changes. Read more on the RLA website.

Delivery Model Key To 200k Homes Pledge

A future Labour government will have to get the delivery model right to achieve its house building aspirations of 1 million new homes in five years.  Home Group has mapped out a model of delivery – Housing Zones – which could make Labour’s housing aspirations achievable. Home Group’s Housing Zone model brings together a range of existing measures into one coherent framework that makes it suitable for large scale development of the right houses in the right locations, including;

• Incentives and powers granted to allow developers, housing associations and local authorities to dramatically increase the delivery of new housing of all tenures within the zones
• enhanced Compulsory Purchase Orders to enable site amalgamation
• Relaxation of planning regulations

Read more on the Home Group website.

UK Needs More Houses Not Higher Benefits

Anti-poverty campaigners should ditch their support for housing benefit in favour of proposals to bring down the cost of housing for low income families, according to a free market thinktank.  The £21bn cost of subsidising mortgages and rents to low incomes families could be almost halved when the government passes legislation to ease planning rules and allow more house building, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) said.  The number of people claiming housing benefit has increased by 780,000 since the beginning of 2009 to 5 million.  The IEA said that only when property developers and local communities have the freedom to build more homes will the cost of housing begin to fall. Read more on the IEA website.