Monday, 17 September 2012

Housing and Growth – Statement by Eric Pickles

The following are quotes from a written statement on Housing and Growth by Eric Pickles.

*Increasing investment in the private rented sector – [Government] will be investing £200 million in housing sites to ensure that the high-quality rented homes that are needed are available to institutional investors quickly. [A] taskforce [will] bring together developers, management bodies and institutional investors to broker deals and deliver more rented homes.
*Affordable Housing Guarantees and tackling empty homes - We will be extending the use of guarantees to cover borrowing needed to deliver more affordable homes.  We also intend to … bring an additional 5,000 existing empty homes back into use. In total we will invest another £300 million.
*Accelerating large housing schemes - Government will work in partnership with local authorities, scheme promoters and communities to accelerate delivery of locally-supported, major housing sites.
*Getting surplus public sector land back into use - Government will accelerate the release of surplus public sector land by strengthening the role of HCA outside London through a targeted programme of transfers from other Government Departments and agencies. We will also work to accelerate disposals by preparing the land for market and providing a single 'shop window' for all surplus public sector land
*Reducing planning delays - We propose to legislate to allow applications to be decided by the Planning Inspectorate, if the local authority has a track record of consistently poor performance in the speed or quality of its decisions. We will be working with the Local Government Association to increase the use of Planning Performance Agreements for major schemes - which commit both applicants and planning authorities to a clear timetable for determining proposals.
*Reducing the cumulative burden of red tape - It is vital that the affordable housing element of Section 106 agreements negotiated during different economic conditions is not allowed to undermine the viability of sites and prevent any construction of new housing. The Government will now introduce legislation…which will allow any developer of sites which are unviable because of the number of affordable homes, to appeal with immediate effect. The Planning Inspectorate will be instructed to assess how many affordable homes would need to be removed from the Section 106 agreement for the site to be viable in current economic conditions.
*Getting empty offices into use - We will introduce permitted development rights to enable change of use from commercial to residential purposes.
Read more on the CLG website

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