Towns Are Targeted For New Housing

Ministers are to sweep away planning restrictions on disused urban sites in a bid to reduce the impact of new house building on the countryside. Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said that the Government planned to ‘augment’ its controversial planning reforms with the introduction of ‘practical ways of removing red tape’. These will include a ‘relaxation’ of the rules that make it difficult to convert warehouses and industrial premises into flats and housing estates. This could lead to the construction of a string of new housing developments on edge-of-town sites, reducing the need for house building in open countryside. Plans also include a package of measures to ‘regenerate’ so-called brownfield sites, which have been developed before. Read more on the Daily Mail website.