MHCLG Announces Allocations For £45m Land Release Fund

Ministers have announced the allocations for its £45m Land Release Fund, aimed at building infrastructure and roads to unlock local authority-owned sites for development. The money has been awarded to successful bids for 79 schemes from 41 councils across England. The government estimates the funding could release land for up to 7,280 new homes. It will be spent on a range of remediation measures, including asbestos removal, road alterations and “bat alleviation”, according to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). Read more on Inside Housing.

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Planners Have the Tools to Make Homes Affordable

Now that the housing market is reviving and developers are demanding that planners release more land, it's vital to ensure that a high proportion of the homes built are affordable. Planners can do this through the obligations they can impose when they give planning permission, but there is little encouragement for them to do so. Why is this? Planners have been able to ensure new development leads to more affordable housing since 1990, through powers known variously as planning obligations, affordable housing requirements or more technically "section 106 agreements". They can be used to secure part of the scheme for new affordable homes or alternatively to get financial contributions from developers to be used elsewhere. Under previous governments, these obligations had massive importance. In 2010 56% of new affordable housing resulted from section 106 agreements. Read more on the Guardian website.