Getting Britain Building again?
Some questions for Angela from today’s announcements from MHCLG…
Bringing Back mandatory housing targets - rising the target to 370,000 new homes per annum - a great idea, but mandatory housing targets were government policy before it was changed by Michael Gove, when the government still wasn’t meeting the 300,000 per annum target. Even when Local Planning Authorities were hit with 5 year land supply free for alls, where developers were able to build what they wanted, where they wanted - because the Planning Inspectorate thought to local council hadn’t planned to build enough homes, - it didn’t result in the volume of housebuilding sought by today’s announcements. So what is going to compel the market to meet the new target?
‘Grey Belt’ land affordable housing targets - again sounds great - 50% affordable homes as a minimum, but where is the funding coming from to pay for them? As shown above, developers are keen to get their hands on greenbelt land, and won’t argue too much about delivering affordable homes there, because they know if they don’t build it out the site it can be taken away from them as soon planning policy changes.
Making it easier to build digital infrastructure - sounds great, but to a commercial developer this sounds like they’ll be able to bring forward those sites next to roads and motorways - those bits of green space between settlements - where they’ll build big sheds for Amazon and the like. Could be good for employment but bad for building sustainable places. Isn’t it unlikely there will be sustainable transport infrastructure included in the developments to connect peoples homes to their employment?
Long Term Plan for housing - again sounds great, but how will it be funded? Rachel just pulled the plug on a load of capital investment, so where’s the money coming from for the affordable homes and all the other good stuff that developers aren’t overly keen to deliver? Will the New Towns Taskforce build on the work already done on the Garden Towns and Villages?
New Towns Code - Good to hear that town will be well connected, well designed sustainable and attractive. The TCPA have a great set of tools to help with that. Sir Michael Lyons has been tasked to find suitable locations within 12 months, but it needn’t take that long, as we identified a number of the likely locations in our recent blog post. These are the Garden Towns and Villages the previous government had already identified as potential growth sites. The reason they haven’t already come forward is the lack of funding and resources.
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