What is RSS?
16 June 2009
Playing politics with housing supply
In the Government’s Housing Green Paper they state “that housing is critical to Britain’s future – the decisions we take today make a crucial difference to the lives of generations to come. Our first challenge is to provide more homes.” So housing supply should be concerning Government in a major way. But where is the impetus going to come from?
In recent years we have seen a succession of Housing Ministers and CLG Secretaries of State. The latest reshuffle has seen a new team of Ministers at the CLG and as a result it is lacking in direction – at least in the short-term. John Healey does have experience of planning, but the new Ministers have a steep learning curve and bulging in-trays. Therefore there is going to be a vacuum whilst they try to pick up the baton.
CLG’s remit is broad. They set ‘policy on local government, housing, urban regeneration, planning and fire and rescue’ and have responsibility ‘for all race equality and community cohesion related issues and for building regulations, fire safety and housing issues’. This is a critical time for housing and regeneration when we are only building one new home for every three households that are being formed. Indeed, almost 5 million people are likely to be on council waiting lists by the end of this year. We therefore need to do what we can to help the new Ministers get up to speed.
A General Election will happen within the next 12 months and therefore all the parties need to be thinking about what they can do to boost housing supply. The Tories through their Housing Policy Paper are proposing considerable change in scrapping regional planning. It is simply too revolutionary. The Tories' plans would wreak havoc at a time when new housing production is at such low levels and when we need to invest in our infrastructure. It will make the under-supply of housing even worse as planners and everyone else involved in the planning process gets to grips with an entirely new system. It would be far better to modify what we have and make it work better.
However, no party has yet articulated robust plans to tackle the chronic shortage of new and affordable housing across the UK. I would urge all the political parties to fully understand the issues before developing their thinking further. They need to take a more holistic approach to housing reform.
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9 March 2009
The broad impact of the recession in housebuilding
Inadequate housing supply creates a number of highly damaging problems – economically and socially. This year new housing output may be down to a post war low of 80,000 new homes or less. This is just one third of the Government’s annual target.
The obvious implication of the very low levels of housebuilding expected over the next few years is that the supply/demand imbalance, which already existed before the credit crunch, will substantially worsen. This has significant consequences not just for those people who cannot find a decent home to live in, but for all of us.
The fact that so many developments are not starting means Section 106 planning contributions are not happening either. A lot of infrastructure will not be delivered including roads and public transport initiatives, schools, libraries and social and community facilities.
EC Harris’ recent report estimates local authorities benefited to the tune of £9billion from Section 106 planning contributions in the financial year to March 2008. This is predicted to fall to £3billion this year and £2billion next year. This is putting a real strain on council budgets and it is likely that central Government will be asked to fill the funding gap.
Affordable housing contributions have constituted around half the total value of planning obligations secured in England in recent years. Given that local authority waiting lists rose to 1.77 million households by April 2008, affordable housing is a priority. However, the call last week by the 2020 Group to spend £6bn on social rented accommodation is a rather short-sighted solution to a much wider problem.
If we are to tackle the current undersupply of housing resulting from the wider economic downturn, a balanced range of initiatives aimed at kick-starting the construction of housing of all types and tenures is required, resulting in long-term solutions. We need a comprehensive approach to the housing crisis rather than a narrow, short-term mono-tenure focus which is likely to create adverse social consequences.
Finally, no blog post would be complete without a plea to improve the planning system. As the editorial in the FT pointed out on 24 February ‘a significant part of British housing costs comes from the country’s unnecessary labyrinthine and capricious planning process. Liberalising planning must remain the central objective of British housing policy.’ The recent Killian Pretty Review produced many practical ideas for a more efficient and effective planning regime. These should be implemented as soon as possible.
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17 September 2008
A delivery focussed planning system
I spoke a few days ago at the CBI re plan-making and here's an extract.
The Government has tried, I believe, to improve the planning process in various ways over the last few years, no doubt as a response to the many complaints about the fundamental slowness of the system. However, despite their good intentions, the changes have, if anything, further delayed planning decisions.
What we need now is a settled period, because every time there is a change it brings about a period of uncertainty as those involved adapt. This in turn causes further delays.
From my perspective as a developer I have found the whole development process in recent times to be the slowest I have ever experienced.
Responsible planning
Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs) and Local Development Frameworks (LDFs) are an improvement on the previous development plan system. They allow a longer-term and more strategic approach. 15 years is much better than 10 when it comes to promoting and creating large new communities. They help district wide plan making rather than the old system which was more piecemeal. It is fundamentally a very good system.
In many ways we’ve been fortunate to work with a number of local authorities that do have their core strategy (as the key part of their LDF) in place, but progress is painfully slow with national coverage only 7% since the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act came into effect four years ago! This does reflect the huge learning curve that local authorities have had to go through to make them work.
Indeed, national and regional policy has continued to change, thereby creating uncertainty. Self-evidently, producing truly integrated spatial plans that co-ordinate the actions of a wide range of stakeholders takes time and considerable effort, particularly as it is evidence based.
Planning in practice
There are too many layers to LDFs which does delay the system, adds confusion, and we never get to the end of the process! This builds a huge sense of frustration in trying to move the system forward. It is good therefore to see that increasingly there is only one layer after the core strategy that identify the sites for development.
The flexibility to continually review RSSs and LDFs is of great importance. But we do need to speed up the planning process. We need many more LDFs to be adopted under the new Act as we are a long way short of the targets set.
We are working towards ensuring that evidence based policy making does not create difficulties and slow things down.
We must ensure that we move from the process and procedure based system to one that is focussed on outcomes and delivery. Above all else what the nation needs is a responsible and effective planning system.
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Information correct as at 22/06/2010