The UK has a housing crisis. Ministers want to build 1.5m new homes by the end of the parliament, and the only way to do this, the government argues, is to overhaul planning rules. On Thursday, the government published an 82-page National Planning Policy Framework report outlining what it hopes to do – and how.
What does the report say?
It’s technical and in places, confusing. But essentially it sets out the criteria that should be used to help turbocharge building by shaking up planning rules.
In the House of Commons, the housing minister Matthew Pennycook recognised that some of the proposals would meet “resistance from vested interests”. But he said ministers were determined to push on.
“The government is under no illusions about the scale of the task before us or the challenges that must be overcome and the pitfalls avoided if we’re to succeed, but we are absolutely determined to tackle this crisis head on,” he said.
The task is ambitious: ministers require an average of 370,000 homes to be approved a year to meet demand – the last time more than 300,000 were built in a year was when Harold Wilson was prime minister in 1970.
Who needs to do what – and by when?
The revised framework re-introduces mandatory targets for councils. Under a new standardised assessment of need, London is the only region which has a reduced requirement, with the annual target falling from 98,822 to 87,992.
All regions will need to deliver an annual housing approval uplift of above 20%, with the largest rise of 79% required in the north-east followed by 61% in the north west.
Under the previous planning framework, just under one-third of local authorities had adopted a local plan within the last five years. Labour is now talking tough on intervention, vowing to take over local plans if councils fail to comply with their new allotted targets – a bold move to manage numbers on a micro level.
Councils will have 12 weeks from Thursday to ensure their local plans are up to date and comply with the new framework
Will there be building on green belt land?
The answer seems to be – quite possibly.
The document says the government “attaches great importance to green belts”, which are there to “prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open”.
And building on brownfield sites is still the priority.
But given the scale of the challenge, that will not be enough – and some types of building on green belt land should be considered.
It says a “development which complies with its five ‘golden rules’ should be given significant weight in favour of the grant of permission.”
So what are these golden rules?
The document says the rules “represent a set of requirements aimed at balancing the need for housing with the protection of green belt land”. The rules are there, it says, “to ensure that such development provides benefits to the community and mitigates potential negative impacts on the green belt”.
However, it goes on to say there are certain types of building that could be undertaken without breaking the rules. Specifically, this includes “the provision of … affordable housing … necessary improvements to local or national infrastructure … and the provision of new, or improvements to existing, green spaces that are accessible to the public. New residents should be able to access good quality green spaces within a short walk of their home …”
Not all of the homes built on green belt would have to be affordable housing, but the document says this has to be a priority. It says that “a 50% affordable housing contribution should apply by default” if there is no “pre existing requirement”.
What about so-called grey belt land?
The government defines “grey belt” as land in the green belt “comprising previously developed land” or land that does not strongly contribute to three of the five purposes of the green belt: checking urban sprawl, preventing the merging of neighbouring towns, and preserving the character of historic towns. The document doesn’t say this explicitly, but it seems to suggest that building in grey belt areas could be considered favourably.
The government says this grey belt definition will allow for development on land “that is not already previously developed as we believe it is important that we also consider the development potential of land which, though it may be formally designated as green belt, no longer adequately serves the green belt purposes.”
What do critics say?
The introduction of the “golden rules” do seem to represent a relaxation of what had been previously rigid planning rules. The Tories accused the government of waging a “war on rural England”, with theshadow housing secretary , Kevin Hollinrake, claiming that most of the 1.5m proposed new homes would be going to migrants.
This remark was condemned by other MPs. Labour’s Adam Jogee said the comments are “not the kind of gutter politics we should be engaging with”.