Housing secretary, Michael Gove, has confirmed that the government will abolish mandatory housebuilding targets for councils.
The U-turn comes after reportedly over 100 MPs rebelled against the planned inclusion of mandatory housing targets in the levelling up bill by submitting an amendment that would see the targets become advisory.
A vote scheduled for Monday 28 November was pulled so that more conversations could take place, and today (5/12), amid growing support for the rebel amendment, Gove has announced that mandatory targets will be scrapped.
According to PA Media, Gove said he recognises “there is no truly objective way of calculating how many new homes are needed in an area” but the “plan-making process for housing has to start with a number”.
The amendment would see the centrally-determined target become a “starting point”, with councils given the chance to propose building fewer homes if they faced “genuine constraints” or would have to build at a density that would “significantly change the character” of their area.
Theresa Villiers MP, who initially proposed the amendment, said: “The government has listened and will amend planning rules so that councils which are subject to genuine constraints will be permitted to reduce their [housing] target. This will apply if meeting the centrally determined target would significantly change the character of an area, for example from suburban to high-rise urban.”
“The compromise we have secured shows that positive change can be achieved through backbench scrutiny of legislation.”
The amendment had faced criticism since its announcement, most notably from former housing secretary, Simon Clarke and Robert Colvile, director of the CPS think tank, who wrote in The Times that the amendment would “enshrine nimbyism as the governing principle of British society – to snap the levers that force councils to build, and leave every proposed development at the mercy of the propertied and privileged.”
