Numbers of new-builds are important, but the housing crisis is about more than bricks and mortar. The government must address all areas of housing to stand a chance of enacting meaningful change, says Simon Graham.
The Conservative government’s white paper on Levelling Up and Regeneration already feels lost in the mists of time. But you may recall that then Secretary of State, Michael Gove, was demanding nothing less than a revolution in the way national and local government works together if major regional economic and social improvements are to be achieved.
Now, Labour is attempting to make that revolution a reality through its changes to local government and the planning system.
Local government looks set for its biggest reorganisation since the early 1970s. Labour wants unitary authorities to be the norm, with more mayors and more devolution deals. That will mean the merging of district councils and two-tier authorities. The intention is for more streamlined services, devolution of stronger powers on issues like planning, transport and housing, quicker decision making and better prospects for attracting inward investment. It will also allow for easier strategic planning across old local authority boundaries.
But, as Sir Keir Starmer made clear in his ‘Plan for Change’ in early December, alongside more powers come more responsibilities, and if local leaders choose not to play ball with Labour’s agenda for housebuilding, the government will not hesitate to step in.
The revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) reaffirmed Labour’s target for 370,000 homes to be built annually. That’s over 100,000 homes a year more than have been built in any year since the 1970s, a task Starmer called, with significant understatement, an “almighty challenge”.
He described the planning system as “a blockage in our economy that is so big it obscures an entire future,” getting in the way of new homes, roads, rail routes, wind farms, power stations and more. “If we want good houses, transport and energy supplies, we have to build them. There is no other way,” he said, promising to take on the vested interests and end the ‘can’t be done’ culture.
To get things moving in the right direction, Labour is reinstating the requirement for local planning authorities to have five years’ supply of land identified, plus a buffer, plus sites and broad locations identified for years 6-10. The Housing Delivery Test will remain in place to ‘encourage’ compliance. The default planning answer on brownfield land will be ‘yes’ and green belt reviews will be mandatory where more land for housing is needed, with ‘grey belt’ sites first in line for development.
Local authorities will have three months to come up with timetables for producing new local plans where none exist or they are no longer fit for purpose. Broader economic planning requirements are dealt with through this month’s Planning & Infrastructure Bill.
One notable modification from July’s draft NPPF is that the ‘golden rule’ for 50% affordable housing on sites in the greenbelt will now instead be a requirement for 15% more affordable housing than in a local authority’s standard planning obligation policies, up to a maximum 50%. If there is no local policy around affordable housing obligations, the default in the greenbelt will be 50%, subject only to sites remaining viable (a big ‘if’, as London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has discovered).
These are serious changes, which will substantially and positively alter the planning and local government landscape. If Labour can pull it off, there should be more homes built more quickly than we have seen in many years.
Berkeley Homes has already come out and indicated that the planning system has started to shift in response to the proposals. It is optimistic an inflexion point is being reached, which will lead to more growth and investment in housing.
Yet despite the scale and ambition, these changes in and of themselves will not improve affordability or certain other problematic aspects of our housing market before Labour has to face the electorate again in 2029.
Even if the magical 1.5 million new homes can somehow be achieved by then, which most informed commentators think highly unlikely, there is so far zero clarity on how enough will be made affordable to those who really need them and how we avoid a focus on numbers and speed creating the kind of unintended negative consequences seen through 1960s’ system-building, the 2010s’ deregulation agenda and permitted development ‘slums of the future’. The lack of high-quality skilled tradespeople available increases the risks, not only of failing to build sufficient homes, but failing to build good-quality, sustainable homes.
This is where Angela Rayner’s promise to produce a long-term housing strategy this year becomes crucial. Labour must be much clearer about its housing objectives. Focusing on a number is not an adequate response to our multifaceted housing crisis.
We need to understand how better affordability will be delivered, how the construction workforce can be renewed and grown, what the expectation is around reducing homelessness and improving housing quality, how energy efficiency and net zero will be layered into the plans, how the dominance and power of the top 10 housebuilders can be lessened and competition enhanced to improve build out rates, how the land market and property tax systems can be reformed, what a business-supportive but robust regulatory system looks like, and so much more.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill and NPPF changes are big and important stepping stones. The national housing strategy and the Spending Review, with its new Affordable Housing Programme, are vital next steps. They must provide the necessary clarity on Labour’s overall housing destination, so we get the homes we need in the places we need them.
This article features in the January issue of Show House magazine. Read the full issue here.
