One of the specialisms at Origin3 is researching and engaging with Development Plans, Local Plans and other planning policy documents - because we believe a strong plan led system based on clear spatial strategies which aim to boost delivery of new homes as part of wider placemaking vision is crucial to addressing the UK’s housing crisis.
Bear in mind that these are the projects we have been working on in 2024, and therefore we have been dealing with the NPPF that was published 12 months ago, setting out a national policy framework seemingly designed to stifle and restrict opportunities to deliver the new homes that people desperately need. Despite these challenges, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that:
However, we are increasingly seeing Local Plans across the South-West and other places attempting to avoid delivering enough housing to meet needs, with Councillors quite happy to claim that they are delivering homes, without noting that their delivery is based upon successful appeals against refusal, or that Local Plan strategies frequently seem to be based on reducing build rates and minimising housing targets. A Councillor recently complained about “Planning Anarchy” because his Committee had to permit a housing scheme, without realising that the “anarchy” is in fact the 5-year land supply and presumption in favour of sustainable development operating exactly as it was meant to – bringing forward housing to ensure needs are met in locations where Councils are not facing up to their responsibilities to providing much needed new homes for people.
Which is why we are awaiting the publication of the new NPPF, following the LURA being enacted a week ago, with some trepidation. Will the new NPPF follow the draft, published nearly a year ago, and water down the expectation that LPAs will use the standard method to calculate their housing need? Will it weaken the 5-year land supply process and allow Councils who submit a plan, no matter how well produced, to only have to show a 4-year land supply of land for new homes, and then to simply monitor delivery after the plan is adopted? There was a suggestion a few weeks ago, when a couple of Councils were instructed to continue with their plan making processes, that a change might be in the air. But since then we haven’t seen anything to suggest a change of heart, despite suggestions that the planning changes, along with the weak state of the economy, may mean that as few as 125,000 new homes will be completed this year – less than half of the Government’s 300,000 new homes aspiration.
The issue we face seems to be that the Government is now ‘playing to the gallery’ and is setting policy which aligns more with the views of Councillors bemoaning “Planning Anarchy” than with the people, young and old, who struggle to find a secure place they can call home. It is aiming to have all the instruments that make up the new planning system in place and in force by November next year – and this timing aligns very well with the General Election timescales we are hearing about. The Conservatives may be setting out a position, where they will be able to suggest that if voters return them to power, the planning reforms they have put in place will remain. On the other hand, we are hearing that if Labour were to come to power they would undo the planning reforms as one of their first acts of Government, with one Labour shadow minister suggesting that they could bring in their own reforms within 5 months of taking power – but with as yet little information as to what those reforms would be.
Planning for badly needed new homes will now be caught up in election politics for the next 12 months. But it may well be that Councils hoping to set out a Local Plan based on subduing housebuilding activity could find themselves in a very different position in 12 months’ time if the election returns a Labour Government.
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