A sweeping overhaul of planning rules to trigger the building of many more affordable homes will be announced by the government this week as it confronts the economic and social legacy of 14 years of Conservative rule.
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner will unveil a new National Planning Policy Framework to MPs on Tuesday before they depart for the summer recess in a move that will strengthen requirements for far higher numbers of affordable homes to be built in areas of need, starting this autumn.
Writing for the Observer before the announcement, Rayner says that since entering government ministers have found a “frankly scandalous legacy” lurking “under each stone we lift”.
She says that with so many people struggling to find a home or roof over their head “delivering social and affordable houses at scale” is her “No 1 priority”.
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Sources close to Rayner, who was brought up in a council home in Stockport, said she was laser-focused on delivering more social housing. There are 4m households in the social rented sector, but nearly 1.3m households on social housing waiting lists.
During Labour’s 13 years of government between 1997 and 2010, there were nearly 363,000 new social rent homes delivered compared with just over 171,000 in the 13 years of Conservative rule between 2010 and 2023 – and of these 45% (more than 77,000) were delivered in the first two years, meaning they were likely to have been the results of the affordable homes programme put in place by the preceding Labour government.
Social housing will be key, “affordable” is pointless if it still means houses are too expensive to buy.
Doesn’t mean squat unless they stop landlords buying new builds and apartments in bulk before they are built, driving the price ot the untouched ones up.
…and make sure that a green belt established in the middle of the 20th century works properly for the 21st.
I sincerely hope this bit isn’t code for “we’re going to build houses wherever the fuck we want, to hell with your biodiversity and local wildlife”.
Also a shit load more houses are only half the requirement. Those houses need to be well insulated, well built, fitted with renewable energy generation and water recycling and supported with appropriate infrastructure such as public transport and additional schools, GP surgeries etc. They also need to be fit for local purpose. Not every location needs another ‘exclusive development of 4 - 5 bedroom homes’, nor do they all need 5000 red brick cookie-cutter Barrett homes and flats.
You can’t just brand 5 acres of shit-tier housing admist a sea of concrete and tarmac and fuck-all else as a successful job done. There needs to be more thought as to how the housing will be used and how well it integrates into the local environment and infrastructure.
It’d also be great if they made at least some effort to make them even remotely pleasant places to look at/drive through/live nearby. Green spaces, trees, water, hedges, grass, greenery. These don’t only benefit wildlife they also make it nicer for people - both those living there and those living nearby. A vague attempt to match local architectural styles would help as well. Make it look like it belongs, not like someone just copy-pasted the same half-dozen house designs all across the country.
But all of these extra requirements cost money and therefore less profit for the housing developers, so I can guess the likelihood of them happening…
Nah sorry I want the UK to look like a shitty asset flip, just that one empty new build copy-pasted everywhere. “Four-bed luxury homes available now!”
Is the supply of new houses what is really causing the problem though? What’s to say that if more planning is granted and the big builders stop land-banking, that these new houses won’t just get snapped up by people who don’t really need them?
My concern with this is that they have been cosying up to the likes of BlackRock so we’ll see a for profit shared ownership scheme that will be just awful in practice and future governments can make it even worse.
For the private market all I want is simpler planning, a ban on building on flood plains, stricter regulations around new build sizing and construction, and taxing land banks at full value of any planning permission they hold or land value, which ever is higher.
Couple that with a mix of social housing based around council housing and not for profit social housing and we are good. However I cannot shake that they are trying to do this on the cheap up front and that costs us in the long term.
