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This week saw Angela Rayner, secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, outline the new government’s plans to reform housing planning rules.
The new housebuilding targets are aimed at delivering Labour’s promise of 1.5 million new homes by 2029, and Rayner said new rules were focused on increasing construction in areas of high demand, although the ambition in London is being cut from 100,000 to 80,000 new homes
The plans were given a cautious welcome by the LGA, which described the target reforms as “positive first steps on affordable housing”.
Commenting on the proposals, Cllr Claire Holland, housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said: “Local government stands ready to work with national government on their detailed delivery plans to ensure practical solutions to these long-standing problems are found.
She welcomed the consultation on the Right to Buy scheme as “positive news for councils who have seen their stock significantly diminish under the scheme and we look forward to working with government on its ongoing review”.
And the LGA took the opportunity of the new reform announcement to roll out its own research which suggests that the roll-out of five-year local housing deals by 2025 would lead to 200,000 additional social homes being built over the span of 30 years
The new research, “Building a better future”, found over the past 30 years, growth in the housing stock has stagnated; as a result, rolling out five-year local housing deals to all areas of the country that want them by 2025 – combining funding from multiple national housing programmes into a single pot – would make a gamechanging difference.
The researchers suggested: “The certainty of a regime, where local authorities are given secure ringfenced funds for housing for sequential five-year periods, will lead to hundreds of thousands more homes for social rent being built.”
The key to effective reform, the LGA said, is to continue with devolution of housing planning – but that cannot solve the problem alone. “The devolution of previously centralised power in policy areas such as housing under the recent Trailblazer deals for Greater Manchester and West Midlands Combined Authorities marks the first time the Affordable Homes Programme has been devolved outside of the Greater London Authority,” the report said.
“Moving towards a system that allows local management of housing funding is a step in the right direction, though devolution is only part of the story. Greater consistency of funding is key.”
The LGA says that with the appropriate devolution of decision making, it estimates that the impact of five-year funding regimes, “could be equivalent to an additional 21% on social housebuilding.
This chimes with Cllr Holland’s response to Angela Rayner’s reforms: “While national government can provide useful guidance, it is local councils and communities who know their areas best, so changes to national planning policy should be suitably flexible to allow authorities to make judgement decisions on managing competing demands for uses in their local areas,” she said.
“We will look carefully at the changes proposed to planning policy and housing targets.”
