Meeting housing needs is now recognised as a national challenge (see Turn Up the Volume, Part 1). Love or hate it, the Regional Strategy system was intended to force reluctant authorities’ hand on planning for large scale delivery. The requirement to objectively assess needs is intended to have the same effect. But it is only part of the solution, because delivering new places requires a multi agency approach and, fundamentally, a commitment to infrastructure delivery. Assembling land at sensible values to prevent circular viability debates is also critical.
The NPPF has proved a sensible tool for delivering growth by appeal, which sometimes provides a convenient excuse for authorities for not making decisions. The Duty to Co-operate is a good approach but is currently delivering punishment not success in the absence of a duty to agree. If we are genuinely going to deliver the necessary number of new homes of over the next two decades, what reforms will be needed?
Reform on the cards
Labour has committed to a target of 200,000 new homes per year by 2020 if elected. There is loose talk of supplementing the duty to co-operate with a ‘right to grow’, intended to avoid delivery being mired in the same way as schemes like West Stevenage. The RICS wants the Bank of England to get involved. It may be that the political scales are nearing the point where the wrath for failing to meet needs will outweigh the ire for doing so. Hence the fact that whilst Ministerial brief has shrunk, it is the Treasury and the Prime Minister making announcements on housing.
Source: Inside Housing
The first structural change is a recognition in planning that private renting – and the potential for institutional investment in it – is a significant part of the solution. Planning can be used to help create the commercial certainty to attract institutional investment, but PRS developers will need to provide a more persuasive model than cheap public land and affordable housing waivers. How can development structuring using public land and long-term equity get the initial land values right for PRS models? How can affordable tenures – both their type and duration – be innovated to work within them? What is the role for Registered Providers as part of consortia or place-makers in their own right? As CIL rates begin to hit student housing schemes, genuine PRS portfolios will have to prove themselves. So the first change is that “objectively assessed needs” has to ensure that PRS requirements are identified and met. The draft NPPG failed to address that issue which was a missed opportunity.
Three further suggestions for reform will follow in Part 3.
