Industry unimpressed by watered down housing targets

The government’s decision to scrap housing targets as announced by levelling up secretary, Michael Gove earlier this week, has not gone down well within the sector.

In a statement Rics said it welcomed the government’s continued focus to regenerate towns and put local people in control of their future.It agreed that protecting the character of an area is important to local communities, however, stressed that this cannot be to the detriment of providing good, affordable housing for local communities.

The statement added that in order for local authorities to achieve this, it may be the case that the government undertake a review of the current green belt policy to transparently consider the benefits and trade-offs that apply to its current operation.

Commenting on the announcement, Rics senior public affairs officer Robert Toomey said: ”The focus from Government on reforming planning is important and the acknowledgement of the significant role that planners play in realising housing and development across the UK is to be welcomed.

Nevertheless, the Government’s decision to water down housing targets is disappointing.Housing pressures are being acutely felt by people across England and the scrapping of the target of building 300,000 new homes a year, will not help to alleviate this pressure”.

In addition, he insisted that resource and funding were key to allowing planning departments in local authorities to work effectively.“Again, the announcements made by Michael Gove are to be welcomed, but more needs to be done to ensure these departments are as efficient as possible so that they can work in the best interest of local people.

Woods Hardwick planning director Russell Gray was highly critical of the latest government announcement.

“The combined effect of the key changes to the framework, including the emphasising that there is no requirement for Green Belt boundaries to be reviewed to meet housing need, the inclusion of the word “advisory” in the paragraph stating that the standard method is the starting point for calculating housing need, and the dilution of the five year housing land supply of housing, will inevitably lead to a reduction in planning permissions and ultimately the delivery of new homes that are desperately needed across the country”.

Gray added that the government had already fallen well short of its own housing delivery target over this parliament and there was little in the changes to give comfort that the considerable uptick in supply and delivery needed is on the horizon.

Far worse, he argued that housing completions were very likely to drop further still.

“The first two of these amendments, in particular, are clearly intended as political messages to those local authorities who do not wish to meet their local needs and aimed at quelling the disquiet of the Tory backbenchers and shoring up votes from those opposed to development in their local areas.”

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