Use Planning Law To Address the Housing Crisis

Background:

Britain faces a housing crisis.

Currently, there are 17.5million people living in poor or unaffordable housing and there is a cumulative demand for more than four million homes. 

There are 1.3 million families on the social housing waiting list with 169,000 children registered as homeless.

While the Labour Government has seen house building as one of the engines of economic growth, its policy does little to address the housing crisis and, in particular, the need for affordable and accountable rental accommodation. These have to be provided through housing associations and, preferably, through public housing.

The Labour manifesto promised 1.5 million homes in the present Parliament, with the assumption that this would come mostly from private developers. Whether this is achievable is a matter of debate.

It is reported that development has stalled due to rising costs and other factors. One assumption was that there would be a take-up of sales through ‘buy to let’ investors. Even if this increases the rental stock, rents are likely to be unaffordable to all those seeking homes at affordable/social rents.

The current policy of the Labour Government, which has almost completed its legislative process, sees planning as the key instrument to encourage housing development and, thus, contributing to economic growth. But what is being proposed does not address the need for providing public rental homes to address the problems set out above. Not only that, but it seriously weakens environmental protection (which could damage the economic reset with the EU). It has been reported that the Government has met the large private housing developers on numerous occasions whilst refusing to meet groups concerned about the environmental impacts of the legislation. This has to be a matter of concern as it appears that the large commercial house-builders have an inside track to Ministers.

Proposal:

Using planning law and regulation is the right way to go forward.

However, just allowing the large private developers to go ahead with extensive house building for sale – largely unaffordable whatever might be claimed – just creates even more profits for the house-building industry and does not address the need for public rental accommodation.

What is proposed is to use planning law/regulations to force the provision of homes for rent as follows:

1. Any development above a de minimis of say 20 houses has to allocate one third of homes to the local authority for rent;

2. This would be provided at cost (i.e. no profit margin) with the developer fully recompensed for building costs - from the Labour government allocation of £39 billion over the next 10 years for social and affordable housing;

3. This allocation should be almost entirely devoted to the provision of public social housing; 
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4. The housing so provided would consist of a mix of units from single bedroom units to family sized units as determined by the local authority in response to locally determined need;

5. The ‘Right to Buy’ would not apply for 10 years after continuous occupancy and only if for every unit sold a replacement unit can be provided;

6. All housing, whether for sale or rent, should be built with solar panels, heat pumps and EV charging as standard. In 2022, greenhouse gas emissions from housing accounted for 20% of the UK’s GHG output.

The outcome of such a system would restore the provision of local authority homes for affordable/social rent and would address the huge waiting lists and the problem of homelessness, especially as it affects children. While this is not an immediate panacea as it depends on actual building, by the end of a decade of this policy the stock of housing for publicly owned housing for rent would have been restored to a pre-Thatcher level.

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Tony Mayer a member of North Swindon CLP and was the former Leader of the Borough Council.

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