LOCAL authorities have been warned by the government they should not evade their responsibilities when it comes to housebuilding.
“They must do everything to identify other land suitable for development,” Michael Gove said when it came to eschewing builds on the green belt.
Speaking at RIBA before Christmas, he renewed calls for local authorities to have a five-year plan in place to ensure a “strong pipeline of future homes”.
Local authorities that fail to meet demand will be made to produce an action plan if it falls below 95% of the need, with more stringent action promised if a council falls below 75% of its target.
League tables will be produced showing how local authorities respond to planning requests, the level of their approvals, and their delivery against targets.
“In the two years to September, only 9% of local authorities determined 70% or more of non-major applications within eight weeks,” Mr Gove said.
“On major applications, it is even worse: strip out the Extension of Time Agreements and only 1% of local authorities managed to get through at least 60% of planning applications within the statutory 13-week period.”
Mr Gove also said that a new National Planning Policy Framework, which sets the number of houses a local authority needs to build based on population growth and affordability criteria, was to be tweaked to ensure it would better take local situations into account.
“Local authorities that have sought to vary the number to take account of the need to protect the Green Belt or other areas of environmental, heritage or aesthetic importance have found the Planning Inspectorate invincibly attached to the number first thought of, with only very few exceptions,” Mr Gove said.
“Local authorities have the comfort of knowing they need not re-draw the green belt or sacrifice protected landscapes to meet housing numbers.”
Responding, the leader of Reading Borough Council, Cllr Jason Brock, said: “The Council’s position has always been that it remains essential that the correct planning framework is in place nationally to enable local councils to keep an overview of local planning decisions and any suggestion that local powers may be further eroded is of course of concern.
“Aside from being a key pillar of local democracy, the local planning process plays a significant role in place shaping and ensuring developers take into consideration the local planning policies, whether that is homes reaching high environmental standards, that they do not cause harm to communities and that they make an appropriate contribution to local infrastructure or affordable housing, for example.”
He felt the government’s approaches on housing had not been beneficial to Reading.
“Through its policies the Government is putting the onus on high-density developments in urban areas to absorb the need huge demand for new homes, in particular by applying arbitrary levels of growth to the 20 largest urban areas, including Reading, while simultaneously giving other areas greater flexibility over the level of homes to be provided,” Cllr Brock continued.
“While we do not dispute the need for new homes, and remain committed to addressing the housing crisis within our boundaries wherever possible, they need to be the right homes and to be delivered within a planning framework which offers protection to the local environment.
“Meeting much-needed family housing, for instance, is more challenging in an urban area such as Reading where most of the available sites are at a high density in the town centre.
“The approach to meeting housing needs should be applied consistently across the country in a way that does not actively make it more difficult to meet our national housing needs.”
He added: “The Secretary of State has emphasised the importance of ensuring that plans are up to date. Reading has a local plan in place and is making good progress on updating it to make sure that it continues to be up-to-date.
“However, with changes to the planning system and to national policy being rolled out on a frequent basis, it is extremely challenging to keep plans up-to-date, and the delays in plan production in other authorities are in large part down to continued uncertainty at national level.
“There are elements of the announcement that the Council welcomes, not least the recognition that, where a local authority has done the hard work in getting an up-to-date plan in place, that the authority not be subject to constant challenge on housing numbers at planning appeal, which has significant impacts on strained local authority budgets.
“However, the overall effect is one of continued uncertainty and a different approach between already constrained major urban areas and other parts of the country.”
And Cllr Rob White, Green Party, leader of the main opposition party and Park ward councillor, said: “The problem that we have in Reading is that the Labour council is failing on affordable housing.
“Too many residents are being priced out of the town in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
“We need action from the government to bring forward more truly affordable homes rather than build, build, build resulting in more luxury flats.”
