Next stage in U.K. housing policy extends land-use direction powers of the regions
ciobinternational.co.uk 26 July 05
The Government is now looking for a shake-up of the United Kingdom's planning system in order, it says, to get a better response to the demand for more house-building, and ensuring that more first-time buyers get the chance to afford homes of their own. The shake-up proposed is radical, following the pattern of regional planning and housing administration advocated by Kate Barker in her Housing Supply report, adding to it proposals for sub-regional areas which transcend established local authority boundaries within the regions.This may well indicate the beginning of the end of local government as it has been known in Britain for the last 100 years or so. It looks like the next stage of the Deputy Prime Minister's plan for regional government which as things stand at present would superimpose the authority of unelected regional assemblies over that of elected councils.
The language is specific: the consultative document entitled Planning for Housing Provision says that regional spatial strategy will establish the overall level of new housing provision needed in each region. It will therefore need to identify sub-regional housing markets, rather than simply look at administrative boundaries. On that basis the regional authorities will allocate housing numbers to the sub-regional areas including the local authorities within them. But as house builders know very well, the land market is subject to laws of its own and is not readily conformable to the calculations of the planners.
"The purpose of these proposed changes", says the paper, "is to ensure that decisions about the level of new housing required in each area should be based on considerations of the housing market, rather than simply administrative boundaries, and that they should take proper account of affordability and market information about housing need, as well as wider social, economic and environmental considerations."
It gives an example of what this would mean in terms of regional housing strategy in the South East of England from 2006 onward. The idea is that working together with the regional assembly and the regional development agency, the regional housing board would re-form the local authorities in the region to make up some 20 housing market areas. In some cases it means dividing a county such as Hampshire into North and South areas for housing market purposes.
The South East Region which provides a sketch of what is intended is huge. It covers about one eighth of the total land area of England, embracing no fewer than nine counties and several unitary authorities such as Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton on the South Coast. Within in this large domain there would be numbers of housing markets, for example Milton Keynes to the north (1), Oxford City Region (2), North Hampshire (7), Isle of Wight (10), Sussex Coast including Brighton (13), Ashford, Kent (20) and Canterbury and East Kent (21). This is the shape of things to come, as envisaged by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
Resolving constraints on development
The consultative paper says that resolving constraints on development would need regular discussion between stakeholders to highlight where local authorities need to be pro-active. That would include collective action between the sub-regional markets with help from agencies such as English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation, the Regional Development Agency and the Highways Agency - in short, from various agents funded by and taking directions from central government.
Local authorities are being told to allocate land to deliver housing for the first five years of their development plans. They should "roll forward their five year supply of land in response to monitoring take up of the five year supply. Where a local authority has allocated more than five years' worth of developable land, they would roll forward the timing of release of individual sites through a Supplementary Planning Document. This would be of particular advantage to those housing markets which need to be more responsive to changes in the housing market, as SPD takes considerably less time to review than a Site Allocation DPD. The advantage to other housing markets would be to save officer time in the rolling forward process."
It all sounds well worked out but the question which must come up at the consultation stage is whether it will work in practice. The whole procedure is tightly regulated and moreover requires an entirely new approach to the relationship between the planning authorities and the house building industry. It suggests that instead of responding to housing needs within the boundaries of their own districts and planning powers, the local authorities will be implementing housing provision plans determined by regional agencies of the Government. How Mr. Prescott is to deal with the 'democratic deficit' he has acknowledged in this kind of set-up has yet to be revealed.
In justification, he says that for decades, Britain has built too few homes, with the result that too many people on moderate incomes can't afford a home. This is generating a major political problem for the Government but it won't be solved by regional planning and land allocation. It needs something more deep-acting than that to resolve such a long-standing problem.
Mr. Prescott claims that his proposals will mean the planning system can respond faster to the housing market and local needs so that more homes can be built where they are needed. At the same time he is encouraging private developers to contribute more to the cost of public services, roads and affordable housing. This policy is founded on the planning obligations created by the famous Section 106 in current planning legislation. His confidence in the funding potential of such agreements is based on the outcome of a study carried out for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister by the Universities of Cambridge and Sheffield, who were asked to undertake a study on the delivery of affordable housing through the planning system, entitled Value for Money of Delivering Affordable Housing through Section 106. The study concludes that over 15,000 affordable housing units a year could be delivered by 2005/06, compared with between 12 and 13,000 three years earlier.
These are described in the ODPM summary as units mixed between 'social rented and intermediate housing'. The numbers compare with Kate Barker's estimate that between 17 and 23,000 additional 'social houses' are needed each year.
Inquiry finds room for improvement
The universities' inquiry confirms that S.106 contributions from developers play an important part in the delivery of affordable housing. However, as the authors say, there are other factors which have a significant influence on such provision. Some of these factors are working in directions opposite to the Government's aims. To take these observations into account in framing a workable future for housing would require radical change in some basic elements of current housing policy. From that viewpoint the report is well worth examination. As the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister agreed in its comment on the release, the research suggests there is room for improvement.
At the same time, a new policy circular on planning obligations, stressing the importance of delivering essential infrastructure to ensure that new development is sustainable, has been issued to planning authorities in England. It replaces the 1997 circular on the same subject, issued by Mr. Prescott when he was head of the former Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
