Councils told to publish ‘realistic’ house-building plans as DCLG publishes White Paper

Up to 60 per cent of English councils are on course to have housing plans imposed on them by Whitehall next year, under reforms proposed in a housing White Paper from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

Unveiling the white paper, ‘Fixing our broken housing market’, the Communities and Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid spelled out the way that central government will handle council plans that are not ‘realistic’ in Whitehall’s view. Councils in England must publish five-year housing plans by next year.

However, according to Mr Javid, only 40 per cent have produced plans which meet the numbers expected of them.

Outlining the rules proposed in the white paper, he said that:

•    Those councils that “do not have an up-to-date plan that meets the projected growth of households in their area” will have plans imposed from Whitehall.
•    The Whitehall plans will use a standardised means of “calculating housing demand to reflect current and future housing pressures”.

Other measures included in the 104-page paper are:

*    Setting up an annual audit on each council’s housing function to ensure that house-building goals are being met. Some councils are “fudging the numbers”, according to Mr Javid.
•    Greater efficiency requirements on authorities and developers who need to avoid “building homes at low density and building higher where there is a shortage of land and in locations well served by public transport such as train stations”.
•    Councils will be able to insist on shorter time scales from developers. It will be “easier for councils to issue completion notices, shortening the timescales to require developers to start building within 2 years, not 3, when planning permission is granted”.
•    Developers will be required to provide “greater transparency and information…on their pace of delivery of new housing”.
•    Assistance and encouragement for smaller, independent builders will be provided in various ways, particularly through the £3 billion Home Building Fund.
•    Maintaining “existing strong protections for the Green Belt”. Its boundaries should be amended “only in exceptional circumstances when local authorities can demonstrate that they have fully examined all other reasonable options for meeting their identified housing requirements”.
•    Reducing “the scope for local and neighbourhood plans to be undermined” -  by changing the way that land supply for housing is assessed.
•    Making the planning process more effective by “improving the speed and quality with which planning cases are handled, while deterring unnecessary appeals”.
•    Setting up systems to continue to “crack down on empty homes, and supporting areas most affected by second homes”.

A total of 250,000 homes need to be built each year to meet the demands of the white paper, which applies only to England. The consultation on the White Paper runs for 12 weeks, closing on 2 May 2017.