The Future for Housing: A Review
On Monday 23rd September, SP Broadway supported Hallam Land at the Hallam Land/Fabian Society fringe event, The Future of Housing: In Conversation with Matthew Pennycook MP, at the Labour Party Conference.
Matthew opened the discussion by highlighting the pressing need to ‘turn the ship around’ on housing and to ‘reform our planning system to unlock economic growth.’ He noted that up-to-date local plans and strategic planning are absolutely vital, and Labour would introduce a ‘brownfield passport’ as part of its brownfield-first approach to development.
Matthew went on to say ‘unlocking the right parts of green belt’ will help hit the challenging 1.5 new homes target. He emphasised that capacity was a big challenge, pointing out that both construction and planning capacity play a crucial role in housing delivery and would need to be addressed.
Matthew reiterated the importance of councils having up-to-date Local Plans as they ‘are the means by which communities can feed comments in’ and noted we have a ‘local plan led system where less than a third of local authorities have up to do date plans in place.’
When asked about what government could do about councils led by anti-development groups, Matthew suggested using all intervention powers necessary and taking local plans off local authorities if they fail to meet mandatory targets; he also suggested far too many allocated sites are ‘falling over’ at planning committee and this was a problem.
Matthew was asked on his attitude towards compulsory purchase and suggested Labour would use CPOs ‘sparingly’. He also suggested ministers might have to intervene to enforce cross boundary working and a more strategic approach to plan making.
Matthew was keen to enable more SMEs to enter the housebuilding sector and was ‘open to ideas’ on whether councils should be able to lock in low numbers to their late-stage Local Plans or have them sent back at Examination.
Matthew touched on the work of the New Town taskforce and suggested sites they might find were ‘probably well known and would not be a surprise.’
Nick Duckworth, Managing Director of the land promoter, Hallam Land, which secured many of the permissions and allocations for the Cranbrook new settlement near Exeter, said the help of Devon County Council had been crucial.
‘They helped us around every roadblock’, he said: ‘It is pushing water up a hill if you do not have the support of a council.’
‘Loans from Homes England, that can be paid back as homes are occupied, are critical. You need a school and community centre there before you have 100 homes. Having loans is a must for that.’
