Developers 'sitting on planning consents for 280,000 homes'

Published by Ross Macmillan for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Communities, Local Government

A Liberal Democrat peer says the Government's draft national planning policy framework (NPPF) is "skewed heavily in favour of development" at the expense of the views of local people.

During a debate in the House of Lords yesterday, where peers considered the framework in the same month the consultation finished on the document, Lib Dem peer Lord Strasburger said that it was the recession and not planning delays that has caused the slump in new homes.

He said: "The figures show that new housing starts increased every year from 2001 to 2006, when they were only a few thousand short of the then Government's target of 240,000 a year. For the next two years the numbers went sideways and then in 2009 they fell off a cliff. Why was that? Was there some change in planning law or practice that caused new housing starts to halve? Of course not. We all know that the reason was not planning, it was the recession and the severe tightening of lending criteria by the banks.

"So it is not planning that is holding back the builders. By the way, it is estimated that the top housing developers hold planning consents for 280,000 homes that are not being built."

He said the NPPF is "very strong and clear about the need for growth". In contrast, he said it is "brief, woolly and full of caveats" when it turns to community involvement or the needs of the environment.

Baroness Hanham, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Department for Communities and Local Government, said the Government had received 14,000 replies to the Government consultation which closed on October 17.

She said: "We are beginning to structure a new system of planning not only with the NPPF but with the Localism Bill. That system will rightly take account of the growth that we need but that will not be the be all and end all. We badly need housing in this country."

As part of the Localism Bill, the Government wants to introduce neighbourhood plans which will allow communities to choose where they want new homes, shops and offices to be built .

The plans, out for consultation, are due to come in next year. Councils will be forced to take them into account when they consider proposals for development in the neighbourhood.

Baroness Hanham added: "Communities should wield real power and that local plans, developed by authorities in close co-operation with local people, should have primacy. The abolition of regional spatial strategies and the streamlining of approvals for local development frameworks will help this."