Planning Reform: An Observation

In the year to the end of 2023 planning applications submitted were down by 14% on last year.

A downturn in the housing market can be induced through the increase of interest rates to offset inflation; this in turn increases mortgage costs and deters homeownership. This has been especially pertinent in the last 2 years given the externalities of the pandemic and Ukraine crisis compounded through the incompetence of the Truss budget.

Additionally, the reneging of housebuilding targets, particularly the 300,000 homes a year target perturbs investors and consequently makes it more difficult for developers to obtain finance which they claim is necessary in this context for expediting the building of homes.

This is an area in which we can allude to a direct detriment induced by the austerity plans of the Tory government post 2010. Funding for affordable housing was cut by 60% in 2010 while the current £11.5bn Affordable Homes Programme is not inflation proofed. This decreases the prospect of profits for developers and so encumbers housebuilding.

The lack of state direction and a Tory party beholden to factions which we saw in 2022 when Michael Gove was prevented from including housing targets in the Levelling Up Bill after 60 Tory MPs signed an amendment calling for mandatory targets to be scrapped shows the incredulity of Gove’s designation of blame on Local Councils.

Gove has also emphasised vested interests by rebuking the Labour Councils of Wandsworth and Westminster for demanding through section 106 agreements an increase in development of affordable homes than intimated previously. An auspicious criticism of labour which has the efficacious corollary of protecting private developers from contributing to communities.