Initial reaction to Angela Rayner’s proposed overhaul of the planning system to boost new housebuilding across the country to 1.5 million over the next five years has varied along familiar lines, largely defined by differing views about the extent to which the planning system is responsible for housing shortages and high prices in the first place.
There has also been some specific reaction to Rayner’s delivery target for London as a whole being set at 80,000 new homes a year. This is actually a reduction from the 100,000 “urban uplift” goal set by the previous government, yet still far in excess of the roughly 35,000 actually delivered during the last financial year and also Sadiq Khan’s London Plan target of 52,000 a year.
For Peter John, former chair of London Councils and leader of Southwark and now chair of the Terrapin Group, “the new target remains a considerable stretch.” However, writing at the CAPX website created by right wing think tank Policy Exchange, Ben Hopkinson, policy researcher at pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade, describes the reduction from 100,000 as “unfortunate” given that “Britain’s housing shortage is most acute in the capital”.
Hopkinson acknowledges that London’s delivery rate has fallen far below 100,000 for decades, but argues that the examples of Aukland and Austin demonstrate that it could be a much higher. On X/Twitter, his Britain Remade head of policy, Sam Dumitriu, has concurred, calling the reduced target “the Labour government’s first misstep on planning”. The Mayor might beg to differ, having had what he called “a fantastic meeting” with Rayner last week.
A positive response to Rayner’s announcement as a whole has come from an array of housebuilding company chiefs, including the chief executives of Berkeley Homes, Landsec and Grainger. They are joined on the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government press release by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Town Planning Institute and by the National Housing Federation, which represents England’s housing associations.
The NHF’s chief executive, Kate Henderson, said, “It’s great to see the government place social and affordable housing at the heart of its plans for tackling the housing crisis”. And Rayner’s department states that in addition to its planning system reforms, the government is “taking steps to deliver quality affordable and social housing, working to reverse the continuing decline in the number of social rent homes”. These are to include changes to the Right to Buy, which will give councils “flexibility to use their receipts to build and buy more social homes”.
City Hall and London boroughs will like the sound of that. Peter Mason, London Councils executive member for planning and skills (and also leader of Ealing) has already welcomed Rayner’s ambitions, though he also underlines that “lack of local infrastructure, construction skills shortages and insufficient long-term funding for affordable homes” have contributed to construction in London becoming “seriously stalled”.
Khan has long called for big increases in affordable homes funding for the capital, but Rayner was cautious about this in general, saying “details of future government investment” nationally will be included in October’s comprehensive spending review. To be going on with, she said “more flexibilities” will be introduced into existing Affordable Homes programmes. This includes “new flexibilities” in the Greater London Authority’s current arrangement.
Rayner was, however, clear that an increase in “genuinely affordable homes” must partly come from private developers. Much debate will centre on the readiness and willingness of those firms to deliver large quantities of homes for sale or rent at prices lower than market levels through Section 106 agreements – levels which, Rayner said, must obey a “golden rule” of 50 per cent on Green Belt land brought forward for development.
Architect Russell Curtis argues that making the planning system “less onerous and more predictable” will diversify and invigorate the housebuilding sector. Others are not so confident. And responding to Rayner’s speech, BusinessLDN chief executive John Dickie, while welcoming the return of mandatory housebuilding targets and the decision to earmark so-called “grey belt” land for development, simply urged the government to “pull out all the stops” to get “shovels in the ground”.
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