However, details of the new legislation reveal some critical changes which would extend the policy of ‘planning in principle’ to allocated Greenfield sites all over Sussex. This would include countryside which local councils have earmarked for building but has not yet been properly assessed through the usual channels - for example by ecological appraisals and design and impact studies. Until now it had been thought that the policy of ‘Planning in Principle’ would only apply to Brownfield site.
“This is one move too far,” says Sussex CPRE’s, Bill Freeman, “It’s the construction industry and land banking developers that are failing not the local authorities. Bully-boy tactics will not solve this problem. And neither will the taking over by central Government of any local plans which have not reached fruition by 2017.”
Chief Executive of the Town and Country Planning association, Kate Henderson agrees. Speaking on BBC’s Today Programme this week (Nov 3) she emphasised that enough planning permissions are already being granted to solve the housing crisis:
“Planning isn’t the problem,” she said. “We do have chronic under supply of housing, but planning in the year to March consented over 260,000 homes in the uk. We are actually consenting more homes than we need.”
Introducing the new Housing and Planning Bill in Parliament on Monday, Planning Minister, Greg Clarke praised local councils for their work producing local plans, but he stressed that he believes the process still needs to be faster.
“It is right to continue in that direction of reform, which is why the Bill takes steps to simplify and speed up the process of adopting neighbourhood plans and giving them earlier force,” he said. Mr Clarke then reiterated his warning to local councils which haven’t completed a plan by 2017, adding, “The Government will have the power to intervene and, working with local people, help bring the process to fruition.” Sussex CPRE’s John Kay says the government’s urgency is misguided:
“While ministers' desperation to get house building moving is understood, they will achieve nothing until they escape the sway of false developer complaints that it is the planning system that is to blame,” he says. “They must instead appreciate that actual house building is constrained by quite other, financial, considerations.
“The last year has seen both a substantial increase in planning permissions and a significant fall in housing starts. Why? Because, however many planning permissions are achieved, house builders won't actually build unless they can be confident a buyer is in prospect, and that is what is currently constraining new housing delivery.
“If the government wants more housing, it needs to be a bit more sophisticated in its approach.”