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The new government has wasted no time in considering putting in place it's proposals for revising planning rules. See annoucement here. As part of this exercise it has produced a revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) for consultation. According to the government, the NPPF is proposed to support the desire to make planning simpler and create the conditions to build more housing, and enable economic growth.
The proposed changes are being consulted upon until the 24th September. The proposed changes can be found at the links at foot of post.
Two of the propoals in the NPPF are likely to cause much debate:
The use of a Standard Method to asses Housing Need with the likely local affect being shown below.
(NOTE Guildford doesn't use the standard method in its current 2019 Local plan and has an agreed target of 562 homes per annum)
The first column shows the numbers required per annum using the current Standard method to calculate housing numbers per annum.The second (Proposed) column shows the impact of using the revised calculation for Standard Methodurrent method. :
|
LPA |
Current |
Proposed |
|
Guildford |
743 |
1102 |
|
Woking |
436 |
795 |
|
Waverly |
710 |
1374 |
Areas of the Greenbelt will be identified as ‘Greybelt’ i.e. suitable for development.
The government has set up a New Towns Task force to recommend where to create largescale communities of at least 10,000 new homes each, with many significantly larger. The Government claims that ‘These places could deliver hundreds of thousands of much-needed affordable and high-quality homes in the decades to come, tackling the barriers to growth and helping more working people across the country own their own home’.
The programme will include large-scale new communities that are separate from existing settlements, and a far larger number of new towns will be urban extensions and regeneration schemes that will work with the grain of development in any given area.
These new communities will be governed by a ‘New Towns Code’ – a set of rules that developers will have to meet to make sure new towns are well-connected, well-designed, sustainable and attractive places where people want to live. They will have all the infrastructure and public services necessary to support thriving communities. The towns will also help meet housing need by targeting rates of 40% affordable housing with a focus on genuinely affordable social rented homes.
The housing expert Sir Michael Lyons will lead an independent New Towns Taskforce, supported by Deputy Chair Dame Kate Barker. The first meeting will take place in September with a target to announce appropriate locations for new towns within 12 months.
NOTE the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has now reverted to its previous name of the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
It is expected that the Government will also produce a Economic Strategy in the next few months, this will show where industry clusters of activitiy are to be encouraged. This will have a particular impact on the location of proposed New Towns but will also inform local plans.
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