Below is a copy of the response provided to the first of the Government’s Planning Consultations on 29/09/2020 by Cllr Simpson and Cllr Tuner (both Lab, Denby Dale)

Hello

Please find below the joint response from myself and my ward colleague Cllr Turner to the four main proposals in the ongoing consultation:

FEWER AFFORDABLE HOMES

Increasing the dwelling threshold at which developers are required to provide affordable homes will be disastrous for the people who most need a sensible planning system to deliver affordable homes in the right place.

In Kirklees, under the Local Plan, developers are currently required to provide affordable homes on any development of 10 properties or over. The Government’s plans would increase this figure to 40 or 50.

If these proposals had been in place over the last 5 years, this would have meant that we would have secured 600 fewer affordable homes across the borough.

This runs totally contrary the Government’s rhetoric on dealing with affordability issues and will inevitably fail to deal with the housing and affordability crisis.

It is our strong view that these reforms will do nothing to address the issue of a financialised housing and land market which places profit margins for developers and market forces above the real needs of people.

Indeed, Litchfield’s own analysis, which is referred to in the Government’s proposals, outlines how meeting the real needs of people for affordable housing through market forces and private developers is ‘unrealistic’.

Market dogmatism is at the heart of England’s affordability crisis and leads to green field and Green Belt sites being unnecessarily brought forward before deliverable brownfield sites. A fundamentally different, less ideological, approach which includes council, social and non-market delivery is required to address these key issues.

‘FIRST HOMES’ REQUIREMENT

Whilst the proposal to provide a dedicated proportion of housing for first time buyers with a First Homes provision is welcome, the requirement that this is only a quarter of the affordable homes allocation is far from adequate.

What’s more, we note that this is only 25% of the affordable housing provision, which will be a significantly reduced number of homes due to these very reforms.

Whilst we welcome the First Homes provision, we believe that the provision of affordable housing should not be reduced to maximise delivery of affordable and first homes – and, that the percentage provision of First Homes on large schemes, such as over 100 dwellings, should be increased.

MORE AUTOMATIC PERMISSION

The extension of automatic Permission in Principle to developments of fewer than 10 dwellings will lead to a further increase in inappropriate developments, particularly on sites which are not currently allocated for housing. This is a wholly unnecessary reform.

The affect that existing national (government) planning policies have had upon applications and allocations within Kirklees makes clear that the extension of Permission in Principle is not required to increase housing delivery.

Moreover, we wholly oppose the proposal to abolish environmental impact assessments for applications of under 150 dwellings. Not only would this be incredibly damaging for the local environment, ecology and biodiversity on the vast majority of planning applications, but it would also lead to further gaming of the system by developers.

CHANGES TO HOUSING NUMBER REQUIREMENTS

The reforms to the standard method which allow more recent data to be used for calculating need and to address issues with some outlier authorities, as well as volatility, are welcome. However we are very concerned that the proposed ‘solution’ to affordability issues, where they are identified, is to further up-rate the number of housing allocations that will be made available for private developers and driven by market forces – meanwhile reducing the number of affordable homes that the market would be required to provide.

Where affordability issues are identified, this should be addressed by providing affordable properties – and it is clear that this matter will not be addressed without councils and social housing providers playing a greater role in the housing mix. Further market forces will not provide a solution where the market has already failed; and we have real concerns that this approach ensures that brownfield-first continues to be a mere slogan, rather than a deliverable reality.

Yours sincerely
Cllr Will Simpson and Cllr Graham Turner