Housing Targets: Suck it up Cllr Buttercup!
The BBC carried a story this week about a number of Councils crying crocodile tears into their morning porridge about the housing targets… (Where is the element of surprise?)
A large number of councils said the government flagship plan to build 1.5m new homes in England over the next five years are “unrealistic” and “impossible to achieve”… Many councils accept the need for more new homes – but they are concerned about whether the targets handed to each of the 317 authorities in England are realistic or achievable.
The concerns are shared by Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat authorities, according to the BBC analysis of 90% of the consultation responses.
Many fear the algorithm used to calculate the targets has not taken into account strains on local infrastructure, land shortages, and a lack of capacity in the planning system and construction industry. Phrases include: “very challenging, if not impossible to achieve”, “wholly unrealistic”, “absolutely swamped with growth that the infrastructure just cannot support”… etc… etc…
Well darlings, let me remind you of how it works (it’s not all that difficult): Councils are responsible for granting planning permission for new homes - but they mostly rely on the private sector to build the properties… These are the good folks who spend vast amounts of money obtaining land, then they spend a vast amount of money on preparing a planning application. They have to commission a huge number of reports to prove to the Council that the site is suitable for development and then to draw up plans to ensure that the highways network can cope, the sewage can cope, that the site will have water, electricity and 10% biodiversity net gain etc. etc.
It's NOT all about profits either, the developers then MUST pay your Council a lot of money to make the infrastructure improvements and on bigger applications, they might even build the infrastructure. This also includes affordable housing.. the stuff you as a Council need, to reduce the cost of meeting your statutory obligations to provide homes for homeless people.
But back to the targets, if all councils hit their targets, it would result in significantly more homes than the 1.5m pledge that the government has made. This is the worst housing crisis in living memory, and in order to fix this we need to build 1.5 million homes.
That’s why we need mandatory housing targets for councils and clear plans to support their delivery, including by changing planning rules to allow homes to be built on grey belt land etc.
There is no point in throwing your hands up in the air and screaming foul before you have even tried. It is time to put on your big panties and grab the bull by the horns. You have a target and you need to aim for it. You may make it, you may not but if you don’t aim for something then how will you know where you need to get to?
Until next week,
Henry