If You Meet Objective Need You Shouldnt Be Found Unsound

Im becoming more and more worried by Local plans which meet objective housing need, but which are still being found unsound.  I’ve been meaning to write about this for sometime but until recently it was only a theoretical possibility, recently we have had both Eastleigh and Uttlesford fall into this category.

The beauty of OAN is in theory wholly objective independent body could calculate it. Indeed we would have gained I think 4 of the last 10 years of plan making if this had been the case. The trouble is the NPPF adds a host of subjective add ons without definition of scale etc.  These being ‘market signals’, the affordable ‘boost’ and employment balance.

How long is a piece of string, you cant combine the objectivity fo OAN with vague concepts like ‘market signals’.  You have the ridiculous sight of the Uttlesford inspector making a figure up of 10% to reflect these.  ‘Boost’  in Uttlesford you would have to triple housing numbers to meet need in full, this should be an option not a requirement.  The one difficult issue is employment balance.  To my mind it can easily be incorporated in OAN if you maintain realistic assumptions about maintenance of levels of non out commuting in the light of economic development.   So when we finally revise the NPPF lets make the formula

Need= OAN    and not

Need = OAN + a number the inspector makes up.

Total Nonsense About Garden Cities being Anti-Feminist

Ridiculous in the Guardian Today

experts such as urban planner Yasminah Beebeejaun insist the gender politics of planning has long been underplayed. She argues, for example, that the garden city movement – which looks set to be revived in the UK with cross-party support – was conceived in part as a means of moving women out of city centres, still regarded in the early 20th century as morally dubious places, to leafy enclaves from where men would commute to work. The single-family houses with private gardens we have all been taught to aspire to, she adds, require far more upkeep than flats and are more likely to result in a breadwinner-model family with a stay-at-home mum.

What total utter rot divorced from any evidence.  In fact Ebenezor Howard admired feminist reformers such as Marie Howland and advocated cooperative housekeeping, commissioning a Parker Unwin designed cooperative quadrangle.  This seems to be pure unevidenced assertion, based on a theory too good to be disturbed by facts.

Osborne May be Forced to Give Away Isle of Wight to Pay Off National Debt

After reports emerged from Hong Kong that Venezuela has offered to give away the island of Blaquilla to China to pay off its national debt the Treasury was wielding reports that the same deal had been sought with the Isle of Wight.  Caulkheads are shocked at the potential invasion of Chinese Grockles, with Osborne house potentially pencilled in as a presidential guest place for communist party officials.  Apparently the exotic sands at Ventnor contain a rare earth with military applications and the whole of the South East of the Island is to be excavated and returned to the sea. Hoseasons caravan park is apparently to become a red army camp and Cowes a base for building nuclear submarines.

Islington Set out Buy to Leave Crackdown

Guardian

Property investors who leave homes empty just to make money from property price rises could be fined or even jailed under proposals made by a London council.

Islington plans to force owners of newly built homes to prove they are occupied. If homes are left empty for longer than three months owners will face high court injunctions which if breached, could bring fines, repossession and, in the worst cases, jail for owners, the council said.

The drastic action has been proposed as the north London borough revealed that 30% of 2,000 homes built in the last six years have nobody on the electoral register and, even when students and foreign tenants are discounted, close to a quarter of homes in five of the newest residential developments appear to be empty.

Owners will have to prove they are not “buy-to-leave” investors by showing up-to-date utility and council tax bills, evidence of deliveries, registration documents for health services, schools and social services, and even prove the homes are fully furnished.

Our new proposals would make sure that all new homes in Islington are occupied – we want to send a message that ‘buy-to-leave’ is unacceptable,” said Cllr James Murray, the council’s executive member for housing.

The proposal was warmly welcomed by campaigners against empty homes but is likely to be fiercely opposed by property developers.

John Silvester, a former president of the Planning Officers Society, said such a use of the planning system was unprecedented and it might be challenged on the grounds that it seeks to curb established rights among property owners.

The boom in investment in homes is being felt across the capital. Research consultancy Molior has found that in developments of more than 20 units in London, over 70% of new-build sales in the £1,000-£1,500 per square foot range were to investors, and over 50% in the £700 to £1,000 per square foot range. It said some are “held as permanently available hotel suites” by the owners.

The draft measures will go out to consultation on Monday and represent the first time a council has tried to tackle buy-to-leave using planning powers. Under section 106 planning agreements set before properties are built, new homes would not be left unoccupied or unused for longer than three months, and would have to be occupied for at least 14 days in any three-month period. Developers selling the new homes would have to make clear in marketing brochures and advertising that the obligation would fall to the buyer.

Owners would have to “use and occupy the individual dwellings as a dwelling house or to ensure such use and occupation”. Generation Rent, the campaign group for more affordable rented homes, welcomed the initiative as giving first-time buyers a better chance of bidding successfully for new homes.

“To people used to property as a speculative asset, this might seem harsh, but if you look at housing as something for people to live in there is no reason not to treat buy-to-leave punitively,” said Seb Klier, Generation Rent’s policy and campaigns manager. “If we are really serious about helping first-time buyers we have to take punitive action against those who see housing as an investment asset only.”

Islington is the most densely populated local authority area in the UK, according to the 2011 census. Under the London plan, the borough is required to ensure 12,641 homes are built between 2015 and 2025, and with very little land available, the council wants to ensure all homes contribute to meeting housing need.

According to council research, as many as a third or more of homes in some new developments are potentially vacant. Of almost 2,000 units built in blocks in the borough since 2008, 30% have no registered voters and the percentage rises considerably when social housing is filtered out and market housing analysed. Of the 58 private apartments in the 1 Lambs Passage development, 71% had no voter registered, while 65% of the 106 in Worcester Point had no one registered.

Even taking into account apartments where students are registered for council tax exemption, or the leaseholder appears to have let the property to a tenant who may not be eligible to vote, and cases where the flat is being operated as a serviced apartment, there are still high levels of unexplained non-registration. Forty-five per cent of the 127 market units in the Bezier building in the borough fall into that category, as do 33% in the Worcester Point building.