Revealed First Image of Quinlan Terry’s New Affordable Starter Home

How adding classicist details as per Quinlan Terry and Roger Scruton is supposed to make housing affordable is anyone’s guess.  

Rural Exceptions have Underdelivered and so Will ‘Starter Homes’

Rather odd that the government has used rural exceptions as the model for the ‘industrial exceptions’ starter homes (20% off) policy.

They have undelivered because if you can get full planning permission why knock down your values?  If a site is genuinely underused and redundant you will get permission under the NPPF anyway.  My experience with promoting urban exceptions policy in the past was they were only defensible if a site had demand for employment and you could say that the ‘affordable’ housing was the higher priority land use. There will be very few such sites in high demand areas because areas like London, Cambridge, Oxford etc. have big shortages of employment land.  This seems a policy designed only for a few midlands towns.

You will pay CIL/S106 on general market housing but they will still be valued more as you wont have the restrictive under 50s first time buyers restriction.  So a policy, like rural exceptions, doomed only to deliver a trickle of housing.  No excuse for not allocating more land.

MP to table Amendment to Abolish Planning Inspectorate

Littlehampton Gazette

ARUNDEL and South Downs’ MP has called on Parliament to provide communities with greater protection from housing developers that ‘circle villages like hawks’.

Nick Herbert spoke during a debate in the House of Commons on Monday (December 8) and urged for more consideration to be given to smaller rural communities and green spaces between settlements which he felt needed to be maintained.

The MP also pledged to table amendments to abolish, or at the very least curtail, the power of the Planning Inspectorate, to prevent it from making didactic interventions in the planning process, ensuring communities have tighter control over development.

Speaking during the infrastructure debate, Mr Herbert said: “I agree about the importance of speeding up the provision of nationally needed infrastructure, but as a Government we also promised that we would deliver localism to communities.

“In fact, local communities are very concerned when planning permissions are given that local infrastructure should be sufficient to meet the needs of the new development.

“Too often in my constituency, the development of houses has not been matched with sufficient provision for schools, local roads or even basic things such as sewerage provision. This has resulted in placing great pressure on local infrastructure, and it undermines support for local developments.”

Mr Herbert said he greatly supported the Government’s Localism Act, which gave towns and villages across the nation more power to determine their futures with the use of neighbourhood plans.

In recent months, plans from across Arundel, Littlehampton, Yapton and East Preston have been approved, among others.

However, Mr Herbert told the Commons that this process was under threat from speculative applications by developers, which are either granted by the district councils or overturned on appeal by the Planning Inspectorate.

Addressing the house, Mr Hebert said: “While all four of the district councils in my constituency are preparing responsible plans for the delivery of substantial numbers of houses, speculative applications are being made by developers who are circling villages like hawks.

“They want to get in quickly and secure planning permission that would otherwise not be given under the local plans but is being allowed in this instance because the planning inspector is taking a view of the provisions for five-year land supply that is excessive and unrealisable.”

London Plan Inspector – 6,600 Homes Per Annum Overspill Needed Outside London

Report here

I should add this is a minimum as the inspector has not calculated the difference between the Liverpool rate and the Sedgefield rate.

Worth reading, not least for the horrible legal mess from outdated law on soundness and duty to cooperate that results.  Of course the London plan is pre the relevent acts however the inspector finds:

-As a matter of policy not law the London plan must conform to the soundness tests of the NPPF

-The DTC does not apply as a to a planning authority but as to a body assisting other in plan making (but this is not fatal to soundness as the London Plan is not a development plan) – but err the DTC is not a soundness test (other than doubling up under the positively prepared test) but a prior legal test under  Section 20(7)(C) of the 2004 Act (so the issue is fatal to the power of an inspector to find soundness not fatal to soundness) – confused – you will be.  The plan was found not to have met the duty with regards to waste disposed of outside London but as said this was not fatal.  However of course this prevents any and every London borough from adopting local plans as these must contain waste policies which must be conform with the London Plan and meet the DTC outside London.

The sooner we scrap the archaic legislation governing the SDS and put it on a level planing field to development plans the better.

The key conclusion on housing

Table 3.1 of the FALP sets targets for the London Boroughs which total 42,389 dpa, around 6,600 dpa short of what is necessary to meet objectively assessed need over 20 years. The Mayor expressed confidence at the hearings that; by maximising opportunities in town centres, on surplus Strategic Industrial Land (SIL) and in Opportunity Areas, 49,000 dwellings a year could be granted planning permission but was unwilling to commit to increasing the target.

However, in order to be in general conformity …Boroughs need only meet their individual targets. In the absence of any clear guidance as to exactly how and where the additional 6,600 dpa will be found it is difficult to see how a housing target in a local plan would not be in general conformity if it made provision for the figure in Table 3.1 and no more. There is no mechanism in the FALP to indicate how the 6,600 dpa would be apportioned or distributed. Without this I do not see how the Mayor can guarantee the delivery of the additional 6,600 dpa necessary to meet the identified need….

The targets set in Table 3.1 will not provide sufficient housing to meet objectively assessed need and I am not persuaded that the FALP can ensure that the additional 6,600 dpa will be delivered. Nor do I consider that the Mayor can rely on paragraph 47 of the NPPF or the duty to co-operate to make London Boroughs provide more. It is not enough to grant planning permissions, homes have to be built and the target rate of 42,000 dpa is significantly higher than has been achieved since 2004 and the boom years before the recession.

The evidence before me strongly suggests that the existing London Plan strategy will not deliver sufficient homes to meet objectively assessed need.

The Mayor has committed to a review of the London Plan in 2016 but I do not consider that London can afford to wait until then and recommend that a review commences as soon as the FALP is adopted in 2015 (IRC3). In my view, the Mayor needs to explore options beyond the existing philosophy of the London Plan. That may, in the absence of a wider regional strategy to assess the options for growth and to plan and co-ordinate that growth, include engaging local planning authorities beyond the GLA’s boundaries in discussions regarding the evolution of our capital city.

What does ‘beyond the existing philosophy of the London Plan’ Startegic Green Belt Review within Greater London and further loss of employment land within London clearly.  The mayor connot resist tghis and expect out of London authorities to cooperate on a Brum like regional planning exercise.

So now what for ROSE authorities?  Every EIP of their local plans will now hear that they must contribute to the overspill need as required under the NPPF.  If a Green Belt authority that can use the new guidance to say that they don’t have to meet need in full.  They will have a hard time fdoing so unless they have conducted a strategic Green Belt review objectively saying they have no sites not meeting Green Belt purposes.  So the need simply gets shifted to outside the Green Belt – and its huge.  More planning stasis under the conservatives as these authorities like those around Brum now cant even put a figure on what their five year supply should be.

Ivan Massows Stupid and Impractical Idea to Turn City Hall over to The Homeless

In Standard today

A few problems:

1) The GLA doesnt own the building, the government does it brought the land and rents it to the GLA

2) The Rent is a good deal for Londoners office rents elsewhere are likley to be higher

3) The GLA would need to pay a break clause

4) The government would be required to rent it out again at highest and best use.

5) Renting out the top floor is a nice little earner

5) It is not designed for housing, it has large atriums and a hall for meetings of the assembly such conversion would not be permitted by Southwalk or the London plan as it is a loss of a central london activity.

6) Rented office space wilnot provide an assembly space that will require a purpose designed or converted building, at great expense

7) It is an icon.  I like housing for the homeless as much as anyone, but why stop there likes convert every bod in the London Eye to a night shelter bed.

Clearly mr Massow has not dones his research.

Why would Any Rational Planning Authority not Zero CIL Rate any Large Brownfield Sites?

After the governments announcement today of a CIL exemption for brownfield sites.  Im just asking, they would be crazy not to if the site has large infrastructure requirements like new schools.

The problem is CIL is the dominance of the large national housebuilders.

They have a portfolio of sites with options agreements and forward purchase agreements.  Naturally these firms will build first those sites in areas without CIL, which is why CIL authorities have seen much lower housebuilding rates.

In theory CIL comes off the price of land – in the long run – however we here are talking of the short run.

It seems to me that outside a few areas such as London CIL is failing.  It cant fund infrastructure and neglects large housebuilders portfolios. After the election I suspect some kind of review of property and land taxation whoever wins.  However even if we get a rational land value taxation you still have the problem of housebuilders with zombie porfofolios of sites which put them in the red at current valuations.  Either as a nation we want house prices to go up or down.  Only if we want house prices go up can those portfolios survice, otherwise housebuilders will ration release of those portfolios keeping house prices high.  So either they are forced to sell and liquidiate them and/or they get some kind of break which allows them to build and sell them at a tax break. Exempting CIL is a short term measure as the infrastructure will need to be paid from general taxation anyway.

Currently if a housebuilder gives up land (say for affordable housing) it simply means less revenues.  If they had a corporation tax discount on such I think this would do the trick. Im inspired here by the system of ‘aqaf’ housing in the middle east where there is a religious requirement to give to the poor even in non tax regimes.  As a result a healthy flow of land comes forward for new schools, ‘gift’ housing and so on.

CIL Exemption at Heart of Gov 20% off for 1st Time Buyers Scheme

Here

At the heart of the Starter Homes initiative is a change to the planning system. This will allow house builders to develop under-used or unviable brownfield land and free them from planning costs and levies. In return, they will be able to offer homes at a minimum 20% discount exclusively to first time buyers, under the age of forty. Currently, builders can face an average bill of £15,000 per home in Section 106 affordable housing contributions and tariffs, often adding tens of thousands to the cost of a site. Under the proposals, developers offering Starter Homes would be exempt from those Section 106 charges and Community Infrastructure Levy charges. The homes could then not be re-sold at market value for a fixed period – making sure that the savings are passed onto homebuyers.

Why only brownfield sites, I can only assume it is to cause a temporary bump in brownfield completions so that the government can say it is developing greenfield first when of coyuse trhe same amount of greenfield will be developed later.

The stupidest part of the scheme is appointing Roger Scruton and Create Streets as a design assessors for new Homes under the scheme – in other words a deliberate new Tory aesthetic for housing.