Gove’s Private Assurances to Mps thaat Housing Numbers will come Down by One Third in South East is Crippling Plan Making

A rather weak note in the latest Chief Planner Letter

We will be providing a further update on our approach to changes in the planning system in the Spring. This will provide further detail on how we will take forward measures to create a modernised and effective planning system that empowers communities to support, and local authorities to deliver, the beautiful,
environmentally-friendly development this country needs.
Whilst we understand that many colleagues in local government are looking forward to further detail on the precise details of our changes to planning, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage local authorities to continue work to ensure they have an up-to-date local plan in place in a timely manner.

Note no longer a response to the White Paper – merely an ‘update’, of all of the adjectives used on up to date local plans, ‘encourage’ is the limpest, dampest and weakest ever used, especially in the light of Basildon withdrawing giving the department no chance to intervene and so many ‘pusing’. In many cases local MPs seem to have been involved.

What is happening is uncovered by 2019 Conservative manifesto Co-author Rover Colville on Twitter

The concern in the housing sector is that the govt has been so spooked by the Jenrick mutiny, and Chesham & Amersham, that it is treading incredibly nervously. The scuttlebutt (which the govt pushes back on) is that the new plans will cut housing targets in the south by 1/3+.

— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) February 13, 2022

This is one reason why many councils are delaying putting in their local plans, or signing off planning permissions – they think (and have been assured by their MPs) that the new targets will be more kinder.

— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) February 13, 2022

Even if levelling up is a brilliant success, it will take decades. And if you shouldn’t have to move from Hartlepool to get a good job, you shouldn’t have to move from Witney to get a good home.

— Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) February 13, 2022

If you reduce targets by 1/3rd in South East in many cases you wont need to allocate new sites as sites still unbuilt in the last round of local plans will do. Shifting them tup north as we know wont lead to additional housing as we have found in the urban uplift, it will just lead to les housing being built. This is simply a cycnical temporarymoving of the dial to temporarily, for five years or so, move the dial on housing numbers to prevent new alloctions till after the next election. Much like the temporary shift that ickles abolition of startegic planning did. It will inevitably lead to a policy reversal after the next election. It is cycnical politics by Gove of the worst kind, deliberately instituting ba policy where he has been told it just wont work, he doesnt care he just wants the Nimbys to pipe down.