Let me repeat 1,000 times The ‘Tilted Balance’ never applies on Sites allocated in a Local Plan – Some Dodgy Committee Reports in North Tyneside

If a site is allocated in a development plan para 11a applies

If it is not or otherwise contrary to a development plan, considered as a whole of course, para iid applies

You cannot apply both 11a and 11d, 11d is designed as a matter of policy to override the development plan (iid), I call this the ‘totally wobbly balance’ approach to writing committee reports.

If a proposal complies with a development plan there is nothing to override. You cannot have two incompatible NPPF decision tests applying at once.

Rather the failure to have a 5YHLS for a policy compliant scheme is simply part of the normal planning balance. It should be approved anyway if there are no strong other material consideration. There is nothing to tilt.

This point is the single greatest source of error in committee reports – as here In North Tyneside which will probably lead to a deserved JR

The committee report uses a template and as such does not tell members:

a) whether the scheme is in line with the development plan

b) What decision test in the NPPF 11a, or 11d to apply

C) How to apply the planning balence

And as such members would have been completely confused and will lead to an unnecessary JR

Rather than thoughtlessly applying template paras supplied by legal, which might not apply, just write the committee report a, b, c and you will be supplying members the info they need to make a decision, and inspectors too. What is the point of quoting paras of the NPPF that cannot legally apply?

What Should Labour’s Year One Priorities for Planning Legislation be? @mtpennycook

Reports suggest that Labour is considering what priorities for year one legislation on any change in government should be. Reports state no decisions have been made as to what extent housing and planning will be part of this.

Planning reform takes time to get right. Boris’s botched dumb tank driven attempt to introduce zoning, a worthy ambition, shows what can go wrong. It can also take years even with a large majority – as the long overdue codification of local plan law in the levelling up bill showed. Their also needs to be a codification of Development management law, but labour should take its time rto get it right and ensure it lasts more than one administration. Arden’s Labour Government in New Zealand proved. Internationally there are many examples of what national and federal governments can do to up housing numbers, which will inevitably require some central intervention. However we advised here that legislation should not be rushed and Labour should focus on what it can do through administrative decisions. in particular size months of study re good sites for New Towns. i don’t know if anyone read it in Labour, I don’t care it would be good advice in any event and this looks like the priority.

However labour needs to use the one off chance of implementing manifesto priorities to get a short focussed pre-prepared bill on the statute book, no more than 50 pages with a number of forensically targeted clauses.

1 Set Up an Independent Statutory Body to set Objective Housing Targets Nationally and Regionally – even before set up set it up in Shadow Form

This would align with Labours strengthening of independent forecasting across the board. Clearly abolition of the NHAPAU was a huge mistake, This would save years of time in abolishing need for complex local reports and stop silly jiggery poking like the Urban Uplift and Affordability multiplier which have such perverse local effects. Gove the shadow chairs job to Professors Glen Bramley and Christine Whitehead and give them 3 months to provide a provisional number, supported by Litchfield’s in analysing supply pipelines. Needed in three months to support the Regional New Towns Work – as yopu cant plan anything if you dont know the numbers

2. Set a Broad Statutory Framework for a National Spatial Framework

Just needs to be a few clauses long, as in Scotland

3. Update the New Town Act

Is still on the books but needs updating, or at least a Henry VII clause to enable ministers to update details. Needed to make any declaration of New Towns bullet proof to JR and learn lessons from Brown’s failed Eco-Town programme , based on statutory consultation and consideration of environmental impacts and alternatives.

4. Provide a Statutory Framework for Strategic Planning and a Duty for LPAS to positively Engage

To prevent the Black Country and Stockport veto situations and to ensure the findings of teh regional New Towns studies have a legal framework to implement them

5. Require all LPAs to positively implement the Housing Requirement and Decisions under 1, 2,3 and 4 above.

6. Abolish completely the Land Compensation Act restrictions on Land Value Capture and encode compensation in law

The LURA went 80% of the way now lets finish the job

7. Provide a statutory duty on government Agencies and privatised utilities to implement the above National Priorities. Also reform the statutory basis for Homes England to become an agency for places not just houses (as per its strategic plan)

That is that.

Year two legislation would be development management reform, as of right development and masterplan consents (like in Scotland and every other country in world) but not year one priorities.

Set down these proposals in the manifesto – stopping Lords opposition in its tracks.

FT Analysis – National Housing Target Needs to Rise to 1/2 million a Year @mtpennycook

As we have long argued on this blog

FT

England needs as many as half a million new homes a year to keep up with the country’s rising population, according to a Financial Times analysis — far more than either the Conservatives or Labour have pledged to deliver. An unexpected boom in the population due to record levels of migration, combined with rising domestic demand and a historic undersupply of homes has left both major parties falling short with their housing targets.

The analysis, which drew on migration projections for 2023-2036, estimated that 421,000 new homes per year would be needed over the period. The number could be as high as 529,000 if current net migration levels hold. The government’s current target is for 300,000 homes per year, a goal it has failed to reach in recent years. The opposition Labour party has promised to hit the same level on average over the next parliament if it wins power. But housing experts and economists said the targets needed to be more ambitious. “We need to be aiming higher,” said Paul Cheshire, professor emeritus of economic geography at the London School of Economics.

Levelling up secretary Michael Gove has stuck with the government’s commitment, despite criticism that proposed reforms to boost house building will fail to address shortages. Labour has in effect matched the target, pledging to build 1.5mn homes over five years if they win the general election expected this year, while acknowledging that delivery would be below 300,000 a year initially.  The party said the target was “ambitious but achievable” but acknowledged continuing challenges including low historical building supply and limited land availability. Cheshire said the 300,000 ambition had “stuck in the political narrative” because it was a “handy round number” rather than “a scientific number”.

The FT analysis used the methodology from a 2018 report by Heriot-Watt University, commissioned by the National Housing Federation and homelessness charity Crisis, and updated it with the latest ONS population data and projections on net migration from Oxford university’s Migration Observatory. The UK’s housing stock has grown at a much slower rate than in peer countries, largely due to greenbelt restrictions and planning bottlenecks that have stalled housebuilding schemes at a time of national shortage. The UK has fewer homes per adult than most of its European neighbours, like France, Italy and Spain.

Analysts said an unexpected uptick in migration to the UK in recent years had substantially raised the number of houses needed to keep pace with demand. Annual net migration hit a record high of 745,000 in the year to mid 2022, and fell to 672,000 by the middle of 2023, according to the ONS. According to recent data, average annual net migration to England will be closer to 345,000 over the next 15 years, stemming from higher-than-expected migration levels in 2021 and 2022. “Just looking at migration, [the housing target] should be somewhere over half a million,” said Karl Williams, research director at the Centre for Policy Studies. Another key consideration in determining the country’s true housing needs is the backlog of unbuilt homes. England has fallen short of its target in recent years, with delivery peaking at 248,591 in 2019 before falling to 234,400 last year, according to official data. The 2018 NHF and Crisis report looked at measures of unmet housing need — such as affordability, overcrowding and homelessness. It estimated that an additional 340,000 homes per year would be needed until 2031. Research published last year by the Centre for Cities think-tank traced the housing backlog to 1947 and estimated 440,000 homes per year would be needed to tackle it while meeting new demand. However, some experts believe the effects of the backlog on the housing market are overstated. “300,000 is a decent ballpark number to keep supply and demand in balance,” said Andrew Wishart of Capital Economics, a consultancy.

Current estimates could still be an undercount because determining housing need depends on the pace at which people move into their own homes, a process known as household formation. Glen Bramley, professor of urban studies at Heriot-Watt and the author of the 2018 NHF report, said that when housing is too expensive or scarce you find a “strange circular effect, with children moving back into their parents’ home, or sharing with their peers, and not forming the demand for new houses they otherwise would have”.  “Some households that should be forming will not form,” he said, and this could bring down expected demand. The 300,000 target has been a political talking point since it was included in a 2018 housing white paper under Theresa May’s government. The origin of the number goes back to a 2004 independent review which set a 240,000 housing target that has since been revised upward. “It has become kind of established without anyone knowing precisely where it came from,” said Simon Coop of development consultancy Lichfields.  A spokesperson for the levelling up department said the “ambition to build 300,000 homes a year remains” and that they had been taking “significant action to drive up building rates”.