This consultation sets out a number of proposals to reform the planning system to increase the supply of new homes and increase local authority capacity to manage growth. The RTPI highlights its strong concerns about the what we consider to be a continued disproportionate focus on a succession of small changes to the planning system and planning policy at national level as a key part of the Government’s approach to the housing crisis.
Our paper Better Planning for Housing Affordability sets out in more detail the problems that have arisen through this long standing approach. Despite it broadly characterising successive Government attitudes over a number of years, there has actually been rather limited headway made in meeting overall housing delivery and even less in addressing the crucial issue of housing affordability. One reason for this is the mistaken belief (which has been operative for some decades now) that simply having more planning permissions for housing per se will deal with the problem.
For too long analyses of the housing market used in Whitehall have concentrated on “supply” issues with no attention focused on demand. Future proposals need to to be set in a broader context of the aims of planning and its ability to shape markets, improve the lives of people and protect the environment.
We therefore strongly repeat our call for Government to do more to act on its acknowledgment that planning system is a very small part of fixing the housing crisis. We believe that current Government policy overlooks the range of other factors involved, and therefore the range of other solutions that can be brought to bear on the problem. We encourage the Government to look also to other areas for solutions, for example:
- Building on current progress and restoring real devolution to strategic level authorities, including the ability of such authorities to raise and spend resources.
- Addressing issues in the national economy such as the availability of credit and the nature of property taxation.
- Making more funding available for local authorities and housing associations to build social housing , thus reducing the amount of money government pays to private landlords in housing benefit.
Click here to read the consultation.
Click here to read our response.
