Toolkit for Sustainable Development (Do-it-yourself Planning and Housing Delivery in a Localist World)

The working group "Do-it-yourself Planning and Housing Delivery in a Localist World" has developed a series of Briefing Notes that are available below. These will be amended or added to over time as the Localism Bill progresses, and as members develop ways of operating within the new environment.

The current topics are as follows:

Making the Case for Development

The UK currently suffers from a huge housing shortage, especially in terms of housing genuinely affordable for people on average and low incomes. Housing is needed in sufficient quantities to support economic activity, attracting and retaining skilled labour in all parts of the country. Poor quality and high cost housing generates substantial opportunity costs for the public purse in terms of poor health, educational and public safety outcomes, as well as excessive and unnecessary housing benefit expenditure and mortgage debt.

The Presumption in Favour of Sustainable Development

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) will consolidate planning policy statements, circulars and guidance documents into a single document. The draft NPPF  set s out that, where there is no local or Neighbourhood Plan ib place or the plan is silent, indeterminate or policies are out of date there will be a presumption in favour of sustainable development.

The draft NPPF also contains the definition of sustainable development which will need to be holistic and robust to ensure that high quality development is achieved, ensuring the long term wellbeing of our communities.

Local Enterprise Partnerships [LEPs], housing, planning and infrastructure

LEPs are developing in a variety of ways. There will be differences across the country. All will need to develop a clear understanding of the relationship between economic prosperity and housing, the quality of the residential environment, and the infrastructure needed for a good quality of life.

Key issues include:

  • The impact of a limited range or poor quality of housing on the attractiveness of a place
  • The affordability of housing relative to salaries of average and lower paid jobs
  • The quality of housing to attract people from particular sections of the workforce
  • The impact of possible interventions, such as improving private rented housing

Local Visions and wellbeing outcomes

Localism could provide great opportunities for community leadership to create positive and innovative plans for the quality of life in 'their place'. It could equally run the risk of opening up significant inequalities between individuals and places without sensible checks and balances.

A simple 'test', linked to the 2010 Equalities Act, could ensure fair access to community budgets and effective accountability for the use of public money between different levels of government and between different communities and places.

Improved Evidence and Practice in Strategic Housing Market Assessments (SHMAs)

The proposed changes to the planning system will involve the abolition of regional housing targets, and an emphasis on 'bottom up' plan making. It will be equally necessary in the new regime for housing allocations to be based on evidence relating to both housing requirements and the way local markets work. Communities generally identify with smaller areas than thehousing markets in  which  they are located  and in relation to which SHMAs must be made. Acceptance of and evidence supporting a locality’s place in a housing and economic area are essential prerequisites to gaining acceptance of housing needs and demand at a very local level.

Infrastructure Finance and Delivery

Even following the Comprehensive Spending Review, public resources for civic infrastructure remain largely unchanged: but this continues to be significantly less than what is needed.

We need new ways of:

  • integrating public and private investment
  • ensuring that planning provides certainty sufficient to give investors confidence, and
  • attracting global capital to the UK, against competition from other economies.

However, this must be capital looking for long term sustainable investment opportunities that no longer relies on the speculative and inflationary increases in land prices that have so damaged the economy in recent years.

Land Price and Challenges for Valuation

Our uniquely unaffordable and volatile housing market arises from:

  • Planning and regulatory constraints on developable land
  • Over and now under-supply of credit
  • Sustained under-investment in infrastructure
  • Landowners expectations of short term capital gain
  • Anti-development sentiment in many communities.

UK land costs much more than in other European countries, and so can and does damage the economy by diverting capital to service high levels of personal and corporate debt in property. Government should encourage savings and investment in genuinely wealth creating production.

Community Housing Opportunities

The community housing sector should be a significant contributor to the Government’s ambitions for Localism; planning, building and managing housing of all kinds and affordability levels that meet local needs and demands.

The sector includes co-operatives, mutuals, co-housing, self-build, development trusts, and community land trusts. They have been the inspiration for the proposed Neighbourhood Plans and Community Right to Build. The sector has a strong track record over 40 years of co-producing well designed places, with high levels of resident and neighbour satisfaction.