The Housing Forum has submitted a response to the Government’s Call for Evidence on the draft Planning and Infrastructure Bill. This has drawn on the views of our Working Group on planning as well as our wider membership.
The Housing Forum welcomes the proposals to streamline planning committees, particularly the focus on training for councillors who sit on planning committees, the cap on size, and having a separate committee for strategic planning. We have some concerns around the plans for a national scheme of delegation and how this would work in a practical sense if compliance with policy is used as a reason to delegate to officers, as this is rarely black and white.
We support the plans for a Nature Recovery Fund to ensure that funding for nature recovery is put to the best use, and that development of much-needed new homes is streamlined. We do, however, identify some risks from the proposals including a loss of control over how money is spent, causing public distrust in the system, and increased complexity if this new system sits alongside existing site-level provisions, such as biodiversity net gain.
The focus on strategic planning seems broadly positive, though we are concerned about the cumulative impact of this coming in at the same time as other aspects of devolution and local government reorganisation. It is difficult to work strategically with levels of government and entities that may not exist in the future. There is a clear risk of policy paralysis while local government is reorganised, causing a hiatus in Local Plan making and in housebuilding. It is therefore essential that the Government fully considers the best order to make changes in and makes a transition plan for all the changes that are coming through to ensure that housing delivery can continue without disruption.
Read our response in fullDate:
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