The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Sajid Javid)
On 7 February we published our Housing White Paper in which we made clear that the housing market in this country is broken, and the cause is very simple: for too long, we have not built enough homes. We have identified three systemic problems: not enough local authorities planning for the homes they need; house building that is simply too slow; and a construction industry that is too reliant on a small number of big players.
Up-to-date plans, including local plans, are essential because they provide clarity to communities and developers about where homes should be built and where not, so that development is planned rather than the result of speculative applications. At present too few places have an up-to-date plan.
On 21 July 2015 we made a written ministerial statement to the House on this same subject. At that point 82% of authorities had published a local plan under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 regime. Today that figure stands at 92%.
In the 13 years that have passed since the 2004 Act received Royal Assent, over 70 local planning authorities have yet to adopt a plan and, of those, 27 authorities still have failed to reach the publication stage. I am particularly concerned about the 15 local planning authorities that have recently either failed the duty to co-operate or failed to meet the deadlines set out in their local development schemes, the public timetable that all local planning authorities are required to put in place.
I am therefore writing today to the local planning authorities of:
Basildon, Brentwood, Bolsover, Calderdale, Castle Point, Eastleigh, Liverpool, Mansfield, North East Derbyshire, Northumberland, Runnymede, St Albans, Thanet, Wirral and York.
These letters will start the formal process of intervention we set out in the Housing White Paper. We set out that we will prioritise intervention where:
the least progress in plan-making has been made;
policies in plans had not been kept up to date;
there was higher housing pressure; and
intervention would have the greatest impact in accelerating local plan production.
We also made clear that decisions on intervention will also be informed by the wider planning context in each area (specifically, the extent to which authorities are working co-operatively to put strategic plans in place, and the potential impact that not having a plan has on neighbourhood planning activity).
I am writing today to give the local authorities the opportunity to put forward any exceptional circumstances, by 31 January 2018, which, in their view, justify their failure to produce a local plan under the 2004 Act regime. I will take responses received into account before any final decisions on intervention are taken.
The remaining authorities who are not making progress on their plan-making and fail to publish a plan for consultation, submit a plan to examination or to keep policies in plans up to date are on notice that consistent failure to make sufficient progress will no longer be tolerated. My Department will begin formally considering the case for intervention as deadlines are missed.
We will also bring forward the important provisions we legislated for earlier in the year through the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017. I will shortly lay the regulations under section 12 to prescribe that local planning authorities must review their plans every five years.
We will also shortly be commencing Section 8 of the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 which will place a requirement on all local planning authorities to have plans in place for their area which set out their strategic policies. Those strategic priorities are set out at paragraph 156 of the National Planning Policy Framework.
As we set out in July 2015 we recognise that production of local plans is resource intensive. On 19 October 2017 we laid the regulations which, subject to approval of both Houses, will bring forward our White Paper commitment to increase planning fees by 20%. This delivers on our commitment to increase resources for local planning authorities where they commit to invest the additional fee income in their planning department. All local planning authorities in England have given this commitment. We will shortly announce details of the £25 million of funding to help local authorities plan for new homes and infrastructure in their area that we announced in the White Paper.
We have supported and we will continue to support, local planning authorities in plan-making, through the planning advisory service, with support from officials of my Department and the planning inspectorate.
Where local planning authorities continue to fail to produce a plan to provide certainty to their community on where future development will be brought forward, we will use our intervention powers to ensure plans are put in place.
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