Five-year Land Supply

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. It is also a pleasure to bring some gender balance to this debate. I counted 15 men and one woman when we started. I do not know what it is about planning that attracts men more than women, but we need to consider that, because this is such an important subject and it is vital for our communities. Why are there not more people here today?

I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) for bringing this debate to the Chamber and for giving us early sight of what he was going to say in The Times “Red Box” this morning, which was very helpful. The debate comes at an important moment for local planning policy, as we look towards the Government’s new revised NPPF. Sadly, there is not much time to debate that in much detail.

We all agree on the problem, which is that we need to build more homes and that the current systems are not working. Since 2010, home ownership has fallen to a 30-year low, rough sleeping has doubled and the number of new homes being built has still not recovered to pre-recession levels. We know that it is not just politicians who want to build more homes, because public opinion has shifted in recent years. The public now do not just support more homes; they support more homes in their local area and more council and affordable housing in their local area. We have the public’s support when it comes to building.

We know that the planning system is not working. Members have mentioned the lack of trust in the planning system, which is significant. I have it in my constituency. The number of homes that have not been built despite receiving planning permission soared last year, as has been said.

Sites for hundreds of thousands of new properties are being left undeveloped. In February this year the Local Government Association published an analysis that showed that more than 400,000 homes were granted permission in 2017 but were still waiting to be built. That is a huge number and a rise of 16% since 2016. More than a quarter of authorities with a local plan cannot demonstrate an adequate five-year land supply, and 61 local authorities lost an appeal in the year to April 2018 due to not having a five-year land supply. Under the new NPPF, the conditions on authorities will become tighter. The five-year land supply requirement will be combined with the need for a local plan and a new housing delivery test.

In a recent analysis, Savills projected that 110 local authorities will fail on two or more of those required measures by 2019. Those local authorities account for 37% of national housing need and risk losing control of where and what housing development will take place in their areas. The hon. Gentleman raises a problem that we all accept, and the evidence bears out his argument. When vague national policy takes precedence over local priorities with this presumption in favour of sustainable development, it entrenches a bias in favour of speculative developers. That does not just cause an issue for communities that are sidelined in the planning process; it threatens to sideline any significant affordable housing in those areas, too. We see more slow build-out from developers and an inability for councils to influence that—councils have no levers to pull.

We agree on the problems, but we perhaps disagree on some of the solutions. We want more homes to be built—particularly affordable homes—but measuring councils on build-out rates rather than permissions will not necessarily help. As hon. Members said, if developers are gaming the system, do we not have to change the system? Should we not instead focus on giving councils the mechanisms to ensure that homes are built once planning permission is given, and to guarantee that affordable homes are part of that equation, which is a particular issue for the Opposition? That is one of the big problems with the proposed NPPF.

It is vital that, once local need for affordable housing has been properly assessed, mechanisms are in place to ensure that it is delivered. We would introduce a “use it or lose it” policy for permissioned but unbuilt sites and a new duty to deliver affordable homes, linked to a better measure of local need for affordable housing. We would establish an English sovereign land trust to work with local authorities to enable more proactive buying of land at a price closer to existing use value. As part of that, we would consider changing the rules governing the compensation paid to landowners.

We would introduce a presumption that there is no development without affordable housing, and a Labour Government would lift council housing borrowing caps to their prudential limits to kick-start the highest level of council house building in 30 years. Finally, we would remove the viability loophole that allows developers to dodge affordable housing obligations, and we would consider a range of wider reforms to overhaul the system.

I could say so much about quality, infrastructure, design and need, but we do not have time, so I conclude by saying that it is clear that we in this place and the wider population agree that we need more homes. I urge the Government, after eight years at the helm, to consider creating the climate and the local levers for that to happen.