Ministers abandon overhaul of town planning laws after criticism | Planning policy

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The government is reportedly going back on its commitment to revise town planning laws to speed up infrastructure projects with a goal of building 300,000 homes per year in England.

Part of the Project Speed ​​government, the new planning laws were announced in the Queens speech with the aim of modernizing and simplifying the system and increasing the number of planned homes by more than a third.

The planning reforms were criticized by rural activists, who said the changes would lead to the suburbanization of green spaces without providing much-needed affordable housing.

News that the plans could be scrapped follows the Tories’ shock defeat in Chesham & Amersham’s by-election to the Liberal Democrats in June, which was blamed by some Tory MPs on the new laws. As the vote drew near, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said if his party won the constituency of Buckinghamshire, which was previously a safe seat for the Tories, it would be a massive mandate for those of us who were campaigning against planning reforms.

According to a Times article, the proposals will be scrapped in light of backlash from voters and MPs in the south. The new laws would have given councils mandatory housing construction targets and prevented landlords from opposing planning requests through a zonal system.

Tom Fyans, deputy managing director of CPRE, the rural charity, said if the reports were correct some of the most damaging proposals in what was a top-down developer charter would have been rightly rejected and called a victory for common sense.

He added: The government should not hesitate to overhaul an outdated planning system to adapt it to the multiple challenges of the 21st century. Local communities need a stronger right to be heard in local decisions; brownfields must be automatically developed first to help protect local green spaces and our green belts in the fight against climate change, and young people and key workers are in desperate need of more funding for affordable rural housing.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: We will not comment on the speculations. Our response to the consultation will be published in due course.

By announcing the development bill, the government committed to creating simpler and faster procedures to produce local development plans, approve major projects, assess environmental impacts and negotiate housing contributions. and affordable infrastructure.

Ministers aimed to use the loosening of planning regulations, in place since 1947, to boost home ownership in areas of growing Tory support in the north of England and the Midlands, as well than using post-Brexit freedoms to simplify environmental assessments of developments. .

However, the Lancashire, City of Liverpool and Greater Manchester branch of the CPRE charity, which lobbies to protect the countryside, described the planned reforms as a total disaster, with President Debra McConnell saying: We will see a lot more homes on virgin land and in areas of outstanding natural beauty. The people of the north of England need these green spaces for their well-being.

In addition to criticism from rural activists who say the changes would lead to rural spread, the government has been condemned for failing to propose legislation to improve the regulation of social housing. Grenfell United, which represents the bereaved and survivors of the 2017 tower disaster, said it was deeply disappointed by the failure to restore the balance of power between public housing tenants and landlords in the speech from Queens, where planning reforms were first discussed.

Over the past five years, social housing construction has averaged less than 6,500 new homes a year in England, according to Shelter, while there are 1.1 million people on waiting lists.

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