Tensions likely in fight to fix UK’s housing market

There were no surprises in last week’s UK Housing White Paper, plenty of detail and now the hard work begins to bring the vision to life. And that will be no easy task given the extent of the changes that need to be made.

By this I mean the political opposition at a local level. Given the sheer number of new homes that need to be built, there is likely to be resistance to development and the paper has made it quite clear that councils are expected to toe the line and support new homes being built.

It was quite a rocket in terms of councils with the government making it clear that their track record in terms of planning for housing needs is poor and they must pull up their socks. It was revealed that more than a third of new homes that were granted planning permission between 2010/2011 and 2015/2016 have yet to be built and currently 40% of councils do not have an up to date housing demand plan.

Councils will now be required to produce a realistic plan and review it at least every five years. They will be expected to use land more efficiently by avoiding building homes at low density and building higher where there is a shortage of land and in locations well served by public transport such as train stations.

The document suggests that once councils have realistic plans, it will be possible to make sure enough land is released for new homes to be built in the parts of the country where people want to live and work and ensure developments take heed of local people’s wishes, while continuing with a maximum protection for the green belt.

The new rules will also result in greater transparency and information from developers on their pace of delivery of new housing so councils can consider this when planning their local needs. It should help address the serious and growing gap between the number of planning permissions granted and the number of new homes completed.

Planning rules will be amended so that councils can proactively plan for more long term Build-to-Rent homes and a consultation has been launched to allow developers to offer more affordable homes to rent alongside other forms of affordable housing.

We knew in advance that the government was going to back Build-to-Rent and this marks a major change in policy in terms of an admission that owning a home is not the ultimate aim for all and that more should be done to bring quality homes to rent to the market.

According to a separate report from the British Property Federation (BPF) and real estate firm Savills, it is suggested that Buildto-Rent could deliver 240,000 new home by 2030. Overall it says that on large urban sites, well connected to employment markets, Build-to-Rent can accelerate house building threefold.

But this all comes back to planning because the success of Built-to-Rent means such new thinking and planning will need to be incorporated into planning and into council plans. There will need to be a statutory planning definition of what Buildto-Rent is all about and an acceptance that discounted market rent may work better than other forms of affordable housing on such developments.

There will also need to be covenants and clawbacks to give local authorities the assurances they need that such homes will remain in quality rental. Alongside this there needs to be an understanding that all parts of the development market are interdependent and that relationship will ultimately affect the number of homes being built.

At the heart of this will be a tension between the need for new homes and resistance at local level.