New planning rules ‘leave green belt open to developers’
GREEN-BELT land will be under threat from developers because of new government planning rules designed to speed up house building, campaigners claim.
Councils will lose some powers to control development if house building falls below 75 per cent of government targets, under a new National Planning Policy Framework.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England warned yesterday that builders would be able to “game” the system by sitting on land to slow down the rate of development, which would trigger a relaxation of planning rules.
Meanwhile council leaders said the new policy would “punish communities” because more than half of all new houses could bypass local development plans.
The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government denied the
claims, saying the new policy would ensure quality homes were built more quickly and in the right places.
In March Theresa May called on builders to “do their duty” by building homes on land they owned to help meet the Government’s target of 300,000 new homes per year.
But the new planning policy announced yesterday by James Brokenshire, the Housing Secretary, will benefit speculators, according to the CPRE, which branded the policy a “developers’ charter”.
The NPPF states that a council’s local plan for its overall development strategy will become invalid if house building dips below 75 per cent of targets.
The CPRE claims that the rule change will make it easier for builders to put up expensive homes on green-field sites – and potentially on green-belt land – because councils will no longer be able to use the local plan as grounds for objecting to such developments.
Matt Thomson, head of planning at the CPRE, said: “Without a local plan, councils and communities have little control over the location and type of developments that take place. It will be in developers’ interests not to build houses if they know that the local plan will end up being invalid.
“They have an incentive to build expensive, low-density homes on greenfield sites, rather than social housing for example, as it is more profitable. Without a local plan, councils will find it much harder to stop them, because developers will go to court to get the permission they need to build.”
Meanwhile the Local Government Association, which represents council leaders, said 165,000 homes per year – more than half the Government target – could bypass local plans because of the new rules.
Lord Porter, chairman of the LGA, said: “It is hugely disappointing that the Government has not listened to our concerns about nationally set housing targets, and will introduce a delivery test that punishes communities for homes not built by private developers.”
A spokesman for the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government said the planning framework contained a provision for councils to block developments for a year if they were not building within the confines of the local plan.