CLA plan to ease a ‘housing crisis’ in villages

CUTTING RED tape would help deliver critically-needed affordable homes in rural areas, a landowners’ body has claimed.

The CLA, which has 33,000 members including landowners, farmers and rural businesses in rural England and Wales, said solutions to the housing crisis are “right under (politicians’) noses”.

It says planning authorities should be carrying out housing needs assessments across all rural settlements which would give parish and community councils greater responsibility for working with landowners to identify housing need.

It also suggests that simplifying the planning process by giving “permitted development rights” for new-build affordable housing on “rural exception” sites, would also help ease the crisis.

Rural exception sites are generally small plots of agricultural land outside the village boundary and the houses built there must be affordable forever and are reserved solely for local people.

Developers would still have to submit a form and pay a fee, but it is not a full planning application making the process quicker and cheaper.

In 2017 around a fifth of all rural affordable homes were built on rural exception sites.

CLA North Rural Surveyor Robert Frewen said: “For years politicians have complained about the housing crisis while ignoring the fact that the answer is right under their noses.

“If just 10 homes were built in every village, the housing crisis in rural communities would be eased considerably.

“Landowners are wanting to help but are being put off by endless bureaucracy, spiralling costs and a lack of planning officers.”

Since 2010 local authorities have had their planning budg

ets cut by 55 per cent, leaving planning officers still in post “stretched to the limit” the CLA said.

Conservative Ministers say by the mid-2020s, 300,000 new homes will be built a year. The latest figures show 241,130 net additions to the English housing supply – a nine per cent year-on-year increase.

However, Yorkshire and the Humber had the second-lowest number of new homes, after the North-East, with 20,120. The majority of new homes were created in cities and wealthier areas.

Mr Frewen said any future Government had to decide “what it wants the planning system to deliver and then provide adequate resources to achieve those aims”.

A “simpler and better resourced” planning system would restore confidence and encourage more applications “unlocking the potential of the rural economy.”