Why building the homes we need means re-thinking how we use land

It’s coming on Christmas, so that must mean another round of planning reform. Following Michael Gove’s pre-Christmas planning policy changes in 2023, this year the new government’s festive offering is to their response to the consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) they issued not long after taking power in the summer.

Part of the recent reset for the government gave the prime minister and deputy prime minister an opportunity to double down on their commitment to delivering 1.5 million homes by 2029. However, even they have recognised that delivering the target will be a tall order, and many local authorities have called the new targets they are now responsible for delivering impossible or unrealistic.

From a CPRE perspective there have been some important changes to celebrate in the last six months, not least an increase in £500 million for the Affordable Homes Programme, support for 300 additional local authority planners, the introduction of Brownfield Passports, and the New Homes Accelerator programme to help bring forward the million or so homes in the system with planning permission waiting to be built. Couple this with the 1.2 million (and ever growing) homes that could be built on brownfield sites and the 1.5 million target begins to feel viable, albeit punchy in the timeframe. The deputy prime minister has also reinforced the importance of local plan making.

Alongside that we’ve seen what amounts to an all-out attack on the Green Belt policy that Labour themselves introduced in the post-war Attlee government. As the major nature organisations agreed this week, we need the Green Belt now more than ever before as we face the climate and nature emergencies. The ill-defined grey belt policy will undermine the Green Belt, one of the most successful spatial protections we have. At a time when the government need to address the climate emergency and restoring 30% of land for nature the opportunity to reimagine the Green Belt for the 21st century has been ignored.

Yet outside the Green Belt, despite assurances otherwise, why does it feel like the risk of building the wrong homes in the wrong place is also increasing? I’d argue there are three main reasons for this.

1. Broken housing market

The UK housing market is dominated by a cartel of large players in a way that is unique to this country. In the US and the rest of Europe for example, self and custom build account for at least 40 or 50% of new homes respectively, compared to a paltry 10% here. Whenever we built these kind of numbers in the past, most new homes were built by local councils.

The housing market we have favours delivery that maximises developers’ profits. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but when that’s your main tool for delivery of housing numbers, then the risk of more of the same is high. That means more identikit, car dependent, unaffordable housing estates build on green fields (including the Green Belt) around towns already struggling with infrastructure. Diversifying the market won’t happen overnight, so there’s a real danger that the victim will be needless loss of countryside.

2. Threats to local democracy

The government are right to focus on the importance of up-to-date local plans. But the incentive for local authorities to adopt new local plans diminishes with the prospect of a Devolution and Planning and Infrastructure Bill set to change the landscape of planning still further in the next couple of years. Some local planning authorities will be facing undeliverable, nationally imposed targets, seismic change on the horizon and increasing pressure to deliver, leaving the door open to speculative developments in the wrong place – mostly, inevitably on greenfield sites where other options exist.

The other broadside from government has been to question the role of local planning committees – now added to the list of blockers along with bats and newts. In a world where the ambitions of democratically cast local plans were delivered undiluted, this would be worth a discussion. But too often delivery is a litany of broken promises, with commitments to affordability, green space, and sustainability downgraded through the planning process on the grounds of viability. Without this scrutiny, who and how can we ensure that the ambitions of local plans are honoured?

3. Shortage of targets

Finally, the targets. We recognise the desperate challenge of the housing crisis and families stuck in temporary accommodation desperate for a home. But it’s not a crisis that will be solved by more detached homes in the Green Belt, in Wren Close where wrens no longer sing. It’s a shortage of genuinely affordable and social rent homes – homes that the market has never delivered without support and incentives to do so. We’ve argued that better targets to solve the housing crisis should be targets in these areas – as well as targets for brownfield homes which has worked in the past to make the most of previously used land. The challenge with seeing housing almost entirely through the lens of growth, is that the lens of place is forgotten.

Best use of our finite land

The hope on the horizon is what comes next, with a return to spatial planning that could genuinely see more careful identification of sites for housing and other infrastructure, guided by spatial plans and a commitment to making places more sustainable – all delivered by a much more diverse set of housebuilders.

We are also keenly awaiting the government’s housing strategy, and again this could be a game changer in getting more genuinely affordable homes built in rural areas. Most of our Green Belt will remain as countryside, and the land use framework could bring about a meaningful change in management to achieve the Green Belt’s potential for people and nature. This won’t be without difficult choices, but we are keen to work with government to make sure this approach helps to protect our countryside, restore nature, build our resilience to climate change as well as delivering the homes and infrastructure we need. It doesn’t have to be an either/or.

Yet the damage that could be done in the meantime feels unnecessary at best, and open season on our countryside at worst. Land is unarguably finite. Surely, reusing it wherever we can needs to underpin everything.