Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister, will this week announce a fast-track consultation to overhaul planning rules, as she seeks to deliver 1.5mn homes including “social and affordable houses at scale”.
Rayner will set in train an eight-week consultation — most of it taking place over the summer holidays — before returning to Westminster in the autumn to confirm the big shake-up of planning rules in England.
Central to the plan is the restoration of mandatory housing targets, which were scrapped by former housing secretary Michael Gove, and the relaxation of rules for building new homes in the greenbelt.
Rayner is expected to add about 100,000 homes a year to the mandatory targets given to councils in a change to how local housing need is calculated, according to government insiders briefed on the proposals.
The planning overhaul is at the heart of the new Labour government’s growth agenda, with Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, promising to be on the side of “the builders, not the blockers”.
Rayner will give details of the plan in a statement to MPs on Tuesday, the last day before the House of Commons summer recess, and initiate a legally required consultation on the proposals lasting until September.
Under the plans, local authorities will be required to respond to national housing targets, intended to clear the way for the delivery of Labour’s manifesto pledge of 1.5mn homes over the course of the parliament.
A series of documents will set out how local councils will have to plan for more homes, starting with brownfield sites but also opening the way for some development in the greenbelt on “grey sites”, such as car parks or disused industrial land.
At least half of the homes built there would have to be “affordable”, government officials said.
A technical definition of what can be considered grey belt land will be proposed as part of Rayner’s new National Planning Policy Framework, the key instrument for delivering planning reform.
Councils will be told to bring their local plans, setting out development land, up to date. Rayner’s allies say that only one-third of authorities have completed the exercise in the past five years.
Rayner fears that councils with out-of-date local plans are more vulnerable to successful appeals from developers who want to build executive homes on greenfield sites without sufficient affordable accommodation.
Councils will also be required to have annually renewed five-year land supply strategies, ensuring that there is an uninterrupted pipeline of land available for future development.
The deputy prime minister said that delivering more affordable homes was her “No 1 priority” and that she was willing to take on opponents of new development.
The last Conservative government had a target of building 300,000 new homes each year in England by the mid-2020s, but official figures showed the net number of new dwellings stayed flat at about 230,000 last year. Labour insiders fear that number could fall below 200,000 this year.
Writing in the Observer newspaper, Rayner said: “Delivering social and affordable houses at scale is not only my No 1 priority to ensure everyone has a roof over their head. But it is a crucial step on the path to 1.5mn homes, kick-starting the sector out of this slump.
“We will make brownfield development our first priority and make sure that a greenbelt established in the middle of the 20th century works properly for the 21st.”
This article was written by George Parker and Political Editor from The Financial Times and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.