A Festive Waiting Game: December, DHLUC, deck-clearing and a dispute
Twas the week before Christmas and all through the land
The Planners were waiting, with their heads in their hands…
It is December 15th and, despite numerous press briefings to the contrary, we are still waiting on the revised NPPF.
To be fair, it is not just the revised NPPF that we are waiting on. At the time of writing, DLUHC have yet to release any of the eleven additional outstanding consultation responses that I listed in my last blog post.
I am also sure that a great many local planning authorities are eagerly waiting to hear if their Planning Skills Delivery Fund grant applications have been successful.
That's not to say the last couple of weeks have been quiet. Far from it. In fact, they have been rather frenetic.
A quick scroll of the DHLUC website reveals:
- Called-in appeal decisions at Broadway Retail Park, Cricklewood and Homebase and Tesco Osterley, Hounslow.
- The opening of the final round of the Brownfield Land Release Fund 2.
- Publication of the latest English Housing Survey, which makes pretty grim reading; and
- The launch of The Future Homes and Buildings Standards: 2023 consultation which runs until 11:59pm on 6 March 2024
and this is before we get into the quite extraordinary events that unfolded yesterday on the DLUHC blog.
It is probably fair to say that the pre-release media engagement over the revised NPPF has probably not gone as well as DLUHC had hoped. Over the last few days there has been a flurry of less than complimentary reporting on the proposed changes, with pieces appearing in the Independent, the Guardian, the Times, and of course, the much beloved Planoraks blog, written by Zack Simons. The Times article in particular seems to have irked DLUHC* as yesterday, the department published a direct rebuttal to it.
The rebuttal is…. well, let's call it robust… and opens with the following lines:
“Today’s leading article in the Times claims that the government has failed to deliver on its manifesto pledge to deliver a million homes over the course of this Parliament. We entirely reject this claim.”
It then goes on to vigorously defend the government's record on housing delivery and draw attention to some of the department's activity over the last year - including the passing of LURA, which for the most part is not yet in force - and finally confirms that publication of revised NPPF has been pushed back to next week.
This barnstorming performance was, however, slightly undercut by the fact that it appears immediately above a blog post, responding to Shelter's latest report on homelessness, which was released that same day.
The Shelter report, which can be found here, finds that “at least 309,000 people in England will spend Christmas without a home, including almost 140,000 children. This is a stark increase of 14%, 38,100 people, in one year.”
A finding which echoes, with depressing familiarity, the headline findings of the latest English Housing Survey, which state (amongst other things) that:
- “Mortgagers found it more difficult to afford their mortgage this year compared to 2021-22, with 11% finding it difficult to afford in 2022. More than a quarter of private renters (29%) and social renters (27%) found it difficult to pay rent.”
- Most first-time buyers funded the purchase of their first home with savings, while there was an increase in those reporting help from family or friends (from 27% in 2021-22 to 36% in 2022-23).
- In 2022, 15% of dwellings failed to meet the Decent Homes Standard, while 8% of dwellings had a HHSRS Category 1 hazard, down from 9% in 2021.
- In 2022, 4% of dwellings had a problem with damp, an increase from pre-pandemic levels (3%) with private rented dwellings rising from 7% to 9% between 2019 and 2022.
- While measures of well-being and loneliness are better compared to levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, levels are still lower than in 2019-20.
- Owner occupiers had higher scores for life satisfaction, thinking life is worthwhile, happiness, and lower scores for anxiety, than other tenures".
In short, whilst we continue to wait for the revised NPPF and what feels like enough consultation responses; further consultations; draft secondary legislation; funding announcements and policy guidance to fill Santa's sleigh to the brim - the housing crisis is continuing to bite and, according to a large number of metrics, to worsen.
A fact which is likely to keep both planning and housing high on the political agenda for quite some time to come….
*I can only assume they haven't read Planoraks yet…..
We know we need to continue our drive to build the homes we need which is why the Housing Secretary is considering responses to the National Planning Policy Framework consultation and will announce further details on this next week.
A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said:
Our target of delivering 300,000 homes a year and one million over the course of this Parliament remains – we are clear councils must play their part and have clear plans on how they will help us achieve this.
However, homes must be built in the right places and the greenbelt must be protected. We will shortly be publishing our response to the National Planning Policy Framework consultation which sets out how we will encourage the adoption of local plans, deliver the homes we need ...”
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