Choices, choices, choices: ministers must decide whether they’re serious about the housing crisis

The Queen’s Speech gives the government another chance to finally try to solve the housing crisis - but will they choose to take it?

The need to increase the number of new homes we build is pretty obvious. The consequences of the housing crisis are well rehearsed. Young people pay a bigger share of their incomes in housing costs than any other generation, while having less floor space to show for it. Commuting times are getting longer. Economic growth is being stifled.

Despite those - and many other - well-known impacts, successive governments have struggled to do anything about it. The problem has all the appearances of being intractable. But it isn’t - it is a choice.

Our planning system is far from perfect - it is inefficient, unpredictable and overly complex. It is also badly under-resourced. There is also an issue in the way in which we ration development land and is therefore the gatekeeper for how many new homes can be built. There are plenty of choices we could make to improve the way the system works, and deliver more homes of a better quality.

We could choose to plan for enough new homes in the first place. As it stands, all the local plans in England are aiming to deliver around 190,000 new homes - far below the government’s target. We also know that around 10%-20% of planning permissions are never built out for a whole variety of perfectly legitimate, benign reasons. We could choose to recognise that and ensure local authorities plan for their fair share of new homes with an adequate contingency to off-set the inevitable slippage.

We could choose to better integrate land-use planning with transport planning. Currently, those plans are often prepared by different bodies over different geographies and for different timescales. Ensuring the two are better coordinated will help reduce the car dependence of new developments and ensure they can better fund transport upgrades.

That means planning for large enough concentrations of new homes to enable them to support new or improved transport connections - in terms of both finance and passenger numbers. It also means delivering more new homes around existing transport links - even railway stations in the green belt.

Once local plans are adopted, the principle of development on allocated sites should be inalienable, not something that can be taken away by a recalcitrant planning committee at a future date

We could choose to make local plans focus on the things that really matter - like where development should go and how it should be designed, with more pictures showing what developments should look like and fewer words trying to explain it.

Once plans are adopted, the principle of development on allocated sites should be inalienable, not something that can be taken away by a recalcitrant planning committee at a future date. Allow developers to immediately submit a reserved matters application instead. To ensure every council has an adopted plan, the secretary of state should utilise his powers of intervention and deliver plans on behalf of dilatory councils more often.

We could choose to make decision making more efficient. A national set of development management policies will make their interpretation clearer - there is no need for Devon to have different policies on flood risk to Durham, for example.  

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More householder applications - which make up the majority of proposals - could be determined in line with a clear set of rules rather than subjective guidance.

We could choose to give more planning powers to elected mayors, allowing them to coordinate development needs across larger areas. Dare we call it regional planning?

Planning applications could be decided at that level too, aligning the geography at which decisions are made with the geography at which the benefits of new development accrue - rather than with the geography of the greatest harms as our current system does. 

We could choose to properly fund planning departments and ensure that teams have the skills they need to deal with modern applications.

We could choose to make the Section 106 process more transparent. Too often, over-stretched local authorities are unwilling or unable to confirm the level of financial contributions required until after an application is submitted. When the operation of the land market means land values are typically fixed before that point, the result is always going to be tension and agreements that can take many months to negotiate. A clear expectation for what is required removes that risk.

And we could choose to properly fund planning departments and ensure that teams have the skills they need to deal with modern applications. We could pay wages commensurate with the private sector and make unlocking the potential of every part of the country a more attractive career choice for the best and brightest.

Not reforming the planning system is a choice too. It is a choice to prioritise the views of the minority who oppose new homes - typically retired homeowners - over the majority who would welcome the multifarious benefits of increased levels of home building.

That makes it a bad choice.

It isn’t too late for the government to make a better one.

Paul Smith, managing director, The Strategic Land Group