Conservative-led councils hit out at government’s new housing targets

Two Conservative-led local authorities have hit out at the Labour government’s new housing targets.

Last week, housing secretary Angela Rayner announced revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework, reinstating mandatory housing targets and introducing a new standard method to calculate them.

The new method will see nationwide housing targets rise from just over 300,000 to roughly 370,000, with certain areas experiencing starker increases than others.

The leader of Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council in Kent, which will need to deliver an additional 446 homes to achieve its 29% uplift, has said Labour’s plans will make it more difficult for the council to “defend” against planning applications “that neither the council nor any resident in the area would consider appropriate” and “weaken the protections” on green belt.

The proposed changes to targets “could be an absolute disaster for those people who wish to quite rightly preserve the identity of their local towns and villages,” said Matt Boughton.

Latest figures show the authority only met 63% of its housebuilding target between 2019 and 2022.

Boughton said the proposals were “pure politics”, claiming local authorities under Tory control were being “punished”, a criticism echoed by the planning and public realm lead in central London’s only Conservative-led council.

Cem Kemahli, a councillor in Kensington and Chelsea, noted that his local area had been told to increase its annual target for new properties 209% despite the figure for the whole capital dropping 18%.

The government, he said, had “inexplicably” left “the smallest London borough with the highest target in the capital” and accused Labour of “letting algorithms set their agenda rather than reality”.

“Labour must think again and we will be responding to that effect in the consultation,” he added.

When contacted for comment, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government directed Housing Today to a blog post on its new NPPF.

It said: “The new method strikes a balance between recognising and meeting the scale of need right across the country and focusing additional growth on those places facing the biggest affordability pressures, by more than doubling the affordability multiplier we apply in the method.”

It also noted that the biggest proportionate increases were focused on the South and South East.