Housing Today calls for affordable housing funding review and planning overhaul

Housing Today’s A Fair Deal for Housing campaign has today called for a review of affordable housing funding and changes to the planning system in a bid to boost development to 300,000 homes a year and beyond.

Our A Fair Deal for Housing campaign, working in collaboration with the Building the Future Commission, has today published 21 recommendations to boost housing delivery.

The recommendations are intended to spark debate and influence politicians in the run-up to the general election. It forms part of a wider Building the Future Commission piece of research out today covering eight broad areas affecting the construction and housebuilding industry.

>>Click here to read the detailed housing and planning recommendations

On housing the report’s recommendations cover four main areas: significantly increasing affordable housing delivery; raising private sector supply; boosting brownfield regeneration and estate redevelopment; and reforming the planning system.

Housing Today calls on the next government to commission a review to identify how to increase affordable housing output to 100,000 homes a year.

It should consider reviewing existing funding for affordable housing so that a more ambitious programme can be delivered. The Chartered Institute of Housing has said an estimated £700m would be needed for every additional 10,000 social rented homes.

The report said: “Boosting affordable supply would both help those with the most acute housing problems, as well as assist in retaining and/or boosting capacity in the residential development sector.

“Affordable housing supply can be used to boost housing delivery during periods of market downturn, so public money can act in a counter-cyclical manner to even out the boom-bust nature of the housing market cyclical, as per the recommendations of the Redfern Review.”

The report also suggests the review could look at grant rates for affordable housing, a longer-term rent settlement for social housing providers, a time-limited stimulus package to counteract the high cost of private funding and at mechanisms to lever in more institutional finance for ‘for-profit’ registered providers.

To boost private supply, the report calls on the government to bring forward a number of refroms, including implementing the recommendations of Oliver Letwin’s Independent Review of Build Out, to ensure more rapid delivery of permissioned sites. The report calls for the government ot use Homes England’s procurement to boost SME housebuilding and to consider amending the definition of “small sites” in planning policy (currently 10 units) in order that builders beyond simply micro-enterprises can benefit from local planning policies designed to benefit small firms.

The report outlines measures to boost regeneration and brownfield development. These include reviewing funding for infrastructure in order to support major housing schemes and an assessment of potential tax incentives.

The latest recommendations follow on the back of the Building the Future Commission’s report on the planning system in the summer. This calls for the reintroduction of a strategic planning tier to take key decisions – such as on housing numbers and the green belt – where it most makes sense, in order to avoid problems with local development constraints.

The Building the Future Commission, launched to mark the  180th anniversary of Housing Today’s sister title Building, ran throughout 2023 and explores solutions to improve the built environment in eight different areas: net zero; skills and education; building safety; workplace, culture and leadership; housing and planning; infrastructure; project delivery and digital; and creating communities.

The commission was aided by help from its 19 commissioners, all high-profile figures from across the industry. For the full findings and recommendations of the six-month planning study, see the full report here.