Sunak pledges to reduce say of ‘distant bureaucrats’ in planning

Rishi Sunak has told parliament he wants decisions over the location of new homes to be taken locally rather than by ‘distant bureaucrats’.

Sunak was asked by backbencher Theresa Villiers at prime minister’s questions yesterday whether he would amend the levelling up and regeneration bill to remove centrally-set local housing targets.

She said: “Excessive housing targets are placing greater and greater pressure on councils to approve development which damages our environment.

“When the prime minister came to Finchley over the summer, he said he wanted to abolish those targets. Will he use the levelling up bill report stage to bring forward government amendments to do that?”

In response Sunak did not say the government would abolish the targets but said ministers are committed to “making home ownership a reality for a new generation.”

He said: “We must build homes in the right places where people want to live and work but…I want those decisions to be taken locally with greater say for local communities rather than distant bureaucrats.”

He added housing secretary Michael Gove “is happy to sit and meet with her to discuss how best to make this a reality.”

Villiers in a blog on the Conservative Home website last week said the levelling up and regeneration bill is an “immediate opportunity” to tackle the problem by bringing forward amendments to “scrap centrally-determined housing targets” which she says have led to pressure to allow overdevelopment. She cited comments made to Housing Today in the summer by a spokesperson for Sunak saying he does not believe in “arbitrary top-down numbers”.

Technically the government does not set housing targets for local authorities, but, via the Standard Method formula, it does calculate the housing need for each local authority, for which councils have to have a strong justification to depart from when setting their own housing targets.

>>See also: Q&A: what Sunak has told us about his views on housing

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Housing secretary Michael Gove, speaking to the BBC last month, implied he was intending to reform and review the system for forming local housing targets.

He said: “My view is that what we do need is a fair way of allocating housing need that takes account of changes in population.”

Gove also said the government’s 300,000-home a year manifesto pledge is still in place.

Housing Today’s A Fair Deal for Housing Campaign is calling on the government to re-commit to meeting the 300,000-home a year target and is outlining ideas for how the housebuilding industry could deliver it with government support.

Stewart Baseley, executive chair of the Home Builders Federation (HBF), has warned getting rid of local housing targets altogether could lead to housing delivery falling to 140,000 net additional homes a year - 100,000 fewer than the number of new homes the industry is on track to deliver this year.