Rayner’s Reforms: Getting Britain Building Again
The new Housing Secretary, Rt. Hon Angela Rayner MP, has announced ‘decisive’ planning reforms, to provide long-term policy stability and better conditions to ‘get Britain building again’.
With new mandatory housing targets, based on an up-to-date assessment method, local authorities will once again be required to identify sites for housing development. Only a third of councils currently have an up-to-date local plan and the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government will now require all authorities to agree a plan.
The Housing Secretary’s statement to the House of Commons covered a range of issues including greenbelt development, targets, local plans, housing mix and community consultation.
The policy headlines include:
A reversal of the previous government’s decision to make housing targets explicitly advisory. Under the new NPPF housing targets will be mandatory.
The Housing Secretary plans to intervene where needed to ensure local authorities deliver local plans.
The method used to calculate housing numbers will be updated and will require councils to ensure homes are built ‘in the right places and development is proportionate to the size of existing communities’.
Brownfield land will be prioritised and reforms will make explicit that the default answer to brownfield development should be ‘Yes’.
Some councils will be required to include ‘grey belt land’ to meet their targets. The government has today provided a new definition of ‘grey belt’, which includes land on the edge of existing settlements or roads, as well as old petrol stations and car parks.
Councils must consider the proximity of new homes to existing transport infrastructure.
Land released in the Green Belt will be required to deliver 50% affordable homes, increase access to green spaces and put the necessary infrastructure is in place, such as schools and GP surgeries.
Beyond housing, the government will reform planning to accelerate delivery of priority infrastructure such as laboratories, gigafactories and data centres. Grid upgrades will be prioritised to deliver more onshore wind projects and solar development across the country.
Reversing the decline in the number of social rent homes is a priority. Changes to Right to Buy will provide councils with more flexibility to use their receipts to build and buy more social homes. A review of the extended Help to Buy discounts introduced in 2012 is underway.
Future government investment in social and affordable housing will be brought forward at the next spending review, so social housing providers can plan for the future and help deliver the biggest increase in affordable housebuilding in a generation.
Government is confirming that the third round of the Local Authority Housing Fund will be going ahead, with £450m to councils to acquire and create homes for families at risk of homelessness.
In the autumn Budget on 30 October 2024, further support will be announced for councils and housing associations to borrow and invest in new and existing homes.
Looking ahead
The consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework will take place over the summer and the government will respond and publish NPPF revisions before the end of the year.
These changes will be followed by further reforms in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will introduce a national scheme of delegation that focuses planning committees on the applications that really matter, avoids a potential development being reviewed multiple times even where it’s been included in the local plan, and places more trust in skilled professional planners.
The government is also confirming its intention to introduce a universal system of strategic planning across England in this Parliament, underpinned by the necessary legislation, that will deliver on the manifesto commitment to plan for growth on a larger rather than local scale.
The consultation includes some proposals to reform the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) regime. This is a first step and further proposals will be brought forward in due course.