Housing and Planning Minister, Alok Sharma, has given a speech at the RESI Conference 2017 on ‘fixing the broken housing market.
The Minister stressed the Government’s clear manifesto commitment to delivering the White Paper. The Government has now followed this with a new consultation on ‘proposals to agree on a clear, open and transparent approach to assessing local housing need’ [see the consultations section below].
This Government will publish its combined consultation response early next year, alongside the draft new National Planning Policy Framework. The consultation states that the Government intends to publish a draft revised National Planning Policy Framework early in 2018. It intends to allow a short period of time for further consultation on the text of the Framework to make sure the wording is clear, consistent and well-understood. Its ambition is to publish a revised, updated Framework in Spring 2018.
On planning fees, the Minister said: ‘the Government is offering higher fees and new capacity funding to develop planning departments. The White Paper outlined a 20% planning application fee increase for local authorities that commit to invest the additional fee income in their planning department.
All planning authorities have accepted, and we are bringing forward the necessary regulations in the autumn to apply the increase. We are also minded to allow an increase of a further 20% for those authorities who are delivering the homes their communities need and we are going to be consulting further on the detail of this as part of the local needs consultation’.
On the Greenbelt, the Minister stated that the Housing White Paper does allow for development on the Green Belt but ‘there is an onus on the sector to also recognise the legitimate concerns that people have about development on Green Belt land’.