The Government has published its housing white paper ‘Fixing our broken housing market’ setting out its vision to ‘reduce the obstacles to house building and help local authorities, developers and SME builders build the homes Britain needs’.
The White Paper only mentions heritage four times – in its footnotes. We are, of course, much more than a footnote and we will respond to the Government’s consultation to ensure that heritage issues are emphasised and more general plans do not inadvertently damage our sector. You can also submit your own response online before 11:45pm on 2 May 2017.
You can read our initial response and summary here.
Some key issues for the sector we identified are:
- Increased funding for planning departments;
- Building up on existing buildings;
- Greater protection for non-designated heritage assets of archaeological interest and ancient woodland;
- Green belt protection;
- Disposal of publically owned land;
- Developer track records;
- Implementation of planning permissions;
- Compulsory purchase powers; and
- Transparency of land ownership.
We have asked our Spatial Planning and Rural Heritage Advocacy Groups to feed into our response. If other members have any comments they would like to raise, please email policy@theheritagealliance.org.uk.
The Government has also published a number of other consultation responses which have fed into the White Paper and a further Call for Evidence. These include:
- Rural planning review: call for evidence. As well as setting out the Government response to the consultation, this document also seeks views on extending the thresholds for agricultural permitted development rights to help farmers, and on expanding the permitted
development rights that apply to agricultural buildings to provide more homes for local people. - House of Commons CLG Committee report on the consultation on national planning policy launched in December 2015;
- National Planning Policy: consultation on proposed changes. This considered, among other things, increasing the density of development around commuter hubs, development on brownfield land and small sites and delivery of housing agreed in Local Plans; and
- Implementation of planning changes: technical consultation. This consultation sought views on the implementation of measures in the Housing and Planning and other planning measures such as changes to planning application fees.