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Theresa May calls for tougher design rules to prevent ‘tiny homes’

July 5, 2019/0 Comments/in Home Page news feed, News /by joannevickers

Theresa May has called for mandatory design standards for new houses, saying the number of “tiny homes” with little storage on the market is indefensible.

The prime minister said the lack of universal, enforceable rules on the amount of internal space is encouraging a “race to the bottom” among builders.

If all councils made those rules a pre-condition of planning, it would end the “postcode lottery”, she argued.

MPs, meanwhile, say residents should be compensated for design flaws.

The cross-party Commons Public Accounts Committee said there needed to be a clear definition of what was acceptable in terms of the quality of new housing.

In a new report, it said it was particularly concerned about offices and commercial buildings being converted into residential properties.

The government is reviewing its policy of allowing the conversion of offices into homes without planning permission.

What are the rules?

Guidelines specifying minimum bedroom size, floor areas for storage and floor to ceiling heights for new builds in England have been in place for several years and were last updated in 2016.

But the Nationally Described Space Standards are not compulsory, and are only applicable if councils adopt them as part of their local housing plan.

What does the PM want?

In a speech to the Chartered Institute of Housing in Manchester, Mrs May said there are different standards in different areas.

While the government remained committed to a massive expansion in house building over the next decade, hoping to reach a target of 300,000 new homes a year by the mid 2020s, she said this cannot come at the expense of quality.

“I cannot defend a system in which owners and tenants are forced to accept tiny homes with inadequate storage,” she said.

“Where developers feel the need to fill show homes with deceptively small furniture. And where the lack of universal standards encourages a race to the bottom.”

The government wants to see design requirements incorporated into the planning process for the first time.

But MPs have expressed concerns that too many councils’ housing plans are out of date and some town halls do not have a blueprint at all due to its cost and complexity.

The Public Accounts Committee said ministers were reluctant to intervene and use their powers to develop a plan centrally because of concerns over localism.

Why is housing such a key issue?

The Local Government Association, which represents more than 300 councils in England and Wales, said there needed to be more leadership from government on the issue so councils, developers and home buyers knew where they stood.

“High-quality homes for affordable and social rent are desperately needed across the country now,” said Martin Tett, the organisation’s housing spokesman.

“These standards should future-proof all new homes ensuring they are accessible for all ages and all markets, meet the housing needs of our ageing population and are environmentally sustainable.”

Shelter said it applauded efforts to improve the quality of new homes but the reality was that most first-time buyers could simply not afford to get on the housing ladder.

It said ministers’ efforts should be focused on removing disincentives in the market to build social housing.

“What this country needs – and what it wants – is a commitment from the top, from any prime minister, to a renewal of social housing,” said its chief executive Polly Neate.

Source: BBC.co.uk

Housing shake up in the 2018 budget

October 31, 2018/0 Comments/in News /by joannevickers

More help for first-time buyers and plans for homes on the High Street have been announced.

Presenting the Autumn budget, Chancellor Philip Hammond said a ‘turning point in our nation’s recovery’ has been reached and vowed that the era of austerity was ending.

Most first-time buyers of shared ownership properties will now no longer pay stamp duty, under the measures.

Chancellor Philip Hammond also said that the Help to Buy scheme would end in 2023 – an extension of two years.

Mr Hammond said the housing market needed to be fixed, adding it was key to boosting UK productivity and living standards.

The UK is facing a shortage of housing. The number of homes on the market is at a 10 year low and fewer people are taking out mortgages.

Mr Hammond promised an extra £500m for the Housing Infrastructure Fund – a pot of money that local councils can apply to for help with building homes.

This extra cash should help build 650,000 more homes, he said.

The government has also struck deals with nine housing associations to deliver 13,000 homes across England.

And the chancellor wants to see more SMEs – small and medium-sized enterprises – building houses, so has announced up to £1bn of British business bank guarantees.

Mr Hammond also said he was providing money to help up to 500 neighbourhoods to allocate land for housing and sell the homes to local people at a discount.

He also confirmed that the cap on councils, which limits their ability to borrow money to build council houses, would be scrapped. Theresa May had already promised the cap would be scrapped in her Conservative Party conference speech.

Mr Hammond’s announcements come after analysis earlier this year suggested that house-building across half of England was slower than it was before the 2008 financial crash.

Source: BBC news

Government will lift the borrowing cap on councils to allow them to build many more homes

October 10, 2018/0 Comments/in Home Page news feed, News /by joannevickers

The Prime Minister’s announcement that the Government will lift the borrowing cap on councils to allow them to build many more homes is a victory for bold thinking and common sense, according to the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).

Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the FMB, said: “This is the most exciting, and potentially transformative, announcement on council housing for many years. It is something the house building sector and local authorities have been crying out for since the last economic downturn as a means by which to increase house building. Indeed, the only times the UK has built sufficient numbers of homes overall is when we’ve had a thriving council house building programme. Local authorities have a strong interest in delivering new affordable homes and many would have the appetite to directly fund this, but have been frustrated from doing so by an artificial cap on their ability to borrow against their assets to build homes. In a victory for common sense, Mrs May has now signalled that the borrowing cap will be scrapped to allow councils to build many more new homes.”

Berry continued: “We believe this could also have the added benefit of expanding the capacity of the private sector by providing more opportunities for SME builders. In this way, a stronger public sector house building programme can complement and help support a stronger, more diverse private sector. The private sector will continue to take the lead in delivering new homes, and to ensure it can do so, we need to continue to lay the foundations for a diverse private sector in which new firms can more easily enter the market and small firms can more easily prosper and grow. However, in order to deliver the number of new homes the Government is targeting it is going to be necessary for the private and public sectors to both be firing on all cylinders. That’s why this announcement is so welcome.”

Berry concluded: “However, as much as this is a bold and praiseworthy move by the Prime Minister, new homes of any sort will not get built if we as an industry don’t have the people we need to build them. Recent announcements on post-Brexit immigration rules, if implemented as currently understood, will be a serious threat to our ability to deliver on the promise of this policy. The failure of the Government so far to listen to the construction industry could unfortunately threaten the delivery of the Government’s increasingly bold moves to solve the housing crisis.”

Before the introduction of the cap under Margaret Thatcher, councils built around 10,000 homes a year – but that figure has subsequently dipped as low as 100. The amount of extra investment in housing could be around £1bn a year, but this is dependent on how many councils decide to borrow.

Source: fmb.org.uk / The Guardian

New rules on housing developments from the National Planning Policy Framework

July 25, 2018/0 Comments/in Home Page news feed, News /by James

Poor quality or unattractive housing developments will be more easily changed by councils under new rules that form part of the revised National Planning Policy Framework, the government has claimed.

Publishing the revised framework, following a public consultation earlier this year, the government said it would:

promote high quality design of new homes and places
offer stronger protection for the environment
allow the construction of the right number of homes in the right places
focus on greater responsibility and accountability for housing delivery from councils and developers.

The revision of the National Planning Policy Framework is part of the government’s ambition to build 300,000 new homes a year by the mid 2020s and incorporates 85 proposals set out in the housing white paper and the Budget.

Under the revised framework, councils will have the power to refuse permission for development that does not prioritise design quality and does not complement its surroundings.

It will also encourage councils to make use of new visual tools to promote better design and quality and will set a strategic direction for driving up new build quality, although it will remain up to councils to apply these policies in the most appropriate way in their area.

There will be a greater importance on air quality, as the framework has also been updated to provide further protection for biodiversity, aligning the planning system more closely with the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) 25-year Environment Plan, which offers more protection for habitats and places greater importance on air quality when deciding development proposals.

The framework also sets out a new way for councils to calculate the housing need for their local community, with the aim of delivering more homes where they are most needed, and from November 2018 councils will have a Housing Delivery Test, focused on driving up the number of homes delivered in an area, rather than how many are planned for.

Communities secretary James Brokenshire said: “Fundamental to building the homes our country needs is ensuring that our planning system is fit for the future. To maximise the use of land we are promoting more effective use of the land available and giving councils more confidence to refuse applications that don’t provide enough homes”

“This revised planning framework sets out our vision of a planning system that delivers the homes we need. I am clear that quantity must never compromise the quality of what is built, and this is reflected in the new rules.”

The framework also sets out a new way for councils to calculate the housing need of their local community, including different forms of housing, such as older people’s retirement homes. According to Brokenshire the new methodology aims to deliver more homes in the places where they are most needed, based on factors including the affordability of existing homes for people on lower and medium incomes.

The government said councils would be required to take a Housing Delivery Test from November this year, “designed to drive up the numbers of homes actually delivered in their area, rather than how many are planned for”.

The government repeated its goal to building 300,000 new homes a year “by the mid-2020s”.

The new rules will see 85 of the proposals set out in the most recent Budget and in the housing white paper – published in February 2017 – implemented in the new framework.

Responding to the latest document the British Property Federation said the NPPF “rightly embraces multi-tenure housing delivery, higher quality design of new homes and the benefits of the build-to-rent sector, [but] the nation’s town centres and the industrial and logistics sectors still require more support from planning policy”.

BPF director of real estate policy Ian Fletcher said the planning system for town centres was still too inflexible and outdated. “The way people use town centres is changing, and in turn town centres must be able to respond more quickly and innovatively to this.

“Leadership needs to come from local authorities and the starting point is a supportive planning policy. Local authorities should be given the resource to regularly monitor retail trends and adapt town centre planning policies accordingly.”

And Mark Sitch, senior partner at design consultancy Barton Willmore, said he was disappointed to see that the industry’s “substantial feedback” had not found its way into the final framework.

“There are however no big surprises and no real changes. The focus remains on housing. Overall, there is less, not more, for those looking to deliver employment floorspace. This may be a critical oversight as we all move towards a post-Brexit economy.”

But Paul Smith, managing director of planning consultancy the Strategic Land Group, said that while none of the NPPF policies were “game changing in themselves, they represent an evolution of the original NPPF which has, in reality, worked quite well. The number of homes granted planning permission has almost doubled since it was introduced.”

Source: Construction Manager Magazine / Building.co.uk

Housing Minister announces new funding

February 21, 2018/0 Comments/in Home Page news feed, News /by joannevickers

New funding to help speed up planning decisions and help deliver quality new homes has been announced by Housing Minister Dominic Raab.

The first wave of the Planning Delivery Fund, totalling £15.8 million, has been awarded to enable councils to process more applications, implement new reforms and also train planners to tackle the housing challenges faced by their local area.

This funding boost will support local authorities working together on ambitious new joint local plans and core strategies, which will engage residents on how future development will take place in their areas and outline the locations suitable for new homes where demand is high.

The funding will also support greater best practice and innovation within councils as they decide planning applications, resulting in more being determined over a shorter period of time.

Money awarded to bidders will also allow local authorities to access the latest expertise on design and town planning, driving up the quality of new homes built.

This first wave of funding has been split into 3 streams that will assist in delivering new homes across England: The Joint Working Fund (£9.4 million), Design Quality Fund (£4.82 million) and Promoting Innovation Fund (£1.07 million).

A total of 68 projects will receive funding from the Planning Delivery Fund across all 3 streams, from 2017 until 2019.

The launch of this fund will give successful councils a greater capability to implement the government’s reforms of the planning system and comes as the Ministry for Housing prepares to launch its revised National Planning Policy Framework later this spring.

Dominic Raab said:

This cash boost ensures councils have the resources needed to make quicker decisions on planning applications, delivering quality housing at a faster rate.

It’s part of our strategy to build the homes this country needs whilst also supporting residents to have their say on the kind of development that takes place in their area.