Forum Topic

Not good news for housing.

The new planning law that was intended to cut bureaucracy and help the economy is allowing developers to challenge their obligation to contribute to the building of affordable housing. Developers can appeal to the Planning Inspectorate to cut or eliminate planning restrictions by claiming they would make schemes unviable. Even some Tory councils are rebelling against the policy of scrapping quotas for affordable homes, and feel the government has weighted the process too heavily in big developer's favour. Apparently under the Growth and Infrastructure Act -2013 - developers can appeal against S106 agreements which stipulate affordable housing requirements, if they feel they make sites unviable. Shameful.

Vanessa Smith ● 4303d11 Comments

I've heard of the plea of not being able to afford the agreed Section 106 monies in Brent as well.There are masses of flats being built without the health centres and schools etc which will be needed.

Philippa Bond ● 4301d

PS. Or it was when the were called Labour...what are they called this week and what do they believe now?

Keith Iddon ● 4302d

Good point Steve but...the actual build cost might well have been £20K with the rest of the value land value. Some replacements could no doubt have been built on land the council owned for (say) £20K.The other thing about building a house for 90K is that you end up with an asset worth...90K.An entrepreneur (or buy to let landlord) wouldn't think twice about borrowing to support the build cost: the rent would cover most if not all of the interest payments, wait a few years and you have an asset worth - according to Nationwide - £781511Of course councils were specifically banned from doing this.

Guy Lambert ● 4302d

At the time part of  Thatcher's reasoning for selling off housing stock was to encourage self reliance, to give people who could never otherwise afford a property a stakehold  in society and to reduce the size of the state and its role in people's lives ( all these things are main Tory tenets of belief). To expect her to build council stock to replace those dwellings is naïve and it was  never stated at the time that the govn. would do this. I think if there is a party who are responsible for not providing enough public housing since then it must be New Labour as state provision of houses and services is one of their main tenets.

Keith Iddon ● 4302d

That's not necessarily true, many of the properties sold were built a long time previously for very little money and the council had had all the rents for a lot of years by the time they were sold. Also at the time councils did still have ownership of more land than they have now. But it wasn't just the failure to replace sold properties it was the business of getting housing associations involved, councils for all their faults, were far and away better at building housing and managing it. The problem now is not the result of right to buy it is a failure on the part of successive governments to build real social housing and a complete and ridiculous snobby obsession with home ownership. Other countries have big successful rental sectors, and there's nothing wrong or second class with renting at all. But the current insistence on 'social' rents having to be 80% of a so-called 'affordable' will only exacerbate an already dire crisis. Quiet who these rents are affordable for is a mystery.

Vanessa Smith ● 4302d

"councils were not allowed to use the capital receipts to build new homes"Yes but the sums didn't add up. You can't sell a property with a market value of £90K for £20K and then expect to build a new home for £20K. Very many of these tenants who had bought for the peanuts prices - sold at market rates and left the country with their new found wealth. They are now all over the place in Australia & NZ and the Thatcher 'greed'culture set in and our property prices soared leaving the mess we are in today. Very difficult for next generations to even get on the property ladder. 

Steve Taylor ● 4302d

I agree Vanessa.Meanwhile it's great to see localism in action (ROFG)

Guy Lambert ● 4302d

No, the biggest blunder - although it was a deliberate move on the old bat's part, was that councils were not allowed to use the capital receipts to build new homes. I always thought that there was nothing wrong at all with councils building both for rent and sale.

Vanessa Smith ● 4302d

One of Thatchers biggest blunders IMO was to allow council tenants to buy their properties for peanuts...I doubt we will recover from it.

Steve Taylor ● 4302d

I absolutely agree, but if you read the latest edition of 'Private Eye' you'll see that the b*st*rds are stitching that up so much it may well soon be just a memory. Thanks to the pie eating Pickles and the Beaker Boy Alexander councils will have their borrowing cap lifted for two years from 2015. "BUT councils that want to take part will have to demonstrate 'value for money' by using their own land and selling off high value council homes as they become vacant. Housing assns. that want to work with them will be encouraged to contribute by converting existing social-rent homes to 'affordable' rents. These are set at up to 80% of market levels, which in expensive parts of the country are much higher than social rents. The gap in London is much greater  where the average 'affordable' rent for a three-bed  home of £191 a week compares with a social rent of around £113. Nine boroughs have just lost a legal challenge to mayor Boris Johnson's London Plan, which insists on 'affordable' rather than social rents to maximise the number of new homes. When it comes to 'affordable housing, the good news just keeps on coming."

Vanessa Smith ● 4302d

Vanessa, affordable housing is anything but affordable for a lot of people. More social housing is what's required but no government since Thatcher sold it all off has been willing to tackle this problem.

Andrew Sibley ● 4302d