General Election guest views. This week, Kate Brock, Senior Practice Development Lawyer at Pinsent Masons considers how the main parties manifestos intend to deal with the creation of new homes through the planning system.

Given the plethora of debate and discussion around development planning and housing as a result of the Housing White Paper and related legislation, the Conservatives are not leading their general election campaign on this issue, hoping that the public are already clear on their intentions and plans for building new homes and speeding up the planning system. Their Manifesto repeats what we’ve already been told: that new homes for sale and rent will be delivered by “freeing up more land”, “speeding up build-out by encouraging modern methods of construction” and “giving Councils powers to intervene where developers do not act on their planning permissions”. Competition in the market will be encouraged. High-density housing such as terraced streets, mansion blocks and mews houses will be supported. On the issue of social housing the Manifesto promises new housing deals with Councils who are “ambitious and pro-development” to build “fixed term social houses, which will be sold privately after 10 – 15 years with an automatic Right to Buy for tenants, the proceeds of which will be recycled into further homes”.

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats agree with the Conservatives on the volume of new homes needed and that they should be sustainable and of good quality design, but in contrast both manifestos prefer direct government intervention to achieve this. Labour pledge to create a Department for Housing to improve the “number, standards and affordability of homes”. They plan to build “at least 100,000 council and housing association homes a year for genuinely affordable rent or sale” and extend the powers of councils so they can build more social housing. They support the creation of New Towns as part of their housing pledge “to avoid urban sprawl”. The right to buy for Council and social tenants will be suspended “to protect affordable homes for local people, with councils only able to resume sales if they can prove they have a plan to replace homes sold like-for-like”. A promise to properly “resource and bolster planning authorities” and “put people and communities at the heart of planning” echo the Conservative promises in the Housing White Paper.

The Liberal Democrats have also taken a direct approach. They have set an increased target for housebuilding to 300,000 homes per annum and propose to fill the gap left by the market by “ directly building..…through a government commissioning programme”. 10 more garden cities in England are pledged as another way of creating homes, all backed by a new “British Housing and Infrastructure Development Bank” to provide long-term capital and help attract finance. To encourage council and social housing, the borrowing cap on local authorities will be lifted and the borrowing capacity of housing associations increased. The Liberal Democrats will end the voluntary right to buy for housing association homes and reserve the right to end the right to buy for council homes if they choose. Local authorities would be given power to enforce housebuilding on unwanted public sector land but local plans would be required to take into account “at least 15 years of future housing need” (as opposed to 5 years which is the current requirement).

Whilst all the three main parties recognise the urgent need for more affordable homes to be created, the way in which they intend to achieve this is very different. Depending upon which party is elected on 8th June, the housing and development industry could face yet more changes to a system already in a state of flux.

Article prepared by Kate Brock, Senior Practice Development Lawyer, Pinsent Masons LLP. Please note that this update does not constitute legal advice.