Streamlining planning may deliver volume, but only public money will deliver affordability

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner. Credit: Simon Walker / Deputy Prime Minister’s Office

1.5 million over this Parliament, or 370,000 per year. Even those who don’t routinely read property sector publications such as this one won’t have been able to escape those numbers these last few days. 

They are, of course, the number of homes that Angela Rayner wants to see built across the country. 

Generally speaking, the sector has been welcoming of the proposals that have been made to enable this. Namely “streamlining” the planning system, reintroducing housing targets and a willingness to exercise ministerial powers to intervene when Councils block applications that are acceptable in planning terms. 

So while it’s a big figure, the government is doing some things that give it a shot at hitting the target. 

But it’s not just about numbers. This is a Labour Government with a housing secretary that knows the value of a stable, affordable home to people’s life chances. Separate from that lived experience, in opposition, when the Shadow Housing brief was held by Wigan MP Lisa Nandy, the party expressed an explicit ambition to make social housing the second biggest tenure in the country. 

And this is where the questions begin to be asked. 

Just making it easier to get planning permission won’t mean that those planning permissions will be for affordable, or social homes. 

I’ve spent enough time on both sides of the fence to know that most often affordable housing is accommodated in applications through a section 106 payment for provision off site. Provision which, in practice, often doesn’t get built for a long time. 

Here in the north those commuted sums are often little to non-existent, because relatively low property values and high land remediation costs mean the viability of housing developments isn’t sufficient to set much money aside.  

This is the reason for Cavendish’s support for Place North’s Mind The Gap campaign; a call for more government support to close viability gaps on northern housing developments. To deliver affordable homes on the scale required, money will need to be put in on most sites, not taken out. 

Alongside my role at Cavendish, I’m a Councillor in Bolton. In common with most other Local Authorities, our waiting list for an affordable home runs to the thousands. And though not from lived experience, in common with Angela Rayner, as Cabinet Member for Public Health I can see the impact that too many people not having a stable, affordable home is having on the health and wellbeing of thousands of people, and the consequences for the expensive-to-provide public services like health and justice further down the line. 

The government is doing some of the right things to get more homes built. But if it wants as many of these as it says it does to be affordable then it will take subsidy as well as streamlining.  

Sean Fielding is an Associate Director with political consultants Cavendish Consulting and serves as a Local Government Councillor in Bolton, having previously served as the Leader of Oldham Council 2018-2021. He can be contacted on sean.fielding@cavendishconsulting.com.