Will the flexibility that has been applied to affordable housing in London go national?

While the spotlight has focused up until now on the dramatic collapse in housebuilding within London, it would be wrong to assume housebuilding is on track across the rest of England. The planning and development sector is also struggling to deliver sufficient housing, specifically social and affordable housing, outside London, leading many to wonder whether a similar package of emergency measures might also be needed to kickstart housing delivery across England.

A change in government expectations became apparent when, in January, housing minister Matthew Pennycook told the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee that the government’s target for 40% affordable housing in new towns is “an aspiration” and “there will be a role for viability and viability will bite on different sites in different ways”.

“The planning system has become too inflexible and the rigid application of planning policies and guidance has become an underlying issue impacting the viability of schemes”

This is the closest the government has come to recognising that London’s viability challenges also impact development elsewhere, and in this case specifically the proposals for 12 new towns.

While a reduced quota may not appear to be good news, the important point here is that those emergency measures in the Homes for London proposal were taken based on the conclusion that the planning system has become too inflexible and the rigid application of planning policies and guidance has become an underlying issue impacting the viability of schemes.

This significant realisation applies nationwide, and ultimately recognition of it could boost, rather than reduce, affordable housing delivery.

I believe this can come about if there is a reintroduction of flexibility into the system – a system that has become accustomed to the binary application of policy and guidance and has lost sight of the overarching role of the planning system to balance impacts and benefits.

The professional judgement of planning officers to interpret and apply policy and guidance should be at the heart of the planning system, but too often it is not.

Flexibility in interpreting policy and guidance is not the same as deregulation: it is about mitigating the impact of development, sometimes through trade-offs. It is about accepting that a scheme can deliver benefits even if it does not deliver – in the case of London – cycle storage or includes single-aspect units. What we have experienced in London is that where policies and guidance are applied absolutely, high-quality developments become unviable.

So the Homes for London package is a welcome step. Not only will it increase affordable housing figures, but it should herald a return of professional judgement and the acknowledgement that flexibility must sometimes trump guidance.

“I advocate for the roll-out of something akin to the Homes for London package across England”

In my mind there is no justification for this stopping at the M25. Flexibility will be key if we are to deliver 300,000 homes per year across England.

So I advocate for the roll-out of something akin to the Homes for London package across England. Only then will the planning system be able to acknowledge and respond to the current realities of development viability.

The difficulty outside London is in how flexibility can be delivered. While in London the mayor can remove or alter policy and guidance impacting 33 local planning authorities (LPAs), across much of England planning policy and guidance remains the preserve of over 300 LPAs.

Government must therefore drive this change, with National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) being an obvious vehicle through which flexibility can cascade down to planning decisions. The government must ensure that flexibility is at the heart of NDMPs and that LPAs are encouraged to apply professional judgement when the application of NDMPs and guidance has a direct impact on viability.

Nowhere is immune from viability challenges such as those that have ushered in the collapse in housebuilding in London in recent years. It is therefore critical in the delivery of both market and affordable housing that emergency measures are not confined within the M25.

James Cogan, director, Boyer London