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Build to Rent schemes should be 20% affordable, says government guidance
Build to Rent developments should provide 20% affordable housing, according to new government planning guidance.
As part of an update last week to its planning practice guidance – which is intended to help planners interpret the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) – the government has published a new section on Build to Rent.
The guidance states that “20% is generally a suitable benchmark for the level of affordable private rent homes to be provided (and maintained in perpetuity) in any Build to Rent scheme”.
It stipulates that affordable private rent should be at least 20% cheaper than the rest of the scheme – in line with the affordable rent product – and should be “physically indistinguishable from the market rent homes in terms of quality and size”, as well as distributed throughout the development.
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These affordable homes should be “under common management control” together with the development’s market rent homes and “will not need the separate involvement of a registered landlord”, the guidance adds.
However, local authorities may suggest tenants for the affordable homes from their intermediate or statutory housing waiting lists.
And councils without intermediate waiting lists “may consider assembling a unique dataset” with the developer to allocate affordable housing in individual schemes.
The guidance notes that if local planning departments wish to set an affordable housing requirement other than 20% for Build to Rent developments, “they should justify this using the evidence emerging from their local housing need assessment, and set the policy out in their local plan”.
Developers will also be able to use viability assessments to challenge affordable housing requirements – though the process for viability testing has become much more stringent since in the new NPPF.
Build to Rent is defined by the NPPF as “purpose built housing that is typically 100% rented out” on the same site, typically managed by a single organisation and usually offering longer tenancies than the wider private rented sector market.
The British Property Federation said the sector grew 30% in 2017/18, with 117,893 Build to Rent homes under construction or in the pipeline at the start of 2018.
The NPPF, on which the planning practice guidance is based, was updated in July for the first time since 2012.
Other updates to the planning practice guidance include a new section on plan-making, as well as updated guidance on the housing need assessment and local plans.
