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Grant funding should be refocused to include regeneration and place, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation (NHF) has told MPs.
Kate Henderson was speaking during an evidence session of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee on Monday.
She joined several witnesses who raised concerns that the Levelling Up, Housing and Regeneration Bill could lead to the centralisation of the planning system and questioned how effective the government’s planning proposals will be in delivering its levelling-up agenda.
Ms Henderson said one important change was the plan to repurpose Homes England to include the regeneration of towns and cities.
Plans to extend the remit of the government’s main housing delivery agency were outlined in the Levelling Up White Paper in February, and Ms Henderson described this proposal as a “really positive step forward”.
She said: “As part of that, we would really like to see a shifting focus with the Affordable Housing Programme, which at the moment just looks at net addition for affordable housing.
“We absolutely need new housing, so this is great, but in some places we really need to look at regeneration.”
Published in May, the bill contains a number of important changes for the housing sector.
Alongside implementing many of the proposals outlined in February’s Levelling Up White Paper, the bill brought forward a number of ideas from 2020’s controversial Planning White Paper.
While the most radical parts of the Planning White Paper, such as the introduction of a zonal planning system, have now been abandoned, a new Infrastructure Levy to replace Section 106 remains.
Ms Henderson called for a “test and learn” approach to implementing the levy to help ensure it works for areas of low land where viability is compromised.
Ian Fletcher, director of policy at the British Property Federation, described the details around the levy as “sketchy” which amounted to a “leap of faith” in the government’s plans.
The committee also explored issues around public participation in the planning system and the trade-off between local and national housing needs.
Mr Fletcher said there was nothing wrong with national policy proposals as long as they act as a benchmark that still leaves room for flexibility.
He said: “Having affordable thresholds for smaller sites can be OK in some urban areas, but it could mean zero delivery in many rural areas.”
Andrew Wood, spatial planning lead at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, agreed it was difficult to scrutinise the bill without more detail.
He also said it is important to put the bill within the wider public policy agenda context and look at the issues it is trying to help address.
He added: “It’s the climate, nature and public health emergencies. It’s social housing and it’s spatial inequalities. And what does the bill actually say about those? It just says trust us and wait and see.”
Last month, the government was told to ditch the bill entirely and instead focus on supporting bottom-up policy changes such as raising planning fees.
Hugh Ellis, director of policy at the Town and Country Planning Association, told MPs that trying to fix a planning system that was broken on such a scale was “delusional”.
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