Responding to the National Audit Office’s report ‘Planning for
New Homes’, Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary,
MP said:
“This report from the government’s spending watchdog should be a
wake-up call for Ministers. It shows that deep cuts and poor
planning changes are stopping us building the homes the country
needs.
“Crude council cuts mean fewer staff to deal with planning
applications, and looser rules mean developers have increasingly
dodged their fair contribution to building new low-cost homes.
“Labour will build a million genuinely affordable homes, end cuts
to councils, stop developers dodging their affordable housing
obligations and set up an English Sovereign Land Trust to make
more land available for housing, more cheaply.”
Ends
Notes to editors:
The National Audit Office report, ‘Planning for New Homes’ is
published today (Friday).
Its findings include:
- · the NAO is not
convinced that the government’s housing targets are consistent
with their own stated housing policy of building 300,000 homes a
year by the ‘mid 2020s’;
- · the government’s
new housing need formula ‘downgrades’ the north of England,
requiring 24% fewer homes in the North West, 23% fewer homes in
Yorkshire and the Humber, and 19% fewer in the North East;
- · the Planning
Inspectorate’s performance is “unacceptable”; and
- · the contribution
that developers are making to funding infrastructure and
affordable housing has fallen as a proportion of sale price,
while developer profits have risen.
Labour’s plans to build a million low-cost homes to rent and buy
over ten years, to close the viability loophole that lets
developers dodge affordable housing contributions, and to set up
an English Sovereign Land Trust, are set out here: http://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Housing-for-the-Many-final.pdf
