On the 4th of July, UK voters took to the ballot box and ushered in a new era for the Country by delivering an emphatic victory for the Labour Party.
As always, house building and planning regulations played their part in the leadership debates before election day.
House building can be a huge part of economic growth, and therefore it is vital the new government get it right on house building and new planning permission regulations.
How will the change of government affect planning rules? We’ll have a look into what we can expect to change over the next few months and years.
Housing Targets
In a speech shortly after her party had gained power, new chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed that Labour plan to build 1.5 Million new homes in England over the course of the parliament.
To achieve this Keir Starmer intends to rewrite the National Planning Policy Framework.
We will immediately update the National Policy Planning Framework to undo damaging Conservative changes, including restoring mandatory housing targets
Labour Manifesto
What is the Housing Target?
The housing target, as confirmed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves is set at 1.5 million new homes over the course of the parliament.
Labour are planning to build on brownfield sites and so-called ‘grey belt’ areas primarily.
Grey belt land is land on the green belt that may be covered in wasteland or disused car parks for example.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Raynor is set to write to local authorities in an aim to identify grey belt land around the country.
Knight Frank has conducted research suggesting that the 13% of England designated as green belt land could contain approximately 1% of grey belt sites.
Of the 11,205 sites identified, just over 40% (4,612 sites) sit within the London green belt area.
Merseyside and the Greater Manchester green belt area offered the second highest number of available sites (1,068), followed by green belt areas in Birmingham (1,351 sites), South and West Yorkshire (1,129 sites) and Bristol and Bath (606 sites).
Anna Ward, Knight Frank
It is thought that up to 200,000 homes could be built on the identified grey belt land. 1.3 million homes will have to be built elsewhere during the Labour reign to hit their target.
300 New Planning Officers
The new Government also has a commitment to providing 300 new planning officers, this equates to fewer than 1 officer per local authority. Hopefully, this will help to clear planning application backlogs.
The government is also hoping to usher through a number of large-volume developments thought to be able to provide 14,000 new homes in Liverpool Central Docks, Northstowe, Worcester Parkway and Langley Sutton Coldfield.
Onshore Wind
Labour has immediately lifted a Conservative-imposed ‘de facto’ ban on onshore windfarms.
In a positive move towards achieving clean energy generation, Labour have acted swiftly in favour of onshore wind.
Windfarms will still be subject to planning permission, however, now they will be treated in the same way that other energy infrastructure projects are.
The requirement to receive full community support and for the developments to be allocated in a development plan or through local development, neighbourhood development and community right-to-build orders have been lifted.
Waiting Game
There of course will be more information making its way through to planning professionals and local authorities over the next few weeks and months.
Will the change of Government affect planning rules?
In all likelihood, there will be some significant changes coming through for the government to be able to hit its housing and energy targets on top of what I have outlined above.
Keep an eye on the Simple Planning Solutions Blog to monitor developments as we’ll cover them as and when they come up.
As ever, if you have a project you need planning support with, get in touch and thank you for reading.
Michelle Hill MRTPI
As a leading planning consultant I can help with the topics covered in this post. Contact me and I can find you a solution to your planning problem.
