Excellent summary of the effect of the Local Plan on the district’s villages – including potential pitfalls if the Plan goes hopelessly wrong, given the risky “high growth” strategy that the Inspector has accepted:
Category Archives: Affordable and Social Housing
High-end Exeter estate agent says 50% of purchasers from outside Devon
Jackson-Stops estate agent, Exeter
” …During the course of 2015 around 50% of the purchasers through our Exeter office came from outside the Westcountry and around 25% were from London and the Home Counties.
… Predictions going forward are always dangerous, bearing in mind that we all had thought there would be significant improvement immediately following last year’s General Election, but the conditions do appear to be still in place for a reasonably active market moving into the spring: The gap between values in London and those in the South West are greater than at any time for the last 30 years and borrowing money is cheaper than at any time since the Second World War.
Many of our local buyers are people who have moved down to this part of the world from elsewhere within the last ten years and are simply moving to a different part of the county, or perhaps “down or up-sizing” and as for those from outside the area, still there are significant numbers who realise that “Devon is heaven!”.
Follow the money … housing benefit doesn’t go to the tenant, it goes to the landlord
“So, your plan is to bulldoze council estates where lots of people live, some of them renting, some owners.
What happens to them during the destruction and building phase and what happens afterwards?
You’re building fewer places to live in than were there before. How will it work?
… None of it makes sense unless you follow the money and try to work out who benefits from this madness. Not the country, not those on normal wages, not the poor and vulnerable.
Those who benefit are property developers and private landlords. Or to put it another way, Tory donors and Tory MPs as they hoover up all that housing benefit money.
Remember that next time your hear about the amount of benefit going to some hard-working person on low pay. She isn’t getting the housing benefit.
No, this wedge of taxpayers’ money is going into the pockets of private landlords.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-property-greed-wrecked-housing-7192291
Cameron: Affordable Homes – 2 + 2 = ?
David Cameron asserted in Parliament this week that people needed only a £10,000 deposit to buy a new home now, so homes were affordable for people to buy on the “living wage”, “whereas he had needed £30,000 when he bought his first home – bet that wasn’t a starter home nor was he on a “living wage”!
However, today’s Telegraph has fact-checked this and found his maths somewhat disingenuous to say the least. No wonder the government can always seem to make 2 and 2 make anything but 4!:
” … The question put to Mr Cameron was if those on the national living wage would be able to afford a home.
Based on the current UK living wage of £8.25 an hour, an individual working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks of the year would earn £16,500 before tax.
A couple together would have a household income of £33,000, which based on a four-times salary multiple (a simplified measure) would enable them to borrow a maximum of £132,000 in a best case scenario, assuming they had a clean credit history, no other debts and minimal outgoing costs.
According to the Halifax House Price Index, the average house price across the UK is £208,000.
Taking a more conservative £180,000, with a 5pc deposit using a standard 95pc mortgage you would need to borrow £171,000 (the other £1,000 from the £10,000 would be needed for stamp duty).
To be lent that much, assuming all other elements are in order, would typically require an income of £42,750. Using regional average prices, that figure is £80,000 for London and £53,000 for the South East.
David Hollingworth, associate director of communications at London and Country Mortgages, said: “The scoring requirement is likely to be higher for those with a small deposit so applicants will need to be sure they can meet the affordability requirements and have a clean credit record.”
The other point to make is if £10,000 is all that you have been able to save, it is unlikely your salary will be high enough for a 95pc mortgage. The equity loan can of course help here, if there are new builds available in your price bracket. …”
“Affordable Housing”: main political parties squabble but don’t help to improve it
outh West Tory MPs have come under fire after opposing amendments calling for tougher rules on “habitable” homes and stable supplies of affordable housing.
The criticism from Lib Dem and Labour MPs follows the successful passage of the Government’s Housing and Planning Bill, which introduced a raft of reforms to the housing sector.
A total of 16 Devon and Cornwall Conservatives voted against the opposition amendments, leading to accusations the party “doesn’t give a monkeys” about the region’s low income families.
But MPs have hit back at the claims, dismissing the proposals as “unnecessary political posturing”. …
“Why are Brits so obsessed with buying their own homes?”
“… Economics and culture are of course interconnected. The British economy is built on this home ownership hysteria and if the government bangs on about cutting the public deficit, it is partly to avoid talking about the country’s stratospheric level of private debt – which it encourages.
The British are among the most indebted people in the world. At the end of 2015, they personally owed almost £1.5trn, and the Office for Budgetary Responsibility forecast puts household debt in 2019 at 182% of disposable income – more than twice as much as in France. This is mostly driven by mortgage debt, but also by the heavy use of consumer credit.
… Britain has a risk-taking culture. In France, we are risk-adverse and debt is considered a social disease. Even if you want to borrow yourself to death, as in Britain, you can’t – the law doesn’t allow it. Monthly repayments, to pay off a mortgage for instance, cannot exceed 30% of your income. In other words, in France the legislators make sure you have enough left every month to buy your daily dose of reblochon and go to the movies.
So while the French are left to enjoy life’s many modest pleasures, courtesy of legislators who look after them like mother hens, the British live more dangerously, and by doing so sustain the country’s infrastructure. In other words, while we save, you spend; while we rent, you buy, sell and buy again. And make the British economy roar. As they say, no pain, no gain.”
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jan/14/why-are-brits-so-obsessed-with-buying-their-own-homes
Sell everything before crash, says bank economist
“In a note to its clients the bank said: “Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small.” It said the current situation was reminiscent of 2008, when the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank led to the global financial crisis. This time China could be the crisis point.”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/12/sell-everything-ahead-of-stock-market-crash-say-rbs-economists
And still EDDC plumps for high growth and massive housing development.
Heseltine (just put in charge of council estate regeneration by Cameron) thought that all council tower blocks had lift attendants …
“Sometime in the dim and distant 1970s I attended a housing conference chaired by the then Labour Environment chief Peter Shore.
Having listened to various speakers making promises they would soon break, a tenant rose up to complain that on his high-rise estate the lifts were out of order more often than not, which was a serious problem for mums with prams and the disabled.
From the back of the room then rose the unmistakable figure of Michael “Tarzan” Heseltine. “WHY”, he thundered, “did not the lift attendants do something about it?”
There was a stunned silence, as half the room were unable to digest what this tall golden-maned toff was saying, while the rest were too embarrassed to correct him.
… So now, at the tender age of 82, Lord Heseltine is to be in charge of Cameron’s latest conjuring trick: the transformation of leaden council estates into golden private housing. On Sunday morning the PM tweeted: “I’ll be talking to Andrew Marr about ensuring everyone has a chance to get on in life in the next few minutes on BBC1.”
… He may look, as a shining example, to the Heygate Estate in Southwark which Labour leader Peter John sold (at a loss of around £20 million) to Australian developer Lend Lease. Around 3,000 people lived in its large and light flats, although the council’s failure to maintain in properly resulted in it looking the worse for wear. The sale to Lend Lease will result in over 2,000 private homes – which are already selling well in Singapore – but fewer than 100 will be for social renting. Mr John has just received an OBE for his services to, er, ahem.
… As with Heseltine’s lift attendants, Cameron has no idea that most tenants who rent substandard homes on poorly maintained estates do so because they can afford nothing else. Most of them are on benefits, squeezed by the Bedroom Tax, benefit caps and “sanctions” – thanks to the efforts of Iain Duncan Smith – and often one payment away from the street.
How Mr Cameron intends to give them “a chance to get on in life” by destroying their homes remains to be seen.”
Housing market collapse?
“House prices have broken free from reality and defied gravity for far too long, but they are an asset like anything else, and there are six clear reasons a nasty correction looms in the coming year.
Global asset price crash
Asset prices around the world soared as central bankers embarked on the greatest money printing experiment in history. While much of that money flowed into the stock market, a great deal also found its way into house prices. What we are now witnessing on trading screens around the world is the unwinding of the era of monetary excess, and house prices will not escape the fallout.
… There is a delayed effect on property prices because the market is so inefficient.
Transactions can take up to three months to complete and the property itself may have to languish on the market for even longer. The prices are also dictated by estate agents, who have an interest in inflating them to raise fees. The number of transactions is also still about 40pc below that of 2006 and 2007, which allows prices to stray from the fundamentals for a longer period.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/12087971/UK-house-price-to-crash-as-global-asset-prices-unravel.html
The article goes on to cite other factors which could lead to a price crash: changes to the buy to let market, fewer international buyers, possible interest rate rises and a massive increase in household debt
What happpens after Cameron bulldozes sink estates?
Sink estate demolished.
No council or housing association houses so people left homeless or dispersed into private rented accommodation.
Developers puts in plans for expensive houses where “affordable starter homes” means £400,000 (London) or £250,000 (rest of the UK).
Sorted.
Got to hand it to the man …
As explained in mote detail here:
” … These are not “affordable’”homes. They are worth up to 17 times the national average wage. For the government claiming “there is no money left” then to find billions to hand over to developers to knock up such expensive homes is an outrage. At a stroke, ministers have redefined affordable so that in the capital it now means nearly half a million quid. As the Highbury Group of housing specialists points out, that will enable big building firms to ride roughshod over the needs of local communities and the demands of local councils, and just throw up the most expensive flats they can get away with.
This is terrible policy and stupid politics. Come the 2020 general election, Mr Cameron may be able to claim he has encouraged the mass building of affordable homes – but voters, even Tory diehards, will not be able to afford the things. Some victory.”
The myth of “affordable starter homes” and why they don’t help, explained by an American!
This American business publication explains:
“… The starter homes will range on price because market pricing will depend where in the country they are being built and which builder is constructing them. The government will apply a minimum 20% discount to the house sale price for first-time buyers under 40.
The discount will then be applicable to properties worth up to £250,000 outside London, or £450,000 in the capital.
So even if you had 20% the price of a £450,000 home in the capital, people argue that this isn’t exactly “affordable” for the average Briton.
On BBC Radio 5 Live, Bogle [Paul Bogle, National Federation of Builders] pointed out that all the government’s plans to help the housing market is, in fact, making it worse in a lot of ways.
“We have a supply problem and a lot of the measurements that the government has done has focused on stoking demand,” said Bogle. “So whether it is Help to Buy for a new buy, first buy, cheaper mortgage rates and Funding for Lending for the banks that allow them to offer cheaper mortgages those will allow people to move into buying homes.
“So if you’re on the housing ladder that’s easy for you but trying to get on [the ladder], it’s going to be more difficult [because of increased demand] and your earnings aren’t increasing at the pace of house price increases.”
And Bogle has a point.
The government scheme Help to Buy means people can rustle up just a 5% deposit while the government provides up to 20% of the price of a home. This makes buying a house affordable for a whole new group of people and for those who don’t even earn that much. After all the average salary is around £30,000 ($45,360) a year.
Over the last few months, investment banks and housing experts have been warning about the huge gap between the pace of earnings growth in the UK and rate of growth in property prices.
In December last year, Liz Martins and her team at HSBC pointed out the huge gap.
So basically, everything the British government is doing right now, according to the experts, is doing absolutely nothing to help alleviate soaring prices or getting those in rented accommodation onto the housing ladder.”
Hats off to EDDC!
Yes, Owl does occasionally compliment EDDC!
Today, it is for the well-reasoned and well-explained response to proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework here (pages 17-30):
Click to access 190116-combined-dmc-agenda-compressed.pdf
Its responses on so-called starter homes and the unrealities of them being affordable, land supply in the case of under delivery where developers drag their heels, and the use of brownfield sites which are not always the most appropriate sites to bring forward is well thought out.
If only EDDC practised what it preaches!
Local Plan declared sound-ish, sort of … 17,100 homes to be shoe-horned in to the district
Well, it’s sort-of sound except that it isn’t yet being published because EDDC has to “fact check” it and/or respond to it ….. or simply agree with it. It appears that Mr Thickett, aware of EDDC’s foot-dragging in this area has said that he wants their response within two weeks. The press release also mentions “main modifications.
http://www.exmouthjournal.co.uk/news/eddc_s_local_plan_finally_judged_sound_by_inspector_1_4370685
So, don’t hold your breath – many a slip twixt cup and lip and every delay means that developers can whap in more pre-agreement planning applications …..
And EDDC will, of course, have to find time to accept it in their very busy meetings schedule, which might also take some time.
Local Govt Association says charge council tax on unbuilt homes with planning permission
Developers that fail to swiftly build properties when planning permission is in place should face stiff penalties, the Local Government Association says.
Builders should pay full council tax on homes not built before the original planning permission expires, the body, which represents local councils, said.
It said 475,000 homes with planning permission were not completed in 2014-15, but councils were not to blame.
The government said building had started on more than half of these.
‘Bumper backlog’
The LGA – which represents local authorities across England and Wales – said its research had found that a “bumper backlog” of homes to be built in England had “grown at a rapid pace over the past few years”.
In 2012-13, the total of “unimplemented planning permissions” was 381,390. But in 2013-14 it was 443,265, rising to 475,647 homes in 2014-15, it said.
Peter Box, the LGA’s housing spokesman, said the figures proved the planning system was “not a barrier” to house building. He said councils were approving almost 500,000 more houses than were being built.
“To tackle the new homes backlog and to get Britain building again, councils must have the power to invest in building new homes and to force developers to build homes more quickly,” he said.
“Skills is the greatest barrier to building, not planning.
“If we are to see the homes desperately needed across the country built, and jobs and apprenticeships created,
councils must be given a leading role to tackle our growing construction skills shortage, which the industry says is one of the greatest barriers to building.”
A spokesman from the Department for Communities and Local Government said there had been “a 25% increase in the number of new homes delivered over the past year alone”, saying the government had “got Britain building again”.
“Alongside this we’re working closely with developers to ensure it [Britain] has the skills it needs – and saw 18,000 building apprenticeships started in 2014.
“We’re also directly commissioning thousands of new affordable homes and recently doubled the housing budget,” the spokesman added.
‘Misleading data’
Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London, said: “Under the Tories, the UK, and London in particular, has been falling far short of building the number of homes we need.
“We need powers to get developers building – alongside support for councils and housing associations which are building too.”
But John Stewart, from the Home Builders Federation, said “speeding up the rate at which permissions are granted” was one of the keys to “significant, sustainable” increases in house-building.
“Too many sites are stuck in the planning system, with an estimated 150,000 plots awaiting full sign-off by local authorities,” he said.
He dismissed claims that developers were guilty of “land banking” – or holding land in order for its value to increase.
Housing Bill debate: started 8.50 pm ended 2 am
The government has been described as “not grown up” for going ahead with a debate over its housing bill that did not begin until 8.50pm and continued to 2am.
The debate on the report stage of the bill was pushed back to late on Tuesday after a series of urgent ministerial statements, by the prime minister and the home secretary, were announced in the Commons.
Labour tried to get the debate postponed until a later date, but MPs voted by 303 to 195 in favour of pushing on with a session to scrutinise the legislation on Tuesday evening.
The housing bill will offer discounts of up to £102,700 in London and £77,000 in the rest of England to people renting from housing associations who want to buy their homes. The policy would not apply in Scotland or Wales, where the right to buy is being abolished.
The policy would be partly funded by requiring councils to sell the top third of their most valuable council homes from their remaining stock. The government also quietly tabled an amendment to the housing and planning bill that sets a maximum of five-year terms for new secure tenancies.
Fiona Mactaggart, the Labour MP for Slough, told MPs: “I am very unhappy about the programme motion, merely because of the time we are starting to debate it: 10 minutes to 9pm.”
She said this meant that “really important clauses” would be considered after midnight. “There are a number of really important issues which, frankly, I think our constituents, who are concerned about housing and planning, would not expect to be decided after midnight,” she said.
That is not grown up; it is a return to the days when I first came to this house and voted against beating children at 4am. I vowed never to have such important votes at that time of the morning again.”
Brandon Lewis, the minister for housing and planning, said the arrangements for the debate had been “agreed through the usual channels to ensure proper and full scrutiny of the bill”.
“Given the comments made by some members about the time until which we may be here tonight, all colleagues have the ability to exercise self-restraint if they wish, and from a ministerial point of view, I will do that to ensure that backbenchers have a good opportunity to speak,” he said.
Roberta Blackman-Woods said:
“Never in my experience of many bills in this house have I witnessed 65 pages of government new clauses and amendments being produced at the last minute for a bill that is 145 pages long,” she said. “That is simply appalling and means that there will be no proper scrutiny in this house of almost a third of the bill.
“We wish to register our strong view that that is no way for legislation to be made, and the government should do the honourable thing and reprogramme this debate.”
Planning Bill: the potential for corruption
” … Labour’s shadow planning minister Roberta Blackman-Woods said: “I cannot believe that the government are serious about this. I know that they tend to carry out pilots, but they must realise that the potential for this mechanism to generate a degree of corruption and totally inappropriate conflicts of interest is probably endless. These new clauses need to be subjected to a degree of scrutiny that will not be possible this evening.”
She said that ministers’ decision to table the amendment late in the bill’s passage through Parliament meant that it has “not been possible for the planning agencies that will be affected by the changes to have a say or to have any input into the process. That is quite frankly disgraceful, because these will be huge changes to the planning system”.
Communities and local government select committee chair Clive Betts said that the new clause is “effectively about the privatisation of the planning service. That is what it potentially amounts to after pilots have been brought in”.
He said: “Let me explore what that might mean. Does it mean that an individual or organisation will be free to shop around for whichever alternative provider they think can give them the best chance of getting a planning application accepted? Will they be able to look at the track record of providers around the country?”
Betts added: “My worry here is that someone parachuted in from outside, with no knowledge of an area but a track record of dealing with applications quickly, may not be as sensitive to the needs of a local community.
“If I was a local MP in an area with particular planning pressures and had concerns about getting those decisions right, I would start to be very worried about the scenario that is developing.”
http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1378327/mps-blast-plan-privatise-processing-applications
Daily Telegraph: “Developers can circumvent planning departments that take too long to clear approvals”
Sneaked in hurriedly just before Christmas, changes to planning rules means that developers will be able to go to private planning consultants of their choice rather than to local authority planning departments – a backdoor privatisation of the planning function.
Inevitably, private consultants will have worked closely with developers in the past.
This is potentially the biggest change to planning law for decades and is being introduced with no consultation and the minimum of debate.
It creates a loophole where, if a planning application is controversial, a local authority can deliberately drag its heels, see the application passed to a private consultant of the developer’s choosing and be approved. The local authority can then throw up its hands and say “Sorry, not our fault” when it patently is.
Current local authority planners will be seduced by initial high salaries offered by private consultants, leaving planning departments unable to function and with private consultants holding the balance of power.
Here is how today’s Daily Telegraph reports yesterday’s “debate” on something already agreed behind closed doors.
What a Christmas present for developers!
“Developers will be able to circumvent planning departments that take too long to process applications.
Housing minister Brandon Lewis told MPs the Government wants to pilot schemes which allow people to choose who processes their planning applications to speed up the process.
However, they were warned that allowing people to “shop around” by outsourcing planning applications risk undermining council planning departments.
He said this would “test the benefits of introducing competition” while local authorities will still make decisions on the applications.
But Labour’s Helen Hayes, a member of the Communities and Local Government Committee, warned the policy is “potentially very damaging” as it “weakens the accountability” of local authority planning services.
Speaking during report stage of the Housing and Planning Bill, Mr Lewis explained the new regulations would allow the communities secretary to decide who is able to offer their services to process planning applications.
He said: “Let me be very clear this evening with the House – this is about competition for the processing of applications, not the determination of applications.
“The democratic determination of planning applications by local planning authorities is a fundamental pillar of the planning system and will remain the case during any pilot schemes the secretary of state brings forward.
“Let me also be clear with the House that new clause 43 will require that any pilot schemes brought forward by the secretary of state will be for a limited period of time, specified in the regulations.”
Further proposals also outline how fees will be developed and allow the communities secretary to intervene if fees are judged “excessive”, MPs heard.
Mr Lewis said: “These new clauses will allow us to test in specific areas of the country and for a limited period of time the benefits of allowing planning applicants to choose who processes their applications.
“It’ll lead to a more efficient and effective planning system, better able to secure the development of homes and other facilities that our communities need and want.
“Introducing choice to the applicant enables them to shop around for services that best meet their needs and enable innovation in service provision, bringing new resources into the planning system and driving down costs while improving performance.”
But Ms Hayes, the MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, said: “New clause 43 introduces the outsourcing of planning applications. This clause is potentially very damaging.
“It weakens the accountability of local planning services and it removes with one hand the fees which the Government is enabling local authorities to raise with another.
“Fundamentally, it’s a solution to a symptom of the problem of the disproportionate effect of local government cuts on planning departments.
“This is a symptom which we alleviated by the proper resourcing, which a system of new planning fees will facilitate.
“So I urge the Government to rethink this proposal, which simply undermines local planning departments.”
“A wholesale power grab: how the UK government is handing housing over to private developers”
“In any sane universe, something called the Housing and Planning Bill might safely be assumed to stimulate house building and improve planning. But the bill, which receives its third and final reading in the House of Commons today, does exactly the opposite of what it says on the tin. It will exacerbate the housing crisis and further enfeeble the planning system in ways we cannot yet comprehend.
The primary assault on social housing has been much discussed in these pages. The bill’s flagship measure – promoted at ownyourhome.gov.uk – will replace genuinely affordable homes with public subsidies for property investors. Rather than building homes for affordable rent, the legislation will force local authorities to build “Starter Homes” for first-time buyers. Capped at £450,000 in London and £250,000 in the rest of England, these homes will be unaffordable for people on average incomes in over half of the country, as Shelter has pointed out. Buyers will be free to sell their assets after five years at full market value, thereby minting a new generation of property speculators and removing any long-term benefit for future first-time buyers.
In addition to this, the bill will extend Right to Buy to housing associations, further depleting the number of homes for social rent. It will also compel local authorities to sell their highest value housing stock and pass the proceeds on to central government. Given that these high value areas are already subject to the greatest pressures on affordable housing, the effect will simply be to remove resources from the places that need it most. It will see British cities divided further into segregated enclaves for rich and poor.
The bill will bring an end to secure lifetime council tenancies, replacing them with two to five-year tenancies, and force those with a total household income of over £30,000 to pay market rents – hitting low-paid working families hardest.
In short, it is a raft of misguided measures that will only increase housing inequality. As campaign group Architects for Social Housing – demonstrating outside Parliament today – puts it, the bill is “an extremely subtle and duplicitous piece of legislation that in almost every aspect does something very different, if not the direct opposite, of what it is claiming to do.”
But the planning side of the bill has yet to receive the attention it deserves, in either the Commons or the national media. The proposed changes are shrouded in a haze of intentional ambiguity, but they threaten to eat away at the last shreds of the democratic process that safeguards how our communities are made, putting power instead in the hands of developers.
The most radical measure is the introduction of automatic planning permission in principle on sites allocated for development, without applications being subject to the usual rigours of the planning process. When the idea was mooted in October, ministers suggested it would initially be limited to proposals for housing on brownfield land but nothing in the legislation prevents it from being applied to any kind of development on any site.
“It is extremely dangerous,” says Hugh Ellis, policy director at the Town and Country Planning Association. “It could apply to all forms of development – for example, fracking could easily be given ‘permission in principle’ as part of a minerals plan. You can’t make a decision in principle about a site until you know the detail of its implications, from flood risk appraisal to the degree of affordable housing. Giving permission in principle would fundamentally undermine our ability to build resilient, mixed communities in the long term.”
Ellis fears that the bill marks the introduction of a “zonal” planning system, along US lines, whereby land is zoned for particular uses at a broad-brush scale and permission granted without the finer-grain negotiation of applications on a case-by-case basis, which has always defined the English postwar planning system.
“Zoning is one of the major contributors to the economic and social segregation of cities in America,” says Ellis. “If the government is going to make such a fundamental change to the planning system there needs to be an enormous amount of public debate and research. The future of British cities is at stake here, but there’s been no white paper and no public discussion at all.”
Lack of debate seems to characterise the entire bill, which saw several crucial amendments slipped in under the radar just before Christmas. In a change that opens the door for the privatisation of the planning system, communities secretary Greg Clark added a clause in December to allow the “processing of planning applications by alternative providers”. Rather than submitting a planning application to the local authority, it suggests that developers could assign a “designated person” to process the application for them instead.
Dr Bob Colenutt, planning expert at the University of Northampton, describes the move as “iniquitous”. “It will replace a public-sector ethos with a developer-led ethos,” he says. “The ‘designated persons’ are likely to be consultants who also work for the private sector, which introduces probable bias and reduces the public scrutiny trail. And it is very likely to reduce the right that the public has to make comments on planning applications.”
In the same way that developers’ financial viability assessments have been hidden from public view, it could mean that the entire planning process happens behind closed doors, with applications assessed by private consultants, paid for by the applicants.
“The question is, what problem is this really trying to solve?” asks Janet Askew, president of the Royal Town Planning Institute. “Local authority planning departments are critically underresourced, so if it’s a question of them being too slow then the government needs to increase their capacity, not strip it away further.”
Elsewhere in the bill, if local powers aren’t being handed out to the private sector, they’re being trampled by central government. Independent planning inspectors will be bypassed in a measure that lets the secretary of state intervene in the assessment of local plans. Another clause introduces a new power that will allow the government to produce plans for areas where it deems the local authority to be “failing or omitting” to do the work.
“It is all profoundly undemocratic,” says David Vickery, a recently retired senior planning inspector. “The bill represents a significant centralisation of powers by government to micro-manage planning, without thinking through the consequences. It reads like a panicked reaction to current low housebuilding rates, and the fact that the government doesn’t trust anyone other than itself to do the job. It proves that localism is dead.”
By further diluting the planning system in the name of “cutting red tape”, the government has picked the wrong target once again: the problem isn’t with planning, but with developers sitting on land. DCLG figures show that planning permission was granted for 261,000 homes in the year ending March 2015 (against the need for at least 240,000 homes per year), but only 125,110 homes were actually built. Put simply, 136,000 more homes were consented through the local planning system than were built by house builders. And, as a recent Guardian investigation revealed, the UK’s biggest developers have a land bank big enough for 600,000 new homes. It might be an idea to get them to use it. Instead, this bill represents a wholesale power grab, transferring both housing assets and planning powers from public to private hands in a drunken festival of deregulation.”
Even Totnes has fallen to greedy developers – what hope for the rest of us?
“… Totnes has become a victim of the government’s 2012 relaxation of planning laws. The failure of South Hams District Council to produce a new Local Plan has given developers and landowners alike a loophole, through which they have swarmed, eager to build all around and over this popular historic town.
Landowners like the Duke of Somerset, or the ‘Dukes a Hazard’ as he’s known here, have made millions selling off their ancestral lands to developers like Linden Homes and Cavanna, who are in the process of building hundreds and hundreds of homes around Totnes, hundreds of identikit boxes. Sites like the misnamed ‘Camomile Lawn,’ where they have managed to water down the provision for affordable homes and have built enormous £850,000 executive villas on the banks of the Dart, 100 mixed houses, only eleven of which are deemed affordable. A year ago sheep peacefully grazed here.
They are cramming houses into any green space they can find between Totnes and the neighbouring villages of Dartington and Berry Pomeroy. There are plans to build on school fields, on wildlife corridors, over the assisted houses of elderly people. The last dairy farm in Totnes, a farm of 400 acres with a 4th generation tenant farmer attached, has been sold off by the Duke of Somerset to developers and the farmer pushed off his land. Despite all the protests, all the agonising by local people, the developers continue and they seem unstoppable. There’s talk of enlarging the road to Torbay, of building alongside it. This is all farmland. The only development the council managed to oppose was contested in court by Linden Homes and the council ended up having to pay both costs. Local people effectively therefore, had to pay to aid the developer in the destruction of their town.
In the 2011 general census Totnes had 8,056 inhabitants. The population has hardly grown since then and yet nearly 1,500 houses between here, Berry Pomeroy and Dartington have been granted or are in the process of being granted, planning permission. That could mean up to 4,000 new people, maybe more as many of these houses are 4 to 5 bed houses; this could result in the near doubling of the population. There has been little to no new infrastructure built alongside this mass development. The developers, Linden, Cavanna and Bloor have paid for a couple of roads to be tarmaced, a couple of new bicycle lanes extended, but no new car parks, no new doctors surgeries, no extension of the sewerage works, the schools are at capacity and traffic here throughout the year is appalling, it takes 40 minutes often to drive the couple of miles between Dartington and Totnes. All of these developments bar two are on greenfield sites.
Its an absolute disaster, the greed of a few to the detriment of the many. And they don’t even deal with the stated reason for it all – affordable housing for those on the housing lists. There was a housing problem before the mass developments started and there still is one. Prices are high in Totnes because of incomers money and the large amount of holiday homes here. Totnes and nearby Dartmouth and Salcombe are expensive because they are still beautiful and were spared the planning fiascoes of the 60’s which decimated towns like Paignton, Torquay, Newton Abbot and Plymouth, which is one of the poorest urban areas in Europe. The unspoilt towns and villages of the South Hams are where incomers and retirees want to live, where people want to visit, house prices are therefore higher. There is also a lack of rental property. It is more profitable for landlords to rent out their houses in the summer than rent them to local people, so many houses are left empty throughout the winter or have seasonal tenants only. This needs to be resolved, but this mass building on our farmland has not helped at all.
A large number of these new houses are being sold to second home owners or as buy to let properties. Investors have been buying the very few cheaper houses on offer and renting them out at the usual exorbitant prices. The most expensive of the new builds, the £850,000 villas on the Dart have gone as second homes according to a local estate agent . Unless they manage to get one of the few houses that offer shared ownership, then people in need can no more afford to buy the £250,000 new builds than they can buy the hundreds of houses for that price that are on the market already and which linger in estate agents windows for years. There are a great number of empty homes in Torbay and the South Hams. There isn’t a lack of houses here, it’s a lack of money that’s the problem and still is. In fact the new builds have made the situation much worse because they threaten our livelihoods as well.
Devon’s main asset is its countryside. We are lucky enough to have fertile, productive land, which is also beautiful enough to attract tourists. We have a profitable and growing food industry here, which is being hit hard by the loss of prime farmland. Land is at a premium and is being sold at very high cost; farmers are looking to sell to developers, knowing that if planning permission is sought, it is very likely to be granted by a council unable to cope. Although Mr Cavanna of Cavanna Housing describes the countryside as ‘empty land’, its anything but. This is where people live and work, this is where our food is grown and our wildlife lives. Once it has been built over it has gone for good, there is no reversal, prime farmland and wildlife corridors are being concreted over and are lost forever.
Tourism is also suffering; people come to see the rolling hills and bucolic villages of the Devon countryside, not enormous housing estates and choked roads. Visitors I talked to in the summer spoke of their dismay at the number of houses going up in AONB, that the problems with traffic and building would put them off coming back to Devon. People will lose their jobs – the B&Bs in the ancient villages, which are now being consumed by giant estates, talk of disappearing visitor numbers. Landowners are leaving the county with millions in their pockets for a nice retirement in the sun, while organisations like the National Trust and CPRE talk of a catastrophe. Devon is sinking and its all because of the government’s blind rush to build houses without giving local people a chance to direct and be involved in the development.
Totnes, being a place full of enterprising and creative people has tried to become involved. The old Dairy Crest site, which closed 8 years ago has been the focus of a community led development group. They have secured investment and have plans for truly affordable homes and an arts centre on the site, called Atmos. Its a very interesting, thoughtful project, but is totally overshadowed by the mass developments going on around it. Leading down from Atmos by the train station, there is a row of 3 story buildings planned by a developer and hardly in the spirit of Atmos. ‘It will look,’ says a local campaigner, ‘like you’re coming in to a redbrick London suburb.’
On the northern edge of Totnes, the largest landowner is Dartington Hall Trust. This is a charitable trust which was left their land for the good of the community to advance research in alternative education and agriculture. They have have found it just a little bit more profitable however, to sell to developers, offering a large amount of their green fields to the council for consideration The village attached to the estate polled a no confidence vote in the Trust last year and yet against all the wishes of their local populace and against the legacy of their trust they have refused to remove their land from consideration.
Dartington is interesting because the chairman of their property board, Tim Jones, also sits on the board of Devon’s LEP, an organisation set up by the government to promote business and enterprise in the South West. The board is given millions by the government to encourage development, much of which has gone to promoting house building. There’s talk of the LEP funding 11,000 new homes in Devon. On the board with Tim Jones, also sit CEOs of housing corporations, property managers, Devon county councillors and people with business interests in transport construction. There is concern amongst local people, who want questions answered. They also want questions asked of the council, who have failed to turn down any of the mass developments here. They reject self-builds and extensions because of ‘adverse impact on traffic’; but that doesn’t seem a problem when there are major builds at stake and the council gets paid a new house bonus on each house built. Questions should also be asked also of where this new house bonus goes. The council has it listed as revenue on its books and use expected revenue from house bonuses as a part of their predicted annual budget, even before the development goes before them for planning permission. Therefore it is in their interest, it seems, to pass them, however inappropriate and damaging they are.
Totnes is not alone. There are many, many other villages and towns facing the same problem not just in Devon, but across the country and its hard to see many positives. We are losing greenfield sites like never before, people are disenfranchised and ignored, our jobs and infrastructure are being adversely affected and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. All you hear from the media and from parliament is the need to build, not the need to build well, or only to build where its actually needed. We need protection from this land grab, this profiteering.
The future for the Totnes of 2016 is a lot less rosy than it was just a couple of years ago when the Guardian wrote a piece called, ‘Totnes: Britain’s town of the future’, that all rings a little hollow now.”
https://allengeorgina.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/the-sad-fate-of-totnes/
Nine housebuilding companies are sitting on at least 615,000 agreed planning permissions
“Britain’s biggest housebuilders possess enough land to create more than 600,000 new homes, an analysis by the Guardian has found, raising questions about whether they are doing enough to solve the housing crisis facing Britain.
The nine housebuilders in the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 hold 615,152 housing plots in their landbank, according to financial disclosures. This is four times the total number of homes built in Britain in the past year.
Berkeley, Barratt, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey – the four biggest companies in the industry – account for more than 450,000 of the plots. They are also sitting on £947m of cash and declared or issued more than £1.5bn in payouts to shareholders in 2015.
Shelter said the figures showed how dysfunctional the housing market has become. Toby Lloyd, head of policy for the housing charity, said: “Developers do need a pipeline of future sites – but when housebuilding is still stubbornly low and landbanks are this large it is a signal of how dysfunctional our housebuilding system is….
… The land held by housebuilders includes sites they own and sites that they have an contractual option to build on. Some housebuilders do not publicly disclose all the land they control, meaning their total landbank could be even bigger. For example, Bellway does not report land that has not got planning permission for house construction, while Persimmon says it controls 18,000 acres of “strategic land” on top of more than 90,000 plots that already have planning permission.
East Devon Watch 