GOOD local government strives to maintain at least a five-year supply of housing permissions in order to meet local needs.

Together with a detailed local plan, that allows it to protect local residents from inappropriate developments by saying: “We have a five-year supply of planned housing, and your application is not in the local plan.”

The scale and speed of the government’s increase in target housing numbers mean it has (purposefully) put large numbers of councils in the same position as Test Valley Borough Council (TVBC) – namely that we no longer have a five-year supply.

Nor will TVBC be able to get back to that position during the remaining years of its existence. Which leaves our residents much more exposed to inappropriate housing developments. But, the country and its population definitely need more houses to be built, so surely an additional 1.5 million planning permissions is to be welcomed?

No. There are already one million planning permissions in place – a further 1.5m simply gives developers greater choice on which permissions to build out first.

And in a commercial world, the most profitable developments (not the most needed) will inevitably get built first. To get more homes built, more quickly, the focus must be on developers – and the planning ‘rules’ which drive their behaviours.

For example:

  • Developers could be required to build in the order in which permissions were granted;
  • And/or a minimum number of years after permission was granted, council tax could become payable on them (by the developers, if they had not yet built them).

Rules like these would be an assured way to get more housing built, more quickly.

Local government will have little choice but to agree to the new housing targets, which will massively increase the number of permissions granted. But if all 1.5m new permissions were granted today – not a single one of those houses will actually have been built.

So please, press your local MP to raise in parliament the (surely) obvious point that builders – not councillors – build houses. And the rules need changing to make the primary basis for that the country’s need, rather than developers’ profits.

Neil Gwynne,
Leader of the Liberal Democrat group and councillor for Romsey Cupernham,
Test Valley Borough Council