Long-term plan for housing

On 29 February 2024, the House of Lords is scheduled to consider the following question for short debate:

The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford to ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to promote a long-term national housing strategy, and to seek cross-party support to ensure its effective delivery.

1. Housing supply in England

Increasing the supply of homes in England is one of several housing issues the government has committed to address. The government’s 2019 manifesto included a commitment to build 300,000 new homes annually by the mid-2020s and to supply 1 million new homes by the end of the current parliament.^[1]

The supply of housing in England is currently below the government’s ambition of 300,000 new homes per year. Annual housing supply in England amounted to 234,400 net additional dwellings in 2022/23, according to the latest national statistics.^[2] ‘Net additional dwellings’ is the main measure of total housing supply used by the government. The measure is based on local authority estimates of gains and losses of dwellings during each year. Figure 1 shows the trend in net additional dwellings in England over the past two decades:

Figure 1. Trends in net additional dwellings, England (2001/02 to 2022/23)

According to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), net additional dwellings rose between 2001/02 and 2007/08, reaching a peak of 223,534 in 2007/08, and then decreased to 130,611 in 2012/13 with the economic downturn. Since then, net additions have increased to a peak of 248,591 in 2019/20, before falling to 217,754 in 2020/21, which was the lowest level for five years. The DLUHC said this decrease may have been due in part to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in spring 2020.

More information on issues with England’s housing supply and steps taken by the government to address them can be found in the House of Commons Library briefing ‘Tackling the under-supply of housing in England’ (19 May 2023).

2. The government’s long-term plan for housing

In July 2023, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, Michael Gove, announced the government’s long-term plan for housing in England.^[3] As housing policy is a devolved matter, this plan set out various policies for regeneration, inner-city densification and housing delivery across England:^[4]

• Regeneration of 20 places: Following its commitment in the levelling up white paper to regenerate 20 places, the government has set out further plans to regenerate Cambridge, inner-city London and central Leeds. These proposals include making Cambridge “supercharged as Europe’s science capital”.
• Urban regeneration: The government said it would deliver reforms to support urban regeneration by building on underused sites in high-demand regions. It said this “densification” of England’s inner cities would support productivity. The plan included commitments to provide additional investment to prevent delays in the planning system. The government also ran a consultation on permitted development rights from July to September 2023, the feedback of which is being analysed by the government.^[5]
• Supporting communities to have a say in how and where homes are built: Plans included the establishment of a new arm’s length body, the Office for Place, to ensure new places are built according to a design code that is supported by local communities.^[6] Nicholas Boys Smith—founder of think tank and consultancy firm Create Streets—has been appointed as the interim chair.
• Building safety: The government has opened a ‘Cladding safety scheme’ to provide financial support to leaseholders in medium or high-rise buildings. It also said it would mandate the requirement for second staircases to be installed in new residential buildings that were above 18m tall.

In December 2023, the government announced the next stage of its long-term plan for housing.^[7] In the statement, Mr Gove said the best way to deliver “more homes, more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably” would be via a long-term programme of reforms to the planning system. The minister said some of these planning reforms would be delivered via the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023. More information on these reforms can be found in the House of Commons Library briefing ‘Planning reforms in England: Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 and further changes’ (5 December 2023).

Most recently, on 11 February 2024, the DLUHC said Mr Gove would soon announce planning law amendments to enable commercial buildings to be turned into homes without requiring planning permission.^[8]

3. Recent revisions to the ‘National planning policy framework’

As part of the government’s announcement of the next stage of its long-term plan for housing in December 2023, Mr Gove said the ‘National planning policy framework’ (NPPF) had been updated. The NPPF is the government’s national planning policy for England. The revised NPPF includes various clarifications and measures aimed at encouraging local authorities to have up-to-date local plans in place. The term ‘local plan’ refers to a plan for future development of a local area drawn up by the local planning authority in consultation with the community.

A selection of examples of the NPPF revisions have been summarised in sections 3.1–3.3 below.

3.1 Local housing need

‘Local housing need’ refers to the number of homes identified as being needed in an area.^[9] The NPPF sets out the test to be used by local planning authorities for assessing local housing need. This test is called the ‘standard method’ and provides a formula for determining the minimum number of homes needed in an area annually. It does not produce a housing requirement figure. The revised NPPF clarifies that the local housing need is an “advisory starting point” for establishing the housing requirements for an area.^[10] The revised NPPF also clarifies that there may be exceptional circumstances which justify a local authority using an alternative method to assess housing need, for example where an area has a particular demographic.

3.2 Local plans

To ensure local communities are in control of where and what development happens in their area, the government has emphasised the importance of local authorities having up-to-date local plans.^[11] The government considers a plan to be “up-to-date” if it is less than five years old and contains a deliverable five-year supply of land. The latest NPPF revisions include measures aimed at encouraging authorities to have up-to-date plans in place.^[12]

3.3 The role of beauty, environment and energy

The government said the new NPPF would “cement the role of beauty and placemaking” in the planning system.^[13] With this in mind, the government has added the word “beautiful” to the NPPF’s provisions on achieving well-designed places.^[14] This part of the framework places an expectation on local authorities to ensure the creation of “high quality, beautiful and sustainable buildings and places”.

On the environment, the government said the updated NPPF gives increased protections for agricultural land. It does this by requiring local authorities to consider the availability of agricultural land for food production when deciding what sites are most appropriate for development.^[15] Additionally, the government said the revised NPPF gives increased weight to the importance of energy efficiency in the adaption of existing buildings.^[16]

4. Parliamentary reaction to the government’s latest update

Parliamentarians in both Houses have considered the government’s December 2023 announcement of the next stage of its long-term plan for housing.

In the House of Commons, Shadow Minister for Levelling Up, Housing, Communities and Local Government Matthew Pennycook was critical of the government’s latest updates.^[17] The shadow minister questioned the impact that the revised NPPF would have on the overall housing supply given that “only a minority of local authorities have up-to-date plans”. Referring to “the most recent figures”, the shadow minister said only 33% of local authorities had local plans that had either been adopted or reviewed within the past five years.

Several MPs sought clarity from the government on what the “advisory starting point” for the standard method would mean in practice.^[18] In response, Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety Lee Rowley said the advisory starting point would mean that “individual circumstances might apply within the context of the need to build more homes in the right place”.^[19] However, the minister said that he could not pre-empt or suggest exactly what that would mean in all instances.

Some members of the House of Lords have also criticised the government’s latest housing policies. During a House of Lords debate, the shadow spokesperson for levelling up, housing, communities and local government, Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, described the government’s plan as being “neither long-term nor a plan to deliver housing”.^[20] The shadow minister raised various concerns, including a lack of resources which she said was “crippling local authorities’ ability to deliver against their planning obligations”. Additionally, the Liberal Democrat Lords spokesperson for levelling up, communities and local government, Baroness Pinnock, argued that the revised NPPF failed to address the housing crisis.^[21] For example, Baroness Pinnock criticised the plan for its single reference to social housing despite a “desperate need for social housing to rent”.

Responding to these criticisms on behalf of the government, Baroness Penn, parliamentary under secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, said the government had increased resources going into local planning services.^[22] She also said the government was committed to increasing the supply of affordable and social housing, noting that the government’s latest affordable housing programme was supported by more than £11bn.

5. Read more

• House of Lords Library, ‘Housing in England: Issues, statistics and commentary’, 10 November 2022
• House of Lords Library, ‘Supported housing’, 23 March 2023
• The Commission of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on Housing, Church and Community, ‘Coming home: Tackling the housing crisis together’, February 2021

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Cover image by Trayan on Unsplash.