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HCA chair: we will hammer councils which fail to deliver targets
White Paper: Local authorities which fail to deliver housing delivery targets set through standard measures will get “caned”, the Homes and Communities Agency chair has warned.
Speaking to Inside Housing at the British Property Federation’s National Residential Investment Conference 2017, Sir Edward Lister suggested that the Local Plans shake-ups in today’s Housing White Paper were the “most important” factor in the government achieving its target of building a million homes by 2020.
He said: “It is about Local Plans and about five-year housing supply being identified sensibly and properly. And there’s all sorts of stuff in the White Paper about that and having to have a five-year housing supply and a Local Plan and if you don’t you’re going to get caned.”
Unveiling the White Paper in parliament today, communities minister Sajid Javid announced that Local Plans will have to be reviewed every five years and that the government is introducing a new housing delivery test for councils.
Mr Javid said the test will involve the government implementing policy responses to bring further land forward in cases where home delivery is “below target”.
Sir Edward said: “I think it’s pretty powerful stuff and there’s also going to be delivery conditions in there as well, so a local authority can be failing and they’ll get hammered for that.
“So there’s a lot of pressure on the local authority to identify land and bring that land forward.”
Key White Paper announcements so far
- Standardised mechanism for setting housing delivery targets for councils’ local plans
- New guidelines to encourage compulsory purchase of undeveloped land
- A new rent standard for the social housing sector post-2020
- Dropping of the 20% threshold for Starter Homes and the 200,000 Starter Homes by 2020 target
- Councils to include Right to Buy in homes built through new council companies
He added that the White Paper puts similar pressure over delivery plans on “absolutely everybody”, including housing associations and developers. According to a report published last March by the government-commissioned Local Plans Expert Group, only a third of councils have adopted a Local Plan since 2012.
