October 2017
By Catherine Maguire
What is wrong with the Governments proposals for assessing housing need?
Our initial thoughts about the ‘Planning the right homes in the right places‘ consultation can be found here. There are many problems with the proposals but the key issues appear to be:
- The proposals conflates housing need with demand
- The housing crisis is a crisis of affordability and distribution – more of the same houses in the most expensive areas does not address this
- It will be impossible for neighbouring LPAs which share Green Belt constraints to prepare a ‘statement of common ground’ which preserves the integrity of the Green Belt.
You may also be interested in CPRE’s initial thoughts about the proposed methodology.
What can we do about it?
- LGBC will be submitting a response to the consultation – if your organisation would like to share your thoughts with us, please email me by Wednesday November 1
- Email/call/meet your MP (email addresses can be found here):
- Inform them of the proposed increases (if applicable) in assessed local need in their constitency
- ask them to tell the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government that the ‘Planning the right homes in the right places‘ consultation proposals present a grave threat to the Green Belt land that their constituents’ deeply value
- show them our Accelerating loss of London’s Green Belt report and Threats Map which demonstrates the current enormous pressure on the Green Belt
- Submit a consultation response on behalf of your organisation by 11.45pm on Thursday 9 November