The Government has significantly overhauled planning rules to help achieve its target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament.
Ministers want to have 370,000 new homes built each year, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has set out the number of homes each local authority should build to meet local demand.
These targets were previously advisory but now they will be mandatory, and councils will be required to submit plans by March 2025 outlining how they will achieve them.
On Thursday, the Prime Minister said that the “top priority” for this new planning approach must be the provision of homes for families.
Sir Keir Starmer told broadcasters: “The starting point is local plans, and that’s really important for councils to develop the plan according to the target, taking into account local needs and working with developers.
He added: “For years, we have had not enough houses being built. That means that individuals and families don’t have the security that they want. We are determined to break through that, to do what’s necessary.”
Under the Government’s “brownfield first” approach, councils will be required to prioritise building these houses on disused sites that have already been developed in the past prioritised.
They will also be required to review any greenbelt boundaries on their land and identify so-called “greybelt” areas – greenbelt land that is considered of poor quality or is underused – on which they could build.
The reviewed targets also significantly shift the focus towards improving supply in the south of England and are aimed at the construction of more houses in the places where they are currently the most unaffordable and demand is highest.
As a result, areas that have had the biggest shift in housing targets under the new framework are predominantly affluent areas of London and the South of England.
Under the plans, 24 per cent of the 370,000 homes built each year are set to be built in London, while 19 per cent will be in the South East and 11 per cent in the South West. These regions will be expected to deliver just under 200,000 homes between them.
The London borough of Kensington and Chelsea will have a significant increase in its house requirement, with the estimated local housing need revised from 847 homes a year to more than 5,107, an increase of over 500 per cent.
Between April 2021 and April 2024, the average number of homes built in the area was just 236 each year, meaning the council must increase housebuilding by over 2,000 per cent to hit its target.
Westminster is also facing high demand. The housebuilding target has increased from 1,361 to 4,077, an increase of 2,716 homes a year. The borough built an average of 1,328 homes over the past three years, just below its previous target.
Another London borough with an increase is Richmond upon Thames, which will have a 224 per cent increase in its target from 777 to 2,513 a year. Its three-year housebuilding average was 154, meaning it will be required to increase the number of homes built by 1,532 per cent.
Other areas of London, however, will have a decrease in their targets, and the overall number of houses required to be built has fallen by 10,830 between the previous framework and the new one.
Tower Hamlets will have the biggest fall, with its target more than halving from 5,190 a year to 2,265 – close to its current annual housebuilding rate of 2,619.
As with the London areas, the authorities of Cornwall and Wiltshire will also have an increase, although these areas have already had some success hitting their previous recommended targets.
In the three years to April 2024, an average of 2,650 houses were built in Cornwall each year, only slightly below the previous target of 2,707. That target has now increased by 63 per cent to 4,421, meaning the local authority will be required to build an extra 1,714 houses each year.
Wiltshire, meanwhile, slightly overshot its previous target of 1,917 a year, with 2,018 houses built annually over the same three-year period. Its targets have increased by 84 per cent to 3,525, which means an extra 1,608 houses are needed each year.
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