Ne 13ws Visibility and Potential
The Callcutt Review RECOMMENDATIONS
Business Models
1. Government should take an early opportunity to discuss with the development and property management industries what are the business and regulatory risks which might otherwise inhibit the free development of long-term private investment in affordable housing provision and management.
2. Government and its agencies disposing of land should consider the opportunity for self-build and should aim to offer a proportion of the land in the form of small plots, where possible with ready access to services and other infrastructure, for sale to self-builders. Local planning authorities drawing up their strategic housing land assessments under PPS3 should similarly aim to identify a supply of small plots suitable for self-build and other smaller housebuilders.
Land Supply
3. CLG, working with the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit, representatives of local government and housebuilders, should build on current work to assess current information gathering arrangements and develop standard definitions and methodologies to improve the quality of house building data.
4. The Government should explore with the appropriate parties, which will include the investment community at large and the UK Accounting Standards Board, ways in which the reporting of land holdings in all companies’ financial statements can be made more transparent.
5. The Government should not take general measures to force more rapid build out of land banks with implementable planning consents. Government and other public agencies may, however, stipulate faster build out rates when disposing of land for housebuilding.
6. The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 should be amended so that a planning permission is not considered to have been exercised until a substantial start on site has been made.
7. The Guidance accompanying PPS3 should be amended to stipulate that at least 10% of the 5- year supply of housing land should consist of small sites (for 10-15 units or smaller), and to give more prominence to the requirement to consider planning applications for windfall sites on their own merits, even where they are additional to the planned 5-year supply.
8. The Government should commission research, possibly in partnership with an industry body such as the Housing Forum, into the marketing and other factors which constrain the optimum build-out rates on large sites.
9. In disposing of large sites for housing development, the Government and its agencies should wherever possible either break up a proportion of each site into smaller parcels for separate disposal or stipulate as a condition of sale that the primary purchaser should do so.
10.Government should review the advice on local planning authorities’ flexibility for negotiating lower levels of developer contribution on marginal sites than set out in their plan, and should consider the scope for specifying clawback in the event that the housebuilder, thus freed of obligations, makes additional profits. CLG should work with the Homes and Communities Agency, local government and the development industry, either to develop a new standard methodology, or to adopt an existing methodology, as a basis for determining the level of mitigation.
11.All local planning authorities should review the scope for forming partnerships with one or more housebuilders, in order to ensure that the viability for development of previously developed land in their areas is fully recognised and exploited.
12.The Government’s guidance in relation to PPS3 and Sustainable Community Strategies should be amended so as strongly to encourage local authorities to consider the scope for drawing new private investment for housing and other development into areas where property values are currently low.
13.Local planning authorities should be ready to offer specific commitments to service delivery, consistent with their LAAs, to potential investors in housing regeneration schemes; and should seek the agreement of other LSP members for their preferred housebuilding partners to join the LSP.
14.Where the Homes and Communities Agency takes an equity stake in a project, it should have full discretion over when it will best serve the Agency’s wider objectives to dispose of that stake. Each case should be weighed on its merits and there should be no presumption in favour of early disposal.
15.The remit of the Homes and Communities Agency should include providing advice and expertise to local authorities, as required, to review local property markets and identify redevelopment opportunities which have the potential to draw in private investment. Its remit should also extend to providing expert advice as required on how to design, set up and run a suitable Local Delivery Vehicle.
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