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It’s 106 A4 pages, stuffed with fine words from “diversifying the market” to an admittance that the housing market is “broken” when it comes to its ability to meet rampaging demand. However far from the Departmental hype of the Housing White Paper being “radical,” it has to be said that balanced against all the expectation, it is a damp squib.


Expectations were high that there would be a major shakeup of the planning system to allow builders to build more easily on sites


that are available, potentially


including the green belt. However the White Paper is conservative, appealing to the NIMBYs in doing very little to alter the National Planning Policy Framework in this area. A proposal to “amend policy to make clear that authorities should amend green belt boundaries only when they can demonstrate they have examined fully all other reasonable options” isn’t exactly a forceful endorsement.


That’s all very well from a sustainability perspective, however the 1 million homes won’t get built if some of that land isn’t released (although that magic number is strangely absent from the White Paper). Of course, one of those “reasonable options” is brownfield sites, but there is no strategic vision here in the document either. In fact, a mere two paragraphs,


including the lukewarm


statement that the NPPF would be amended to “indicate that great weight should be attached to using brownfield sites.”


When it comes to affordability, as the FMB’s Brian Berry says in this month’s HBD column, the seemingly endangered 200,000 homes Starter Homes policy needed clarification in the White Paper. As it turns out, the onus has been passed to developers


and local planners to “agree an appropriate level of delivery of Starter Homes,” which looks like a fudge.


The document does however state that the NPPF will be amended to introduce a requirement for a minimum of 10 per cent affordable homes. SME builders will be crying out that they cannot deliver this on some small developments, and whether the £3bn Home Building Fund will help to support this is again not clear.


Expectations were high that SME builders would be getting a leg-up thanks to controls on landbanking, and an attempt was made to this end in the reduction of the time from planning permission to start from three to two years. However more detail on how partnering with the Government in the Accelerated Construction programme will work, to help SMEs buy in to the idea, would have been useful.


The Land Release fund, as part of Accelerated Construction, is of course a good thing, making possible less risky serviced land parcels to SMEs in a way rarely seen previously. However this fund is £45m, which seems a drop in the ocean given the need to close the gap between the current delivery of 190,000 houses a year and the 250,000 ‘target.’ Requiring LPAs to ensure that 10 per cent of their sites are under 0.5 ha is positive, is there any guarantee small builders will get these jobs?


Some commentators have been fairly scathing about the White Paper, calling it things like ‘hollow’ and ‘misguided’ but it does capture in one document a range of positive initiatives, including several previously announced. As ever, the devil is in the detail, and there’s precious little of that.


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