20 COMMENT THE SOCIAL NETWORK:


Patrick Mooney, managing director at Mooney Thompson Consulting


WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE TO IMPLEMENT THE WHITE PAPER?


Patrick Mooney's regular look at the developments across the social housing sector


of responsibility is being placed on the shoul- ders of staff working for councils and housing associations. Only time will tell if they have the capacity


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and inclination to step up to the plate and deliver, but the initial sense is we are a long way short. The Government is asking an awful lot from these staff and should remember that voting in favour of something doesn’t automati- cally mean that something actually happens as you wanted it to. Ministers have told us the housing market is


TIME WILL TELL IF THEY HAVE THE CAPACITY & INCLINATION TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND DELIVER, BUT THE INITIAL SENSE IS WE ARE A LONG WAY SHORT


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broken and it needs fixing now. But simply telling local authority planning departments that they can increase their fees by 20 per cent, will not in itself provide an overnight cure or panacea for the mess we are currently in. Planners do not grow on trees. They take years of training, much of it initially done at university, and in work experience before they can deal effectively with the complications thrown at them. The Communities Secretary has rejected the


‘easy option’ of allowing new development on the Green Belt, insisting that new homes should be built on brownfield sites and at higher densi- ties than currently. These developments typically require higher levels of experience and skills – both from architects and planners.


PLANNERS Local authority planning departments have been starved of resources since the downturn in 2007/08. Staffing numbers in planning have been stripped right back to the bone and this is an area where you can’t just turn the tap back on. Talented people need to be recruited, trained and helped to gain appropriate experience. This all takes time – something we haven’t got the luxury of, if the housing market is to be fixed in time for today’s generation of tenants and poten- tial first time buyers to benefit from. In a recent report called ‘Small is beautiful: Delivering more homes through small sites’,


s the dust settles on the launch of the Housing White Paper, it is becoming increasingly clear that a huge amount


produced by the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) and the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU), they highlighted this very problem. Drawing upon the experience of local authorities and SME housebuilders from right across the UK, they confidently stated the national target of one million new homes by 2020 will not be met. Although builders are willing to pay higher


planning fees, provided the money is ring- fenced and used to improve local planning services, they fear that without more experi- enced staff employed in council planning departments, the targets for housebuilding (of all tenures) will remain aspirational and out of reach. The report’s authors also discovered the following findings: • 64 per cent of builders and 45 per cent of local authorities see lack of planning resources as a barrier to developing more small sites;


• More than half of councils deliver fewer than 40 per cent of homes on small sites. Brian Berry, chief executive of the FMB,


commented on the report: “The Government’s aim to build one million new homes by 2020 won’t be realised unless more housebuilders can enter the housing market. Too often small sites are dealt with entirely by inexperienced officers. There simply aren’t enough senior and experienced planners to make the system work effectively. Unless planning departments have enough experienced planners on the ground, our housing targets will be nothing more than aspirational.” Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive, LGiU,


said: “There is a large untapped potential in small sites, but resource and capacity pressures in planning departments make it difficult to unlock. We need new approaches and new partnerships to build the homes we need.”


ROGUE LANDLORDS A similar argument can be put forward in respect of Environmental Health Officers who are responsible for checking conditions in privately rented properties and taking action against rogue


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