22 COMMENT
adopted a Core Strategy with a housing target of 66,000 new homes. The second part of that plan, the Site Allocations Plan, was intended to identify the sites on which those homes would be built. Yet following the introduction of the standard method, LCC commenced a rather euphemistically titled Core Strategy Selected Review, which proposed to reduce the housing target by some 30 per cent to just over 46,000 homes. Two local authorities – 46,000 homes lost.
Nor is the local plan process the only place in which the standard method is causing problems. Stoke City Council recently used the
standard method to try to defend a planning appeal against a housing application in the city. Their adopted Core Strategy set a housing target of 675 homes per year, but the second part of the plan, allocating development sites, was never adopted. As Chris Young QC observed in his closing statement at the planning inquiry, it is more than 25 years since the council adopted a plan which allocated sites for development. Unsurprisingly, the number of new homes delivered in Stoke has been relatively low. Yet as part of the evidence presented
needed new homes. In the words of Kit Malthouse MP, the (then) Minister for Housing and Planning: “more, better, faster.” The above local authorities are just
three examples, but there are many more. They’re particularly interesting case studies, though, because Greater Manchester, Leeds and Stoke all claim to be pro-growth authorities – yet faced with the opportunity of reducing their housing target, like muffins on the counter at Starbucks, they couldn't resist. Short-term pleasure, with no regard for the long-term consequences. The objective of housing targets isn't to
at the appeal, the council used the standard method housing target of 400 homes a year to try to argue that they did, in fact, have a five-year housing land supply. The appeal was ultimately allowed – the inspector determined that housing supply wasn’t relevant given the age of other policies in the local plan – but it still delayed the delivery of much
assist developers and land promoters in making profits, or land owners to sell at a premium – it’s to deliver real homes for real people. To make sure enough homes are built to meet need – something we have failed to do for a generation. The result is worsening affordability, and a growing financial divide between those that own a home and those that don’t. The standard method was supposed to
be part of the solution to that problem, by giving local authorities nowhere to hide when it comes to setting housing targets, forcing them to deliver.
In the north, at least, it is having the opposite effect.
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