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NEWS HOUSING
Gove gives new planning role to communities and casts doubt on 300,000 homes target
Housing Minister Michael Gove has confi rmed that the Government would give local communities powers to support or veto planning decisions on home extensions, to ensure schemes better suit their needs and see less resistance. The recently published Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill included a proposal for ‘street votes,’ as well as community-led ‘design codes’. Gove also gave an interview to the Sunday Telegraph however saying that the Government’s 300,000 homes per year target “should not be used as a sole measure of success” and added that it was problematic that in the past “people have been driven just to create units of accommodation, rather than homes and communities.”
A spokesman for Boris Johnson later attempted to squash any apparent contraction with the Government’s “commitment” to the pledge, telling the BBC it was “central” to levelling up. As a result of Gove’s comments however, doubt now hangs over how binding the manifesto pledge is to build 300,000 homes a year in England by the mid-2020s.
EDUCATION
UK architecture hit by skills shortage as applications to creative courses drop 20% over last decade
Following higher education funding cuts of 50%, falling applicant numbers for creative courses at UK universities have caused a skills shortage. Experts have highlighted an increasing reliance on international students to plug the creative skills gap. The UK “could be facing a creativity
defi cit,” according to fi gures from UCAS, with 20% fewer applications for arts and design courses at UK universities being received in the last decade. In the last fi ve years alone, there has been a 12% drop.
These courses “play a key role in providing talent to creative industries, including architecture,” said high-resolution design textures specialists Ultra High Resolution. The greatest contributors to the decline are falling numbers of UK and EU applicants. Domestic applications are down 25% in 10 years, while EU applications have halved since Brexit. By contrast, the amount of non-EU applicants for creative arts and design courses in the UK has more than doubled in the last 10 years. In the last fi ve years,
it has risen by 44%. Around one in six applications for UK creative courses now come from non-UK citizens. The data was collected from UCAS through a freedom of information request, by Ultra High Resolution. The fi ndings show applicant numbers for all creative arts and design courses at UK universities. Architecture “has been facing challenges with EU workers leaving gaps post-Brexit,” said Ultra High Resolution. The RIBA’s Future Trends survey reports that one in fi ve practices are struggling to recruit.
In suggesting that the 300,000 homes target was not the only measure, Gove added that the Government “would do everything they could to reach it,” adding that the quality of homes was a critical factor. Gove told the Sunday Telegraph: “Resistance comes down to the quality of what is built, and the fact that housebuilders can make signifi cant profi ts which are not shared equally with the community.” He added: “The planning system means that developers can override the clearly expressed view of local people.” Mr Gove agreed more homes were required, but told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it would be “no kind of success to simply hit a target if the homes that are built are shoddy, in the wrong place, don’t have the infrastructure required and are not contributing to beautiful communities.” The Government remains substantially behind on delivering the target; in 2019/20, its fi rst year in offi ce, 243,000 new homes were built, and this fell to 216,000 in 2020/21, partly because of the disruption caused by the pandemic.
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ADF JUNE 2022
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