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encourage. If we want more affordable homes, it should not be easier to obtain permission for a mixed scheme and change it later than to propose more affordable housing from the outset. The solution should not be to strip
out play space or accept poorer developments, but to give planners more ways to achieve the same objective. That could mean allowing neighbouring schemes to share good-quality play facilities rather than requiring each development to provide its own, and more discretion to consider the quality and accessibility of existing facilities around a development, rather than of space within it. Where another development or park is
close by, investment could go into safer walking routes, crossings, lighting and access rather than duplicating amenity spaces within the site boundary. In other locations, courtyards, roof terraces or other communal spaces may provide a better answer. There is also a case for keeping the
housing in a development, the more children this calculation assumes will live there. That can increase the amount of amenity space the scheme is required to provide, with otherwise identical developments needing different amounts depending on the tenure mix. Again, there is a very reasonable
argument behind this. Families on lower incomes, with less access to private outdoor space or paid-for childcare, may rely more heavily on the space immediately around their homes and safe, accessible places for their children means in practice. On already constrained urban sites,
extra amenity space must come from somewhere. It can mean less room for homes, parking, cycle storage, bin stores or other facilities required to make a development work. A site that could accommodate 85 houses may end up providing 75, and a planning policy designed to improve the lives of families in affordable housing can have the unintended effect of reducing the
number of affordable homes that can be built. There are also cost implications.
Landscaped communal areas and play spaces must be built, maintained and managed, which can add to ongoing service charges paid by residents. In some circumstances, a scheme with more affordable homes can therefore to deliver than a scheme with less affordable housing, and some developers are inevitably looking for ways to navigate that.
for permission for a mixed-tenure development: for example, a scheme containing 55% affordable housing and 45% homes for market sale. Once the design, play space and communal areas have been approved, the developer could later return to the council and seek permission to convert the remaining homes to affordable housing. That may be a legitimate route through it is what the policy was designed to
assumptions behind any amenity space requirements under review. If tenure is being used to predict how many children will live in a development, households actually live and change over time. None of this means lowering standards.
Children need safe places to play and residents need safe buildings. But good planning should be about achieving those outcomes, not assuming there is only one way to deliver them. We need
judgement and a willingness to look beyond individual developments. There will always be limited space
in our cities. If every desirable requirement has to be accommodated separately on every site, something else will have to make way. We should make sure it is not the affordable homes we are all trying so hard to build.
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