By Stephen Conway
I never thought that I would become a regular writer of letters to Michael Gove, the secretary of state responsible for housing.
Last week, I sent my latest letter; it followed on from several earlier ones written by my predecessor, Clive Jones (now the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Wokingham) and by me, all calling for the government to give us clarity as we finalise our own local plan. We have asked our local MPs to support our attempts to secure a decision from ministers.
The government, back in December 2022, announced that it wanted to change the planning system.
At that time, Mr Gove suggested that centrally imposed housing targets would end, that there would be new rules on the land supply that councils are required to identify for future housing, and that over-delivery of new homes in one local plan period could be taken into account in the next local plan.
At that stage, we were told that, after consultation, the government would announce its final policy position in the spring of 2023. The spring came and went, and still no announcement from Mr Gove.
The idea of abandoning centrally imposed housing targets met with strong pushback from the development industry. Whether the government has retreated is not clear, but the long period of silence is ominous. Nor have we heard anything further about changes to the way the amount of land that councils have to identify for future development is to be calculated.
But on the matter of past over-provision, and taking it into account in new targets, there is still reasonable hope.
A letter from Mr Gove’s housing minister, Rachel Maclean, gave me some encouragement in the summer that the government was still minded to deduct past over-provision from future housing targets. In Wokingham’s case, that would mean a reduction of nearly 2,000 in what we are expected to deliver in the coming years.
After the promise of a government announcement in the spring failed to materialize, we were told that the announcement would come in the autumn. The autumn is now with us. We wondered whether we would hear at the Conservative party conference. We did not. In fact, in an hour-long speech, the prime minister failed to mention anything about housing.
I hope my latest letter will finally elicit a positive and clear response. We need to know what figure we have to deliver before we can bring our local plan work to a conclusion.
All this matters to the borough. The council has been trying to persuade the government that we should be allowed to determine our housing target based on local need, not on government algorithms, which have punished past over-delivery by using it as the base calculation for future delivery.
New housing is necessary, to meet the needs of those who want homes of their own, especially young people and those on low incomes. But we need genuinely affordable new homes for those priced out of the housing market – whether discounted market homes, shared ownership schemes, or social rental properties.
Extensive development in our area over the last 20 years and more has not made housing more affordable for those who need it. But it has put pressure on local infrastructure – especially the road network, school places, and doctors’ surgeries. And it has eaten up much-loved countryside, as the scale of development required by government has been impossible to deliver in existing urban centres.
This is why we want not just a reduction in our housing target for the emerging local plan, but also an end to government-imposed targets based on a calculation that takes insufficient account of local circumstances.
At present, the council is merely meant to implement what the government dictates; that top-down approach can’t be right and needs to change.
So, our ask of Mr Gove and his colleagues is please get a move on and give us the clarity we need on what you intend the future planning system to look like. And please let local people and their elected representatives have more of a say.
Cllr Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and ward member for Twyford
