By Cllr Stephen Conway
In December 2022, the government consulted on its proposals to change the planning system.
Among other measures, ministers proposed to end top-down housing targets and to allow councils such as Wokingham to be allowed to use any houses built above the requirements of one plan period to reduce the amount of housing required in the next plan period.
Once the consultation ended, we were told that the government would announce its final package of measures in the spring, then the autumn, and then by the end of the year.
Just before Christmas, we were told of the changes to the planning system that ministers intended to implement.
The outcome, to put it mildly, is disappointing.
The much heralded end to top-down direction on housing numbers did not materialise. As before, government will tell councils to deliver the number of new dwellings required by local housing need, but the calculation of local housing need is to be determined by an algorithm provided by government. Departure from the algorithm is permitted only in exceptional circumstances, and those exceptions are so rare that the algorithm applies in almost every council’s case.
Worse still, the perfectly reasonable expectation that homes build above and beyond the requirement of the previous plan period would not need to be built again is not being allowed, at least for the moment.
Why the government has backtracked on what it had favoured in December 2022 is difficult to fathom. But it probably owes much to resistance from the development industry, which the government has decided to appease.
For Wokingham Borough Council, this means that we have to allocated land for nearly 2,000 homes more in the emerging local plan than could have been the case if the government had recognised that we have already delivered those homes in the current local plan.
We will make representations to ministers about this injustice, but we will at the same time move forward to the final stage of the local plan process to ensure a new local plan is in place before the current one expires in 2026.
Contrary to the impression conveyed by the Conservative opposition on the council, we have not been sitting on our hands while waiting for the government to make its mind up. We have been continuing with detailed planning and improving the draft local plan that we inherited from them.
We have been developing bold new environmental policies for the local plan, which will secure more energy-efficient homes, saving on heating bills for residents and reducing consumption of electricity. We have also designated extensive areas of countryside as of landscape value, where we can impose more controls on new building. And we have identified many green spaces in urban areas, which can be protected from development in the same way as can land designated as green belt by central government.
We are now undertaking detailed viability studies to see what level of affordable housing (discounted market, shared-ownership, and social rental) we can require developers to provide in their market schemes.
For those members of our community priced out of the market, affordable housing is the only way to secure a home of their own. Our aim remains to improve on the current average of 35% affordable housing in new developments, though how far beyond that we can go will depend on the outcome of the viability work.
Robust and detailed viability work is necessary because we will need to justify all our new policies at the final stage of the local plan process, which is a public enquiry, presided over by a government-appointed planning inspector, who will eventually decide whether to approve our plan for adoption.
Developers will have their say at the local enquiry, and we can expect them to oppose at least some of our new policies. Getting things right now is therefore vitally important; we don’t want the inspector rejecting our plan.
Cllr Stephen Conway is the leader of Wokingham Borough Council and ward member for Twyford
