Tag Archives: MHCLG

Waking up to an ageing population

By Kasia Banas, Consultant

January saw Chelgate Local kick off 2019 with another successful breakfast briefing event.

The Chelgate team partnered up with Barton Willmore to host a timely discussion on the impact of an ageing population on housing provision. Delegates from across Kent gathered to hear from speakers from MHCLG, planners Barton Willmore and older people’s housing developers McCarthy & Stone.

Dan Fryd, Account Director at Chelgate, welcomed the packed room and started proceedings by setting out the main issues around housing supply for our ageing population. He pointed out that in the midst of the housing crisis the topic rarely gets the attention it deserves, but the proportion of over 85-year olds is set to double over the next 25 years – making it necessary for the government and the housing sector to start planning for this particular housing need now.

Lucy Seymour-Bowdery, senior planning officer at MHCLG and the lead on older people’s housing, then presented the recent regulatory changes relating to provisions for an ageing population. She noted the revised NPPF strengthened the policy approach to planning for the housing needs of different groups of people; revised the definition of older people; and introduced the expectation that planning policies for housing will make use of Optional Technical Standards for accessible and adaptable housing.

She also mentioned the statutory duty to produce guidance for local planning authorities on how local development documents should meet the housing needs of older and disabled people​, introduced by the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017. While she was not able to provide a date for the release of new policy guidance, she teased that it will focus on the importance to plan for older and disabled people’s housing needs, benefits of accessible and adaptable housing​, types of specialist housing for older people​ and inclusive design.

James Donagh, development economics director at Barton Willmore​, then took to the stage to present a high-level review of supply and demand for specialist housing for older people across mid-west Kent. He outlined the population changes expected between 2017 and 2041, most notably, the fast-growing demographic groups of over 65s and 75s. He projects that this increased demand for specialist elderly housing will generate a need for an extra 5,300 units (45%) by 2029 and 10,500 units (90%) units by 2041. James pointed out that there is a lack of diversity in tenure and type of available units with two-thirds being social rent and four-fifths being sheltered housing. He concluded suitable housing for older people could be a part of the solution to the housing crisis.

The event finished with a panel discussion with Cllr Clive English, chair of the Planning Committee at Maidstone Borough Council​; Guy Flintoft, planning director at Retirement Villages Group​; Gary Day, land and planning director at McCarthy & Stone,; and chaired by Barton Willmore’s director, Simon Flisher.

There was a consensus amongst our panellists that there is a growing need for housing provision for older people in the UK and Kent specifically. The example of Japan was mentioned a number of times as a warning for what’s to come if this demand is not addressed. Gary Day encouraged new entrants into this market space, and there was agreement that existing providers must grow to help deliver new retirement communities. Innovative multi-generational housing models were also identified as an opportunity area that could contribute to solving the issue at hand.

Developers and politicians are not the only ones looking for sustainable solutions that meet the needs and aspirations of our ageing communities. Programmes such as ‘Transform Ageing’ are paving the way to taking a community and design-led approach to improve people’s experience of ageing and we hope they can drive positive change, responding to the challenge of our ageing society.

Our next event will take place in March and will address ‘Infrastructure led growth’ – A look at how Crossrail 2, HS2 and major infrastructure could drive growth. Further details will be available on our website.

 

Homes growth slows

Homes growth slows as Local Plan deadline looms

By Daniel Fryd, Senior Consultant

The growth in the number of new homes in England has slowed significantly despite more than 222,000 homes being built in England last year.

MHCLG statistics released earlier this month showed new home completions at their highest rate for 10 years, but the rate of growth has fallen to 2%, compared to a 15% rise in 2016.

The statistics also showed the number of new affordable homes increasing, while new homes provided through Permitted Development Rights have fallen considerably.

While the latest figures have been heralded as a success by Communities Secretary James Brokenshire MP, there is clearly still a long way to go before the target of 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s can be reached.

At the current rate, it will be 2034 before the Government hits its ambition of 300,000 new homes a year.

New builds, not office-to-resi

New build completions were up 6% on last year, with the number of homes provided through Permitted Development Rights (PDR) down by a whopping 28%.

While new rules in the NPPF made it easier for PDR to be implemented to convert buildings to residential, use has predictably clustered around major cities and in the home counties where there is high demand.

Applications for office to residential conversions have steadily dropped over the last year, largely down to a decline in the availability of office buildings which are appropriate for conversion to housing.

PDR will continue to play an important role in providing housing in areas of high demand, but it is clear it is not a long-term solution and that new build rates will have to increase further as the number of suitable office buildings falls.

Affordable homes

There was also good news for the Government and first-time buyers as statistics showed the number of new affordable homes rose by 12% to 47,355.

Affordable rent has become the most common tenure type for affordable homes, with a total of 26,838 new affordable rent homes – 57% of the overall number of affordable homes.

The effect of the Government’s much-celebrated policy to remove the HRA borrowing cap, announced in Budget earlier this year, is likely to bear over the coming years with a further increase in affordable home delivery.

Local Plans and Delivery Tests

With a deadline of 24th January 2019 for councils to submit Local Plans or face the new NPPF rules and their revised housing figures, we are seeing a flurry of activity. This is expected to continue in the coming months as developers look to start work on approved sites.

The result of MHCLG’s Housing Delivery Test, set to be released in the very near future, are also expected to move things along, as the list of the worst performing local authorities who need to step up their building rates the most are released.

The test will look at the construction of homes over three-years against the assessed need for new homes, with the worst performing councils potentially facing having their plans declared out of date by the Government.

We await the test results with bated breath.

planning news

Planning Ahead – Planning news, views and insight – November 2018

This month: Letwin on land banking, Malthouse ignores ONS stats, upwards extensions, HRA borrowing cap and TCPA’s tips on affordable housing

  • Malthouse calls for “more, better, faster” as Gov ignore latest population stats
    Government will not change  housing targets despite official statistics predicting lower household growth than previously thought, it was confirmed… Read more
  • Onwards and upwards for extensions?
    The government has launched a fresh consultation on permitted development rights (PDR) for upwards extensions… Read more
  • TCPA proposes 13 steps to deliver truly affordable housing
    The planning system is failing to deliver affordable homes in the country’s poorest areas, a new report claims… Read more
  • Government lifts HRA borrowing cap
    In one of the biggest announcements from this year’s Conservative Party conference, Theresa May presented government’s plans to remove… Read more
  • Letwin Lets Rip in Build Out Review
    Oliver Letwin MP’s new report confirms house builders do not land bank, and sets out a number of measures to speed up housebuilding… Read more
  • Budget 2018 Special
    Hammond’s highly-anticipated pre-Brexit budget was slightly underwhelming from a housing and planning perspective. However, he did admit… Read more

Local Plan updates
Chelgate Local brings you Local Plan updates for Aylesbury Vale, Basildon, Brentwood, Central Beds, Chelmsford, Chiltern and South Bucks, Dacorum, East Herts, Epping, Epsom and Ewell, Harlow, Medway, Milton Keynes, Mole Valley and many more…

Chelgate Local invites you to our Breakfast Briefing on the Role of County Councils
We welcome you to attend our breakfast briefing on the shifting role of county councils in planning, with a focus on Hertfordshire.

We will hear from local politicians, housing associations and developers on how county councils are playing a far greater role in the planning of infrastructure and larger developments.

Come along on 7th December, 8-10am in St Albans. Email vshirley@chelgate.com to reserve your spot, places are limited!

TCPA proposes 13 steps to deliver truly affordable housing

By Daniel Fryd, Senior Consultant

Despite positive moves to get councils building, the planning system is failing to deliver affordable homes in the country’s poorest areas, a new TCPA report suggests.

The responsibility for building affordable homes is now firmly in councils’ courts following the Prime Minister’s move to lift the Housing Revenue account borrowing cap. Make no mistake – scrapping the borrowing cap is a huge move which means councils finally have the freedom they have been crying out for to significantly boost affordable housing supply.

According to a new research paper from the TCPA, however, the scale of the housing crisis is so severe that despite the new freedom for councils to build, the planning system will continue to fill the gap through requiring developers to build affordable housing within new developments.

With a woeful 2% of councils achieving their full affordable housing target through the planning system, there is clearly a long way to go and further changes needed before we see a genuine uplift in supply. Getting councils building is only one part of the solution.

Affording “affordable” homes

To unpick the problem with affordable housing you have to take a step back.

Speak to young people looking to get on the housing ladder about ‘affordable housing’ and you face the same questions: what does ‘affordable’ actually mean? Affordable to whom?

The fact the new NPPF now links affordable housing to market rates, especially in high value areas like London, simply means it in is line with the price of other homes which are broadly unaffordable for young people.

The TCPA report ‘Planning for Affordable Housing’, released just weeks before Budget 2018, draws on this as a key theme in the report, suggesting the definition of affordable homes should be amended in the NPPF to be based on a measure of local income instead of being pegged to an arbitrary proportion of market rates.

Linking provision of affordable homes to market rates, rather than local incomes, can lead to a situation where councils cannot set their own rents based on local incomes to ensure they meet local need.

13 steps to build affordable homes

Drawing on this, ‘Planning for Affordable Housing’ puts forward 13 recommendations to improve the planning system to deliver affordable housing, including an overarching recommendation for Government to set a target for the number of new affordable homes the country needs, and a strategy for how to achieve this figure.

Key recommendations include reform of viability assessments to ensure developers build affordable homes after planning approval, reform of land value capture to remove the ‘hope value’ of land and the rescinding of permitted development rights, which delivers no affordable.

None of these proposals are likely to prove popular with developers, however. The viability system is heavily relied on by developers building homes in expensive areas of high demand (i.e. the entire South East), in order to make their investment feasible.

Land value capture reform has proven unpopular in discussions held by the HCLG committee with developers and planners – Ian Fletcher, director of real estate policy at the British Property Federation (BPF), highlighted that “Crudely applied reform… will deter much-needed private sector investment into housing delivery and our town and city centres.”

The Letwin Review

The Letwin Review, published this week at the same time as the Autumn Budget, revealed quite bold plans for councils to compulsorily purchase land at a rate capped at “around ten times existing use value” in order to provide the affordable housing the market requires. This will be an interesting attempt to crack the nut of land value capture in a way which does not drive down land supply.

The removal of the HRA borrowing cap, as well as the announcements in this week’s Budget for an extra £650m for councils, and a further £500m of funding for the Housing Infrastructure Fund, to unlock 650,000 homes, will go some way to meeting the housing deficit.

Further measures and further planning changes are clearly still needed before we see a real uptick in provision, however.

Read more about the latest planning news:

  • Malthouse calls for “more, better, faster” as Gov ignore latest population stats – Read more
  • Onwards and upwards for extensions? – Read more
  • Government lifts HRA borrowing cap – Read more
  • Letwin Lets Rip in Build Out Review – Read more
  • Budget 2018 Special – Read more
expressway

Expressway route revealed but still no certainty for Oxfordshire

By Daniel Fryd, Senior Consultant

It’s been an eventful month for the Oxford-Cambridge arc.

The route for the new Expressway was revealed, the Housing Minister embarked on a CaMKOx tour and called for “transformational” ideas to drive growth in the area, and the Communities Secretary changed planning rules in Oxfordshire so they can prepare the Joint Spatial Strategy for 2021.

Just when it looked like the future was becoming a little clearer for the Arc, dramatic new population projections suggested household growth across the corridor will be 57% lower over 10 years than previously thought.

The question now is how MHCLG’s revised housing need calculations, expected to be consulted on in the coming weeks, will continue to set out the continued need for “a million new homes” to help the area realise its full economic potential, despite the significantly reduced housing growth projections.

The importance of CaMKOx

Described by Treasury Minister Robert Jenrick as ‘one of the greatest opportunities for economic growth in Europe’, the Oxford-Cambridge Arc continues to attract significant interest and investment for its potential to provide a million new homes and a million new jobs by 2050.

While Government made a clear dedication to the arc in the Autumn Budget last year, the funding sources and most appropriate location for new homes and jobs has been a bone of contention for local authorities and the development industry ever since.

The fact there is clarity on the expressway route and new commitment from Government to build new settlements in the area will provide some reassurance for investors in the Arc, even if we are still left with more questions than answers.

Expressway route

After months of delay the route of the Cambridge-Oxford Expressway was finally announced with Corridor B, which has a route serving Bicester and Leighton Buzzard on its way to Milton Keynes, getting the go-ahead. The motorway will form part of the biggest road building programme in the country since the 1970s and pave the way for growth along the brain belt.

A public consultation will now be held in 2019 over whether the final Oxford portion of the route should be ‘B1’, to the north-west of the city via Kidlington, or ‘B3’, which runs around the east side of the city through Headington.

Given the final route is not agreed for the whole of the expressway, the announcement comes as little comfort to Oxfordshire local authorities still preparing their local plan. The fact there is still a question mark over the western part of the Expressway has led to frustration from Leaders at Oxford City and South Oxfordshire District councils about the way forward.

Their frustration comes as no surprise – the final route will have significant consequences for any areas it touches upon, considering it will bring up to 470,000 more people within commuting distance of the Oxford Science Park with it. With South Oxfordshire District Council still preparing  its Local Plan following months of delays and backtracking, the council need all the certainty they can get to plan their future growth.

Closing in on the Oxfordshire Housing Deal

There have been other positive noises from Government as well. In a sure sign of support for the Oxfordshire Joint Spatial Strategy for 2021, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire MP has allowed Oxfordshire councils to adopt a three-year pipeline of housing sites – two years less than the five-year land supply called for in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

The move is designed to cut down on ‘speculative development’ and allow councils there to focus on preparing the joint statutory spatial plan rather than worry about a flood of applications coming in from developers trying their luck.

This change has come into effect now and remains in effect until adoption of the JSSP, set for 2021. There is no indication of whether, separately, Brokenshire will allow an extension of Local Plan agreements past March, although all the public rumblings from MHCLG have been that the March deadline remains.

What next for CaMKOx?

The reduction in the housing need growth projections issued by the Office of National statistics this month has come as something of a blow to growth ambitions in the area: Cambridge alone had its 10-year household growth projection reduced by 1,380, and local authorities have been quick to use this as an excuse to avoid meeting their housing need figures.

Given the clarity over the Expressway route and Government commitments to ensuring the potential of the area is realised, it seems like folly to row back and revise housing need numbers down when ‘one million homes by 2050’ is what should be expected for the area.

MHCLG recognise the need to keep consistency, and set out in their new Housing Need Assessment guidance in July that any new methodology will make sure “the plan-making process is… consistent with ensuring that 300,000 homes are built per year by the mid 2020s.”

The next month will be critical to future of the Arc: if the Communities Secretary maintains his commitment to the housing need figures which were consulted on last year for the CaMKOx corridor, it will send a clear message he really is dedicated to making it one of the greatest opportunities for economic growth in Europe.

 

 

Voluntary Right to Buy - Daniel Fryd

Is Right to Buy heading in the wrong direction?

By Daniel Fryd, Senior Consultant

Just when it looked like ‘Voluntary Right to Buy’ was firmly buried in the long grass, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire dug it out earlier this month and announced £200m to revive it as a new pilot scheme.

The new scheme allows housing association tenants in the Midlands to register online to buy their home at a discount, with places allocated through a ballot closing on September 16.

While the news will certainly be welcome to a select few Housing Association tenants in the Midlands, its use in actually helping solve the housing crisis is much more uncertain.

The ‘dream of home ownership’

Right to Buy has long been touted by the Conservatives as a way to increase social mobility and provide social housing tenants with a route into ownership. Since 2010, the policy has allowed almost 94,000 households to buy up the council homes they have lived in at a discounted rate.

Voluntary right to buy (VRTB) for housing association properties was then put forward as a Conservative manifesto commitment in 2015. Since then, every Housing Minister has remained conveniently quiet on the policy, making no commitments while it largely faded from public consciousness.

It comes as a surprise then that the VRTB scheme, which can only assist the decline in social housing stock, has suddenly reappeared now: in the same week as a Social Housing Green Paper which allocated no new money for social housing and set no target for future housing numbers.

Over 66,000 council homes have been sold through RTB since 2012 with only 17,000 replacements, so new homes are desperately needed – not a further sell-off.

Government has stated money from homes sold under the pilot will be given to councils to fund one-for-one replacements, but councils are likely to be dubious given they have barely been able to replace 25% of the stock that has been sold off. Early reports from Inside Housing suggest around 3,000 homes will be sold across the Midlands under the Pilot, so there will be plenty of replacements needed.

Hope for council homes

It is not all bad news however. MHCLG released a wider consultation alongside the Social Housing Green Paper on allowing councils to set all RTB discounts locally and keep 100% of receipts from homes sold. This would allow councils across the country to reduce the discount and could help them lower demand if they need to retain some of their stock.

Following publication of the new NPPF, the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap is also being raised “in areas of high affordability pressures” by up to £1bn over the three years from April 2019. This could give London councils under severe housing pressure like London Borough of Waltham Forest more capacity to replace homes sold under RTB.

The government has also abandoned the “high-value asset levy” policy, meaning councils will no longer have to worry about selling off their most valuable homes in the future, with little prospect of replacing them.

Moving ahead

145,000 new affordable homes are needed every year by 2031, according to the National Housing Federation, so each of these new policies are a positive step towards achieving this. Schemes like VRTB, meanwhile, will not help achieve this. It might even hinder it.

Which is why the government’s decision to press ahead with the VRTB pilot at this time seems bizarre. The Social Housing Green Paper’s new ‘1% ownership’ scheme for council tenants would have been the perfect replacement policy for Government to offer tenants as an opportunity to own their home.

Brokenshire is pressing ahead, however, and the pilot scheme will run until spring 2020 when MHCLG will decide whether to roll the scheme out to the rest of the country.

If the Midlands councils involved really can find a way to replace every single home they sell by 2020, then perhaps the scheme will prove itself successful. If not, the Government should muster the courage to chalk the policy up as a failure and get on with the job of building more homes, not selling them off.

New NPPF ends Government summer policy drought

by Daniel Fryd, Senior Consultant, Chelgate Local.
This article was also published on Pub Affairs.

In a day for burying Government announcements, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire revealed the new ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ (NPPF) on 24th July, providing good news for build-to-rent developers and bad news for councils dragging their feet. Read Chelgate’s analysis of the key announcements below:

On a swelteringly hot final day before summer Parliamentary recess, housing and planning professionals across the country sat with ‘bated’ breath and awaited the various MHCLG announcements they had been promised.

The Social Housing Green Paper, the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), and the Rough Sleeping Strategy were all pledged for publication ahead of the summer recess at various points over the last few months. While we will have to wait until September for the other two, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire finally published the long-awaited NPPF2  on the day before recess, before promptly sprinting out of the MHCLG door on his summer holidays.

But while NPPF2 could be seen as a rather underwhelming compilation of minor changes which have been seen before, it does introduce important new policy on areas including the housing delivery test, small sites, housing design, and build to rent:

Build to Rent

For the very first time, Build to Rent (BtR) has been officially recognised by the government as its own specific asset class. Furthering the Government’s drive towards a greater tenure mix, local authorities will need to reflect the demand for purpose-built rented homes alongside social rent and private ownership in their policies and local plans.

Significantly, changes in NPPF2 now allow Build to Rent developments to count towards the total affordable housing allocation for an area, meaning BtR sites can provide new affordable private rent homes for an area, and ease the pressure on registered housing associations to build homes.

The change should allow councils to plan more effectively for provision of affordable housing, and allows them to draw on the typically more high-quality rental homes that BtR provide to meet their housing obligations.

This will be come as some small consolation for councils left with an increasing deficit in their housing stock thanks to Right to Buy, as purpose built BtR developments can be used to provide “affordable private rent” while councils concentrate on replenishing their stock.

Housing Delivery test

One of the key new policies to enforce the Housing Need methodology, and ensure performance against local plans, is the Housing Delivery Test. From November 2018 councils will be assessed against the numbers of homes that are built in their area, rather than how many homes they planned for but have not yet delivered. To ensure councils can no longer agree local plans which set
wildly unachievable housing figures, the test penalises councils under-delivering over a three-year period.

While the policy will help MHCLG crack down on non-compliant councils failing to meet their land supply targets, councils have seen it as allowing developers to run riot. An outraged Lord Porter, Chairman of the LGA, pointed out that the test “punishes communities for homes not built by private developers”, and that national targets could see agreed local plans bypassed. If developers build less than 75% of the council’s target OAN target for new homes over three years, they will now benefit from a “presumption in favour of sustainable development.

Councils have long argued the slow build-out rate of developers has held back their delivery while they approve “nine out of 10 applications”. Developers have repeatedly contested this assertion, and while MHCLG has not committed itself either way, the findings of the Letwin Review at Autumn Budget should finally force the Government to take a policy stance on the issue.

January 2019 local plan deadline

Councils have been told for the first time they have until 24 January 2019 to submit their local plans if they want to be examined against the previous NPPF, using the old housing need figures.

Plans submitted after 24 January – exactly six months from NPPF2’s publication – will be examined under the new rules and will be held to the new housing need assessment.

Good design

Showing he practices what he preaches, the Communities Secretary has also made guidance around good design significantly more robust, in a move which could help bring an end to the days of faceless cheap developments. Recognising its importance for creating places which people want to live in and enjoy, NPPF2 places the creation of high quality buildings as ‘fundamental’ to the planning process.

Warning about how the “quality of approved development [can] materially diminish between permission and completion”, the new guidance sets out how local authorities should work with developers to ensure changes are not made to areas like materials on permitted schemes. While the viability and cost of materials is a perennial issue post-approval, the new guidance could see councils cracking down on changes.

Adopted neighbourhood plans should “demonstrate clear local leadership in design quality, with the framework allowing groups seeking such plans to truly reflect the community’s expectations on how new development will visually contribute to their area”.

Small sites

While the draft NPPF, and Oliver Letwin’s initial findings, have promoted small sites as one of the answer to England’s housing woes, the new NPPF moves away from this. Previously the document stated that “small sites can make an important contribution to meeting the housing requirement of an area, and are often built out relatively quickly”.

Under the revisions to the plan, councils must accommodate 10 per cent of their housing requirement on small sites, as opposed to 20 per cent of sites which they would have had to deliver under the draft version. While the development of small sites is clearly still part of the solution for MHCLG, this move, and the reinstatement of the previously dropped Garden City principles, could signal a move back to larger strategic sites to deliver new homes.

To find out more, and to see how we can help you, get in touch at mhardware@chelgate.com or 020 7939 7989.

Kit Malthouse becomes eighth Housing Minister in eight years

In a day of turmoil for the Government, Kit Malthouse, the little known former Department of Work and Pensions Minister, has been appointed as the new Housing Minister.

Elected as MP for North West Hampshire in 2015 Malthouse has maintained a low but fairly well-respected profile, serving as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the DWP, Deputy London Mayor for Business and Enterprise, and Deputy Leader of Westminster Council.

With a range of experience under his belt, Malthouse’s arrival will be met with muted enthusiasm from across the board as a sensible appointment given the circumstances and the need for stability.

But as a supporter of localism and a strong plan-led system to increase housing supply it is just possible Malthouse could emerge as the Housing Minister to provide the planning reforms we need.

Malthouse on Housing
Malthouse has previously spoken out in the House of Commons in support of a plan-led system and strongly supported the introduction of Neighbourhood Plans to maintain local input during the strong growth in housing.

He also welcomed the standardisation of the calculation of housing supply for local authorities, which will be vital to drive through the new NPPF in the coming months.

Interestingly he has criticised the role of the Planning Inspectorate for its involvement in planning in the past, saying that it is often used as an excuse to slow things down as a “complicated game of chicken is played between developer, local authority and local community”.

Elsewhere he has written for the Times, arguing that local authorities should let flats to rough sleepers for free as a basis for providing support to the homeless.

Shaky Foundations
Theresa May’s promise that housing is “at the top of the Government’s agenda” rings somewhat hollow now, given she in on her fourth Housing Minister since her appointment as Prime Minister two years ago.

Malthouse replaces Dominic Raab, the ardent Vote Leave campaigner and former lawyer who has been confirmed as the man to lead Theresa May’s Cabinet as the new Brexit Secretary.

Raab managed a grand total of six months as Housing Minister following his appointment to Theresa May’s cabinet reshuffle in January, replacing Alok Sharma who spent just seven months in the role. His credibility took something of a hit this year over accusations of ‘dog whistle’ politics as he used discredited statistics to link the housing crisis to immigration.

In a year that has also seen MHCLG lose Sajid Javid as Communities Secretary and Marcus Jones as Local Government Minister, Malthouse will be tasked with bringing stability to a Housing agenda undermined by constant change.

A Tall Order
Malthouse will immediately take over the mantle of delivering a housing agenda to build on million new homes by 2020. And he will have his work cut out for him.

July will be an incredibly busy month with both the Social Housing Green Paper and revised NPPF due for publication. Alongside this, work will continue on reforms to the rental sector while allocation of funds such as the £3billion Home Building Fund will need to be addressed.

MHCLG have committed to delivering the revised NPPF, which has already been delayed and tinkered with over the last year, this month. Given Raab’s departure today and the need to bring Malthouse up to speed with complex regulations, it is looking increasingly unlikely they will be able to deliver to this timescale before Parliament breaks for Summer Recess next Friday 20th July.

If he gets up to speed quickly and heals the hurt left by yet another departing Housing Minister, Malthouse has every opportunity to stamp his mark on the portfolio at a time when bold and stable leadership is desperately needed.

Chelgate Local
Chelgate Local has been providing strategic communications advice to residential and commercial developers for 30 years. We are working on 30 projects across London, Home Counties, East Anglia and the East Midlands which could provide 92,000 new homes.

To discuss how we could help your business navigate the planning system get in touch with Mike Hardware on 020 7939 7949 or mhardware@chelgate.com.