The government was facing a rebellion from backbench MPs over its Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, which led to a vote on the bill being dropped last month.
The rebels, led by Theresa Villiers MP, objected to housebuilding targets being imposed, and argued that they would lead to areas being forced to accept unwanted housing developments.
The bill is due to return to the House of Commons next week, but with the rebellion still likely, Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities has watered down the housing targets.
Writing to MPs, Gove said that the targets would now be “advisory”, and act “as a starting point”. It means that local authorities will now be able to build fewer homes than the Government has suggested are needed, if they can demonstrate that hitting the targets would significantly change an area’s character.
However, Gove has argued that the watered down proposals do not mean the government has dropped its target of 300,000 new homes being built each year, noting that this was a manifesto commitment.
Gove said: “If we are to deliver the new homes this country needs, new development must have the support of local communities. That requires people to know it will be beautiful, accompanied by the right infrastructure, approved democratically, that it will enhance the environment and create proper neighbourhoods.
“These principles have always been key to our reforms and we are now going further by strengthening our commitment to build the right homes in the right places and put local people at the heart of decision-making.”
Astonishingly negligent
James Forrester, managing director of Stripe Property Group, said that the decision was “astonishingly negligent” from the government, noting that housebuilding has languished below the targets for years, “even with the focus and accountability of local authority facing targets”.
He added: “To remove those targets is to allow the UK’s requirement to dangle in the wind and we now have even less chance as a nation of providing adequate dwelling numbers. It’s a dumb move.”
The decision seemed “somewhat counterintuitive” according to Lee Martin, head of UK for Unlatch. Martin suggested that the country was starting to get to grips with higher housebuilding volume, and completions are “starting to look meaningful”, yet Gove has now killed “all possibility of reaching the very levels of supply that the government itself has aimed for but missed for years. It’s hardly progress”.
