Angela Rayner announces bold move to overhaul planning rules

Still no mention of managing net migration then?

Other proposals include councils and developers being required to give more consideration to social rent when building new homes, while local leaders will gain greater powers to build affordable homes.

CONSIDERATION.

Using Shelters own stats (*shuddering*) as the 'truth' (as they like to pitch it) then there are 112,660 HOUSESHOLDS were homeless and living in temporary accommodation at the end of 2023 . As of March 2023, 1.29 million households were on the waiting list for social housing in England.

Total then at this point is 1.4M homes required JUST FOR THIS purpose

There is no way 99% of ANY homes built will be social or affordable to these people as nearly all with be on benefit of some form or another.

So yes, this is not a target/milestone/plan....just a wish.

Reply to the comment left by Reluctant Landlord at 13/12/2024 - 11:23
Housebuilders already struggle to build houses in the areas where it is most needed for a price per square metre that makes building sustainable for them.

40-45% of the cost of building a house is labour costs.

Labour just put up employers' national insurance.

Lets see what is really proposed to get developments through planning, no plan here to say how this is going to happen.
I have had a few small scale build to let developments for property investors stopped or significantly compromised by planners own personal opinions and nimbys. Even on sites that had been previously demolished and left clear for years.
There has to be a consistent, published set of standards that the developer/designer and council must follow.
Although greenfield developments aren't always the best option, sometimes they are required.
As for affordable homes, that's great, just as long as the developer can make money these projects will move forward. Affordable homes need to be purchased by somebody, normally corporate landlords, if it fits into their investment plan. No point in trying to sell a portion of scattered developments that would only fit a home buyer or as the developers rental property.

My experience is that council planning departments are in favour of new developments in their area until it goes out to consultation in the neighbourhood. Then all the nimbys get together to block the proposal. How is Angela Rayner going to stop the nimbys?
Secondly, there aren't enough builders capable of doing the work. Where is the labour coming from?
How do you turn things around when there are 9 million working age people not working? And a welfare budget out of control?
Governments shy away from the tough love messages like telling people they can't get benefits and instead go for the easy targets like picking on landlords.

Reply to the comment left by Robin Wilson at 14/12/2024 - 12:16
I think this is true but the other question is this.

Developers/builders already struggle to build homes for a cost per square metre and at a price that is affordable, such that they also make a profit, in the areas where houses are most needed because there is the greatest competition. That's why so many builders go bust during a recession...margins are already under pressure.

Labour has just increased employers' NI. This is in effect a massive extra tax bill for employers who are responding in the predictable manner by holding wages down, stopping hiring, stopping investing, divesting staff, cancelling Christmas parties etc. This is a normal and predictable response to a policy introduced by this labour government.

This NI increase imposes a massive extra cost on the public sector, the private sector, and also the charitable sector. The problem is made far worse because Angela Rayner is implementing changes to give workers joining a business exactly the same rights as workers who have been in a business for a long time. This massively increases the risk of employing people for a business, and so less of them are doing it and when they do it they will seek to hold all other costs down to minimise the risk.

40-45% of the cost of building a house is labour, so the NI increase hits housing supply. The employers' NI increase also has the effect of holding employees salaries down, such that it's harder for potential house buyers to get finance to buy a house or afford mortgage payments.

Furthermore, the employers NI increase and proposed new workers rights appear to be having the effect of driving the UK economy into recession. A lot of builders go bust in a recession.

So there is a complete mis-match between labour's 'going-for-economic-growth' rhetoric and the policies that they are actually implementing. The policies they are implementing are driving the UK into recession, but the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, keeps on banging on about not being able to reverse the underinvestment of the last decade quickly. The problem is though, she is supposed to be an economist and yet she has not understood the simple fact that the UK economy is driven by SMEs and not by the public sector.

And by the time labour has created a recession and driven a lot of builders into bankruptcy they aren't going to be in a position to build lots of new houses.

If that was what your economic policy was....and let's face it, these policies are completely incoherent....economically illiterate....then why on earth would you want to be disincentivising landlords who are actually able to invest from investing by stopping them from offsetting their finance costs? This is blind pursuit of dogma by a bunch of people who clearly have no idea what they are doing.