New plans announced to accelerate development of new homes

Housing and Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove, has set out new plans to accelerate the development of new homes in areas where there is already local consent.

Proposals aim to focus new development on inner-city and urban areas, rather than eroding countryside at the edges of towns, as well as helping to clear backlogs and bottlenecks within planning processes.

A £24 million Planning Skills Delivery Fund will launch to ensure planning officers have the right skills, while a “super-squad” team of planners and experts will focus on unblocking major developments, and will initially be deployed in Cambridge to accelerate plans for a new urban quarter of housing, laboratories and green spaces in the city centre.

Homeowners will also be given greater freedom to extend their properties, through both extensions and loft conversions, while greater flexibility will be introduced to help convert high street units such as shops and takeaways into new homes. Red tape slowing down residential conversion of agricultural buildings and disused warehouses will also be cut to accelerate development.

Developers will meanwhile be asked to contribute more in fees to support improving the planning service.

The announcement of reforms to planning processes comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announces the government is on track to meet its target of delivering 1 million new homes during the course of this Parliament. The Prime Minister commented:

“Today I can confirm that we will meet our manifesto commitment to build 1 million homes over this Parliament. That’s a beautiful new home for a million individual families in every corner of our country.

“We need to keep going because we want more people to realise the dream of owning their own home.

“We won’t do that by concreting over the countryside – our plan is to build the right homes where there is the most need and where there is local support, in the heart of Britain’s great cities.

“Our reforms today will help make that a reality, by regenerating disused brownfield land, streamlining planning process and helping homeowners to renovate and extend their houses outwards and upwards.”

Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove said:

“Most people agree that we need to build more homes – the question is how we go about it.

“Rather than concreting over the countryside, we have set out a plan today to build the right homes in the right places where there is community support – and we’re putting the resources behind it to help make this vision a reality.

“At the heart of this is making sure that we build beautiful and empower communities to have a say in the development in their area.”