Housing minister Gavin Barwell has said the housing white paper will focus on four key areas: land release, speeding up build-out rates, diversifying the market and de-politicising the planning system.
On releasing more land to the market. he said it was “definitely true” that there are parts of the country where councils are “simply not releasing enough land”.
Barwell was speaking to an industry audience at the UK housing delivery summit at Eversheds’ headquarters at 1 Wood Street, EC2.
On speeding up the build out of schemes, he said the white paper would include measures to ensure units were built more quickly after planning permission was achieved. “That’s not always actually developers’ fault,” he said. “I think there’s lots of other issues that can often slow down the build out in terms of infrastructure, planning system, section 106 agreements, planning conditions, utility companies and their performance.
“So there’s a whole range of things which can have an effect and we’re not going to try and address all of those, but I think we are entitled to turn to industry and say, ‘ok, we’ve dealt with all the things you told us were slowing things up we now want to see an improvement in performance.’”
The third section of the white paper will focus on “diversifying the market”.
“We need as many different people as possible to get involved in building,” he said, from institutional investors and the private rented sector to custom and self-build.
Barwell said the white paper will look at how to depoliticise the planning process. He said the issues would be addressed in terms of “what we can do to make sure that when someone comes forward and proposes building homes, that proposal doesn’t meet political resistance”.
He added: “I think there is far too much time, energy and money wasted on unnecessary conflict in our housing system.”
The housing white paper, which had been expected to be published alongside the autumn statement in November, is now expected to be published later this month.
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