Planning Portal Blog

Welsh planning minister Carl Sargeant has written to all chief planning officers highlighting the importance of not being too swayed by visual and amenity issues when considering renewable and low carbon energy schemes.

His letter said: “I appreciate that visual and amenity impact on surrounding communities and properties is an important issue (and policies are in place to protect against unacceptably adverse impacts) and that discussions of this nature can become quite emotive during the planning process.

“However planning decisions need to be taken in the wider public interest and in a rational way, informed by evidence, where these issues are balanced against other factors.”

The letter highlighted that the Energy Saving Trust has been commissioned by the government to deliver training for local planning authority members and officers on community renewables.

Sargeant also noted that in England permitted development rights for commercial properties have increased so that up to 1 megawatt solar panels can be installed on roofs subject to a prior approval procedure.

“I want to see if there is an alternative option available in Wales that will be less cumbersome for developers and those in the business community seeking to generate their own energy.

“We recently commissioned Arcadis to carry out research in this area and this is due to be completed by the Spring of 2016.”

He added: “The Welsh government is committed to using all using all possible levers it has to increase the supply of renewable energy in Wales for the benefit of the next generation and I expect local planning authorities to take the initiative in delivering sustainable outcomes for future generations.”

View the letter

Roger Milne

March 24, 2016

Planning round-up 24 March 2016

Scottish rail prospects

HS2 Ltd has published a report on broad options for upgraded and high speed railways to the north of England and Scotland. This explores options to improve journey times from Edinburgh and Glasgow to cities further south, including options that could reduce journey times to London to three hours or under. It also considers how additional passenger and freight capacity could be met.

The report considers various options for building on HS2, including:

Upgrades within the footprint of the existing railway
New high speed bypasses of constrained track sections
Complete new lines on either the east or west of the Pennines.

These alternatives range in cost between £17 and £43bn to reach a three hour journey time, although some are capable of being constructed in stages.

View the news story

Deprivation counts

Latest analysis of data from the 2011 Census by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the 28 English towns and cities out of 109 under scrutiny with the largest percentage of deprived areas were in the North or Midlands of England.

Oldham and West Bromwich both had over 60 per cent of their local areas ranked in the most deprived 20 per cent of areas in England.

The towns and cities with the largest percentage of least deprived areas of England were Guildford, Woking and St Albans which each had over 50 per cent of their so-called Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) ranked in the least deprived 20 per cent of areas in England.

View the article

Brownfield best says CPRE report

Brownfield sites are being developed more than half a year faster than greenfield sites, according to research published by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).

This follows on from CPRE research carried out in late 2014, which found that there are enough suitable brownfield sites for at least one million new homes.

The new research involved logging development activity at 15 local authorities across England between March 2012 and December 2015.

Construction consultants Glenigan collected and analysed the data which revealed that the time between planning permission being granted and construction work starting was generally the same for brownfield and greenfield sites. However work on brownfield sites was completed more than six months quicker.

CPRE insisted this work illustrated that prioritising investment in brownfield sites was a highly effective way of building the new homes needed.

The campaign group claimed the research undermined claims that brownfield was either too slow or inconvenient to develop in comparison to greenfield sites.

Read the article

Growth deal funding

Local leaders wanting to boost skills, support business and build more homes will be offered the chance to apply for the latest round of Growth Deals worth billions of pounds, Communities Secretary Greg Clark said this week.

Under the Growth Deals, England’s 39 Local Enterprise Partnerships, made up of council leaders and business representatives, will be able to apply for a share of £1.8bn to support projects in their areas that boost local economic growth and create jobs.

The money forms part of the government’s £12bn Local Growth Fund, which is already being used to support successful projects, chosen by communities themselves.

View the recovered appeal: Haunton Manor Farm, Haunton, Staffordshire

Tunbridge Wells town centre revamp

Proposals for a £70m revamp of the Royal Victoria Place shopping centre in Tunbridge Wells have been approved by the borough council.

The town centre scheme, which will involve the demolition of some existing buildings, will add an extra 3,395 square metres of floor space and provide new shops, restaurants and an eight screen rooftop cinema.

View more information

Clark unmoved by Staffordshire turbine project

Communities Secretary Greg Clark has agreed with the inspector who held a recovered appeal inquiry over a two-turbine wind project earmarked for farm land at Haunton, Staffordshire and dismissed the proposal.

Clark’s decision letter said the scheme was in conflict with the 2015 Lichfield Development Plan, would have an adverse impact on the character and appearance of the area and that the turbines would stand out as “alien industrial features” in a pleasing rural landscape.

Ferdinand bids to score as developer

Former England captain Rio Ferdinand has unveiled government-backed plans to partner Central Bedfordshire Council and regenerate Kingsland, one of the most deprived areas in the town of Houghton Regis, with a world-class sports academy, education and community facilities as well as 1,000 new homes.

Legacy, the former Manchester United defender’s regeneration company set up in 2015 with footballers Mark Noble (West Ham) and Bobby Zamora (Brighton), will now work up the scheme for a 22-hectare site in an area already approved for major urban extensions.

The site includes various education establishments, the council’s Adult Skills Service and Houghton Regis Leisure Centre.

Council Leader James Jamieson said “Kingsland will help further regenerate Houghton Regis, an important town in which we are already committed to two planned major extensions. These will provide up to 7,000 new homes, 40-hectares of employment land, and a range of retail, leisure and other facilities, plus community infrastructure, including education, sports and green spaces”

London round-up

London Mayor Boris Johnson has published a report which claims the environmental cost of expanding Heathrow is so enormous that the only credible solution to Britain’s aviation dilemma is to pursue plans for a new hub airport to the east of the capital, away from populated areas.

Consolidated Developments has been granted planning consent by Camden Council, for the final piece of its £90m St Giles Circus development in the West End. The scheme includes new buildings and refurbished listed buildings and will provide both an 800-saeater music venue and a smaller 280 venue at the site of the former 12 Bar Blues Club in Denmark Street. Cartoon drawings and graffiti scrawled by Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten on property in the same street has helped two buildings (no 6 and 7) be awarded Grade 2* listed status.
British Land has submitted a planning application for a 32-storey tower in Finsbury Avenue Square in the City of London despite protests from heritage groups about the demolition of the existing building, which houses the British headquarters of UBS.
The Royal Docks and Beckton Riverside Opportunity Area Planning Framework has been published and is now out for consultation. It focuses on releasing surplus industrial land and intensifying other sites, which City Hall believes will open up further developable land, potentially leading to the delivery of 24,000 homes and 60,000 new jobs.
International law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) has been formally appointed to advise Tideway, the new company created to finance and deliver London’s £4.2bn Thames Tideway Tunnel. BLP will provide expertise in planning, environment, compulsory purchase and asset protection as well as real estate advice.

Legal round-up

The Court of Appeal has ruled on the meaning of the expression in paragraph 49 of the NPPF, “relevant policies for the supply of housing”. The importance of the paragraph is that if the local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites, such policies are not to be considered as up-to-date. The ruling follows some seven or more High Court decisions offering significantly differing takes on the import of the paragraph. The two cases at the centre of this judgment involved Suffolk Coastal District Council and Cheshire East Council.
The Court of Appeal has upheld a challenge brought by traders against a High Court ruling that the decision by former Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to confirm a compulsory purchase order for Shepherd’s Bush Market in west London was lawful. In confirming the CPO made by Hammersmith & Fulham Council Pickles had gone against the recommendation of a planning inspector.
Leicester University has won a High Court battle over Oadby & Wigston Borough Council’s refusal to grant an application for a certificate of lawful use for a hall of residence for students and conference delegates. The planning authority’s stance had been backed by a planning inspector on appeal.
Two north London landlords who breached planning regulations by converting a house into seven studio flats have been ordered to pay a total of £116,000 in fines and costs by Blackfriars Crown Court following action by Islington Council.
South Cambridgeshire District Council’s decision to approve a new ground for Cambridge City FC at a green belt location at Sawston has survived a High Court challenge.
A High Court judge has upheld a planning inspector’s decision to grant permission on appeal to a developer for a 32-dwelling scheme in Worcestershire originally refused by Wychavon District Council despite the Communities Secretary conceding that the decision should be quashed.
Somerford Parish Council has won a High Court challenge over Cheshire East Council’s refusal to register land in its area as a village green.
Cheshire East Council has lost its legal challenge over an appeal approval for a 150-home scheme at Wistaston which the planning authority claimed breached its green gap policy.

Roger Milne

Budget displays a garden settlement prospect

View more information on the Budget 2016

Wednesday’s Budget announcements confirmed the government’s appetite for a new wave of garden settlements with a promise of legislation to make it easier for local authorities to work together to create new garden towns and cities.

Local authorities and businesses covered by the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership have just unveiled ambitious proposals for a new garden city providing some 45,000 new homes in 30 towns and settlements in and around Wolverhampton, stretching from Aldridge to West Bromwich.

The scheme has the backing of the government and the support of the Homes and Communities Agency. Some 550 brownfield sites across the sub region have been identified. The 1,500-hectare project will require an investment of around £6bn.

Ministers are also keen to provide technical and financial support for areas that want to establish garden villages and market towns of between 1,500 and 10,000 homes. The prospect of “planning and financial flexibilities” is on offer alongside a second wave of compulsory purchase order reforms.

The Budget Report said the government would release more public sector land for housing and has committed to providing greater freedom for the deployment of mobile phone infrastructure. This will involve reducing planning restrictions and allowing taller new ground-based masts to be built.

Chancellor Gordon Osborne announced an additional boost to spending on flood defence which would amount to a spend of £700m by 2020-21. Flood defence schemes in Leeds, York, Calder Valley and wider Cumbria are on the cards

On the devolution front, the Budget signalled new deals with the West of England, East Anglia and Greater Lincolnshire in addition to a further round of Growth Deals with LEPs.

And the government announced it would create a new Marine Hub Enterprise Zone in Cornwall. New EZs will be established at Brierley Hill in Dudley, Loughborough and Leicester. The existing Sheffield City Region EZ will be extended.

The government has also requested the National Infrastructure Commission carry out a study on the strategic infrastructure priorities for the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor which contains some of England’s fastest-growing and most productive cities.

At the same time as the Budget the Local Plan Expert Group has published its report which makes a series of recommendations designed to streamline and speed up the local plan making process.

The group has recommended simplifying the calculations of housing need and halving the timetable for plan making. It has also suggested ways of better integrating local plans with Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Charging Schedules.

View the Local Pans Expert Group report to the Secretary of State

Roger Milne

Osborne backs Crossrail 2 and HS3 for the North

Chancellor George Osborne this week committed £300m to kick-start work on major transport schemes in the capital and the North, specifically Crossrail 2 and rail and road links between Manchester and Leeds, which are expected to trigger significant urban development.

Support for the capital’s Crossrail 2 scheme is predicated on the development of a housing strategy which would involve some release of green belt land and the provision up to 200,000 new homes.

In the North the expectation is that the long term transformation of Manchester Piccadilly station should stimulate significant regeneration across 60-hectares of central Manchester.

Osborne’s commitment to significant transport infrastructure spending came in the wake of two reports from the National Infrastructure Commission

The first, published last week, urged backing for Crossrail 2, the proposed new north-east to south-west tunnelled rail line across the capital. The Commission insisted funding should be made available now to develop the scheme fully with the aim of submitting a hybrid bill by autumn 2019. This would enable Crossrail 2 to open in 2033.

The Commission called for a funding plan in which London contributed more than half the total for the scheme. Also recommended was a strategy to maximise private sector involvement in the development and funding of stations and their surrounding areas and the construction of at least 200,000 homes along the route. This could require the creation of one or more development corporations.

The second report, published on Tuesday, made the case for a higher speed, higher capacity and higher frequency rail network in the North from Liverpool in the west to Hull and Newcastle in the east. This would incorporate sections of the proposed HS2 project as well as upgraded lines and sections of new track where necessary. This is being called HS3.

The Commission said the development of this network should begin with the rail link between Manchester and Leeds, the two largest economies of the North. Phase one should reduce journey times from 49 to 40 minutes and increase capacity by 2022. Phase two could cut to just 30 minutes.

The Commission said an integrated plan covering both phases should be drawn up before the end of 2017. It added that route decisions on the northern sections of HS2 to be announced later this year should support enhanced high-speed connections within the North, including between Leeds-Sheffield, Liverpool-Manchester, and Sheffield-Newcastle.

The Commission argued that Highways England should accelerate capacity enhancements to the M62 between Liverpool and Manchester and between Manchester and Leeds. Also firmly on the agenda is the prospect of a new road link between Manchester and Sheffield involving a tunnel under the Peak District.

Read the news story

Roger Milne

Clark backs Maldon over local plan wrangle

Communities Secretary Greg Clark has sided with Maldon District Council which last year took issue with the planning inspector examining its local plan. When the inspector issued his initial findings [on the plan] he concluded the strategy was unsound because its stance on sites for travellers wasn’t consistent with national policy.

The council claimed the inspector’s interim findings were neither balanced nor proportionate and complained to Communities Secretary Greg Clark. He subsequently directed that the plan should be submitted to him for approval. The inspector involved has since retired.

Clark has written to the council agreeing that “it was not proportionate for the inspector to find the whole plan unsound because he had not examined the whole plan.

The SoS acknowledged that the inspector was correct in his analysis that the local plan policy on travellers’ sites was deficient. But he said the inspector was wrong not to give the council an opportunity to remedy the problems.

Now Clark has announced he will appoint a new inspector to consider the local plan “and all the currently available written and audio evidence from the initial hearings and to then reach their own view on what further evidence is needed, including any further hearings”.

Councillor Mrs. Penny Channer was chair of the council’s planning committee throughout the local plan preparation period.

She said: “Maldon District Council feel vindicated by the response by the Secretary of State, as we felt we had submitted a robust plan”.

View the news story

Roger Milne

Cardiff City Region deal cemented

Wales’ first City Deal, aimed at boosting the economic competitiveness of the so-called Cardiff City Region (CCR) was confirmed this week.

At the heart of the £1.2bn agreement, announced on Tuesday, are ambitious proposals to improve public transport via the South Wales Metro project, a scheme which includes Valley Lines electrification.

Equally crucial, the Welsh Government and the Cardiff Capital Region councils have committed to a new partnership approach to housing development and regeneration. This is designed to ensure the delivery of sustainable communities, through the use and re-use of property and sites.

The ten local authorities involved in CCR, Cardiff, The Vale of Glamorgan, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Monmouthshire, Bridgend, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen and Newport, have agreed to contribute £120m to a 20-year investment fund. The UK and Welsh Governments are each providing £500m.

The local authorities have also signed up to the creation of a Cardiff Capital Region Cabinet, a non-statutory Regional Transport Authority, a Cardiff Capital Region Skills and Employment Board and a Cardiff Capital Region Business Organisation.

National and local politicians claimed the deal would create up to 25,000 jobs and leverage £4bn of private sector investment.

As part of this City Deal, the Welsh Government will explore with the Cardiff Capital Region councils the devolution of business rate income above an agreed growth baseline and the ability to levy an infrastructure supplement.

View the policy paper

Roger Milne

Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan ruled unlawful

View more information on the Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan

Plan-making and decisions on major schemes across much of Northern Ireland are now in difficulties following a High Court judge’s ruling over the status of the Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan (BMAP).

Mr Justice Treacy held that SDLP Environment Minister Mark H Durkan acted unilaterally and unlawfully in authorising the BMAP in September 2014 without the agreement of Northern Ireland Executive colleagues.

The successful legal challenge was mounted by the then Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party.

The judge backed claims that because the plan’s significance stretched across a number of separate departments it needed approval from the Stormont cabinet.

“In the present case, the minister having failed to achieve any agreement at the Executive sub-group, acted unilaterally and unlawfully by authorising and directing the Department to adopt the BMAP without informing the Executive until after the event and despite objections having been raised by other ministers” the judge ruled.

The court heard that the legal action involved a disagreement along party political lines, with the DUP opposed to the restrictions on retail activity adopted by the SDLP minister in the BMAP which meant that a long-proposed John Lewis store could not be built at the Sprucefield shopping centre on the edge of Lisburn, Co Down.

A DOE spokesperson said: “The minister is currently considering the judgment of the Court.”

Enterprise Minister Jonathan Bell insisted: “The judgment will mean that a revised BMAP will be brought back to the Executive for consideration and agreement. The significant area of concern with BMAP as it stands is the restriction that it would have placed on retail development at Sprucefield.”

Individual council local development plans and major planning applications are meant to comply with the regional land-use blueprint, the BMAP.

The plan covers Belfast City, Carrickfergus Borough, Castlereagh Borough, Lisburn City, Newtownabbey Borough and North Down Borough Council areas where some 40 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population live.

Roger Milne

Planning round-up 17 March 2016

View the recovered appeal: land south of Loxwood Farm Place, High Street, Loxwood, Billingshurst

PD changes

The Department for Communities and Local Government has laid before Parliament the regulations which make office to residential conversions a permanent feature of permitted development rights from 6 April.

The rights were first introduced on a temporary basis nearly two years ago.

An amendment to the General Permitted Development Order includes a new condition which allows local planning authorities to consider the impact of noise from commercial premises on occupants of the housing.

The time-limit on exemptions obtained for parts of London and Manchester will run out in May 2019. Planning authorities will be able to apply for Article 4 directions to remove the rights.

The change to permitted development to facilitate residential conversions will also apply to launderettes and, from 2017, light industrial up to a maximum floor space of 500 square metres.

New permitted development rights for mineral exploration which will allow for boreholes for specific monitoring purposes where there is preparatory petroleum exploration are also coming into force.

View more information

Sluggish utility companies restricting housing growth

A new Housing & Finance Institute report has highlighted sluggish performance by utility companies as a factor restricting housing growth.

The report has recommended that local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships undertake so-called Infrastructure Dependency Mapping at a local and sub-regional level to get a better handle on the needs of electricity and energy companies.

The institute also proposed that the Communities Secretary should be given powers to force tardy utilities to provide utility connections “in a timely manner”.

View the report

Capital developments

London Mayor Boris Johnson has published a slew of planning guidance this week. This includes new Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) covering the so-called Central Activities Zone. For the first time this states that new residential development is not appropriate in the commercial core of the City of London and the northern part of the Isle of Dogs. The SPG pinpoints geographical parts of central London where commercial use should be given priority over new residential developments. The mayor has also published new Housing Supplementary Planning Guidance as well as the Minor Alterations to the London Plan (MALPs).
In addition Johnson has announced 11 new Housing Zones in London funded by an additional £200m of his housing budget. The new zones, which will deliver a total of 24,554 new homes, include sites in Barking, Catford, Feltham, Kingston and Romford.
Meanwhile Wandsworth Council has launched a competition to select a partner for the regeneration of the six-hectare Alton Estate in Roehampton south-west London where approximately 1,100 new homes will be built as well as additional social rent, affordable and private housing.

Clark blocks West Sussex homes scheme

Communities Secretary Greg Clark has agreed with the recommendation of the planning inspector who argued that an appeal over a 25-home scheme at Loxwoood, Billingurst in West Sussex should be dismissed. The scheme, eleven of whose units would be affordable, had been refused by Chichester District Council.

The Secretary of State agreed the proposals were in conflict with both the local plan, the now made neighbourhood plan and were not suitably sustainable to justify overriding the planning policy objections

The Loxwood Neighbourhood Plan was the subject of two unsuccessful judicial reviews.

Guidance on caravan and houseboat dwellers

The Department for Communities and Local Government has published draft guidance related to the new duty on English planning authorities, included in the Housing and Planning bill, to consider the needs of people “residing in or resorting” to a district in either caravans or houseboats.

It shows how the government wants councils to interpret the changes to accommodation needs assessments in both those respects and highlights the need to cooperate with neighbouring local authorities.

View the guidance

Bedforshire ‘mansion’ faces demolition

Extensions and alterations to a house at a green belt location in Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire will have to be demolished within a year following a decision by a planning inspector.

Random House, originally a bungalow, owned by Mr Syed Raza Shah, was granted planning permission in 2011 by Central Bedfordshire Council for the ‘erection of single storey side extension and roof alteration with rear dormer windows.’

But when the development was finished, the floor space had increased by 165 per cent, turning the property into a three-storey mansion.

Subsequently the building has become the focus long-running and acrimonious planning and legal dispute between the local authority and the owner.

View more information on the case

Rochester regeneration

Medway Council has announced it has selected Countryside Properties and Hyde Housing as its partners for its ambitious 30-hectare Rochester Riverside regeneration scheme.

The developers are set to transform the area over the next 12 years, building around 1,300 new homes, of which 25 per cent will be affordable housing.

They will also provide a new school, nursery, hotels, restaurants, gym, healthcare facilities, office space and a number of retail units as part of the £400m project. The developers are set to submit their first planning application by the end of the year.

Rochester Riverside has over 2.5 kilometres of frontage on the River Medway and adjoins the town centre and new railway station.

The scheme is backed by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), which is the co-owner of the site and has invested around £60m in preparing it for development.

City help urged

A new report by the think tank Centre for Cities has urged greater government focus on addressing the economic challenges facing some of the UK’s fastest-growing and strongest-performing cities.

The report was published in association with the Fast Growth Cities group, which represents five of the most vibrant medium-sized cities: Cambridge, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Swindon and Norwich.

All five places enjoy higher productivity levels than bigger cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. They also have higher than average levels of employment and business start-ups.

However the report warned that these cities face a number of significant economic challenges including lack of new homes, increasing transport congestion and a growing skills gap.

Brownfield register pilots

Communities Secretary Greg Clark has named the 73 councils across England which will pilot one of the new brownfield registers. These will provide house builders with up-to-date and publicly available information on all brownfield sites available for housing locally.

They will also allow communities to draw attention to local sites for listing, including in some cases derelict buildings and eyesores that are primed for redevelopment and that could attract investment to the area.

Registers will eventually become mandatory for all councils under proposals going through Parliament in the Housing and Planning bill.

Each council agreeing to be part of the pilot project will receive £10,000 government funding to help prepare their registers.

Developer Grainger, the UK’s largest listed residential landlord, has submitted a detailed planning application to West Berkshire Council to develop land between Newbury railway station and Market Street as an “urban village” providing 232 new homes, around 950 square meters of offices as well as new station plaza, car parking and a new bus station. The majority of the site is owned by the local authority and is currently a combination of parking spaces and the existing bus station.

Energy moves

Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has granted a development consent order (DCO) for a 19 kilometre long gas pipeline designed to link the proposed Thorpe Marsh combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant near Doncaster with the high-pressure gas network at Camblesforth in North Yorkshire.
In an end of an era development Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, the last deep coal mine in the UK, has been capped off. It was shut-down in December bringing to an end centuries of deep coal mining in Britain. The site has been earmarked for potential redevelopment including housing.
Meanwhile Communities Secretary Greg Clark has agreed with the inspector who held a recovered appeal inquiry into a single turbine proposed for land west of Moor Lane, Caistor and dismissed the project originally refused by West Lindsey District Council. His decision letter concluded that the benefits of the scheme were outweighed by its disadvantages which included its impact on a Grade 1 church, appreciable harm to the local conservation area and its effect on landscape character and views to and from the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, as well as its adverse impact on users of the Viking Way.

Neighbourhood plans support

The arrangements for claiming financial support for neighbourhood planning have been reviewed, updated and set out in new guidance published by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The letter from DCLG planning director Ruth Stanier to English chief planning officers also clarifies latest planning guidance on how planning applications should be decided where there is a made or emerging neighbourhood plan but the local planning authority does not have a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites.

View the letter

Affordable housing stats

Figures highlighted in this year’s UK Housing Review from the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) reveal that while the government is investing a total of £42bn in the private market only £18bn will be spent on affordable rented housing, just 30 per cent of the total investment in housing.

The CIH insisted these figures meant that investment in affordable renting will fall to its lowest levels since the Second World War.

It noted that of the government’s target for new homes to be built by 2020, only 12 per cent will be affordable rented homes.

CIH research and analysis suggested that by 2020 there will be a 9 per cent loss in both council and housing association properties let at social rents, equating to the loss of over 350,000 social rented homes altogether if further investment is not made.

Terrie Alafat, chief executive of CIH, said: “We need housing policy for the 25-30 per cent of the population who will never be able to afford to buy a home of their own.”

Community pub aid

A new support and finance programme worth £3.6m over the next two years designed to help people take control of their local pub has been announced by Community Pubs Minister Marcus Jones.

TCPA good practice guides

The Town and Country Planning Association have launched a set of practical guides to help local authorities and developers create high quality new communities.

The first three guides (out of a series of six) unveiled this week cover:

Planning for energy and climate change
Homes for all
Planning for arts and culture.

Another three guides will be launched after Easter on: locating and consenting new garden cities; finance and delivery and, finally, design and master- planning.