Increased housebuilding targets for councils

 

Areas with the highest unaffordability for housing and greatest potential for growth will be handed increased housebuilding targets under the Government’s planning overhaul.

The Government's updated national planning policy framework will also require councils to review their green belt boundaries to meet targets.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has pledged to build 1.5 million homes in five years, said the Government would ‘overhaul the broken planning system'.

Angela Rayner visits a housing development © Imageplotter/Alamy

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner added: ‘We cannot shirk responsibility and leave more than a million families on housing waiting lists and a generation locked out of home ownership.

‘I will not hesitate to do what it takes to build 1.5 million new homes over five years and deliver the biggest boost in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.'

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has warned the Government will use the ‘full ministerial intervention powers at our disposal where there are some genuinely recalcitrant councils that say no to the targets we're putting forward'.

However, housing spokesperson for the Labour-led Local Government Association, Adam Hug, warned: ‘For councils to share the Government's ambition to tackle local housing challenges, there must be a collaborative approach.'

This article first appeared on themj.co.uk.

 
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