Councils have raised the alarm over what they describe as unrealistic government targets for new housing, saying these penalise local authorities when the fault often lies with developers sitting on sites that already have planning permission. Local authorities have also complained that targets under the proposed new national planning policy framework (NPPF) for England are sometimes totally unrealistic, both in terms of what can be built and, in some cases, the amount of homes needed. It follows earlier concerns that the wording of the NPPF, which is being consulted on, could result in large expanses of pristine green belt being built over so councils can reach their targets. The leaders of every political group on one council, including Labour, have written jointly to Angela Rayner warning that councils are “being set up to fail” with a planning framework based on an overly simplistic view of the housing market. Under the NPPF, set out in July with a blueprint to deliver 1.5m homes this parliament, all regions apart from London must plan for thousands more homes. Councils that fail to deliver could risk penalties or even a takeover by ministers. The joint letter to Rayner, the housing secretary, by Arun district council in West Sussex says the authority has approved more than 8,000 planning permissions that have not been built by developers, and that simply adding new numbers to a target will not alter this. “The proposed NPPF changes appear to rest on the premise that the planning system is solely responsible for the shortfall in housing delivery and thus continue to penalise councils for missing housing targets,” it reads. “This is simply not true.” Martin Lury, the Liberal Democrat leader of the council, who signed the letter with the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Greens and two independent groups, said that while they all recognised the need for new homes, local infrastructure was “cracking at the seams”, and available land was limited by the South Downs national park and flood plains. “The message is: stop penalising us for things that are beyond our control. It’s unfair. This isn’t about our planning system. We’ve delivered what they wanted,” he said. “If they are serious about increasingly affordability, they need to do what we did in the 1950s and invest very heavily in social housing.”
Mike Northeast, who leads Arun’s Labour group, said the centrally imposed targets ignored local factors, not least the 8,000 unbuilt approved sites. He said: “We support what the government is saying about building more affordable homes – but not, when it comes to us, about councils dragging their feet. It’s developers land banking, and it doesn’t seem fair that it’s us who should be penalised.” The leadership of another council in the south of England, Waverley in Surrey, has also written to Rayner to warn about the new planning targets, saying it was expected to deliver 3.4 times more homes in the next 20 years than in the previous two decades. The Lib Dem-led council said the plan was “simply unachievable” in an area where building was heavily constrained by the Surrey Hills national landscape – the new term for an area of outstanding natural beauty – and that the planned new housing far exceeded projections for local population growth. Joe Harris, the leader of the Lib Dem group on the Local Government Association, who is also the leader of Cotswold district council, said many councils he had talked to were increasingly concerned about the targets. “We all want more affordable housing, but just setting a housing target and saying you’ve got to meet it isn’t addressing the core issues that strangle housing – land availability, developers land banking, and the perilous financial situation which many councils are in,” he said. Harris described the target for his own council as “crackers – it’s not going to happen. It’s just not deliverable in terms of the land availability.” He added: “Eighty per cent of my district is a national landscape, which means you can only build really strategic developments in the 20% which isn’t. And of course, that puts huge pressure on infrastructure.” A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “We are in a housing crisis so all areas of the country must play their part in ending it by building the homes we need. “We will work in partnership with councils to deliver 1.5m homes over the next five years, and our new housing targets better respond to affordability pressures to ensure homes are built where they are needed most.”