Agenda item

Paul Swinney from the Centre for Cities highlighted a number of the challenges around addressing the demand for housing supply and affordability.  In doing so, he highlighted the importance of locally-led and placed based housing growth, tailored to meet the specific needs of localities rather than driven by centrally set targets.

Trudi Elliot from the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) spoke about the opportunities for local government to influence the conditions in which planning operates, as well how the RTPI could help local authorities address some of the challenges around planning.  These included: funding; resourcing; infrastructure; and meeting the combined interests of the public, developers and central government. 

In the discussion that followed, Members made a number of comments, including:

Housing

·        Increasing housing supply to meet local needs was emphasised as a key priority, with Members seeing the Board as having a critical role in lobbying Government to help unblock the barriers to house building and in shifting the debate so that councils are perceived as ‘delivers of development’.  In discussing the challenges, suggestions included: effectively linking up infrastructure planning and funding with housing development; releasing Government owned buildings and land banks for housing use; supporting councils to develop a workforce equipped with planning and development skills; providing greater flexibilities and longer timeframes for housing development; and grounding strategic planning decisions in locally democratic structures.

·        In discussing the affordability crisis within specific housing markets, Members discussed a number of tools to address the challenges, including: linking local housing allowance and real rents; robustly community impact testing solutions against long term inflationary implications; and encouraging greater economic decentralisation away from the current centralised system.

·        Whilst Members were supportive of the LGA’s call to lift the cap on the Housing Revenue Account (HRA), there were a number of suggestions about how to frame the issue so that it gained maximum political traction.  These included: greater focus on investment rather than borrowing; calling for better use of funding within the current HRA cap; and lobbing for HRA underspend to be devolved to local government.

·        In discussing the importance of housing quality as well as supply, there was strong support for greater emphasis in the work programme on councils’ role in holding the private rented sector to account in terms of standards and security for tenants. 

·        Member emphasised the importance of maximising the lobbying opportunities which might arise from the publication of the two housing reviews by the Government and Sir Michael Lyons, should these reviews’ findings align with the LGA’s position.

Planning

·        In discussing the Board’s role in supporting a locally led planning system, Members emphasised the need for a strategic approach to planning.

·        Members highlighted the challenges of delivering existing planning permissions in addition to new ones, and discussed the potential to treat groups of existing permissions as virtual garden cities rather than as individual projects.

·        Concerns were expressed regarding centrally set Government targets and space standards, which could be both costly and lead to perverse behaviours.  

Environment

·        It was noted communications and research activities were being taken in response to the potential risk that a number of local authorities could be to be subject to an EU financial sanction relating to breaches of EU waste legislation. 

·        Reference was made to the significant reduction in landfill waste per household and the importance of communicating this success story to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

·        It was suggested that the work programme include scope for exploring income generating opportunities around issues such as: deployable renewable energy; energy efficiency; and local energy markets to tackle fuel poverty.

·        With reference to the extreme weather experienced towards the end of 2013, Members discussed the critical role of councils’ in providing effective resilience support and the interest in this topic which the one year anniversary might bring.