CPRE’s revised and updated planning policy for housing arrived in my inbox this week.
It covers pretty much all the bases including NPPF compliant sustainable development, neighbourhood planning, design, Custom Build and Smart Growth.
Tottenham regeneration is currently looking very much like a slow motion car crash.
Speeding down the Tottenham High Road from a great height is the expected new Tottenham regeneration body which is anticipated to be public sector dominated with private sector members expected to include the football club. Rolling alongside this juggernaut is a soon to be published masterplan commissioned by the GLA and local authority from global consultancy Arup.
This week has been full of housing for me.
I’ve been looking at some potential new Custom Build sites, meeting Custom Build manufacturers, talking to public sector land owners about housing delivery on their land and talking to housing associations, investors and government about market rent.
And then there was the Budget.
It was fascinating to see the neighbourhood planning system descend into chaos in Bermondsey this week.
The carefully constructed federal system of the original Frontrunner, the Bermondsey Neighbourhood Forum, was undermined as two of its 30 or so constituent local community groups, one a group of wealthy owner occupiers at one end of the 23,000 population (one square mile) area and the other a group of predominantly social renting tenants from the other end, both Nimby in character, sought to break away and declare UDI.
I really enjoyed the contribution of reader Gareth E a couple of weeks ago where he mentioned the ‘stickiness’ of the housing market in relation to empty nesters who stay in their 3 or 4 bedroom houses after their children have left home.
I’m sure he’s right and no doubt this factor is a contributor to the larger space per head we enjoy on average these days (as household size reduces faster than house size) despite the housebuilder ‘Hobbit home’ production.
This week’s house builder reporting season provides strong evidence of how government subsidy to the volume house builders is squeezing the smaller builders out of the market and how the subsidy is flowing through to management, banks and shareholders rather than to increasing output.
Last week saw the launch of a campaign by CPRE, Civic Voice and others to promote Smart Growth. This might also be thought of as a campaign against urban sprawl.
This doesn’t seem anywhere like as powerful in the public psyche yet as the campaign to save the Green Belt or ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ that was waged around the publication of the draft NPPF.
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This week hasn’t been filled with high quality urban design for me. My fault perhaps for going to Colindale in north London (Barnet, between the M1 and the Edgware Road to be specific). With the greatest respect to the people of Colindale, it’s one of those places that has been pretty badly served over the years by the property development industry and the planning system when it comes to high quality urban design and place making. Unfortunately it hasn’t got a centre which is always a bad start for a place.
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The extent of the disorganisation of the public sector army battling to deliver more housing was apparent again this week although some baby steps of progress were also evident.
The link to the Select Committee TV recording of the Planning Minister’s appearance came on line this week and those of us who hadn’t managed to be there were treated first to something of a love in between the committee, the minister Nick Boles and Mathew Taylor whose nerdy interest in the planning system and intense hard work and intellect has delivered a solution to the 7000 pages of mainly out of date planning guidance that seems to have garnered almost unanimous support.
Many of my political friends are currently engrossed in an orgy of manifesto ideas generation and constituency hunting. This may explain some of the policy papers appearing around housing and regeneration which by common consent seems likely to be the key issue for the next general election.
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