Housing and Planning Applications

I have picked up a sense of confusion in some recent planning discussions around what a planning authority can demand in terms of housing in a planning application.

Affordable?
The first confusion is around market, affordable and social housing.  Market housing is easiest.  That is just housijng sold at the market price.  Generally, that is where a developer makes the main profit that funds the project.  The real confusion comes with affordable housing.  This means housing rented at 80% of market rate.  In London that can easily be seriously unaffordable for many people.  Social housing  is more genuinely affordable, but seems to be being steadily eroded not just in planning conditions but also through the Right to Buy.

Tenure Mix
Two more things to look out for are whether the properties are sold or rented.  If sold, they can sometimes by subject to shared ownership or other concessionary schemes.  It is also worth looking at the mix of sizes.  A viable community should have some family and some smaller accommodation.  However, the market currently favours one or two bedroom flats over family accommodation.  Brent therefore tries to push developers to include more family accommodation. 

Negotiation
The third area where people seem to misunderstand is the nature of a planning authority's powers.  Brent cannot simply demand whatever it wants.  it has to be able to demonstrate that its decisions are in line with various planning policy documents (or deviate from them for a good reason), and that its demands are reasonable and proportionate.  Developers generally try to reduce the proportion of non-market housing by pleading poverty.  In recent times, the Council has started putting in a clawback position in cases where the developer subsequently stands to make a killing. 

Frequently, the Council is seeking to trade off one benefit against another.  Thus the Willesden Library development was judged justified in not having non market housing because the developer was paying for a new cultural centre, for example.