Enough is enough! Scrap the Housing Delivery Test and stop rewarding developers’ failure to build homes already approved

Richard Thompson, CPRE Kent planner, lays out how disastrous governmental planning policy is desperate news for Kent

The publication of the 2021 Housing Delivery Test results, combined with existing lack of five-year housing supplies, now puts Kent in the frankly ridiculous position where 11 out of its 13 councils are being punished for developers’ failure to build homes already approved.
The Housing Delivery Test is a backwards-looking assessment that compares how many houses having been built in a council’s area over the last three years against the government-set housing number for that area. The result is given as a percentage of homes built against this target, with increasingly severe punishments the lower this percentage is.
The National Planning Policy Framework five-year supply test is a forward-looking assessment of whether enough houses have been granted planning permission, or are allocated within a Local Plan, to ensure this same government-set housing requirement is likely to be built.
The point is, both tests see the imposition of a housing target on a council and then punishes it for not meeting this target. However, the reasons the targets are missed are largely factors completely outside of their control. That is, it can grant as many planning permissions and allocate as much land as it can, but unless it starts physically building the houses itself, it is at the mercy of market forces.
Private housebuilders will, however, only ever build at a rate that the local housing market can absorb. They are not going to build at a level that over-supplies a local housing market as this would force them to reduce prices and lower profits. They are also currently subject to practical constraints such as labour and material shortages.
As of March 31, 2020, (from when the most up-to-date Kent-wide numbers available) some 64,611 new houses either had planning permission or were allocated within an adopted Local Plan and were expected to be built within the next five years. For context, that’s already enough houses for another Maidstone planned for Kent over the next five years.
Yet this is not deemed enough.  
Because of either the Housing Delivery Test or the five-year supply test, nine of Kent’s councils are subject to the most severe of punishments: an automatic presumption that speculative planning applications will be granted, even if they are contrary to democratically adopted Local Plans. 
Of the remaining four councils, two must produce action plans setting out how they are to increase housebuilding in their areas. The full 2021 Housing Delivery Test results, along with the last published five-year supply figures, are shown below:

The real-world consequences for Kent of this absurd policy are stark. Councils across Kent are rushing through ever-increasingly unsustainable Local Plans in a fruitless endeavour to beat the presumption punishment. In Kent, this often entails allocating ever-increasing housing numbers on greenfield land, which is more profitable and hence more likely to developed quicker, making them more attractive to councils needing to boost housing delivery in the short term to meet the five-year supply test.
In the meantime, speculative applications are being allowed either by councils or at appeal (because of the current presumption punishment), causing anger and disenfranchisement among local communities.
And it is not just us saying this. In calling for the Housing Delivery Test to be suspended, Canterbury City Council chief executive Colin Carmichael has stated “it cannot be right to punish councils that are working hard to do what the government asks even when most of the levers councils need to pull are out of their control”.
We agree. Only it’s not just the councils that are being punished, it’s the people of Kent who have lost a democratic voice to oppose speculative development. It is Kent’s special countryside that is being sacrificed to this developer’s charter. 
And the government wonders why the people of Kent are so angry with the current planning system.

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

• A number of important documents have yet to emerge. For example, a rigorous transport plan and a finalised air-quality assessment. The latter is critical given that allocations at Teynham will feed extra traffic into AQMAs.
• There seems to be no coherent plan for infrastructure delivery – a key component of the plan given the allocations being proposed near the already crowded Junction 7.
• There seems to have been little or no cooperation with neighbouring boroughs or even parish councils within Swale itself.

The removal of a second consultation might have been understandable if this final version of the plan were similar to that being talked about at the beginning of the consultation process. It is, however, radically different in the following ways:

• There has been a major shift in the balance of housing allocations, away from the west of the borough over to the east, especially around the historic town of Faversham. This is a move that raises many concerns.
• A new large allocation, with accompanying A2 bypass, has appeared around Teynham and Lynsted, to which we are objecting.
• Housing allocations in the AONB around Neames Forstal that were judged “unsuitable” by the council’s own officers have now appeared as part of the housing numbers.
• Most of the housing allocations being proposed are on greenfield sites, many of them on Grade 1 agricultural land – a point to which we are strongly objecting.

Concerns about the rush to submit the plan

The haste with which the plan is being prepared is especially worrying given the concentration of housing in Faversham. If the town is to take a large amount of new housing, it is imperative that the policies concerning the area are carefully worked out to preserve, as far as possible, the unique nature of the town. The rush to submit the plan is likely to prove detrimental.

As Swale does not have a five-year land housing supply, it is open to speculative development proposals, many of which would run counter to the ideas contained in the current plan. Some are already appearing. This is a common situation, and one that, doubtless, is a reason behind Swale’s haste.

Our overriding fear, however, is that this emphasis on haste is ultimately going to prove counterproductive. This is because it is our view that the plan, in its current form, is unlikely to pass independent examination. We are urging Swale to listen to and act upon the comments being made about the plan and to return the plan to the council with appropriate modifications before submitting it to the Secretary of State.

Essentially, this means treating the current consultation not as the final one but as the ‘lost’ second consultation.

The consultation ends on Friday 30 April and we strongly urge residents to make their opinions known if they have not already done so.

Further information

• Read more on the Swale Local Plan
• Read CPRE Kent’s detailed comments on the plan
• View the council’s consultation document