Sam Stafford's Blog

Last week I watched a councillor object at a public inquiry to an eminently sensible proposal for a sustainable extension to a town widely acknowledged to be a focus for future growth. The following day the same councillor retweeted a post from The Economist highlighting that concern over housing is at its highest level since May 2008 at 15% (the Economist's article is here ). That retweet may have been out of interest and not endorsement, but it serves to illustrate the fundamental reason why there is a housing crisis in this country. That reason is summarised by Ipsos Mori in it's submission to the Lyons Review: Our surveys point to a local ‘enough already’ sentiment, and the national sense of crisis is felt much less keenly by people locally. In fact, more disagree than agree that there is a local crisis (49% vs 45%) and 36% of those who think there is insufficient local affordable housing disagree that new homes need to be built. Planning is collaborative...

Another day, another appeal decision in Cheshire East. This Dunnocksfold Road, Alsager decision is though notable because the inspector offers a definitive view on the housing land supply position rather than just, as previous inspectors have done, concluding that the Council cannot demonstrate one. "In applying the identified annual housing target from the CS + the backlog figure + the 5% buffer (2029 units) the resultant years supply would be 3.62 years. Even using the Council’s own assessed supply figure of 9897 it would only provide 4.8 years of land with a 5% buffer. " Also of note is a mild rebuke for the Council for using the RSS annual requirement of 1,150 homes per annum for the purposes of five year supply calculations, whilst at the same promoting an annual requirement of 1,350 per annum in the emerging local plan. "On the evidence before me I conclude that for the Council to put aside their promoted CS housing target based on recent evidence wit...

I have not seen Titanic all of the way through. I recall watching until the ship left harbour, but then forwarded it until the iceberg appeared on the horizon. Hopefully that reveals simply an inability to sit through Kate Winslet films rather than a latent sadistic streak (let's leave that for now...), but it did come to mind this morning as I contemplated the news this week that the Inspector examining the Cheshire East Local Plan has requested a not inconsiderable amount of further information from the Council prior to this month's pre-Examination meeting. The Local Plan, and the separate but integral question of the five year housing land supply, has twisted and turned over the past eighteen months or so, during which time two diametrically opposite views on its soundness have emerged. On one side, the development community has expressed serious doubts about the soundness of the plan (see the letter from Gladman dated 4 June 2014 here ). On the other side, t...

On the same day as an opposition debate in Parliament on housing supply, the Guardian has pre-empted Sir Michael Lyons' review of housebuilding, commissioned by the Labour Party as part of a policy review, by reporting his comments to a Local Government Association conference. Lyons is reported as saying that the two main issues holding back the construction of more homes is the wholly inadequate supply of developable land and the small range of those able to build houses. On the latter point,  Lyons' comments about the need for new freedoms to get local government back delivering homes are consistent with earlier messages about lifting or removing borrowing caps, but if the final draft of his report does include his reported comments on the supply of deliverable land then the Labour Party might have a pre-election decision to make.  Consider, for example, how these quotes from Michael Lyons... "The direction of my work is if anything we will turn the screw o...