Housing, housing, housing - the agenda for 2017

摘要

Exactly seven years ago this column lauded the establishment of the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU -an unpronounceable mnemonic), which was set up in 2006. It had started with Kate Barker's Review of Housing,2 in which she had proposed the establishment of a Regional Planning Executive to provide public advice to regional planning bodies (RPBs) on the scale and distribution of housing required to be planned for. It was intended to stop quarrelling consultancy reports and blatant political horse-trading on housing numbers as each Regional Spatial Strategy was brought, blinking and overdue, into the light.