LOCAL GAIN FOR LOCAL PAIN

摘要

Environmentalists and the development industry have both expressed anxiety about the Kate Barker Review of Housing Supply report to the Treasury which makes recommendations to get house-building rates up, to get house prices down, and to take a share of the unearned increase in land value that comes with the grant of planning permission. The latter is to be achieved by means of what Barker calls a 'Planning Cain Supplement' (PGS). On the matter of more and cheaper houses, environmentalists had been obsessing that Barker would lead to changes in the planning system that would allow market forces to become dominant. As it turns out, the proposals in the consultation paper Planning for Housing Provision which will be informing the upcoming draft PPS3: Housing are mild and reasonable. Local planning authorities are to plan for housing land for 15 years ahead, when the previous requirement was only five years. Second, the state of the local housing market is to become another factor to be borne in mind when making plans (it is amazing that it wasn't already). Environmentalists should relax.