Affordable housing tariff plans face the axe

Proposals to introduce planning tariffs will be dropped if the idea does not win enough support, a senior figure from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has said.

Genie Turton, ODPM director general of housing, homelessness, urban policy and planning, indicated this dramatic policy U-turn during a session on rural communities at last week's Chartered Institute of Housing conference.

She said: "The planning system is a mess and is failing. Small businesses and farmers find that the development system is seriously underperforming.

"The aim is to produce something that will improve on section 106. If consultation shows tariffs won't work, then we won't do it ... I have hardly ever come across someone who has a good word to say about section 106. A lot of people believe they are secret deals struck by nasty developers."

Speaking to Housing Today, Turton said: "The changes in the planning system are designed to provide more affordable housing."

The tariff idea was introduced in the planning green paper last December as part of a shake-up of the planning system. They replace the old section 106 agreements for a certain amount of social housing to be built along with all new developments. The tariffs are meant to be a more transparent alternative to section 106 agreements, which are seen by both private developers and social housing providers as being too secretive.

The new system was initially welcomed. But after the housing sector read the proposals in detail, fears were voiced that using tariffs would actually act against the provision of new social housing.

This is because if the changes were made, tariffs would be paid by the developer to the council instead. The council would choose how to spend the money. The tariffs would be set at a local level through the local development framework.

The changes in the planning system are designed to provide more affordable housing

Genie Turton, ODPM

Countryside Agency chairman Ewen Cameron said: "I am concerned that the tariff system as planned will not deliver the affordable housing needed."

He added that he thought the planning system remained "fundamentally flawed".

Carmel Conefrey, senior project officer at the Local Government Association, said: "If it's not going to be tariffs then something has to be done to tackle the amount of time the current system takes."

Richard Bate, planning adviser to the National Housing Federation, said: "The section 106 system is currently producing affordable homes. The last thing anyone would want would be to abandon a system which is actually doing some good.

"There's no question that introducing tariffs would cause enormous upheaval. The question is whether it is worth it?"

An ODPM spokeswoman said: "We are still considering the issue of tariffs as part of the green paper consultation process. What [Turton] said is not necessarily true and at this stage there has been no change in policy."