A new draft PPG3, statutory guidance for how local planning authorities deal with the placing and styling of housing, is imminent. Delays to the draft due in December have been linked to its overlap with the later scheduled but higher profile Lord Rogers’ Urban Task Force report whose findings will be shaped into an urban white paper. John Prescott started talking up the latter when he told the Commons on 20 October it is “the first such paper in 20 years”.
Sources say a late version of the Rogers report has been with DETR since February despite not being due for issue until May, which could suggest that the draft PPG3 is being reconciled with the Task Force conclusions. There is some evidence of a shift in its focus as powers within the DETR who had been discussing the new draft’s direction are understood to have clammed up suddenly. There are fears that the let-the-market-dictate-design approach in the existing PPG3 is being replaced with clauses enabling planner officers to be more prescriptive.
The issue of both a new PPG3 and Urban White Paper lets the government reshape guidance for where and what type of new housing it wants and identify the instruments it will use to force that focus. The wishlist of options identified in the Task Force’s interim report in January included a VAT cut for refurbishment and an equivalent rate for new-build. But Gordon Brown may want to keep VAT for new-build in reserve to use with other property transaction taxes such as higher stamp duty if, as the Treasury fears, falling interest rates ignite house prices. Preparation for EMU means the old housing market brake - high interest rates - is not an option.
However, the DETR is happy to clarify some speculation, including the apparent leak to the Financial Times that appeared to be trailing “a sequential test” for housebuilders, implying the type of planning application test in PPG6 where commercial developers wishing to develop new out-of-town retail must satisfy local planning authorities that there are no suitable sites within the limits of existing development.
The DETR is now quietly stressing that testing first heralded at in last spring’s “Planning for the communities of the future” command paper will not relate to applications - imagine the planning chaos - but force local authorities to examine their allocation of housing land. The local planning authority will have to prove it had exhausted suitable sites within the boundaries of existing development before it can adopt greenfield sites being promoted. This is now the way of a good number of LPAs but, formalised in statutory guidance, can be expected to impact both on housebuilders’ options and the creaking plan process.
Source
Building Homes
