Out of Whitehall

This autumn communities minister David Miliband is packing his bags and taking to the road for a series of city summits. Expected to kick off on the 12th of this month in Newcastle, the city summits will take place in the eight core cities. Newcastle, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham are first on the tour agenda, and Miliband will be visiting a second set of cities later in the year, with a number of other ministers accompanying him. The objective of the city summits is to come up with a future strategy for each city, looking at how the responsibilities of central government could be devolved out to the cities, in line with the new localism agenda being put forward by Miliband. The findings are also expected to feed into the ODPM’s next state of the cities report, which is due to be published in January.

“There are four or five cities in the UK that think they’re in the champions league, four or five that think they are relegated. It is a question of getting the middle rankers to look to promotion rather than relegation,” is how local government minister Phil Woolas has described the ODPM’s aspirations for cities.

The ODPM is quick to point out that the summits will not be a forum exclusively for the great, the good and the committed; ordinary local people will be involved with each summit including a ‘Question Time’ style debate with sixth-formers from local schools.

September 9 marks the end of the consultation period for several planning documents launched by the ODPM just before the summer recess. The documents were: the joint ODPM Treasury summary, Housing Policy: an overview; the consultation paper, Planning for housing provision, the Draft greenbelt direction, the new circular on planning obligations and the Study on value for money of delivering affordable housing through Section 106 agreements.

The proposals have generally been welcomed by the industry – particularly the shift to a five-year rolling supply of land. However, local authorities will be pivotal in helping the proposals to achieve that elusive freeing up of the planning system. Many questions also remain about the fine detail, such as the market assessments that will help determine housebuilding numbers, outlined in Planning for housing provision. These and other key planning issues, such as the ODPM’s long-awaited response to Kate Barker’s proposal for a planning gain supplement, or development land tax, should become clearer over the coming months.

What is already clear is the size of the government spending pot on housing. Last month the government announced £5.5bn for housing investment through Regional Housing Pots for the next two years, running from 2006 to 2008. £3.9bn of this will go to social rented housing and low-cost home ownership schemes. The remaining £1.6bn will go to local authorities to improve existing housing, with £700m earmarked for the government’s drive to bring all council housing up to a decent standard by 2010.