Housebuilding Plans Lack Firm Foundations

Government proposals to boost housebuilding seem to pay little more than lip-service to associated environmental impacts and provide scant evidence that they would improve access to housing for those in greatest need. This was CPRE's initial reaction to the Government's response to the Barker Review published as part of the Pre-Budget Report.

Key aspects of this announcement include:

• increasing housing supply by around 50,000 to 200,000 new homes each year in England - with no hard evidence that such an increase is either necessary or achievable, or that it would deliver improvements in affordability;
• making the planning system more responsive to the housing market signals — despite clear evidence that this would undermine urban renewal and add to pressure for greenfield development;
• welcome plans to increase provision of social housing, affordable for low income households — but no firm commitments to increase funding; a further review of the planning system by Kate Barker — which CPRE fears could fail to give sufficient weight to protecting the environment and countryside in the drive for economic growth and inward investment;
• a recognition of the need to promote the reuse of brownfield land - but no commitments to new fiscal incentives to deliver this and no increase in the 60% target for new housing on brownfield land.
• a new Code for Sustainable Homes - which will be voluntary for market housing and therefore may not lead to the radical improvements in environmental standards required.

Neil Sinden, CPRE's Policy Director, said: 'The Government's approach to tackling the lack of affordable housing appears increasingly wrongheaded, inadequate and ignorant of the environmental implications. The outcome could see the worst of all possible worlds: a failure to provide housing for those in greatest need, a reversal of recent progress in urban renewal, and a return to the days of unsustainable sprawl across the countryside.

'CPRE accepts there is a desperate need for more affordable housing. But this is not the way to meet it.'