Government White Paper published following CPS report calling for action on housing
The Centre for Policy Studies welcomes the publication today of the Government White Paper on the future of Britain’s housing market, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market.
Last week the Centre for Policy Studies report Housing: Now is the Time to Seize the Opportunity highlighted the changing attitudes towards house building – including a significant reduction in the number of people who oppose construction in their local area – and outlined proposals to increase the number of homes built each year.
Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, outlined the white paper in the House of Commons. The White Paper incorporates several ideas set out in the CPS report – including a national standard by which local councils can assess their future housing needs – and references the CPS publications directly:
“The Government is already supporting a new wave of garden towns and villages, and will work with these and any future garden communities to ensure that development and infrastructure investment are as closely aligned as possible. We will also legislate to allow locally accountable New Town Development Corporations to be set up, enabling local areas to use them as the delivery vehicle if they wish to. The Government will also explore what opportunities garden cities, towns and villages might offer for bringing large-scale development forward in ways that streamline planning procedures and encourage locally-led, high quality environments to be created. The Centre for Policy Studies proposed the idea of ‘pink zones’ with this goal in mind and we are looking carefully at their recommendation.”
Keith Boyfield, a co-author of the Pink Planning series, says “We particularly welcome the invitation in the Housing White Paper for comments on our ideas relating to streamlined planning procedures which we term ‘Pink Zones’ (A.58, Page 84)”.
Click here to read the government White Paper in full or any of the links below to read our previous reports.
Housing: Now is the Time to Seize the Opportunity (2017)
A Convergence of Interests (2016)
A Suggestion for the Housing and Planning Minister (2015)
Pink Planning: Diluting the Red Tape (2014)
Date Added: Tuesday 7th February 2017
