Housing, 50 Shades listeners, will know, is slap bang in the middle of the intersection between planning and politics and nothing offers both the illustration and impact of this than affordable housing.
Research commissioned by the National Housing Federation and Crisis from Professor Glen Bramley at Heriot-Watt University in 2018 identified a need for 340,000 homes each year in England to 2031, including 145,000 affordable homes.
According though to recent research from Turley and Tetlow King, commissioned by the LPDF, it is estimated that only 35,500 net additional affordable homes have been delivered on average in each of the last ten years.
Delivery is especially poor in the country’s largest urban centres. The largest 19, excluding London, have collectively added around 1,200 affordable homes per annum over the last ten years.
Whether there is a housing crisis, or a challenge, or whether all of this is just a figment of the construction industry’s imagination, will depend upon whether you ask a single parent in emergency accommodation, a politician in electioneering mode or Simon Jenkins. What is indisputable however is that the planning system has a huge role to play in all of this.
Why are we where we are? What are the obstacles to delivering more affordable housing and how might they be overcome?
Sam Stafford puts these questions to Antony Pollard, Head of Economics at Turley; Annie Gingell, Principal Planner at Tetlow King; and Marie Chadwick, Policy Leader at the National Housing Federation.
Some accompanying reading.
Housing supply requirements: low-income households & homeless people
An Affordable Housing Emergency
https://www.lpdf.co.uk/latest-publications
Five things we learned from Homes England’s Affordable Homes Programme data
Simon Jenkins plumbs new depths of housing nonsense
https://capx.co/simon-jenkins-plumbs-new-depths-of-housing-nonsense/
People in housing need 2021
https://www.housing.org.uk/resources/people-in-housing-need-2021/
The damaging legacy of Right to Buy
https://neweconomics.org/2022/05/the-damaging-legacy-of-right-to-buy
Notes from the Green Belt: what’s so very special about Colney Heath?
https://www.planoraks.com/posts-1/notes-from-the-green-belt-whats-so-very-special-about-colney-heath
Some accompanying listening.
A House Is Not A Home - The Charlatans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LljqVqRPiUI
50 Shades T-Shirts!
If you have listened to Episode 45 of the 50 Shades of Planning Podcast you will have heard Clive Betts say that...
'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'.
Sam said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt and it does. Further details can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2021/07/50-shades-of-planning-t-shirts.html
50 Shades of Planning
Sam Stafford started posting on the 50 Shades of Planning blog in 2012 and in 2019 turned it into a podcast. 50 Shades of Planning is about the foibles of the English planning system and it's aim is to cover the breadth of the sector both in terms of topics of conversation and in terms of guests with different experiences and perspectives.
50 Shades episodes include 'Hitting The High Notes', which is a series of conversations with leading planning and property figures. The conversations take in the six milestone planning permissions or projects within a contributor’s career and for every project guests are invited to choose a piece of music that they were listening to at that time. Think Desert Island Discs, but for planners. If you would like to feature on 'Hitting The High Notes', or know somebody that would make a great guest, please email [email protected].
If you have listened to Episode 45 of 50 Shades of Planning you will have heard Clive Betts say that...
'In the Netherlands planning is seen as part of the solution. In the UK, too often, planning is seen as part of the problem'.
Sam said in reply that that would look good on a t-shirt and it does. Further details can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com/2021/07/50-shades-of-planning-t-shirts.html
Sam is on Bluesky (@samuelstafford.bsky.social) and Instagram (@samuel__stafford), and his blogs can be found here: http://samuelstafford.blogspot.com.
As with the 50 Shades Blog, the 50 Shades Podcast is a platform for Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers.
50 Shades of Planning is produced in partnership with Cratus Group.
Why Fifty Shades? Well, planning is not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between...
