Early evening summary
Labour has said that plans announced by Michael Gove today intended to boost housebuilding don’t “come close to matching the scale of ambition needed to fix the housing crisis”. (See 5.50pm.)
Updated
Gove's plans unlikely to make significant difference to supply of houses, experts claim
The Labour criticism of Michael Gove’s housing plans (see 5.50pm) matches what the National Housing Federation said about them earlier (see 9.34am).
Other specialists are similarly underwhelmed. Here are comments from three who have submitted reaction to the media.
From Stuart Baillie, head of planning at Knight Frank, a property consultancy
[The plan to make it easier for shops to be turned into homes] is unlikely to have meaningful impact on housing supply. It’s likely that the output of this policy will only create hundreds of new homes, instead of the many thousands needed to make a real impact on the UK’s significant housing shortage. This policy will only paper over the cracks, instead of getting to the heart of the issue facing the UK’s overburdened and under-resourced planning system. In many instances, residential amenity would be compromised by a town centre location – particularly ground floor retail – meaning conversion or redevelopment would be limited to fringe and out-of-town areas.
Local planning authorities will be very concerned that the proposals could create a loss of retail capacity, impact local retail amenity and reduce the vitality of already struggling town centres that have fallen victim to the rise of online shopping in recent years.
From Victoria Du Croz, head of planning and a partner at Forsters, a law firm specialising in real estate
A focus on inner cities makes sense, given the Conservative’s aversion to delivering development on the green belt, but the reality of bringing more homes to the cities will mean building high in order to reach the necessary density. Neither brownfield sites or conversions of office to residential have delivered the number of new homes that are needed across the country to date.
Re-focusing on these planning mechanisms, by expanding permitted development rights to shop and commercial conversions, is unlikely to boost housing numbers to the levels that are needed.
From Oli Creasey, a property research analyst at Quilter Cheviot, a wealth management firm
The government has today announced further changes to the planning system in an effort to boost house building and conversions, specifically aimed at urban regeneration. Unfortunately, like much of the housing policy that has come before, it is somewhat of a damp squib …
We will await further details on the proposals, but our initial view is that this is unlikely to have a significant impact on the number of planning approvals, or the number of homes built. And while this policy isn’t designed to line the pockets of the housebuilders, they do have an interest in these proposals and as such it is important to watch how their share prices reacted to the news. The fact that these share prices have been largely unchanged this morning tells you all you need to know – nothing will really change and the chronic shortfall of housing in the UK will continue.
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