The manifesto pledges: What the parties are pledging

? The Conservatives have pledged to deliver 1.6 million homes over the next parliament, or 320,000 a year, with a focus on brownfield development delivery. The conservatives plan to expedite planning requests in these locations and lift regulations such as legacy EU nutrient neutrality laws and section 106 rules.

A ‘cast iron’ commitment to protecting the green belt has also reinforced the government’s commitment to urban development.

? Labour are aiming to deliver 1.5 million homes over the next parliament. This would also include a brownfield-first strategy but with a “strategic approach” to developing green belt land and targeting “grey belt land”.

Core to Labour’s housing policies is reforming the National Policy Planning Framework, restoring mandatory housing targets and greater funding for local authorities’ planning departments.

“Full intervention powers” and reformed compulsory purchase powers also suggest greater state intervention under Labour.

? The Liberal Democrats have pledged to build more houses than the government with a 380,000 houses a year target over parliament, with the inclusion of 150,000 social homes.

The Lib Dems too will target brownfield development through financial incentives, but are not ruling out green belt encroachment through the trialling of community land auctions and reforming the Land Compensation Act to make it more affordable for councils to buy land — developers too may also be forced to act with the introduction of ‘use it or lose it’ powers.

Matching words with action

As the incumbents, the Conservatives’ pledge to build 1.6m homes has attracted particular scorn from those in the industry.

Justin Young, CEO at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, points out the government has only delivered 2.5m homes since coming into power.

“[Delivering over 300,000 new homes a year] hasn’t been achieved since the sixties, a period during which the public sector and SME housebuilders had a far greater role in housing delivery,” said Justin. “While it’s encouraging to see the Conservatives committing themselves to supporting small builders, this will not address the quagmire of laws that make up Britain’s restrictive and politically permeated planning system.”

The UK’s planning permission framework has been widely identified as a key barrier to housing development. While the Conservatives are seeking to fast-track approval in brownfield sites in the largest 20 cities, the Labour commitment to updating the NPPF has caught the eye.

“An important change that will be welcomed by the development industry is to immediately update the NPPF,” said William Nichols, regional director at Lanpro, “including the restoration or mandatory housing targets, and it has also said it will take tough action to ensure planning authorities have up-to-date local plans as well as strengthening the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’; how this works in practice remains to be seen.”

Opening up the market to SME builders is an issue identified as crucial to boosting housing stock, as emphasised by Ryan Etchells, CCO at Together, said: “It will be interesting to see whether the government of whichever colour will be able to deliver on the support SME house builders need to make these ambitions a reality.”

Though Labour has pledged more support for local authorities to meet housing demand, the opposition’s manifesto did not explicitly mention smaller house builders or developers.

In contrast, the Conservatives are seeking to lift Section 106 rules, and require councils to set aside land for smaller builders. Colin Brown, head of planning and development at Carter Jones welcomed this: “Subject to seeing more detail, we think this could be a positive move.

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“We agree that communities should be encouraged to engage with the entire planning process, starting out at the plan-making stage.”

Brownfield vs green belt

The Conservatives have made it clear brownfield development will be their priority to reaching this target — however, many in the housing industry are unconvinced.

Karen Charles, executive director of Boyer, pointed out that there is a greater demand for housing in less urban locations.

“If the prime minister is going to achieve the increase in housebuilding as set out in the manifesto, then the government will need to reform the planning system and relax some planning restrictions which make it so time-consuming to prepare development plans, and so difficult to secure planning permission and deliver new homes in locations where people really want to live,” added Karen.

Terry Woodley, managing director of development finance at Shawbrook, saw greater brownfield development as potentially having an impact but also questioned relying on this.

“While this could be a positive change, any government considering these steps must ensure that they’re taking a multi-pronged approach to adequately tackling housing issues if we are to see real progress over the next 12 months and beyond,” said Terry.

 Labour’s proposal to allow for green belt development, and a move away from the “cast iron” commitment of the Conservatives not to develop this land, has been applauded by some, Lanpro’s Nichols called this a “welcome approach”.

“While Labour will continue to take a ‘brownfield first approach’, another welcome intervention is Labour’s commitment to take a more strategic approach to green belt designation while prioritising release lower quality ‘grey belt’ land alongside the creation of a set of ‘golden rules’ to ensure development benefits communities and nature,” he said.

A “concrete proposal” from the Lib Dems?

Aside from having a housing target 25% higher than the government’s, pundits were largely quiet on the manifesto of the Lib Dems. However, one area that did get experts talking was a planned reform of the Land Compensation Act. This would allow councils to buy land on the current value, rather than on the ‘hope’ value basis. Aidan Van de Weyer, senior planner at Lanpro Services  described this as a “concrete proposal”.
 
“The impact of this will vary depending on how much freedom is given to councils,” Aidan added. “But with substantial freedoms allowed, this risks creating a two-tier planning service: wealthy, attractive areas get well-resourced planning teams, while quality in less affluent areas drops as councils compete to bring in development — perpetuating the rich/poor divide which already impacts far too much in our planning system.”

Carter Jones’s Colin was also sceptical and said a lot rides on how this will work in practice: “Other parties, specifically Labour, have spoken of capturing more land value, but not necessarily to the level of existing use value which may be agricultural.

“I’d argue that a landowner should still be able to see a sufficient return to make disposal of the land desirable, as opposed to continuing an existing use.”
 
It remains to be seen which party wins, and with which form of majority, and the housing industry is split on the best way to meet the country’s housing shortfall. Some are unconvinced regardless, and Brian Brynes, head of personal finance at Moneybox, said all three major manifestos have fallen short. Instead, he thinks a greater focus should be spent on the homeowner and helping them get onto the ladder.

“Many of the solutions needed to address housing supply and sustainably boost homeownership without further inflating house prices, are complex and will take some time to bear fruit,” said Brian.

“That is why we passionately believe that any incoming government also needs to prioritise pragmatic measures such as future-proofing the Lifetime ISA, to help more aspiring first-time buyers save a suitable deposit as well as embed and reward positive saving behaviours that will boost long-term resilience and prosperity.”