Potential Planning changes

As each day passes, we are seeing more announcements from No.10 on potential tweaks to the regulatory landscape with a view to stimulating economic growth and bringing back life to the High Street.

Yesterday was no different with two potential tweaks to the planning regime raised.

Firstly, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner stating she will introduce legislation to protect pubs from being turned into housing or offices later this week. She will stated that, whilst the plan remains to build 1.5m homes before the end of this parliament these numbers will not really be boosted by the change of use of an existing pub to domestic accommodation. One hopes these will be the community hubs for the new  houses the plan is to build.

Secondly, the Guardian reported that one of the plans is to build thousands more homes within 10 minutes of transport hubs, including on green belt sites, good news for all the old Railway Taverns!

A number of the changes were already in consultation started by Angela Raynor’s predecessor Steve reed as part of the new national planning policy framework but the new position appears to be to have a “default yes” approach to housing developments that are within a reasonable walking distance of well-connected train and tram stations.

Angela Rayner said it would help address the fact that “too many people are being priced out of the communities where they want to live and work”.

“By unlocking thousands of homes around well-connected transport hubs, we’re helping people live closer to work, school and the services they rely on, while backing local businesses and driving growth in our communities,” she said. “That’s how we’ll tackle the housing crisis and raise living standards for people in every corner of the country.”