Battle continues over house building targets

Here’s a quick guide to regional strategies – useful for those in the Land & New Homes business who are baffled by the ongoing saga.

In July, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles tried to abolish national house building targets, or Regional Housing Strategies to give them their correct name.

He said he intended to replace them with a system of financial incentives to encourage local authorities to grant residential development applications.

Unfortunately, all this has led to huge confusion – for developers and local planning authorities alike.

For many developers, abolition would mean that months or even years of work on planning applications would be wasted, and as a fresh application under any new rules for the same land might have less chance of success, a legal challenge looked likely.

One developer, CALA Homes, duly served it up, in the High Court in November, saying the minister had no power to abolish the existing rules in this way.

The Judge agreed, saying the rules could not just be changed by the minister without the approval of Parliament.

Yet this has not been the end of the matter.

The High Court also declared that local planning departments should not take into account the Government’s attempted abolition of these regional strategies.

Pickles hit back by writing to every local planning department warning them that, when considering planning applications, they must treat the Government’s intention to scrap regional housing strategies as a ‘significant consideration’.

This volley was once again challenged in the courts and the letter from Pickles to planning departments was ‘stayed’.

The Government then challenged the stay and it was lifted, on condition that the Government put a warning on its website saying the letter to the planners ‘is subject to legal challenge and might have to be disregarded if the challenge is successful’.
 
CALA’s latest challenge is likely to be lobbed into court in January, with still no early end to this legal rally in sight.

“Developers and planners both stand to be baffled and bemused by this legal tennis match,” said Anthony Ogley, property partner at Oxley and Coward Solicitors LLP in Rotherham. “If the planners ignore the minister’s letter they may be in trouble for disregarding government policy, but if they follow the Government’s recommendations and refuse a planning application, they may lay themselves open to appeal and more costs at a time when money is in such short supply.

“As for the developers, it creates another headache at a time when the housing market is still in the doldrums.”

If the CALA action is successful, developers will probably have a window of 12 months to get planning applications in under the current regime.

By the end of that period, the Government’s Localism Bill will have made its way through Parliament and it will be game, set and match to the Government when the new rules are in place.