For the government, ‘growth’ is a panacea, but just as with a human body growth can be healthy or diseased. Growth can be socially useful, environment friendly, or it can be damaging. The government’s policy might be described as any growth, at any cost.
Take the example of housing. In 2013 the coalition government introduced changes to planning law which enabled conversion of offices and other premises to housing, without having to apply for planning permission. It was a means of driving up the number of ‘homes’ when the government was getting nowhere near achieving its target of 300,000 a year.
Between 2015/16 and 2022/23, 102,830 new homes were delivered through change-of-use Permitted Development Rights without planning permission. Most of these homes were created through conversion of offices, other commercial, business and retail units.
In 2020, a government-commissioned report found that PDR often resulted in poor-quality homes that failed to meet space standards. Shelter said units created through PDR schemes provided “substandard” accommodation for vulnerable families, which could have a “devastating impact” on their health and wellbeing.
The Royal Town Planning Institute said there had been “a tendency for the very worst conversions, such as Terminus House in Harlow, to end up being occupied by large families in difficult circumstances.” The London School of Economics said the fact that “many PDR properties end up as temporary accommodation” reflected “their relatively low standards”. The LGA agreed. “Substandard and poorer quality homes developed through PDR are more likely to be used to house vulnerable people such as those in temporary accommodation.”
The Parliamentary Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee expressed concern that some homes delivered through PDRs were “of poor quality and situated in unsuitable places”. PDRs “tend to produce too many studio and one-bedroom flats and not enough family homes”.
The LGA, even with a Tory majority, also raised concerns that Local Planning Authorities could not require developers to deliver affordable housing or supporting infrastructure for PDR schemes. It called for an end to conversions through PDR without planning permission.
In February 2024 the Tory government introduced a consultation on extending PDR to include upwards building (extra floors on top) and demolition and rebuild. In response, then Shadow Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook said that
“Not only will a further expansion of permitted development rights do little if anything to boost supply, but it will add to the quantum of poor-quality/slum housing that post-2013 PDR expansion has created.”
Yet, shockingly the government has left this policy in place. It’s difficult to see this as anything other than a means of driving up the numbers of ‘homes’, regardless of quality, towards the 1.5 million target which many people believe is undeliverable.
Deregulation of planning laws will not produce the homes that are needed because the housing market is dominated by an oligopoly – the large volume builders – who build at a pace and a scale to maximise their profit and dividends for shareholders. There are already more than 1 million housing plots with planning permission, yet to be built on. Rushing through more will not make them build more and quicker. And they never build for social need.
The situation remains the same today as in 1945 when Aneurin Bevan said “the speculative builder is an unplannable instrument”. The plannable instrument which the government used was the local authorities to build council housing. Unless this government follows the same course then the acute housing crisis will be protracted. The market will not resolve the housing crisis.
The government should end conversion without planning permission. Do we really want more “poor quality/slum housing”?
Martin Wicks
Published in the Swindon Advertiser
Martin Wicks 