Is government facing a housing brick wall?
The housing and regeneration bill, designed to speed up the delivery of new homes to high zero-carbon standards, has begun its parliamentary journey in the Commons, underlining the prime minister’s commitment, on taking office, to make housing “one of the great causes of our time”. Gordon Brown’s aim is to deliver 240,000 new homes a year by 2016. As the Home Builders Federation noted last week, it is certainly a “huge challenge”, but attainable, provided sufficient land is available in the right places and the planning system is capable of delivering on such a scale. Put aside oversimplified builder versus planner arguments, in which the former can easily be accused of hoarding land to boost profits; research by the Royal Town Planning Institute this year showed that developers have 14,000 acres of land with planning permission – enough for 225,000 homes. Consider instead how a government with fewer instruments at its disposal than interventionist predecessors can dictate housing supp
