Agenda item

[Report of the Assistant Director for Planning, Building Standards and Sustainability. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Sustainability]

An Action Plan was published in August 2019.  Haringey’s 2019 HDT measurement published by the Government in February 2020 showed a 55% achievement, resulting in the requirement for a new Action Plan to published by August 2020.  Cabinet are being asked to adopt this new plan which set out actions the Council is taking to boost housing delivery. The HDT AP signposts corporate work across the Council to boost housing delivery, as well as provide an update on the previous Action Plan published.

The Cabinet Member outlined that the Housing Delivery Test was a Government initiative to try and bolster housing supply. Housing supply referred to all housing built in the borough, not just Council housing, whether affordable or for purchase.

The Council were undertaking work on a new Local Plan to frame its housing ambitions, including a commitment to build 1,000 new Council Homes. The number of permissions agreed were what counted as the numbers of housing supplied within a given period.

The Council would continue to grant permissions in line with planning policies, manifesto commitments and in accordance with statutory timeframes, to ensure Haringey has the homes it needs. The Council would continue to work with developers to remove obstacles to delivery. The Cabinet Member expected the house building industry to also take action, as the under delivery of homes could not be solved by, or blamed, on the Council alone.

In response to questions from Cllr Cawley – Harrison and Cllr das Neves, the following information was noted:

• The next Local Plan was due to be published in late 2022 and a Member’s working group had been established to oversee this process. However, there would need to be a set process followed with prescribed consultation, and a public enquiry, before final decision by the Council. The previous Local Plan had been published in 2017 and in 2018 there had been changes made to the Housing strategy appendix C and also to the CiL policy. The Council were working in accordance with the timeframe of a 5-year plan with adoption planned in 2022.

·        If the local Planning Authority’s delivery of housing fell below its housing target of 75%, the Council would not be able to prove that it its meeting its five-year housing target .The Council would move to a legal situation called a ‘tilted balance’ which means a higher planning test to follow if refusing a planning application with housing included. The effect of this for decision making was that the Council would need to give more weight to housing, meaning less consideration of other needs for the area that the Council were wanting to promote. This could also mean losing more planning appeals if enough consideration had not been given to housing requirements.

• It was important to note that Haringey’s target for housing development had risen 4 times over the last 4 years and there had been over 4000 planning consents with implementation on site. This was not a housing delivery policy implementation issue and the Council worked with developers but ultimately could not force them to build.

• To provide some further context to the housing target, it was important to compare the Council’s own house building programme which had 1000 units which the Council were in control of building with the target of 8000 units set in the London Plan. This demonstrated that the housing delivery test was imbalanced as the Council were not in full control of wider delivery of housing in the borough.

• It was noted that the Council were at 58% against the target of 75% of housing delivery. However, this was without the inclusion of the financial year end data which required site visits to take place for validation purposes and these could not take place due to Covid 19.

RESOLVED

1. To note the comments of Regulatory Committee.

2. To adopt the Housing Delivery Test Action Plan 2020 attached at Appendix A of the report

Reasons for decision

To comply with requirements in the NPPF to produce an Action Plan, given delivery in Haringey of new homes was recorded as 55% of the Council’s housing target.

Alternative options considered

The alternative option would be not to publish an Action Plan. However, this is not recommended as it would be contrary to Government Policy, and could jeopardise the Council’s position at any future appeals where housing delivery was contested, as it could be seen that the Council is not actively trying to address the housing shortfall against the adopted target.