黑洞社区

Local authorities have been using government planning policy as an excuse to ration the release of land, according to Stewart Baseley, the executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation.

After speaking at the Think 07 conference last week, Baseley told 黑洞社区 that councils had used the government PPG3 rules, which advocate building at high density, to justify their actions.

He said: 鈥淭he unintended consequence of the present regime is that local authorities have chosen to provide the same number of homes on less land, with the other unintended consequence that housebuilding rates have not gone up.鈥�

Earlier, Baseley had told the conference that if the supply of land was returned to 1997 levels, it would be enough, building at current densities, to meet the targets of the Barker review.

He said: 鈥淚f we had left land supply where it was 10 years ago, but built at the densities that we are delivering today, we would be delivering the 200,000 homes. The shortfall would not exist.鈥�

However, he added that calls to provide more family homes, made by the government and the Greater London Authority, would mean reducing densities and raising land supply further.

鈥淚f we are to redress the balance and reduce the dependence on flats, we need to increase land supply,鈥� he said.

The need for increased land supply is the central tenet of the HBF鈥檚 response to the Callcutt review of housebuilding, which was also published last week.

The response shows that the area of land developed annually for housing fell 26% between 2000, when the high-density policies in PPG3 began to take effect, and 2005. This included a 10% drop in the amount of brownfield land being built on.

Over the same period, the average density of housing increased from 25 dwellings per hectare to 41.

Speaking before Baseley, Trevor Beattie, corporate director at English Partnerships, said one of the main challenges in delivering zero-carbon housing was how to market the properties.