Value of affordable housing

Apr 23 2008 by Andrew Moss for The Journal

THE secretary of state for communities and local government has the ability to recover planning appeals for her personal determination.

In such cases, the planning inspector provides a recommendation on whether planning permission should be granted, and if so, what conditions the permission should be subject to.

The secretary of state recently made an interesting decision on a recovered appeal relating to an area of employment land in the North East.

She agreed with her inspector’s recommendation to grant planning permission for a mixed use employment and residential development.

In this case, the appeal site was designated as being an employment site, but she agreed that the local planning authority had a more than adequate provision of employment land.

She further noted that there was little prospect of the site contributing to the supply of employment land without some form of subsidy.

She found that whilst there was some conflict with the development plan – the development entailing the loss of employment land – she found that this was not to be of sufficient weight to justify the refusal of planning permission.

On the issue of housing, whilst there was an adequate five-year supply of housing land, she found that the development would not entail an unacceptable oversupply of housing land.

She went on to give significant weight to the substantial need for affordable housing in the district, noting that the 75 affordable units that the development would facilitate, was a significant argument in favour of the appeal proposals. This assessment led to her decision to grant permission subject to conditions.

There are two main interesting points arising from this case. Firstly in relation to emerging Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) policy 18 which is concerned with the region’s employment land portfolio.

Secondly, that the secretary of state acknowledges that the need for – and provision of – affordable housing is a material consideration which can carry significant weight in support of development proposals, even if that affordable housing is only viable when built alongside ‘open market’ housing, on land potentially designated for alternative uses.

For developers and land owners, the above is an illustration that if a piece of land is designated for a particular purpose, that does not necessarily mean the development potential of that piece of land for other purposes is sterilised – especially if there would be wider benefits resulting from that development.

Andrew Moss is a chartered town planner at Ward Hadaway law firm in Newcastle.