SQUEEZED OUT - THE IMPACT OF BUILD COSTS AND

In the south and east of the country, 3 out of 8 councils in our sample – Ashford, Crawley and East Cambridgeshire – risk seeing no social and affordable housing delivered through Section 106 (S106) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the planning mechanism used to require social and affordable housing in market-led schemes. [...] The government must act to reform the planning system in England to address the long- term undersupply of social and affordable homes in communities across the country, as well as the short-term risks to affordable supply from rising build costs. [...] The white paper suggests, “[I]n the event of a market fall, we could allow local planning authorities to ‘flip’ a proportion of units back to market units which the developer can sell, if Levy liabilities are insufficient to cover the value secured through in-kind contributions.”32 This would amount to the institutionalisation of the viability system, with social and affordable housing bearing the. [...] As the government takes time to reflect on the proposals put forward in the 2020 Planning for the Future white paper, and the feedback it has received on these proposals from NEF and others, it is vital that politicians, journalists, academics, and other commentators emphasise the need to drive up opportunities to deliver social housing as part of planning reform, both as part of market-led scheme. [...] This will prevent homelessness and sustain housing supply (and therefore jobs in and servicing the construction industry) as the full economic consequences of the pandemic feed through and prevent a collapse in the delivery of social and affordable housing supply in the north and midlands that could otherwise threaten the government’s levelling up project.