Comment

Standard method 2

Christmas may not have been cancelled but today’s much anticipated revision to the standard method is certainly not the early present many would have been hoping for.

Where a radical overhaul was promised in the summer, we are now back to the existing approach with only one additional step that applies a 35% uplift to the twenty largest cities and urban centres (Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham, Plymouth, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton).

The Government has released a spreadsheet containing indicative figures for every authority which confirm that this approach produces a national need for 297,605 homes per annum, slightly short of its 300,000 target and some 40,000 lower than the summer’s proposal.

It is impossible to ignore that London accounts for nearly a third of this total (93,579 homes), despite the capital delivering only 41,700 homes last year (its highest in at least thirty years). The guidance is clear in directing urban authorities to prioritise urban sites, reinforcing ongoing consultation on new permitted development rights, but experience to date suggests that these higher figures will lead to larger shortfalls which are left to be addressed through a Duty to Co-operate that is widely seen to be unfit for purpose.

We will be commenting further on the changes, but it immediately feels like the Government has missed an opportunity to deliver the much needed radical overhaul of the method that it rightly considered to be necessary to meaningfully address the housing crisis and longstanding national inequalities.

16 December 2020