We are pleased to share with you the following formal response from Andrew Griffiths MP, Director of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit, to our consultations on Planning & Housing and Strengthening Families & Communities, completed in January and March 2022, respectively.
The letter is issued to Dr John Hayward who is the CPF Manager in CCHQ. More details can be read below:
CPF consultation on Housing & Planning
Thank you for your letter and for organising the Conservative Policy Forum consultation on housing and planning. The views and ideas expressed in your survey overview are invaluable for informing our policy advice to the Prime Minister. May I also express my gratitude to the CPF groups and members that took part in the survey? The number of responses is a testament to the importance of this topic to our party and our voters.
By way of response, I wanted to pick out two of the findings that stood out to me most in the survey overview, while giving an update on how we are approaching these issues from the No 10 Policy Unit.
The most popular proposal was to improve the quality of construction. This perfectly chimes with the view of the PM, who has championed a more beautiful built environment both in his time as London Mayor and when leading the country. The quality of build and design of too many new homes is way below the expectations of local communities, who understandably object when a new development seemingly takes away from, rather than adds to, the value of their area.
Informed by the work of the late Sir Roger Scruton in his chairmanship of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, we are now asking all local authorities to develop Design Codes that are produced in conjunction with local communities. Our ambition is for the aesthetic preferences of the local community to be the rules upon which planning applications are decided, changing the way new developments are built and how they look. It is unsurprising that most people want new homes to be built with traditional designs and crafts on tree-lined streets. We hope to see a big upturn in construction quality as local people are given more of a say through Design Codes.
Another theme of the survey was strong support for small builders and particularly those families who choose to build their own homes. Again, this chimes with the views of the Prime Minister who has tasked us with massively scaling up the self and custom-build industry. It is only by diversifying the housebuilding sector that we will give people the choice they need and want when buying a new home.
Our policy focus to date has been to improve the access of small and self-builders to land supply and finance. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is about to launch a genuinely novel affordable finance scheme for anyone wanting to build their own home. They have also offered grants to local authorities to transform derelict sites into new homes built by SMEs and self-builders while encouraging councils to maintain a healthy supply of smaller sites in their local plans. However, we recognise there is much more that needs to be done to achieve our objective of a more competitive housebuilding industry, so will always welcome any further ideas from the CPF on this topic.
Thank you again for your help, and for the wisdom of the CPF members.
Kind regards,
Andrew Griffith MP