Planning for 20,000 homes

Community Housing Cymru is a signatory on a Housing Supply Pact, alongside Welsh Government and the Welsh Local Government Association, promising to deliver 20,000 homes by the end of the current Assembly term. We have seen a positive approach to delivery from our members, as well as substantial support from Welsh Government in the form of major capital funding. CHC has reviewed its members’ experiences of the planning and land acquisition systems, as well as issues they experience when on-site with permission granted, to ensure that housing associations are able to take full advantage of the positive context in which they are operating. We also asked them to highlight areas identified as having the potential to slow their ability to build the houses that Wales needs.

In the interests of constructively overcoming these hold-ups, we have worked with our partners in the Home Builders’ Federation and the Federation of Master Builders, whose members share similar concerns about impediments to housing delivery, to deliver a briefing, entitled: ‘Planning for 20,000 Homes: Recommendations for improvements to land and planning systems that would expedite the achievement of the 2016 Housing Pact’. Read the briefing here.

The purpose of the briefing is to recommend areas for improvement to the current systems and to highlight ideas that our members have had to speed processes up and improve the abilities of local authorities to help us to deliver greater numbers of new homes.

Stakeholder engagement has formed part of the process of compiling this report and, along with our members, we are grateful to the following for their time: RTPI Cymru; Lichfields; Home Builders Federation; Welsh Water Dwr Cymru; Welsh Local Government Association; Arup; and Planning Officers Society Wales.