Construction Industry News – Early August 2024
Estimated reading time 2 minutes
The government has set out some of the details of its planning reforms that it hopes will pave the way for more housebuilding.
The Labour Party made it a centrepiece of their election manifesto that it would see to it that 1.5 million new homes were built in England alone before the next general election by relaxing planning restrictions.
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, secretary of state at the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, has today set out new rules that reverse the decision last year to water down housing targets, reinstating mandatory targets for all councils in England.
Housing secretary Angela Rayner has set up a New Towns Taskforce to identify sites for new conurbations of more than 10,000 new homes. The New Towns Taskforce is chaired by former Birmingham City Council chief executive Sir Michael Lyons, with economists Dame Kate Barker as his deputy.
The government says that while the new towns programme will include large-scale new communities that are separate from existing settlements, most of them will be urban extensions and regeneration schemes that will “work with the grain of development in any given area”.
