The Government have today published the much-awaited Housing White Paper: “Fixing our broken housing market”.
The Government have described the White Paper as setting out a broad range of reforms that will be introduced to help reinvigorate the housing market and increase the supply of new homes.
Our initial reading of the White Paper doesn’t reflect the Government’s description and the reforms don’t appear to be quite as far reaching as we were led to believe. For those of you who like consultations this appears to be the Paper for you!
One of the more controversial proposals is a suggestion to charge for planning appeals. There is a suggestion of a capped fee of £2,000 for a public inquiry.
Common sense has prevailed with regard to ‘staircasing out’ of Starter Homes and clearly the statements on encouraging the efficient use of brownfield sites are to be welcomed but for the south coast such opportunities remain limited. Chapman Lily Planning will consider the White Paper in full and will shortly issue a further news update analysing the reforms set out in the paper.