Shaping national housing and planning policy

Abstract

This chapter examines three examples of how the property lobby has influenced national policy on planning and housing and in doing so has prolonged the housing crisis. The first is the role of developers and landowners in the ill-fated Growth Areas programme in the Sustainable Communities Plan of New Labour in the 2000s the second is how the property lobby directly influenced the writing of the national planning framework (NPPF) of the Coalition Government in 2012 and the third example is the manipulation by the property lobby of the viability assessment process for planning obligations which has directly reduced the amount of affordable housing provided by developers. It is argued that this measure which was introduced by Government after the 2008 Crash and written into the NPPF, continues to dominate the provision of affordable housing to this day.