Housing Minister Can't Guarantee New Towns Affordable Homes Target Will Be Met
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Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has refused to guarantee that the government will hit its affordable homes target in the New Towns programme.
Speaking at a fringe event at Labour’s conference in Liverpool, he suggested that the target of ensuring 40 per cent of properties are classed as ‘affordable’ was currently an aim, rather than a promise.
It comes just one day after the independent New Towns taskforce published its recommendations to Pennycook’s ministry, outlining 12 proposed locations for the new settlements – each comprising at least 10,000 homes.
The locations include entirely new communities in rural parts of the country, as well as redevelopment and densification projects within existing urban areas.
The report states that new towns “should include a minimum target of 40 per cent affordable housing, of which at least half to be available for social rent”.
But within hours of the report’s publication on Sunday, the Labour MP Chris Curtis admitted to a conference fringe event that this threshold was unlikely to be met “across the board”, particularly for the urban regeneration projects.
He said: “Can we sit here with anywhere near 100 per cent confidence and say that that [level] is going to stay at 40 per cent for every project right across the country, always? Probably not.
“Because some of these projects are urban redevelopment projects. We know that the chance of hitting 40 per cent in those kinds of areas – and that maybe wasn’t where the taskforce was setting off when it first thought of this - you’re just not going to hit 40 per cent, let’s be perfectly honest about that.”
At a separate panel event on Monday, PoliticsHome asked Pennycook whether Curtis’s comments were accurate. He was then further pressed by the panel’s chair, former New Statesman deputy editor Jon Bernstein. “That word, ‘aspiration’, is not the same as ‘promise’,” said Bernstein.
“Well, for good reason,” said Pennycook. “What I’ll say, I always hesitate to sort of dodge a question, not least because we’ve got to go through a strategic environmental assessment [of the proposed locations].
“I just point you to the very carefully chosen words in the initial government response, which are clear about our thinking on that and other matters.
“Chris Curtis’s views on the matter notwithstanding, the government’s set out a clear position on that, and we’ll see how we come out of the strategic environmental assessment, and the [placemaking] principles – because we’ll issue another, more formal and fuller response in the course of time, once we’re through that process.”
The “very carefully chosen words” in the government’s initial response to the taskforce’s report include a reference to the 40 per cent target as an “aim”. It adds that in relation to the taskforce’s placemaking principles – which include the affordability target - the government will “consider how best to ensure expectations are set and managed at a national level”.
In his remarks on Sunday, Curtis had said that despite the 40 per cent threshold not always being feasible, “that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for us to start with that real level of ambition and to plan for 40 per cent”.
He said this was because the target can be a useful tool during the land acquisition process, to “ensure that we keep land values down, which is important for maxing out affordable housing and ensuring that we can deliver the infrastructure that’s required”.
He added: “It [the affordable housing target] is a very good starting point, although, you know, I don’t think anybody thinks that it’s going to be always 40 per cent across the board.”
Joining Pennycook on Monday’s panel was Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, who served as a member of the New Towns Taskforce.
She spoke positively about the 40 per cent target, saying that the use of dedicated development corporations to deliver the new towns will help make the threshold feasible to achieve.
She added: “Where viability testing shows that that [threshold] is not possible, there will be grant funding available, and where there might be a deviation from that, that’s then a conversation with the secretary of state.
“This is about setting out the government’s ambition for places that are inclusive and meet the needs of all… So I’m a big fan of the 40 per cent, and I stand by that.”
Also on Monday’s panel was Ian McDermott, chief executive of the housing association Peabody – which owns most of the land at the proposed new town site at Thamesmead.
He insisted it was “absolutely” possible to achieve 40 per cent affordable housing at Thamesmead, “and that’s the basis on which we’ve been planning”.
He cautioned, however, that this would only be realistic if Peabody was not also expected to provide funding to extend the Docklands Light Railway across the Thames to reach the new homes – an infrastructure project which has been estimated to cost £1.5bn.
