Planning review workshop and chance to feed into SFHA consultation response

With the deadline approaching for responses to the White Paper People Places and Planning, the Scottish Government recently held a workshop to discuss increasing housing supply and creating better places.

The workshop, facilitated by David Stewart of SFHA, focussed on how the planning system might encourage a variety of developers and tenures, and how to ensure that new housing developments can create quality and a sense of place. During the course of the workshop, a number of proposals were discussed by participants who included private sector developers, local authority planners, planning consultants and representatives of housing bodies

Proposals included:

Encouraging different developers and tenures:

• Grant permitted development rights for conversion of town centre buildings to flats, prioritise housing for older people and first homes
• Use the proposed simplified planning zones for housing to designate sites for particular house types and tenure – for example, co-housing, social housing, custom and self-build
• Provide loan guarantee funds to support SMEs and build to rent

Improving quality and encouraging better place making:

• Develop more detailed development plans based on upfront community consultation
• Provide more master plans and design briefs for sites specifying scale, mix, materials and density

Increasing housing supply:

• Support local authorities or a national infrastructure agency, master plan and provide infrastructure for sites – this would enable development and allow greater influence on quality and housing mix
• Have a presumption in favour of sustainable development
• Have flexibility on sites within development plans

Increasing link between planning and delivery:

• Have an honest broker to look at stalled sites and whether they are developable
• Place time limits on planning permissions

Ensuring the homes developed are in the right place and meet needs:

• Have a clear systematic link between housing need and demand assessments  and local development plans
• Increase the resource given to community consultation in preparation of development plans

SFHA members can feed into the federation’s consultation response by emailing Policy Lead David Stewart dstewart@sfha.co.uk