Graham Rix

What will the June 2010 changes to PPS3 means for housing development?

The only real change here was to remove garden land from the definition of ‘previously developed land’.  It’s hard to see how this will work in practice, but it won’t be as dramatic as the press would have us believe. The thrust of the PPS is that a lot of new housing is still needed.

I first heard a Tory back-bencher talk on this about a year ago, I assumed he was a bit simple, and that no one would be able to take this seriously. He didn’t seem to realise that large numbers of proposals for new houses on garden land get refused, and dismissed at appeal, and he seemed to have no idea how the planning system works. .

I’ve spoken to many consultant and local government planners about the change to PPS3, and they all know that it’s mad, asuggest that when, in about a year’s time, there have been no new family homes built in the south east, the government will have to adjust its ideas.

At least, within Greater London, local authorities still have housing targets, and without garden land there is no hope of meeting those targets.  So perhaps not much will change in Greater London.

The problem with new housing in suburban areas is that the neighbours assume (almost certainly correctly) that any new development will be cheap, crude and pretentious. And so they want to oppose it.  The trick would be to employ high calibre Town Planners (an oxymoron if ever there were one) to ensure high quality development.