Tag: house affordability

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The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

If you haven’t already signed the petition, please sign if you want necessary changes to stop the present house price crisis from continuing to crash the starter end of our housing markets.

Sadly none of the political parties in Westminster are addressing the housing price crisis properly. This is hurting the nation’s economy by becoming an inflationary drag on the whole of society.

The following three remedies are designed to correct the housing markets by enabling sufficient affordability to be restored and maintained, aimed particularly at those working locally.

Did you know that a substantial part of the price of a house today is based on the value of the land beneath it!

The first and (No1) proposal is to make any land which gains planning consent for residential use, should become rated as having a nil or a nominal land value. This would help bring house prices back to genuine affordability levels once more. This proposal is based on the valuation knowledge, reasoning, and experience of the petitioner. There are two further proposals in addition to this.

You may well ask, how have ‘I’ (one person or individual), come to know exactly what to do and which way to turn in order to resolve matters of this degree of specialisation? The answer is that I chose surveying and valuation as my career in my 20’s and commenced in a training job back in the 60’s, working amongst a team of qualified surveyors already knowing all of these things and taking five or so years to qualify by examination. As a newly qualified surveyor I could then put such knowledge into use, advising clients and employers throughout the rest of my career. As I’m now retired, I can give commentary to what I have come to know over my career. I am able to diagnose and cure the present housing crisis using my knowledge relating to land, buildings, law, planning, economics and valuation. Crucially, I understand how to use valuation knowledge as the essential tool required for resolving the present house pricing issues, which have becoming a significant problem across society these days. There are two further proposals to set out in addition to this.

To continue …
The second or (No2) proposal in this petition is to change The Town and Country Planning rules so that whilst the regional planning authorities should continue to administer the whole planning process as happens currently, all such decisions relating to residential land use would fall under the jurisdiction of the relevant Town or Parish Council and would be decided by that local Town or Parish Council with reference to the currently adopted Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs). These instruments will have been created in liaison with the regional planning authority as now of course.

Such devolution of planning decision procedures are required in addition to the current Government’s ‘New Wave of Devolution’, which essentially proposes to introduce regional Mayors if local planning authorities should decide to apply.

Demand and supply could easily be brought to balance within each individual town and village concerned by introducing an adopting Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDP). See ‘The house price affordability crisis’ on the web site for more information.

Balanced demand and supply locally could be achieved for each individual town and village by having an Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDP) fully adopted as being the document to refer to when making planning decisions throughout the validity of the ENDP.

The additional change under this petition is to devolve all such decisions relating to the residential use and development of land to the relevant Town or Parish Council to decide subject to and with reference to the currently adopted Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs), as explained.

Such extra devolution on residential planning decision-making would have to be included in the government’s current proposals for amendments to the existing National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), also part of the ‘New Wave of Devolution’.

Under this new devolution for residential planning applications there would no longer be a right-of-appeal to planning inspectors nominated by The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) in the U.K. Instead, the local Town or Parish Council would be the authority to determine (to grant or refuse), all such planning applications within their jurisdiction.

If a dispute should arise following a decision made by the relevant local Town or Parish Council, any necessary appeal would be decided by a regulated arbitration process and there would be a formal hearing if deemed necessary. Under this procedure an appeal would be convened and heard locally upon application by the parties in dispute, instead of remotely by The Planning Inspectorate.

In other words, on the question of all applications for residential, or part residential planning approval, the local Town or Parish Council itself would expect to have a proper say, instead of only being allowed to make a formal comment to the regional authority, as occurs at present!

This way, appeals would be dealt with more quickly and appropriately, speeding up the whole planning process for residential planning applications. There would be a significant saving both in the time taken to determine these and in the financial cost of accomplishing the approved development.

The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) in the U.K. should however retain the ultimate right to call a particular planning application in for determination at inception, but The Planning Inspectorate should no longer be involved in determining residential planning applications and appeals in general, because appeals against such decisions would have been fully devolved to the relevant local Town or Parish Council to decide locally.

To reassure petitioners on some of the technical aspects of this change and in brief, all land would still be owned freehold or leasehold but any change of residential user would be treated as development under the planning rules and such development of land would require planning permission as newly administered by the relevant Town or Parish Council. Therefore obtaining formal planning permission for a change of residential user would differ from that which currently happens under the existing planning rules.

The third or (No3) and final proposal, is to bring better pricing knowledge and advice in, making this available for all buyers and renters, by introducing new buyer-orientated property agencies.

To achieve this there should be a complete change of all the existing marketing methods for housing, by introducing property agents representing the buyer and renter side of the negotiating process in place of the existing seller-led estate agency system. This issue has been failing all housing markets around the whole of our country for a long time.

This proposal would be a considerable improvement for reducing the cost of housing and hinges on shortening the time it takes for sales and purchases to result in becoming successful completions. It would work by improving the way all residential property is marketed, whether going for sale or to let, by replacing the existing estate agent regime with a new and fully licensed buyer and renter orientated agency service called Residential Housing Agents (RHAs). 

These agents would act primarily on behalf of buyers and renters by advising them both upon the market value of the property under consideration and also the condition of such property. This way those purchasing or renting property, especially if it is for themselves and their families to live in, would be directly hiring and paying for the Residential Housing Agent, both to find the best property for them and to deal with the whole of the purchase (or the renting transaction), right through to completion. This would be completely different from (and a reverse of), the existing estate agency regime, bringing significant advantages to the market. Another of the distinctions would be that the sale of the family’s former residence may be dealt with by a different RHA from the one advising on the purchase (or the rental) of the house to be acquired but working on the common ground of obtaining a completion.

If these changes were brought in people moving between houses at the higher end of the market should not be out of pocket as a result, whereas those at the lower end would see considerably lower prices, helping them to climb onto the property-owning ladder in the first place. Lower rental values would also be a spin-off effect from this.

The overall cost of building new houses would also be noticeably reduced as a result of these three proposals.

Sales throughput of all forms of residential property would increase as the affordability levels themselves would simultaneously increase.

These are the very stimuli needed to get housing sales flourishing and get new house building completions increasing once again.

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The House Price Solution

How to Improve all local housing markets in England and Wales

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution

Your comments on this subject would be appreciated.

Unless things change significantly and along the lines explained here, countless people will experience unnecessary pain and trauma so please sign our petition under the link:

The petition is on the following link:

Petition on the cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

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Kick-starting economic growth is now top of the agenda 

Angela Rayner is reported to have said (30 July 24), “Britain was facing the most acute housing crisis in living memory”. This appears to acknowledge that there is an underlying failure within the housing markets of Britain, well beyond dealing with the rented sector and that this needs to be fully realised and addressed.

As an experienced professional in the property sector I have developed a new and comprehensive planning and marketing solution which can resolve this problem. I merely ask that this is given due consideration by government.

Having been in contact with my own MP about it, I am hoping for a referral of my alternative proposal to The Secretary of State at The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I would like to generate some in-depth discourse on this, most earnest submission, before long please.

The first question is:- How can my solution help?
It can do so by enabling more buyers, especially first-time ones, to purchase their property for less, rather than being required to borrow more then they can afford. This would mean people’s earnings would enable them to purchase essentials like housing for themselves more easily.

The cost of living would become lower as a result of the changes being proposed, meaning manufacturing and business could become more competitive allowing increased sales of products for export.

This may seem counterintuitive at first sight but it would in fact be a direct way of boosting exports.

The second question is:- How could median house price levels be lowered?
By improving the way houses are marketed, so that prices would depend more on each individual’s level of affordability rather than each having to rely upon borrowing increasingly eye-watering amounts of capital against the property being purchased by way of obtaining increasingly large mortgage loans!

The way this could be done, in brief, would be for buyers to submit arms-length offers (or bids) not to the present-day estate agents but to newly licensed and trained residential house agents (RHAs), contracted to act for them in seeking the best house for their needs.

The job of these new Residential House Agents (RHAs) would be not only to sell or indeed let owner’s houses but more importantly to find and secure the houses which their contracted client(s) are seeking both for themselves and their families – whether these clients are wishing to buy or to rent.

This would be a significant departure from the present system where the seller appoints an estate agent employed by them to obtain the best possible offers (including helping each buyer to borrow as much as mortgage lenders might be willing to lend to the buyer against the property deeds, to be held by the lender as their security).

A knock-on effect if such a new RHA regime, were to be brought in, would be to reduce the land value aspect of each property valuation. By doing this; developers could continue to build at economically viable development costs. This is a well known aspect of residential property valuation.

Reading this, you will no doubt appreciate that matters relating to house price levels are actually somewhat more complicated than they may be at first sight. Surveyors and valuers are aware to this but in my experience, many estate agents sadly are not.

My knowledge of all of this is based upon my valuation training and approximately 30 years experience as a residential property valuer and front line surveyor.

This allows me to isolate ways of enabling lower house prices without adversely affecting the profit level of builders and developers expected to maintain the levels of quality of housing desired, yet allowing the affordability of most housing to improve, at this highly critical time.

For more on this please follow the link below:

The house price affordability crisis

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution, otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.

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The best thing to do to resolve the national housing crisis

A leaked set of proposals to The Guardian newspaper recently has resulted in a front page article outlining the content of a recent report by The Labour leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, Stephen Cowan, about to be sent to the Labour Party.

Among some serious issues being highlighted is the cost of living itself and the problem of rising rents deemed as a result of insufficient supply of available rental properties coming onto the market.

I think there is a lot more to this than meets the eye however.

Mr Cowan suggests solutions could range from putting restrictions on the amount of rent increases and their frequency, to possibly considering scrapping no-fault evictions.

A significant problem with these ideas would of course be that such actions are likely to further restrict the already dwindling supply of private rental property being offered on the market.

Sir Kier is said to have promised to tackle England’s housing crisis if elected as Prime Minister, in part by relying on a massive socially rented house-building programme. However, there are other alternative proposals that I would like to advance for consideration and debate.

From my viewpoint, as a retired surveyor, the best solutions to be applied should retain and nurture an open market for privately rented housing, without excessive restrictions on rent levels or discriminating against good landlords simply wishing to operate in the private rental sector. I don’t think Mr Cowan has been able to consider proposals such as the ones I have been putting forward.

Firstly, it is clear that the way houses are currently marketed via estate agents, is an economically imperfect way to do so. This has to change as a matter of urgency so that buyers and renters are considered equally in any negotiations on rents and/or prices.

What is causing the increasingly unaffordable house price increases is being driven by the fact that traditionally, house price increases are being decided in liaison with estate agents and letting agents acting solely for vendors and landlords. This is what needs to change. There needs to be open market consideration by buyers and renters so that their affordability criteria can be fed into the equation. Agents need to be tasked with balancing any price / rent increases with buyer / renter affordability in the market. Local buyers and renters ought to be included for full consideration when determining which applicant is the best applicant for the house or flat in question.

The only and long overdue answer for this would be to re-regulate the marketing of all privately owned and rented residential property by improving the way all houses are marketed both from a buyers’ and a renters’ perspective.

Secondly, it is vital as part of this to make sweeping changes to residential planning rules so that local town and parishes absolutely decide user types of all residential properties in their areas, and no one else should be involved. This could also be done with immediate effect by our central government.

It is clear that to assist with the provision of additional residential dwellings in the locations where they are most needed, important changes to the planning rules are brought in such that local town and Parish councils, (which are democratically elected), should decide the residential use classes of all the houses or residential properties in their designated areas. They could do this by putting the required classifications into the next five-year Neighbourhood Development Plans. These, once adopted, would then be decided until further superseded, as housing demand locally may fluctuate and change.

For those owning residential property that has had changes to its use class, such owners must accept that when the property is next vacated, the new use class must take effect under the Neighbourhood Development Plan then in existence.

That may mean when marketing their property, that a different class of occupier may involve a different level of affordability. The risk of this would naturally have to belong to the owner of the property concerned, not the town or Parish.

Doing this would allow local areas to be able to balance the supply of suitable properties in their area with the actual demand for these.

More about this may be found in the various articles published on this web site of course.

Whilst I was finalising these unique proposals I needed to explain, to my professional body the RICS, having qualified as a Chartered Surveyor back in 1974, all about these solutions to the housing crisis which had come to my attention. They are based upon the valuation knowledge and my market awareness gained whilst conducting my inspections mostly on behalf of buyers and renters. Unfortunately, it was clear at that time (some years ago now), that RICS was not willing to sanction these changes and instead vehemently supported the existing estate agency model which is now as old and archaic as the hills!

The only realistic possibility open to me in such circumstances seemed to be to have to resign my membership of the institution, which I rather reluctantly then did. I hoped that this might not result in my proposals being ostracised by RICS as a result, but I seemed to have had little alternative except to take such a risk at the time.

In the final analysis, there can be only one preferred solution to successfully being able to solve the existing and worsening housing crisis; namely my solution.

Having arrived at such a viable solution myself, I believe RICS ought ultimately to acknowledge the validity of this cure, along with others who will hopefully consider my alternatives with fully open minds. I remain open to discussing the details of these proposals with RICS if and when they may be interested in doing this of course.

Meanwhile, I hope the next British government might take these proposals seriously and perhaps debate these either within these pages or indeed elsewhere.

For more on this please follow the link below:

The house price affordability crisis

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution, otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.

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Our two-stage proposals for solving the price and availability of housing nationally

Planning reform is one of two main arguments currently being made for bringing forward new policies which would completely reshape local housing markets across the whole of the U.K.

The other equally pressing argument is about the inadequate way in which houses are marketed currently. Price issues are not simply because of an insufficient supply of new housing. This is not what is causing house prices to escalate beyond the reach of so many people in this country.
(For more on this, please see the other articles on this web site.)

As far as the planning part of the solution is concerned, the required planning reforms should be incorporated into new Neighbourhood Development Plans.

Set areas within each town in these plans ought to be designated as having users restricted to primary residences only – on a permanent basis.

Under these provisions, any houses not being used as primary residences prior to the designation taking effect should have the planning use reverted to primary residential use, as soon as the house in question should become vacant.

Under such proposals, those owning houses falling within such use restrictions ought to have to accept these restrictions for the good of the local community, to bring about good planning for the future of the town. (This could, of course, also cover out of town or parish locations as well.)

These new policies would allow towns to retain sufficient suitable housing for use by those in the local workforce wishing, either to buy or to rent the housing they need for their local occupancy.

The planning system should be tilted away from its excessively stringent development control method and instead be moved towards a new, open and locally focused, rules-based zoning system, based on ‘types of user’.

It is becoming clear that all towns and parishes with a housing crisis like St Ives & Porthleven in Cornwall, The South Hams in Devon, Ilfracombe in North Devon (as screened on BBC Spotlight on 30th July 2024), as well as Frome in Somerset and Whitby in North Yorkshire, should canvass for fully devolved planning decision-making powers to be provided to local town and parish councils up and down the whole country. 

The towns named above have been in the news lately as being unable to resolve the crisis in housing, endemic in their regions over several decades past, where local workers as well as the retired are concerned. All this despite more powers having been devolved to their county or regional authorities over past years. This strongly suggests a wholly different planning policy is now needed.

Shortcomings such as these ought to be tackled head on. It would seem that this is an issue needing to be raised at the very highest level and without delay. So, I’m including it here as well as referring it to my local MP. You should do the same too if you think there is a similar problem in your local area.
If you want to know what to ask them, ask why they aren’t changing the way houses are both planned for and marketed, to finally resolve the poorly performing, over-priced and obdurate housing markets around the whole country?

I am saying towns and their associated hinterlands should zone all existing and future housing within their administrative areas into the following specific categories and document these within the current Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs). These criteria should all be enshrined within new and upgraded Neighbourhood Development Plans lasting at least for five years at a time.

Demand and supply could easily be brought to balance within each individual town and village concerned by introducing an adopting Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDP). See ‘The house price affordability crisis’ on the web site for more information.

Balanced demand and supply locally could be achieved for each individual town and village by having an Enhanced Neighbourhood Development Plans (ENDP) fully adopted as being the document to refer to when making planning decisions throughout the validity of the ENDP.

Owner occupation: (by those working locally or retired)

Affordable to buy: (for those starting off in life and by those working locally)

Private rental: (by those working locally)

Social housing lettings: (by those working locally or retired)

Second homes: (for those not working locally)

Holiday lettings:
(If considered advantageous planning-wise, a mix of these user designations, which should be specific to each individual house, might be allowed in the same street or location.)

This would give planners, advising and, acting in accordance with democratically elected local councillors, appropriate authority to oversee how the local environment should be developed and nurtured, taking into account present community aspirations.

Towns and Parish councils which only have the current right to comment on planning applications within their area, should instead be given the power to decide them. This would be an absolute game-changer.

In peacetime (i.e. whilst our country is not at war with another), residential planning consents should be delegated to all local town or parish councils for them to determine, depending upon local housing need.

This way, genuinely democratic decisions may be arrived at using local decision-makers whom are best able to understand what the current needs of the community are at any particular time.

Planning enforcement should fully apply to such new use criteria and should naturally be fully implemented by the appropriate planning enforcement authorities.

For one thing, these proposals would have the effect of limiting the amount of holiday lets within each town and this would be one of the best methods to solve the present housing crisis.

If you investigate, the overall lack of housing supply is not being caused by a total lack of existing housing stocks but by too much of it being put into uses such as holiday use. “These ideas are thankfully up for debate in Parliament imminently.” says Peter Hendry, author of The House Price Solution.

Any new planning uses, should certainly define and identify precisely where in each locality, houses should be reserved for primary residences only. The preferred user-type should be defined by each local planning authority – in consultation with local owners, but the local planning authority alone should of course have the final say.

No holiday lets, no socially rented units and of course no second homes should generally be permitted In certain zones. Instead, properties there should be reserved for local buyers and renters alone.

Having this would be equivalent to the construction of previously set but demonstrably unachievable house-building targets. The advantage would be that the housing released this way would be exactly where it would be required within each town and parish location.

Local areas desperately need this. In this way local communities could benefit from a re-designation of sufficient residential properties, as may be required, without having to ruin the existing built environment with excessive and inappropriate over-development.

As the property which would be involved would have already been built, this policy could be brought in without undue delay. After all, in most cases, this was what these properties were originally built for in the first place!

There certainly needs to be further regulation of the use of residential property, so that enough housing  can be retained for local people to buy or to rent. Otherwise, whole communities will be ‘hollowed out’ by holiday lets etc., as was explained and has been happening for some time, especially in tourism hot spots.

This web site proposes changes to the whole way in which houses are marketed as well as bringing in more effective planning controls.

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The House Price Solution

How to Improve all local housing markets in England and Wales

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution

All your comments on this subject would be appreciated.

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What is causing ever accelerating house prices relative to most peoples’ pay

I have researched what’s causing house prices to rise and fall, as they have over several decades recently.

Having seen programs like BBC Two – Britain’s Housing Crisis, What Went Wrong?
it is clear that more detailed and renewed consideration is necessary to avoid further damage to our housing economy.

The BBC’s recently televised programs explain what the economists currently believe is causing the house price crisis facing homebuyers today.
However,  I myself have come to a very different conclusion from that of the academic community. This might be something to do with the fact that I was trained as a valuation surveyor in the sixties & seventies and I’ve watched the continued cycles of price changes from then, into and through the next millennium – with increasing incredulity.
Seeing this happening, up front and personal so to speak, and knowing how others were feeling about this, has driven me to find and diagnose the real causes. My explanations are not from the viewpoint of an economist but are exclusively from that of a qualified valuer or a working surveyor’s standpoint.

The conclusions I’ve reached are therefore not only unique and easy to understand but are fully able to be used to remedy the house price crisis which we are now experiencing.
What follows is a brief explanation of my findings. The rest of my web site explains my reasoning in full and I hope you enjoy what I am able to describe to you here.

What are actually causing ever accelerating house prices relative to most people’s pay levels are two separate Financialisation anomalies which are both culprits causing house price crises within our British housing markets.
They act rather like a sort of fog, wreaking havoc for those driving their cars but instead, this state of confusion is allowing excessive pricing to not only exist but to accelerate, especially during times of financial stress. My conclusion explains why during such times as we have seen, particularly more recently, house prices tend to keep on spiralling upwards, before the inevitable correction.

If both of these two legislative anomalies were to be removed, housing markets across Britain would start to match general affordability and would also become price stable. This would bring desperately needed price affordability back to those communities that need this for their very survival.

The legislative instruments creating these two anomalies were both conceived a good long time ago. It is therefore perhaps understandable that they have remained intact because each seemed logical when they were originally made into law.

In chronological order, the first of these (anomalies) was the logic of extending the work of estate agents to cover both sides of the sale process of individual houses, both on behalf of buyers buying and sellers owning these.

The original purpose of having estate agents, going back more than a century, was to create specialised offices, essentially to advise large estates belonging to landed gentry for whenever they wished to dispose of land and buildings deemed surplus to requirements. In addition, these offices would negotiate any purchases on behalf of the large landed estates. The estate offices would work solely on behalf of their employers, with a view to negotiating the best price able to be negotiated as and when required. 

The Estate Agents Act 1979 (enacted over 40 years ago), has since enabled estate agents legally to represent single house owners in selling such property as well as to allow any house buyer out there to also be represented. Unfortunately, doing this is causing what we now know of today as ‘Financialisation’ of the housing markets.

It is clear today that for individual house sales, agents should be limited to having to act for and advise the buyer primarily not the seller as well – in order to avoid causing the degree of house price inflation to which I am referring. However, to achieve this would require a change in the Estate Agents Act legislation.

A further explanation about this is given in the web page entitled: ‘This House Price Solution is devised to resolve the current housing crisis completely’. The link is below.

This House Price Solution is devised to resolve the current housing crisis completely

This explains that true market prices can only be determined by supply and demand in a perfect marketplace. In a perfect marketplace, the whole amount of homes on the market would be sold and the demand for them would also be fully satisfied at all times. The present UK housing market as a whole, is therefore very far from perfect!

IF, housing markets around the whole country were near perfect, economically speaking, it wouldn’t take a year or more for each house-move to happen. Houses and flats going onto the market would take much less than a year to attract a buyer ready to complete on their purchase. 

There would then be fewer unsold and empty properties waiting to find buyers. Supply and demand would be in balance. House prices would enable this to happen and would facilitate sales to take place more swiftly than upwards of a year.

On the rental side of things, here markets are in a very different situation. There are far more people wanting to rent than there are rental properties available. Also, the supply of flats and houses is shrinking currently, which is forcing rent-levels to inflate. Demand for these properties seriously outstrips supply, economically speaking. Here, the obvious solution clearly has to be to provide more properties available for rent.

It should be noted however, if there were to be less unsold properties at any one time, there would be a lessening of demand for properties to rent, because more tenants would’ve become buyers! Therefore, improving buyers’ markets would clearly help with lessening the rental-demand side of things as well. That would be an important added bonus for both marketplaces, which is why ‘The House Price Solution’ is the final answer.

The second, and equally damaging piece of legislation for house prices has been the longterm use of some of the provisions enacted under the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 (conceived over 70 years ago). This Act was the first major one to start directing how and when land could be developed, or used for different purposes. It specifically provided for such decisions ultimately to be decided using powers vested in the Secretary of State to appoint a planning inspector. These officers are effectively appointed by central government acting on behalf of The Crown, as being the ultimate owner of all land outright sitting above the legal estates granted in fee, such as freehold interests.

(For those who want to know a little more about land tenure this goes back in essence to William The Conquerer, after which time all land in Britain effectively belonged to The Crown. A freehold title granted by The Crown can be an estate in fee . An estate in fee simple, for example, is the highest estate possible with the least restrictions. However, even that state of ownership is subject to the laws of the land as and whenever they may receive Royal Assent.)

Rather importantly, there has just recently been a new Act of parliament which received Royal Agent on Thursday 26th October 2023. It augments the operation of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 (as now amended). This new Act of parliament is called the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023.
It has been prepared by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities and comprises approximately 530 pages, It underpins the government’s current levelling up agenda and covers among other things, provisions concerning local democracy and town and country planning. It covers additional details about Local Plan making and Neighbourhood Planning for example.

However, in this newly enacted legislation the Secretary of State still retains the power to finally determine planning appeals by using the existing method of appointing a planning inspector to determine planning applications on appeal, irrespective of the views of the local community or even the local authority, including ones submitted under the new Local and/or Neighbourhood Development Plan rules.

I contend that modern-day decisions on things like land use and planning should, from now on, be allowed to be made locally and democratically, rather than autocratically or dictatorially as happens currently using the existing powers vested in the Secretary of State to appoint a planning inspector.

I contend that whenever a planning decision has been decided at local level, that decision should no longer be able to be superseded on appeal by a planning inspector appointed by central government.

Whilst such determinations may have appeared to have worked well initially in the distant past, as the years have gone by, things of this nature have become more and more fraught. Nowadays, we are all very much aware of the discord surrounding decisions ultimately being decided by planning inspectors whom are appointed by central government. This often happens when they simply do not accord with what local communities actually want and require of course.

Unfortunately again, the damaging aspect of such centrally made decisions is what we know of today as ‘Financialisation’. The result of decisions such as these, being made remote from the communities directly involved, causes progressive damage to the very community that these were originally intended to protect. This occurs through the loss of essential residential uses such as those for local first-time buyers. The result is houses which are mostly priced out of local reach, for local people, and this is the last thing these people currently require.

My suggestion for resolving this is for government to vest those representing local communities with full responsibility for determining local residential planning applications depending on which uses are most needed within the community and as provided for within the democratically agreed and adopted Neighbourhood Plans, subject only to an appeal on a point of law (for example, if there had been some misdirection or misuse of the legal framework of the application or of its tenure of ownership).

[For clarification, this should also mean that instances of National Policy Framework considerations should be within the remit of local planning committees to make determinations.]

It would clearly require a significant change to the existing Town and Country Planning legislation in order to accommodate these new fundamentals.

My conclusion is that with the twin changes pointed out here, local land use and the resulting prices of property being built, would be restored to price levels affordable by those living in their respective areas. Buyers could fairly compete to purchase residential property from sellers without interference by estate agents acting for sellers. Planning uses could be decided democratically using previously approved Neighbourhood Plans.

I contend there would be no downside from a governmental point of view, in accepting such proposals as I have outlined here.

As I say, top down solutions such as planning ones, especially residential planning applications, not only fail often but are becoming extremely unpopular for the reasons outlined. Devolving decision-making to those with the most to loose, (and/or gain), is the only logical alternative. I ask that these proposals therefore be thoroughly debated and I recommend that they be adopted very soon in order to deal with and fully resolve the exceptional difficulties now being experienced in satisfying modern-day housing need at affordable prices.

In peacetime (i.e. whilst our country is not at war with another), residential planning consents should be delegated to all local town or parish councils for them to determine, depending upon local housing need.

This way, genuinely democratic decisions may be arrived at using local decision-makers whom are best able to understand what the current needs of the community are at any particular time.

As a retired residential property valuer I remain convinced that if democratically elected local councillors were to be granted full authority to decide local residential planning applications, the effect of this could resolve the whole housing crisis.

Decisions made by such elected representatives would not be based upon NIMBYism ‘Not In My Back Yard’; quite the contrary!

Instead it would be a question of ‘IN My Back Yard’, as these councillors would be representing the wishes and needs of the local community – not simply trying to resist necessary change!

There could be no finer outcome than this, especially where residential property is concerned, because with this solution these councillors could work to actually resolve the housing crisis which we are now all being affected by, particularly owing to its increasing severity.

Outside links to the BBC:

Episode 1—Series 1 – How politicians promised home ownership, but with policies that sent prices out of reach.

Episode 2—Series 1 – How the strain on housing – from new builds to social homes – reached breaking point.

Also:

Watch exclusive interviews with the programme’s contributors

Finally, for more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The House Price Solution

How to Improve all local housing markets in England and Wales

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.