Regionally Administered Housing Taking Shape

Kate Barker's vision of regionally administered housing and planning policies is taking shape step by step which must be a major boost for the house-building industry.

Kate Barker's vision of regionally administered housing and planning policies is taking shape step by step.

It now seems likely that the North East of England will produce a regional planning executive of the type advocated in her Housing Supply report, emerging as a prototype of the new-style local government inherent in the U.K.

Government's plan for creating sustainable communities.

As the consultative document behind this said, sustainable communities need sufficient, quality housing to meet the needs of flourishing local economies supported by adequate infrastructure.

Everyone in the industry would certainly agree with that in principle, especially since it offers good prospects for the house-building and public services workload over the next few years.

Around this idea, a new pattern of regional administration is developing involving a wide range of innovative concepts, such for example as the Regional Spatial Strategy.

This is defined as integrating policies for the use and development of land with other policies and programmes, subject to a sustainability appraisal which will incorporate the requirements of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive.

The legislation to empower this apparatus has been moving quietly through Parliament over the past few months.

In fact, Kate Barker's report on Housing Supply assumed that this was already in place or soon would be.

She must have been well briefed on what the government had in mind.

Expounding the new institutional framework for housing and planning, her report began by spelling out the situation as she began work at the behest of the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and his colleague John Prescott at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

At that time, Kate Barker advised the Government to establish a review of the housing market to measure progress in implementing her recommendations.

This would, she said, assess progress towards achieving a more flexible housing market and identify any further obstacles, though what the house builders would prefer is progress towards a more productive industry.

As the first move in this direction, Ms.

Barker said that each region of England (there are eight of them plus London) should set its own target to improve market affordability.

Integration of housing and planning powers.

"Indicative net housing targets for the region and the local authorities", she said, "should be produced by the regional planning executive in order to achieve this market affordability target." The administrative machinery on which this would all depend would be a powerful regional planning executive integrating the functions of the present regional planning bodies, the regional housing boards and the regional development agencies.

As the Housing Supply report put it: "The establishment of elected regional assemblies will allow various functions and strategies at the regional level to be brought together." Public endorsement of devolution to this extent in the English regions is yet to be secured, but even if that consent is withheld it won't make a great deal of difference to the evolution of the new regional housing and planning policies.

The coming referendum on the structure of government in the North East region will give a choice only between which type of single tier authority is preferred.

The old order of district authorities is on the way out.

But as Kate Barker observed, even in the absence of elected regional assemblies, a streamlined institutional framework is possible and desirable.

So, she said, "the regional planning bodies and regional housing boards should be merged to create single regional planning and housing bodies, responsible for all aspects of managing the regional housing market.

They should be supported by the establishment of regional planning executives which would be responsible for providing evidence to inform the provision of market housing and investment in social housing in the region." In the North East, regional housing strategy is taking shape at a fast pace.

The next few months will be taken up with development of the draft strategy, due to be published at the end of this year.

The usual period of consultation will follow.

By the middle of next year the North East Housing Board should be able to agree the final version of regional housing strategy and submit it for approval to the Government.

Ministerial approval is not expected to take long and after that the strategy will be in force.

If by then the regional elected assembly is in place or getting there, the Government's vision for evolution of housing and planning policy will be close to realisation.

In fact, the integrated regional framework for the North East is already well advanced.

It seeks in conformity with government policy to establish a shared vision for the sustainable future of the region.

Sound finance missing from the plan The Deputy Prime Minister has recently opened a new subject for debate, what local government should look like in ten years' time: by contrast Kate Barker has given us a glimpse of what it will look like two or three years from now.

Announcing his new initiative Mr Prescott said: "Local government has a crucial part to play in creating sustainable communities.

It has a unique place at their heart - democratically accountable, understanding local needs and aspirations, and able to bring partners together to improve services and quality of life." That is certainly what people want, but there is one part of the formula for renewal that the government have so far failed to tackle, the reform of local government finance.

Mr Prescott's colleague Nick Raynsford has produced his Balance of Funding review which demonstrates with great clarity the defective nature of both the U.K.

residential council tax and the uniform business rate as sources of revenue.

In short, both are found inflexible and regressive.

Neither could be regarded as the financial counterpart of sustainable communities.

In her Housing Policy review, Kate Barker put forward a number of useful ideas on this front which might be developed by the independent inquiry into revenue sources recently set up by the Government.

For example: "Developers could be required to make a contribution based on a proportion of the residential value of land in each local authority.

This could be calculated using actual values, and/or by using the existing twice-yearly land valuations undertaken by the Valuation Office Agency.

This avoids excessive complexity - a downfall of some previous development gain taxes - since, but using such sources, this obviates the need to engage in a lengthy and costly administrative process to calculate accurately the exact part of the land value uplift that is attributable to a change of use." Sir Michael Lyons has been asked to advise on council tax reform but he also has scope to assess the case for giving local authorities more flexibility to raise revenue.

He is not however expected to report until the end of next year.

Meanwhile the house building industry has to struggle on with the existing system which is not producing enough of what people want, decent housing at prices they can afford.

The Housing Corporation is being given the means to make a big difference in the field of affordable housing, but at heavy cost to the Treasury: its approved development programme for 2004-05 is costing £2 billion in round terms to raise the rate of social housing completions to the level envisaged in the Kate Barker review.

That must be a major boost for the house-building industry.

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