In January 2014, Greater Manchester's ten local authorities agreed to work together to deliver a region-wide plan to be known as the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (or GMSF for short). Eight years later, after numerous drafts supported by copious evidence and dealing with both the advent of Andy Burnham as elected Mayor and the withdrawal of Stockport from the project, the final version of the plan now known as Places for Everyone was eventually submitted for examination last year.
However, recent media reports have suggested that the fragile political consensus behind the plan could be on the verge of collapse - which would derail the whole project.
The reason is proposed new changes to national planning policy which were announced by the government shortly before Christmas. Amongst other things, the proposals would make it easier for local authorities to plan for fewer new homes and would essentially make it entirely up to councils whether they should release areas of green belt for development.
As a result, councillors in Oldham, Rochdale and Bury have all expressed a desire to withdraw from the Places for Everyone process and to prepare their own Plans for fewer new homes.
It is important that doesn't happen.
House prices in Manchester have risen by more than virtually every other UK city - including London - over recent years. The figures below are for the last 12 months, but look at the data on Hometrack's website and you'll see that Manchester has been at or close to the top of this list for the last decade.
A huge part of the reason for those increases is that the city region hasn't been building enough new homes. Whichever way you look at it, delivery has been far below need. The table below, taken from the representations we made to the Places for Everyone examination, show that only three of the nine local authorities in the region have delivered more homes than their annual housing need since 2015. Across the city region as a whole, housing delivery has been almost 15% below need.
The situation isn't likely to get better either. To reflect the fact that sites can take time to come on stream once permission is granted, and that it is impossible to deliver all the homes on a given site at once, local authorities are expected to have enough housing land available to meet their needs for the next five years. This ensures that there is continuous supply of new homes being delivered. Known as "five-year housing land supply" this assessment is effectively a forecast of how many homes councils expect to be built in the future.
The table below - again taken from our representations to the public inquiry - shows that just four of the nine Greater Manchester authorities involved in Places for Everyone have an adequate pipeline of new homes. The tenth Greater Manchester authority, Stockport, doesn't have a five-year supply either.
That's all because the region isn't planning to build enough new homes in the first place.
Most Local Plans are more than a decade old - and many of the newer ones are "Core Strategies" which don't identify specific sites for development anyway. When plans are so old, the sites they allocated for development are typically already built out - so the supply of housing land dries up. Without an up-to-date plan identifying specific sites for development, councils are dependent on "windfall" sites to meet their housing need - and that is never going to be sufficient.
Local Plans are expensive, time-consuming and controversial to prepare. It is entirely rational that local authorities chose to wait for Places for Everyone to be in place before progressing their own plans - otherwise they would be out-of-date as soon as Places for Everyone came into force. But various political difficulties have meant that Places for Everyone has taken much longer to prepare than anyone ever expected. It has been "imminent" for around six years, during which time plan-making in the region has effectively ground to a halt.
Planning is important. We can't just wish homes into existence - we need to plan for them. That means identifying sites for new homes of all types, sizes and tenures and working out what infrastructure is needed to support them - from road improvements to public transport, doctors surgeries to playgrounds.
Places for Everyone was supposed to resolve all of those issues. It is a strategic plan for the whole city region dealing with difficult but necessary issues - like green belt release and how best to distribute housing supply across Greater Manchester as a whole.
It is far from perfect - our own analysis clearly demonstrate that it dramatically over-states the number of new homes that will come from some sources. But it is also a pressure release valve that will buy time while councils will follow on with their own, more focused Local Plans. Those Plans can identify more development sites and, if the Planning Inspectors considering Places for Everyone choose not to address them now, they can also remedy some of the failings in Places for Everyone itself.
If Places for Everyone collapses, we're back to square one. It will be years before we get back to this point again. That won't help housing affordability, and economic growth will be stifled. It will be awful news for the city region - and especially those trying to get on the housing ladder.
As frustrating and complex as that all sounds, here at The Strategic Land Group we're used to dealing with the development plan process. It's one of the ways we unlock development potential on behalf of our landowner partners, maximising the value of their sites. As a land promoter, we do that entirely at our cost and risk. We only charge a fee once the site is sold to a developer, so if we don't succeed it doesn't cost the landowner anything.
If you know of a site that might be suitable for a residential or solar farm development, get in touch today for a free, no obligation discussion.
