Independent · Planning, housing and place · England
We read the documents.
Long-form reporting on housing, planning and place in England, written by people who work inside the system. Every number is traced back to the document it came from, and the document is named.
One sentence in an annex, and the 82 councils heading towards it.
On 18 May the government named 82 councils it was paying to finish their local plans under the old system by 31 December. Every one will be examined against the December 2024 framework. None will be examined against the framework that now decides planning applications, and that framework says a local policy materially at odds with it should carry very limited weight unless the plan was examined against it. Nobody has defined what materially means. The councils are taking the route anyway, because an adopted plan changes the figure their housing land supply is measured against. In the Cotswolds that is the difference between 1.8 years and 4.6.
Continue reading, 15 min →The planning system was rewritten to say yes, and the state is now financing every link in the chain.
Since July 2024 the government has restored mandatory housing targets, made the presumption in favour of development permanent and moved planning decisions away from committees. Alongside that, a change to the fiscal rules let it lend, guarantee and invest in housing on a scale grants never allowed. This is how the two halves fit together, and who carries the risk.
Your First Home, and why a housing target runs through the mortgage market.
On 26 September the government announced a 20% equity loan for first-time buyers of new homes, and called it a stimulus for the market. Homes are built at the speed they can be sold. This is how the scheme fits the machinery that sets that speed, and what the last scheme like it did.
The local plans racing the December deadline, and why they arrive already weakened.
82 councils have been paid to submit local plans under the old system by 31 December 2026. Each will be examined against a framework that no longer decides planning applications, and adopted into one that says any policy materially at odds with it should carry very limited weight. Nobody has defined what that means.
Ground Level is a professional editorial platform. Investigative, data-driven, written by industry professionals. Interrogating Britain's planning and economics systems driving housing and infrastructure.
What the standard method is, and what it is not.A formula, a set of inputs, and a missing cap. Three things, in order.
02The five-year supply, the tilted balance, and why your council can't say no.The mechanism that hands control to developers when a council falls behind.
03What "affordable" actually means, and what it costs.The gap between what the planning system calls affordable and what a local worker can pay.
04Viability, density, and why every estate looks the same.The product range, the economics behind it, and a planning system that cannot demand anything better.
05The Local Plan, and why most of England does not have one.The document that decides where houses go, how it gets made, what happens when it fails, and what happens without it.
06Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy.Two mechanisms for making developers pay for what development needs, and why both are under strain.
07The infrastructure that doesn't exist yet.How water, roads, schools, and GP surgeries are supposed to arrive alongside new housing, and why they don't.
08The neighbourhood plan, and what it can actually do.The most democratic tool in the planning system, and the one with the least power when the system is under pressure.
09How land gets its value, and who keeps it.The arithmetic underneath the English housing crisis.
Three rural districts, each handed a need figure by formula, and not one of them able to show five years of housing land when it was last measured. The methodology doesn't ask whether the land exists.
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