‘Bulk of reform has been done’ - Pennycook warns housing developers against ‘holding back’ for more

The “bulk” of the Labour government’s planned housing reforms has been done, the housing minister has said, warning developers not to hold back waiting for more.

Responding to a question from a housing association leader at a Labour conference fringe event on Tuesday afternoon, Matthew Pennycook said that “there’s not next year some huge change to the planning system” and that “we’ve got to make the existing system work”.

“if you’re holding off for some reason, I don’t know what you’re holding off for,” he said, while acknowledging that the government “might make tweaks around the edges”, such as the upcoming “acceleration plan” that the new housing secretary, Steve Reed has hinted at.

“But now we will need to get working so it is about maximising delivery, and we want to work in partnership with the sector to do that,” he said.

Pennycook told the audience to expect to “see the fruit” of multiple consultations “in the coming months”. This includes new site threshold changes, brownfield passports and ”a more pro-growth approach to development around transport hubs”.

While celebrating what the housing ministry had achieved in a little over a year, he encouraged people to temper their expectations.

“Development and planning does take time,” he said. “Even when we speed it up, it’s going to take time, and we won’t see the fruits of some of our changes for some time yet”.

However, he pointed to “green shoots”, including figures suggesting that housing starts were up 29% in the second quarter of the year, compared with the same period the year prior.

The minister also denied reports that a Conservative peer has been tasked with writing a second planning bill to block judicial reviews of major planning decisions.

>>See also: Plan to exclude new towns from local housing targets not realistic in some areas, political leaders warn

Reports in The Guardian at the weekend claimed that the prime minister had asked Charles Banner KC, who was made a peer by Rishi Sunak, to write a new legislation which could limit the ability of environmental groups to oppose large infrastructure projects.

But speaking at a Labour Housing Group fringe event Matthew Pennycook flatly denied the report. “Lord Banner has not been tasked with drafting the second Planning Bill,” he said.

“Nothing that I’ve seen suggest that, unless it’s been well hidden from me. So I don’t know where the stories come from.”

Pennycook also dismissed a questioner who suggested the government’s new towns programme, which sets out plans for communities of at least 10,000 homes, was less ambitious than the original new towns programme, where plans for Milton Keynes alone including 250,000 homes.

The housing minister explained that the taskforce had come forward with sites that can accommodate “at least” 10,000 homes, but that “in some cases it will be far, far larger numbers” and that over their lifetime, some of the recommended sites could “really accommodate potentially very large scale, communities”.