18 February 2015
Allocating plots in ‘garden villages’ to self builders could help to deliver over one million new homes during the next decade, a new report suggests.
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The paper, ‘Garden Villages: Empowering localism to solve the housing crisis‘ published by leading think tank Policy Exchange, argues this rise in housebuilding could be achieved if each of the 353 councils in England built just one garden village of 3,000 new houses – and set aside some of the plots to help people self build, or custom build, their own home.
Suggesting that a future government can overcome local opposition to development by devolving powers to set up new garden villages from Whitehall to councils, the document proposes that locally-led development corporations, set by councils, would be charged with masterplanning and setting quality design standards for the construction of a new wave of garden villages; earmarking some of the plots for self builders and housing associations. As part of a quid-pro-quo, councils agreeing to build new garden villages sufficient to meet their housing need would be allowed to rule out having development around existing communities forced on them through appeal.
The proposed model points to the competitive and market responsive delivery of all housing with “self build playing a major part”; the catalyst being the releasing of land to the self builders currently finding it hard to access.
Lord Matthew Taylor, author of the report and adviser to the last Labour government and the Coalition on planning policy, said: “Empowering councils to create new garden villages to meet local housing demand and capture all the land value uplift is critical if we are to win over the support of existing residents and build the homes we so desperately need.”
