Housing
Homes in thriving, pleasant communities.
Photo: © Ecos Trust
CPRE view
CPRE believes that to solve the housing shortage facing both rural and urban areas, we must build the right types of housing in the right places. We believe everyone is entitled to live in a home that is truly affordable and that planning policy should seek to deliver that housing. The current planning system allows house builders to unnecessarily target countryside for development, creating a growing threat to high-quality open space and farmland.
A number of measures can counter these threats, including prioritising brownfield sites for new housing and promoting the delivery of the right housing developments by investing in affordable housing to meet local needs.
CPRE and housing
A thriving countryside is important for everyone, no matter where they live. To achieve this, it’s important to deliver housing in rural communities that meets local needs. It's essential to minimise sporadic development in the countryside and the unsustainable sprawl of our towns and cities. Otherwise, we will see unnecessary loss of our countryside and irreversible damage to our landscapes.
What we want:
- The amount of land supplied for new housing to be based on realistic assessments of what the public, private and social sectors are likely to deliver.
- An increased delivery of the right housing by investing in affordable housing to meet local needs, particularly in rural areas.
- Diversification of the house-building market, WITH small- and medium-size house builders, custom and self-builders, and councils playing a greater role in the development process.
- Good-quality housing design with high environmental standards, complementing the local character.
- Better guidance to local authorities on how to set realistic housebuilding targets when preparing strategic housing market assessments.
The issues:
The right homes in the right places
England faces a housing crisis. We agree there is a need to deliver more homes, but it is essential that these homes are the right types of homes and are in the right places.
The issues:
Brownfield land could provide one million homes
We need to build many more homes in England. The number of homes being built is at an historic low. In 2015-2016, 189,500 new homes were built. While this is an increase on previous years, it is still far below the 250,000 projected annual growth in households for that year.
