Political Bulletin

Week commencing 1st March 2010

Development, Planning and Property News

• DJ landed with 100,000 Euro MIPIM fine
  
  Drivers Jonas has lost a legal battle with the organiser of the annual MIPIM conference in Cannes over its hiring of a café away from the official event venue to conduct business.
  
  The Tribunal de Commerce de Paris imposed the fine as it determined that it is not legal to exhibit and conduct business at MIPIM outside the Palais des Festivals venue.
  
  DJ completes its merger with Deloitte later today.

Department for Communities and Local Government

• Healey reacts to Mayor’s strategy
  
  The line between politics and the executive was blurred last week as the DCLG reported Housing Minister John Healey’s reaction to Boris Johnson’s housing strategy.
  
  Reacting to the Mayor’s London Housing Strategy, Healey warns that it will not sufficiently address the Capital's needs, and outlines areas of particular concern, including plans to provide only around 13,200 affordable homes a year and plans to move away from the strategic target that 50 per cent of new homes in London should be affordable to a London-wide numeric target. Mr Healey argues in his letter that this could make it harder for the Mayor to use his planning powers to ensure the need for affordable homes is met across the city.
  
  He also has concerns about plans to reduce the number of new social rented homes provided by councils and housing associations by an equivalent 2,755 homes a year compared to current plans and plans to increase the annual household income limit for families to qualify for support to buy a home through the Government's Homebuy programme from £60,000 to £74,000.
  
  John Healey said: "The provision of enough good quality affordable homes is essential to London's economic future, and meeting the needs and aspirations of Londoners."

The House of Commons

• Debates of interest
  
  4th March- Frank Dobson has raised an adjournment debate about the proposed sale of homes by the Crown Estate.
  
  3rd March- Jeremy Corbyn has raised a Westminster Hall debate on the "Situation of private tenants and leaseholders in London."

The House of Lords

• Debates of interest
  
  The Lords, having been in session for only a week, have not directly covered development issues. However, they have discussed a new Bill which would affect insurance arrangements.
  
  The purpose of the Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Bill is to amend existing legislation governing the relationship between insurers and claimants, with specific regard to "third parties, to make it easier and less expensive to claim compensation from insolvent defendants. Current legislation dictates that claimants must establish an insolvent defendant’s liability before bringing a separate claim against their insurer. However, the Bill would enable claimants to sue the insolvent defendant’s insurer directly, without having to sue the wrongdoer first.

London Mayor and Assembly

• Johnson unveils new housing strategy.
  
  London mayor Boris Johnson has pledged to bring 3,000 empty homes back into use in a new London Housing Strategy. He said that he would achieve this aim by trebling funding to £60m.
  
  Johnson said that more than 1700 of the capital’s abandoned, derelict and unused buildings had already been brought back to life - "providing 'urgently needed homes for hundreds of families across the city and revitalising communities".
  
  The London Housing Strategy, the capital’s first statutory housing strategy, also aims to deliver 50,000 affordable homes before the Olympics, the most in a single Mayoral term, halve severe overcrowding by 2016, inject millions of pounds of funding to kickstart stalled regeneration projects, bring to an end rough sleeping in the capital and give London’s boroughs more say over delivering affordable homes in their areas.
  
  The strategy can be found here

Labour

• Healey responds to Tory Green paper
  
  John Healey MP, Labour’s Housing and Planning Minister responded to the Tories' planning green paper released last week.
  
  He said, "David Cameron can dress it up in whatever post-bureaucratic rhetoric he chooses. But when it comes to the crunch, the Tories planning proposals will be about as welcome as a hole in the head to a construction industry wanting greater certainty about its future."
  
  "Put simply, the Tories plans will block investment and wreck the recovery."
  
  He added, "Given the chance to put these shoddy proposals in place, the Tories will put firms out of business, building workers on the dole and the ambitions of many thousands of would-be apprentices on the scrapheap."

Conservatives

• Conservative Planning Green paper released.
  
  The Conservatives finally released their long-delayed Planning Green Paper last week, without fanfare during the Gordon Brown ‘bullying’ controversy. The green paper includes a wide array of policies of concern to developers, local authorities and those involved with regeneration, including the acute limiting of appeal rights.
  
  The paper is well-hidden on the Conseravative website, but can be found here.

• Spellman speech outlines Tory planning vision.
  
  Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Caroline Spelman, addressed the Tory conference in Brighton this weekend with a speech regarding planning. She said, "You know how it goes - fantasy housing targets are conceived in Whitehall and forced on neighbourhoods with no regard for sustainability, the environment or the infrastructure."
  
  "Planning applications that local people have legitimate objections to are forced on them either by planning laws which leave councils powerless, or an appeal system which over-rules council decisions anyway."
  
  "The planning system has become a powerful symbol of the old discredited politics, which is top-down, unaccountable and bureaucratic."
  
  "We will have local communities coming together with a local architect and local councillors to draw up plans for how they would like their neighbourhoods to evolve."
  
  "Local people will be plugged directly into the process which decides the location, scale and type of new development we need."
  
  "It will be the product of real collaboration between neighbours and communities, and it won’t be second guessed by national interference or appeals to the planning inspectorate."
  
  "Putting people at the heart of planning decisions will get people enthused at the prospect of new development."
  
  "So we will match from the centre the council tax on all new housing for six years, and for affordable housing match it to the tune of 125%."
  
  "That financial return can be reinvested in infrastructure, local services, keeping council tax down – whatever local people want."

Liberal Democrats

• Lib Dems urge stronger retail planning powers
  
  Liberal Democrats have promised to give local planning authorities a duty to plan retail development of their area to prevent "over-expansion of supermarkets" and to introduce a "retail competition test".
  
  The party's new policy document "Vibrant Local High Streets" aims to address the "decline of shopping centres” with a range of measures including development of Post Office services, local enterprise funds and “regional stock exchanges".
  
  Leader Nick Clegg said "The Government has tilted the planning system in favour of the haphazard expansion of ubiquitous supermarkets at the expense of hard-pressed independent stores. The financial crisis has exposed Labour and the Conservatives' folly of being entirely dependent on the City of London. The Liberal Democrats understand that it will be small businesses that are key to building a healthy and balanced economy."