Skip to content
openDemocracy
Subscribe

Tory planning reform may have cost England 25,000 affordable homes

Government wants to allow more office-to-home conversions despite finding majority were poor quality

By Adam Bychawski
Tory planning reform may have cost England 25,000 affordable homes
The prime minister claims the law is delivering homes, but councils say thousands have been lost. | Joe Giddens, WPA Pool/Getty Images
Published:
Share

A Tory tweak to planning laws padded property developers’ profits while worsening the UK’s housing crisis.

openDemocracy analysis found that the introduction of the controversial “permitted development” policy in 2013 has meant there are approximately 25,000 fewer homes available for some of the UK’s most vulnerable families.

Under the policy, housing developers do not have to seek full planning permission from councils to convert commercial buildings like offices and shops into homes, which means they are not subject to the usual planning requirements that a proportion of new homes built must be “affordable”.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. Please check individual images for licensing details.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0