Briefings and responses

We broadly support measures that streamline and modernise the CPO process including flexibility surrounding the three-year time-limit in which a CPO can be used.

This briefing summarises the housing and planning proposals of most relevance and significance to local government. It also provides the LGA’s initial reaction to the proposals along with our policy messages, which may necessarily evolve as discussions on the proposals continue.

The LGA has called on the Government to provide councils with the powers and tools to reverse the chronic shortage of social housing, including giving councils powers to build 100,000 high-quality, climate-friendly social homes a year.

As the consultation notes, rough sleeping and begging can often be conflated, and the overlap between them is complex.

The LGA has a set of core asks around the Building Safety Bill. These are addressed in order of priority.

The LGA has four core asks around the Building Safety Bill.

Delivery of the new building safety regime is dependent on council building control and the fire service. The funding to achieve the necessary increase in skills and capacity has not yet been agreed and we are concerned that it may be inadequate. The LGA asks that new funding is administered to councils and fire services to deliver this new work.

No leaseholder should have to pay the costs of making their homes safe and the Secretary of State’s threat to use the legal system to ensure developers meet their responsibilities to leaseholders is a positive step in the right direction. However, leaseholders are not the only innocent victims of the construction industry’s failure to build safe homes.

The LGA’s view is that the best way to increase housing security is to address the unaffordability of housing, which is a key reason why many people lose their tenancy and become homeless. To fix the unaffordability of housing, the Government needs to reform Right to Buy so that councils can build more genuinely affordable homes, by allowing councils to keep 100 per cent of receipts from homes sold to reinvest in housing delivery.

To meet the Government’s aspirations for the build out of new homes to help deliver 300,000 new homes per year, the Government needs to provide councils with the tools to encourage and oblige developers to build out sites with permission in a swift and timely manner.