By Ethan Davies

The new Labour government has been in office for around a month — and in its first few weeks it's made a series of major policy announcements on energy, transport, and public finances.

Perhaps its largest reform was unveiled by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner earlier this week, as the Ashton-under-Lyne MP — who is also the housing minister — revealed sweeping changes to the planning system on Wednesday (30 July).

Whilst the reforms won't mean the model of how someone bids for and obtains planning permission changes, it will mean the method by which planning decisions are reached changes.

That's been done through a review of building on green belt land, which now means councils can be forced to start building on the green belt if they have not 'met its identified need for housing, commercial, or other development through other means' – i.e. building on brownfield land.

The reforms also include alterations to the Right to Buy scheme and 'Golden Rules' for New Towns the government hopes to pop up across Britain.

But the most immediate shake-up was a return of mandatory local housing targets — which were previously advisory. It means officials in Whitehall are telling councils how many homes should be built in their borough every year.

Stockport Councol recently unveiled its plans for 4,000 new homes as part of its Town Centre East project (Image - Stockport MDC)

"Today marks a significant step to getting Britain building again," Ms Rayner told the Commons. "Our decisive reforms to the planning system correct the errors of the past and set us on our way to tackling the housing crisis, delivering 1.5 million homes for those who really need them."

The new targets are not just mandatory – they've also been revised upwards under a new formula.

Greater Manchester is subject to the same revised targets as everywhere else, even though there have been pockets of intense development in parts of the region over the last decade, such as Manchester city centre. And the new targets are also higher, in most cases, than those set by Greater Manchester's Places For Everyone plan (PfE).

PfE is Greater Manchester's development blueprint. It sets out how many homes are expected to be built — and where they should go within each borough with a series of 'allocations'. Each allocation is location-specific, but building homes under PfE is not just confined to allocated zones – smaller pockets of development are expected to take place across every borough too.

As it's a Greater Manchester-wide plan, it's meant that some areas are taking on more housebuilding — like Salford and Manchester — in order to spare green belt land in more rural areas. It was formally adopted in March.

Manchester city centre (Image - Alasdair Perry)

But getting to that point has not been easy. It was first discussed in 2014, before Andy Burnham was elected mayor, and led to years of wrangling between politicians and residents.

In late 2020, Stockport dropped out of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework — as it was called first — so a 'plan of nine' went ahead, which was called Places for Everyone. Even now it's been adopted by each of the nine councils, it's still subject to a judicial review from campaigners.

For the moment, officials in the mayor's office are said to believe PfE won't need alterations until its next review, in five years' time. It's thought Greater Manchester might be in a more advantageous position than other areas of England, as other Combined Authority areas like the Liverpool City Region could be asked to draw up their own version of PfE.

If that were to happen, it means Greater Manchester would have effectively gained a head-start on dividing up land to be built on. But at the same time, Angela Rayner's new reforms, which make it easier to build on the green belt are now up for public consultation – so the question remains how much of Greater Manchester's green belt might be built on.

PfE has a brownfield-first approach, i.e. encouraging developers to use parcels of land which were formerly industrial or commercial sites, before setting their sights on the green belt. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) also administers a £150 million brownfield housing fund, which gives loans to developers to kick-start projects.

That being said, the mechanism the GMCA uses to help get development off the ground also highlights one issue with Ms Rayner's targets. While they have been set centrally and there is a desire from politicians of every party to build more homes, they require private developers to come in and take on the schemes.

That means council officials may have to work more closely with developers to encourage them to invest in their part of the world in order to hit the new targets, or it could mean more planning permissions are given by committees.

Councils across Greater Manchester may have to work more closely with developers (Image - Alasdair Perry)

They are among the many unanswered questions the Deputy Prime Minister's reforms produce – others include whether meeting these targets depends on increasing density at existing PfE sites or finding more locations for development alongside PfE allocations.

One certainty the reforms have created is about the top-line goals. The headline figure for Greater Manchester is that it needs to build 17,705 more homes by 2029 than first planned. PfE and Stockport's own local plan aimed to construct 11,402 homes annually between 2025 and 2030 — and the new Rayner targets set this at 14,943 by the next General Election, which can't be later than 2029.

With 3,541 more homes now promised for the city-region every year for the foreseeable future, we examined what's already hoped for under Greater Manchester's existing PfE plan – and how those targets have changed under Angela Rayner.

It should be noted that both the numbers included in Manchester's existing PfE plan and Ms Rayner's revised figures are targets – and hitting those will depend on developers being found and planning permission being secured in each case.

Stockport spectacularly pulled out of PfE in late 2020 because of Conservative fears smaller areas like Heald Green, Bredbury, and Romiley, would have had to "bear the brunt of mass development".

That meant it had to pursue its own local plan — with the old government formula requiring it to build 1,097 homes every year. It now has to construct 1,906.

It has yet to adopt its own local plan, as it unveiled a draft in early July — just two weeks before Angela Rayner's reforms were announced. It may need to go back to the drawing board to accommodate the extra 809 homes demanded by the new government target.

~

To get our top stories in your inbox each week, subscribe to our free weekly newsletter HERE.

Please consider following Stockport Nub News on Facebook or Twitter