Gove and Pennycook clash over planning policy

In its manifesto, the Conservative Party confirmed it would also abolish these ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules to “immediately” unlock the building of 100,000 new homes with local consent.

In August last year the government announced that it would remove the rules through amendments to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. However, these amendments were rejected by the House of Lords in September 2023.

Mr Gove questioned why Labour voted against a change that would have unlocked 100,000 new homes by changing the nutrient neutrality rules.

“We actually brought forward something that was a direct planning reform that would have unlocked new homes that Labour opposed,” he said.

Mr Gove also criticised Labour’s alleged planning reform for having a “nasty edge” because an unnamed Labour official was quoted in Politico’s London Playbook saying that the party would flatten the green belt to build more homes.

The anonymous full quote read: “I don’t care if we flatten the whole green belt, we just need more houses in this country.” Prime minister Rishi Sunak published this on X with the caption: “Good to finally get Labour’s real views on Britain’s green belt.” However, it was reported that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was not a Labour Party official who said it or his party’s policy.

Mr Gove also reiterated the Conservatives’ manifesto pledges to launch a new Help to Buy scheme and make permanent the increase to the threshold at which first-time buyers pay stamp duty, from £300,000 to £425,000, which it introduced in 2022.

He added that if elected again the Conservatives would build more homes, and said that one of the things that any government should do, and that his department has been doing, is using taxpayers’ money to have an “effective” Affordable Homes Programme.

Labour

Matthew Pennycook, Labour’s shadow minister for housing and planning, said that if elected, the party would want to “reverse the damaging changes to national planning policy that Michael Gove oversaw as secretary of state”.

He said this includes the abolition of mandatory housing targets that are seeing housebuilding rates “collapse across the country”.

Mr Pennycook said that Labour would reintroduce housebuilding targets and get the “planning system geared back once again to meeting demand and need in full”. The party has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes if elected, which equates to 300,000 homes a year during a five-year fixed term of parliament.

The shadow housing minister said that the party would look to introduce an “effective mechanism for strategic planning” across the country where local authorities can effectively come together and make decisions.

On housebuilding, he said that Labour would opt for a “strategic” release of green belt land and releasing more of the right types of green belt land – low-quality land which the party refers to as the ‘grey belt’.

“It will be for local authorities to release green belt land as and when they need to when they cannot meet their housing targets on the basis of brownfield previously used land alone,” Mr Pennycook said.

“The government have released, under Michael Gove, large tracts of the green belt, large swathes of it often in a very speculative manner, haphazard, chaotic. We are simply saying there’s a smarter way to do this.”

In its manifesto, Labour vowed to build “a new generation of new towns, inspired by the proud legacy of the 1945 Labour government”. It has the aim of making 40 per cent of these affordable housing.

When asked about the number of new towns Labour would build, Mr Pennycook said the party has not picked a number but if elected to power, in the first weeks of government it would appoint a taskforce to identify appropriate sites across the country.

He said this would feature independent experts and they would pick the appropriate number of sites and where to build this “large-scale growth”.

When quizzed on his party’s stance on Right to Buy, Mr Pennycook said Labour has been “very clear” that it wants to see an increase in affordable housing and as it drives to build more, has to stop the outflow of existing stock.

He said Labour would stop this outflow by slashing the Right to Buy discounts, reviewing those discounts, and then putting in place extra protections for newly built social homes.

“It’s absolutely scandalous that in large parts of the country, councils are building lovely new exemplary council homes and three, four, five years later they’re being sold off and then rented back to those authorities,” Mr Pennycook said. “We’ve advanced a pragmatic way that we can reduce the number being sold.”