This year’s Queen’s Speech has today outlined several legislative changes and the overhauling of laws around levelling up, planning and economic crime that could affect conveyancers.
At the state opening of Parliament this morning, Prince Charles delivered the Queen’s speech as the monarch missed the opening for the first time in almost 60 years as she continues to experience “mobility problems”. Here are just some of the 38 areas of focus that will be relevant to those in the conveyancing industry.
Levelling up and Regeneration Bill
The planning system will be reformed to give residents more involvement in local development, and will be tackled via the Levelling up and Regeneration Bill which has the aim of “improving the planning system to give communities a louder voice, making sure developments are beautiful, green and accompanied by new infrastructure and affordable housing”.
The Government will be obliged to set “Levelling Up missions” and report back annually. A “County Deal” authority model allows local leaders to join up services. Councils will have stronger powers to revive empty premises and residents get more say over street name changes, while al fresco dining is to become permanent.
Neighbourhood planning will become strengthened and a digitised system introduced to make local plans easier to find, understand and engage with.
Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill
The aim of this proposed Bill is to strengthen anti-money laundering measures. The Bill is set to include the introduction of identity verification for people who manage, own and control companies and other UK registered entities.
Companies House will have more effective investigation and enforcement powers including better cross-checking of data with other public and private sector bodies, and businesses in the financial sector will be enabled in the sharing of information more effectively to prevent and detect economic crime.
Non-Domestic Rating Bill
Business rates will also be affected as this Bill aims to amend the business rates revaluation cycle from five to three years from 2023. The Bill will also Introduce new 12-month rates relief on increases to rateable value arising from improvements made to a property, and a new 100% rates relief for low carbon heat networks that are assessed as separate entities for business rates.
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill
A Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill is set to be introduced and will help tackle fake online reviews. The law would “update consumer law to prohibit commissioning fake reviews, offering to provide fake reviews, or hosting consumer reviews without taking reasonable steps to ensure reviews are genuine.”
Responding to the Queen’s Speech, Cllr James Jamieson, Chairman of the Local Government Association, said:
“To deliver on levelling up ambitions and ensure councils can deliver the right types of homes in the right places with appropriate infrastructure, a local, plan-led system is integral. It is good to see that any new Infrastructure Levy will be set at a local level, and we want to work with government to ensure that it is a success and can deliver more affordable housing and infrastructure contributions at a local authority level than the existing systems for developer contributions.
Empowering councils to bring vacant properties back into use is also an encouraging step. National permitted development rights, allowing conversion of offices, shops and restaurants into houses without the need to provide any affordable homes or infrastructure funding, also need to be removed so councils can ensure the right homes are built in the right places, and deliver on local ambitions to revive and reimagine our high streets and town centres.
As well as ensuring that existing homes are high quality, energy efficient and safe, building new, high-quality council homes has to be a national priority. This needs to include urgent reform of the Right to Buy scheme to allow councils to be able to keep 100 per cent of receipts from sales of homes and the ability to set discounts locally.
Councils and the LGA look forward to working with parliamentarians to shape the proposed legislation as this Bill is brought forward.”
James Forrester, Managing Director of property developer, StripeHomes, commented:
“Reforming and improving the slow and cumbersome planning process would be welcome if it were not for the fact that successive governments have had several stabs at doing so – usually via big punchy headlines that rarely come to fruition.
Remember Garden Towns and Garden Villages? In fact, the last reforms announced were swiftly jettisoned when rural Conservative MPs objected to the less democratic means proposed by Robert Jenrick, whereby towns could designate areas as ‘automatic consent areas’ that would not require the local authority to assess consent.
The graveyard of Westminster housing policy announcements is full to bursting with discarded headlines and the likelihood is that many of today’s will end up there as well.”
Paresh Raja, CEO, Market Financial Solutions commented:
“Let’s start with the obvious fact: the UK needs more housing, and fast. To achieve this, we need to make it easier to build more new homes and, crucially, also convert disused commercial properties into residential ones. Tabling the Planning Bill is a vital first step in hopefully addressing the red tape that prevents the delivery of new homes.”
Jonathan Allen, senior associate at Browne Jacobson, commented on Planning Reforms:
“In summary… underwhelming.
Despite fanfare on wholesale reform of the planning system, pushback from backbenchers means that most major proposals have either been removed entirely or lack detail to such a level as to be meaningless.
A prime example are the proposals on a national infrastructure levy. Beyond setting out that the levy will be ‘locally set’ and ‘non-negotiable’, there is no suggestion that the government has an answer to the difficult questions of how such a scheme would work in practice.
For example, how will a standardised levy make development viable in economically deprived or brownfield sites? How will it fairly assess the increased infrastructure needs of larger sites? Or the complicated needs of city centre developments? How will it secure affordable housing and local allocation rights? How will it deal with viability issues on stalled sites?
Everybody knows the s.106 process can be infuriatingly slow for developers, but the truth is that successive governments have failed to come up with a suitable alternative replacement. They don’t seem to have the answer yet.
At the same time, they have failed to deal with the fundamental issue of local planning authorities resourcing issues. Until this is addressed, the reality is timescales for decisions are only likely to go one way.”
Angus Walker, partner at law firm BDB Pitmans, commented:
“It is a ragbag of miscellaneous tweaks to the planning system, a far cry from the grand ambitions of the 2020 White Paper, from which only the infrastructure levy remains. And even the infrastructure levy looks like a pale imitation of the 2008 community infrastructure levy rather than a nationally-set rate based on a fixed proportion of development value. The headline-grabbing provision about street votes is simply an outline to be fleshed out later.”
David Mathias, planning partner at Shoosmiths, commented:
“The UK is facing a chronic shortage of new housing. Any aim to reform the planning system has to be seen through the lens of historic undersupply.
Today’s announcement could see the demise of Section 106 agreements as we know them. While not without its flaws, the existing system allows for flexibility and certainty of delivery, especially on non-financial planning obligations, such as those securing affordable housing delivery.
The new locally set, non-negotiable levy must enable swift decision making that offers flexibility and certainty if it is to succeed. Local authorities and their planning departments must also be provided with the resources to manage the levy and ensure that obligations are delivered.
We have to make sure the planning system is working efficiently – enabling local authorities and developers to bring forward the scale and mixed-tenures of housing the UK needs, with the accompanying infrastructure and community facilities that will truly level up those areas of the country that have fallen behind. Adding an additional level of scrutiny in the form of ‘street votes’ has the potential to run counter to the swift and effective decision making these reforms are aiming to facilitate.”
2 Responses
So Mr Gove blames “lack of democracy” as one of the key reasons why the public are disaffected by planning – where “distant inspectors” overrule local policies that have been drawn up. Are those the same Inspectors that are simply following government policy which blatantly overrides local policy in the ridiculous “tilted balance” approach which delivers mass housing in the wrong place. How democratic is it for a Planning Minister to do exactly the same thing?
Never mind all will be solved by giving objectors a vote on development proposals that clearly will deliver the housing and infrastructure required. That should work. Oh dear, just one more attempt to trash what was once the best planning system in the world on top of all the others in the last 12 years!
Currently appealing an Enforcement Notice after converting empty commercial building into a small home. Vacant for 30 years and many failed planning applications. Why are buildings allowed to fall into dereliction when we need houses?