London has 289,000 potential homes with planning permission that have not yet been built. Do we really need a "presumption in favour of developers building whatever they like" on brownfield, or do we need a capital grant top up for stalled sites to boost Social and Affordable?

The government is introducing new Permitted Development Rights to make it even easier to convert office blocks etc., in the hope this may put a dent in England's homeownership crisis. It won't. Since 2013, PDR has created 100,000 homes. Very few have ended up in homeownership.

The problem with brownfield development is NOT slow planning. The problem is profitability - it costs more to remediate & develop, so developers prefer fresh greenfield sites. The only way Gove's policy can possibly work is by cutting #AffordableHousing etc. from brownfield.

The high-density brownfield development model is very different to the way volume housebuilders build homes on greenfield sites. Here’s a brief explanation of it from March last year builtplace.com/market-comme...

2/3rds of £4.2bn UK Housing Infrastructure Fund unspent despite homes crisis: “It has been killed by the economy and ridiculous business case requirements". A perfect example of UK government's talent for preventing money pledged from ever being spent. www.ft.com/content/1977...

Great to see new #SocialHousing supply tick up in the latest stats - but England is still losing around 4k more social homes each year than we build. Things are now getting worse slightly less quickly than they were.

Excited to talk about planning reform with a brilliant panel at tomorrow's #housingconference - no, I really am! How can the system deliver more #AffordableHousing? How can we improve Section 106? How can we build sustainable places - not just units?