Petition urging lower housing target launched by councillor

A petition calling for the government to reduce its housebuilding target has been launched by an East Devon councillor. Peter Faithfull, (iIndependent, Ottery St Mary) claims building 300,000 new homes a year in the life of this parliament – or 1.5 million in total – needs to be reduced by a third.

A petition calling for the government to reduce its housebuilding target has been launched by an East Devon councillor.
Peter Faithfull, (iIndependent, Ottery St Mary) claims building 300,000 new homes a year in the life of this parliament – or 1.5 million in total – needs to be reduced by a third.
He is recommending a target of 200,000 new homes nationally per year for the current government’s five-year term, which he believes would reduce pressure on local councils’ planning decisions.
The target was also 300,000 homes a year under the last Conservative government. In 2021-22 and 2022-23 new housebuilding was just short of 235,000 each year.
Cllr Faithfull’s petition, on the parliament.uk website, says the current target is unachievable.
“[We should] lower national homebuilding targets to an achievable level for local councils, builders and infrastructure providers, rather than what we think are arbitrary numbers,” his petition states.
“We think changes in housing targets need to be in small, workable increments.
“Many local councils are very aware of the need for social and affordable housing. We think current targets are not achievable under the current planning system.”
Cllr Faithfull, who sits on East Devon District Council, added that existing targets gave developers “too much control of housing provision but fail to deliver the houses needed”.
“We think we do not have the labour force nor the material provision to deliver the housing targets put forward in the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF),” he said.
“We think the present targets will not deliver the number of houses and leave local councils without any meaningful control.”
Cllr Faithfull said he had the support of the CPRE, also known as The Countryside Charity, which aims to protect rural areas and argues for sustainable development within them.
At present, the survey has 157 signatures. It needs to get to 10,000 to garner a response from the government, and 100,000 for it to be considered for debate in parliament.
Cllr Faithfull does not believe his petition presents a conflict of interest with  his position on the council’s planning committee, and he has disclosed his petition to the committee.
East Devon, like many other councils, is required to show that it has a five-year housing land supply – essentially that it has enough deliverable development sites for it to hit its housing quota.
This can put pressure on planning committees to pass applications they might rather refuse.
This pressure is referred to as the ‘tilted balance’ in planning terms, meaning the need for a council to hit its targets can be more important than potential issues with applications.
In March last year, a housing update from the council showed an average annual completion rate of new homes (including care home) of 918 between 2013 and 2024.
That was below the 950 target in its local plan, which outlines broad planning objectives for the district, but above the local housing need (LHN) target of 893.
LHN is another way of measuring how well councils are doing to provide the number of new homes the government wants them to achieve.