21 September 2017
Green Party councillors are calling on Norwich City Council to get tough on housing developers who try to avoid providing affordable homes.
According to council policy, developers should be providing 33% affordable housing on sites of 10 new homes or more. However, they can avoid this obligation if they submit a financial viability assessment showing that it would not allow them to make a “reasonable profit”. These viability assessments are typically not made available to the public or even to the council’s planning committee.
Data provided by the city council shows that from 2013-2016 there were 905 new homes in developments where the affordable housing policy should have applied. This should have resulted in 299 affordable homes – but only 31 were delivered. The Greens estimate that this equates to a loss of between £18 million and £32 million pounds’ worth of affordable housing.
In a motion which will be put to the council on Tuesday 26th September, Green councillor Tim Jones is calling for viability assessments to be made public as part of the planning consultation process. The motion also calls for a definition of “reasonable profit”, which the Greens suggest capping at 15%.
Councillor Jones said: “It is a scandal that Norwich is losing out on much-needed affordable housing because developers are getting away with avoiding their obligations.
“The council needs to get much tougher and enforce its own policies on affordable homes. It can be hard for overstretched planning departments to stand up to well-resourced developers, and that’s one reason why public scrutiny of these documents is so important.
“It was thanks to independent advice sought by Green councillors that the council was able to challenge the recent St Peter’s Church housing application, where the applicant had offered a tiny contribution to affordable housing. We hope to see that level of robust scrutiny become the norm.”
Full text of motion (This is as proposed. It was then amended by Labour before being approved. The approved text can be found on the council website):
Motion – Affordable housing and viability assessments
Councillor Jones (T) to move and Councillor Jackson to second:
” Norwich is losing out on affordable housing due to developers producing viability assessments that allow them to avoid affordable housing obligations.
Details of 15 major housing developments approved between 2013-2016 show that of the 299 affordable homes developers should have supplied if all had complied with the 33% requirement set out in the Joint Core Strategy, only 39 were delivered. Based on a cost per unit of between £70,000 and £120,000, this approach has lost Norwich between £18.7 million and £32.6 million worth of affordable housing provision.
Council resolves to:
(1) seek that the existing policy of requiring at least 33% affordable housing in developments of more than 10 houses is upheld or bettered within the Greater Norwich Local Plan.
(2) note the planning application committee’s recent refusal of planning permission for St Peter’s Church on Park Lane, due to scrutiny of their viability assessment by an outside expert, as the precursor to a new, more rigorous approach to holding developers responsible for meeting the council’s affordable housing targets.
(3) ask cabinet to:
(a) Make viability assessments publicly accessible online and therefore open to public scrutiny throughout the planning consultation process, following the example of councils including Greenwich, Islington, Lambeth and Bristol.
(b) Introduce a policy of requiring external, independent scrutiny of all viability assessments by default, to replace the current procedure of subjecting a viability assessment to independent assessment only when the council ‘considers it necessary’ (as set out in the council’s Affordable Housing Supplementary Planning Document 2015).
(c) Clarify in the forthcoming revised Affordable Housing Supplementary Planning Document what specifically is meant by ‘reasonable profit’ for a developer, by stipulating a maximum profit level (such as 15%) that recognises developers’ financial constraints while also demonstrating the council’s refusal to allow developers to profit at the expense of much-needed affordable housing.
