Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill: Second Reading

The introduction of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill represents an opportunity to change the rules around land and planning to ensure that the needs of communities are truly met by new development – including ensuring the delivery of much needed social housing. The current system of development results in the needs of communities often being forgotten or ignored when they should be front and centre of any plan to level up the country. We need a planning system and a land market that has delivering the infrastructure and social homes communities need at its heart.

To do this, the Levelling Up Bill must ensure that the proposed Infrastructure Levy delivers more social housing than the current Section 106 system, which currently fails to hold developers to their obligations.

If the Infrastructure Levy and Affordable Homes Programme are to achieve their stated ambitions, the Bill must also make the price of land more realistic. The astronomical cost of land that landowners can currently demand often makes social housebuilding and providing infrastructure unviable for councils and developers alike. By reforming the 1961 Land Compensation Act to remove ‘hope value’, the Levelling Up Bill can make the price of land more realistic so we can build the social homes, facilities, and infrastructure that communities are in desperate need of.