Community Planning: Housing in the UK
  • introduction
  • planning policy
  • housing policy
  • resources
  • suggestions

houses

Sustainable new communities
Award winning urban extension with 1,000 new homes masterplanned using a collaborative process involving all stakeholders. See ‘Upton Urban Extension’ in Projects AZ. Photocredit: The Prince’s Foundation, 2008

Introduction

This section provides links to resources of special relevance to those wanting to help local communities engage in the main housing challenges facing the UK.

These are:
  • Where and how to build a large amount of new housing to cater for growing demand. An additional 240,000 new homes each year are planned – approximately 2 million by 2016, 3 million by 2020.

  • How to make new and existing neighbourhoods more sustainable, so reducing energy demands and helping combat climate change.

In this section you will find information on how planning for housing works in the UK and how individuals and communities can get involved. You will also find links to a range of tools and information sources on this website and elsewhere.

Can’t find what you want? Suggestions for improvement? Any comments? Please use the Housing UK submission form or see Contact us.

It is important that people are equipped with the evidence about local housing pressures, demand, and supply and to know the processes that shape decisions on housing locally. Information on local housing pressures is available at www.communities.gov.uk/









Much of the material on communityplanning.net will be useful to those concerned with involving local communities in housing. Explore for yourself using the menus on the left.

For those in a hurry, here are some direct links to material most likely to be useful. On this site:


and other sites:

On CLG and other UK Government Websites


The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)
www.communities.gov.uk/corporate/
The most relevant English government department which deals with both planning and housing.

Government housing guidance
www.communities.gov.uk/housing/about/guidanceforpublic/
Guidance for homeowners, tenants and landlords. Quick links to useful information produced by the government.

Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government (IDeA)
www.idea.gov.uk/idk/
Good practice on housing and on planning for housing

Local Housing Pressures Toolkit
www.communities.gov.uk/housing/
Empowering local communities in decisions about housing - information on local housing pressures. Some of the most useful or popular data, presented by type and other variables. These information sources provide an indication of local housing pressures, to enable a community to reach its own views on the challenge its local area faces.

The National Housing and Planning Advisory Unit
www.communities.gov.uk/
Set up to help make market housing more affordable

Planning Advisory Service (PAS).
www.pas.gov.uk/pas/
Good practice on housing and on planning for housing

The Planning Portal
www.planningportal.gov.uk/
Planning and building regulations resource for England and Wales. Use this site to learn about planning and building regulations; and use the links to apply for planning permission, find out about development near you, appeal against a decision and research government policy.



On other sites

Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH)
www.cih.org/
Professional body for people involved in housing and communities.

National Housing Federation
www.housing.org.uk/
fRepresents 1,300 not-for-profit housing associations in England.

Shelter
england.shelter.org.uk/
Information and advice on housing and homelessness

Town and Country Planning Association
www.tcpa.org.uk
Campaign group for reforming the planning system. Useful publications.



Key publicationss


The UK Government key policies for housing in England are set out in the 2007 Housing Green Paper - Homes for the future: more affordable, more sustainable -

and its policies on planning for housing are in the 2006 Planning Policy Statement 3 on Housing

Its overall plans for sustainable growth were published in 2003 in Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future – the sustainable communities plan. 

A wide range of statistics on English housing can be found both on the DCLG website and in the annual UK Housing Review produced by Prof. Steve Wilcox.




Do you have anysuggestions on how the Housing UK section could be improved or any specific detail that you think should be included?




clgThanks; This section of the website and much of the material  linked from it has been funded by Communities and Local Government as part of an initiative to provide a toolkit on community involvement in housing provision and improvement.


Housing UK
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Last updated on: 01 January 2009