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Planning and housing charity, the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) is setting out an 'agenda for action' on 'developing in a downturn' and 'planning for the upturn'.
The TCPA is calling for councils and housing associations to join forces to act as planner-developers to deliver homes in the recession.
TCPA Chief Executive Gideon Amos OBE said: "We must acknowledge that the old model of housebuilding is broken. The reality is that people delivering development now will be in the public or voluntary sector. We need to relearn the skills to deliver large-scale development via the public sector but for key projects we also need to put in place infrastructure funding to make housing schemes viable - with land values halved these sums will not often be coming from landowners or developers - at least for the immediate future. Failing to provide infrastructure and meet sustainability standards would be failing the future generations whose tax revenues we are already putting into development."
The Association has launched its agenda in response to a housing starts fall of 58% in the last quarter of 2008 and a reduction in the number of planning applications of around a fifth in the third quarter of the same year, compared to 2007.
Mr Amos added: "The statistics obscure the underlying eagerness of people to acquire a decent and affordable home. We always knew that achieving the homes the nation needs would be challenging, the recession makes it more challenging still but pretending the underlying projections don’t exist would be a form of self delusion. In this recession our focus should be on securing quality and sustainability in the
homes we can and should build. The figures for housing projections will continue to speak for themselves and for the reality of a still growing population."
The TCPA's agenda for action is a draft discussion document which will explored further at the TCPA's roundtable series 'Planning for the Upturn/Developing in a Downturn'. The first series of roundtable events are taking place in Bristol on the 14 May, London on the 4 June and Birmingham on the 30 June.
(CD/JM)
