Planners condemn 'knee-jerk' NHPAU advice

The new government-funded National Housing and Advice Unit (NHPAU) has come under fire from the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) following the publication of initial NHPAU research.

The RTPI has said that it agrees that the need for new housing is paramount, but criticised the suggest that resolution was a simple case of releasing more land.

Factors such as the skills and capacity of the building industry as well as the internal policies of mortgage lenders also need to be considered, the RTPI has suggested.

"We fully concur with the desperate need for housing to be more affordable but we are dismayed that, in the first utterance of this supposed independent body, it appears to put forward the simple knee jerk reaction that planning needs to release more land," commented RTPI director of policy and research Kelvin MacDonald.

"This issue is much more complex than such rhetoric assumes and it demands a more sophisticated analysis than the new unit appears to be engaged in," Mr MacDonald added.

NHPAU chair Stephen Nickell said yesterday that government plant to build 190,000 new homes a year fell far short of targets needed to resolve the supply problem.


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