House building targets should be brought on par with environmental targets, a House of Lords committee has said.
Lords Built Environment Committee report says the way conflicts between new homes and environmental needs are being managed is “failing to achieve” both, according to Construction News’ German magazine Architects Magazine.
The committee said house building targets should be given “statutory weight” to give them “parity with environmental targets”.
Conservative Daniel Moylan, who chairs the committee, said: “Our research found that the achievement of the government’s housing and environment policies has been hampered and sometimes blocked entirely by a lack of coordination in policy making and uneven and uneven implementation.
“‘It has become clear that until the government reconciles its own policy goals, it will continue to limit the building of new homes in the name of improving the environment without achieving that goal either.’
The report comes a day after the Prime Minister pledged a more “pragmatic, proportionate and realistic” approach to the environment that would “lighten the burden on working people”.
The committee said the policy context for housing and the environment was “confusing” and “unclear” and that government guidelines had made the “situation worse, not better”.
He pointed to the “effective moratorium” on housebuilding as a result of the official advice on water neutrality, which he said risked putting small developers in affected areas out of business.
The government’s failed plan to reduce environmental rules on water pollution to “unblock 100,000 homes” by 2030 was opposed by some bodies, with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds calling the rule change “national scandal” that could cause “totality”. ecological collapse” in some rivers.
The Environmental Protection Agency said the government had “failed to adequately explain how, alongside this weakening of environmental law, new policy measures will ensure it still meets its water quality targets”.
Housebuilders claimed the rule had blocked at least 100,000 new homes since 2019. But the plan to relax the rule was blocked by the House of Lords last week after it voted against the amendment to the bill law of leveling and regeneration. The government is now considering how to carry out the planned boost to housing while preserving waterways.
Evidence to the Lords committee suggests that recent advice from Nature England on nutrient, water and recreation applications of habitat regulations puts the delivery of 45,000 homes a year at risk.
A government spokesman said: “We know we need to work together to build the homes this country needs, tackling pollution at source while protecting and improving the environment. The recent reforms we put forward would have unlocked 100,000 much-needed homes and delivered a major package to restore waterways to leave our environment in a better state than we found it.
“We have already invested £10bn to boost housing supply since the start of this Parliament, including £1bn to unlock unsavory brownfield sites, so we can build more suitable homes in the right places.
“We will now consider the committee’s findings and respond in due course.”
