Legal News

The Royal Borough of Greenwich is to force housing developers to supply a “fully public” viability study for planning applications which do not meet the council's affordable housing target.

Social housing publisher 24Dash.com reports that Greenwich requires developers to include at least 35% of affordable homes in new residential developments comprising more than ten new homes.

Viability studies are currently confidential and are assessed by an independent expert on behalf of the council, who makes recommendations to the council planning board as part of the overall report regarding a planning application.

Greenwich borough is to introduce new criteria for information that should be included with a planning application. A full public consultation will then take place as part of the planning application.

The proposed policy on viability studies is contained in a list of 39 proposed new locally set criteria which some planning applications may have to meet, depending on factors such as size and the nature of the development.

Greenwich Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Transport, Councillor Danny Thorpe, said:

“This is about transparency for local people. At the moment our hands are tied on affordable housing levels if the viability study shows a development won’t work financially with the levels of affordable housing we want.

“This will now allow the whole process to be far more transparent – making the viability studies publicly available as part of the planning documents means the Royal Borough and residents alike can see precisely why a developer might claim they cannot meet our affordable housing targets.

“We believe we’re the first local authority in the country to be doing this – looking at policy which insists on these studies being in the public domain.

“We now want to hear what people think about this policy, so please do give us your views”.

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