Dorset Council UK has been urged to help tackle ‘taxes on development’ rather than take ‘viability’ out of the equation for development.

A meeting of the full council will tonight  (OCTOBER 22) consider a motion to lobby the government for changes to national policy and guidance on viability.

It wants the well-established principle and material planning consideration of considering development ‘viability’ with any proposal for development subject to on or off-site infrastructure and other financial contributions to be set aside in response to a perceived trail of developers asking for scheme viability to be reviewed.

Instead, the Council consider that such conversations should not be welcomed or entertained and instead developers should be held to the provisions in the Dorset Plan and emerging Dorset Local Plan; most significantly to deliver the maximum target percentage of affordable housing.

The council claims that this would fundamentally allow it to secure more affordable housing from open market developments.

However, KPPC Planning Director Adam Bennett has pointed out that reducing myriad costs on development should be the starting point and would improve the viability of schemes and actually allow more affordable homes to be delivered in a sustainable and realistic way, rather than simply preventing development from coming forwards at all.

He said: “National policy as set out within the ‘national decision-making policies’ of the NPPF at Policy DM5, is clear that viability is, and remains, a material consideration and there may be circumstances where a viability assessment demonstrates that it is not possible for development to proceed on a policy compliant basis.

“The direction however is that proposals should make the maximum possible contribution to affordable housing and other infrastructure, whilst still allowing the development to ‘viably’ proceed.

“The Council are right to be concerned that the difficulties presented by the current market, build costs, land values and other associated costs of development are making it harder and harder for development to deliver the ‘target’ percentages of affordable housing set out within Local Development Plans.

“This is a broader problem with the housing market and the costs of delivering development for developers of all scale, not least SMEs.

“However, affordable housing figures are, as noted, ‘targets’. They are not rigid requirements.

“When considering the level of affordable housing to be provided by a development it is necessary to take account of material considerations, and development viability is one of these material considerations.

“In order for affordable housing to be delivered, outside of dedicated exceptions sites, housing needs to be delivered as a starting point.

“For housing to be delivered, it needs to be viable for it to be delivered. The introduction of additional costs on development such as nutrient neutrality, biodiversity net gain, CIL and other specific mitigation and contributions that cannot be reasonably tested or questioned through development viability means the buck stops with reducing Section 106 contributions and affordable housing.

“Education and highways contributions are often the first to go by the wayside, but then next on the block is affordable housing. Many of the Section 106 contributions which the Council require for monitoring aspects of the development take precedence over the affordable housing and this gets supressed further still.

“The starting point to help developers to deliver a greater percentage of developments as affordable housing would be to get a better handle on all of these additional unavoidable costs.

“To remove what are effectively ‘taxes on development’ and to put the focus back on actually delivering the housing itself, alongside proportional, and necessary infrastructure.”

The council’s full motion, proposed by Cllr Spencer Flower, is:

“THAT the administration will commit to lobbying Government for changes to the viability provisions set out in national policy so that this council is able to comply with its own polices as set out the Dorset Plan and the emerging Dorset Local Plan.

“THAT the Leader of Council will write to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government setting out these concerns, seeking changes to national guidance on the matter of viability. Furthermore, in doing so he will seek cross-party support from other Group Leaders to be co-signatories to the letter. “

The Dorset Local Plan which is scheduled for adoption in 2029 has housing targets for the Dorset Council area of 3,246 homes per annum, totalling in the order of 50,000 new homes during the lifetime of the plan.

Site allocations for affordable housing at circa 30% would provide 15,000 homes.

• We will keep you updated about the decision.