Communities win right to build without planning permission, but plans need 80%+ support

Local communities are to be given a right to build shops, businesses and facilities as well as new homes, Housing Minister Grant Shapps has said.

However, the proposals are expected to require the support of at least 80% of the community if they are to avoid the need for an application for planning permission.

The Department for Communities and Local Government said the new Community Right to Build “will shift power from government to communities to allow local people to deliver homes and development that they really want, without being told that their own expansion doesn’t fit with their local council’s plans and should not go ahead”.

A DCLG e-leaflet said a community organisation would be allowed to go ahead without the need for an application for planning permission if:

• there is overwhelming community support for the development, and
• minimum criteria are met.

The Community Right to Build will also be restricted in that it will not be able to be used to expand the size of a community by more than 10% over a ten-year period. Any surplus made from the sale or renting of homes will be required to be recycled for the benefit of the community, the DCLG said.

A DCLG spokesman told Local Government Lawyer that a significant majority of the community – “probably about 80-90%” – would have to agree to the proposals. He added that the idea would be to carry the community with the plans from the start.

He said the minimum criteria were yet to be decided, but the government was trying to create a framework that “would allow communities to deliver the developments they want quickly and with the minimum bureaucracy”.

In a statement, Shapps rejected the suggestion that Nimbyism would prevail, arguing that “up and down the country there are entire communities willing and eager to give the go-ahead for new developments in their area. The countryside must be a vibrant place to live, and cannot be allowed to become a museum”.

He added: “I want to give communities the power to preserve their villages, which are currently struggling to survive because of a shortage of affordable homes.”

The minister suggested that the new right to build could provide the answer to younger people being forced to move away from their communities.

The proposals will be contained in the Localism Bill.