We held an open meeting on 8th February 2023 to discuss proposed government reforms to national planning policy – immediately after the business part of our Annual General Meeting.

Jonathan Moberly (a social housing resident from Tower Hamlets) and Michael Edwards (UCL Academic and a member of Just Space) joined us to provide short presentations on the proposed changes. This was followed by a question and answer session with attendees.

The deadline for responding to the consultation is 2nd March 2023. Responses to the consultation can be made via an online survey or by email

There are a possible 58 questions to respond to.

LTF has selected 12 that best fit with the issues tenants raised at our February meeting. These issues include;

• the general problem of setting an overall housing target (like the 300,000 homes) rather than setting specific targets for different tenures that might genuinely meet needs in localities
• the proposed removal of the requirement for plans to be ‘justified’ – with evidence of community participation and for them to be the most appropriate strategy when considered against reasonable alternatives
• uplift of housing targets in urban areas – where we have made suggestions around the need for government to invest in social housing and to include a presumption in planning policy against demolition and for the refurbishment of homes (rather than higher delivery of market housing)
• to attach more importance to social rent
• building beautiful?
• national development management policies

Link here to the LTF response to the consultation.

Tenants groups and others are very welcome to use our response as a basis for their own.