Report recommends more proactive role for councils in housing delivery

The government announced an independent review into the role that councils can play in supporting housing supply in its 2013 Autumn Statement, and appointed Natalie Elphicke, the chair of housing initiative Million Homes, Million Lives, and Keith House, board member of the Homes and Communities Agency to lead the review in January 2014.

The final Elphicke-House report (74-page / 4.7 MB PDF), published yesterday, said councils should "take responsibility for making development happen in their area rather than purely assessing housing need and determining planning permission". It recommended a series of measures that council be taken by councils and the government to help boost the housing supply.

The report recommended closer co-operation between councils and local developers and businesses, with a particular focus on how smaller housing businesses could be supported, through land, finance, training and collaboration. It called for councils to take a particularly proactive role in identifying smaller sites suitable for custom build and local builders and to consider whether their own assets could be brought forward for redevelopment.

The report also recommended that councils engaged with local communities more regularly, ensuring that they were aware of the local housing need and providing support for neighbourhood planning. It called for the government to consider issuing guidance to councils on making housing assessments more transparent and easily accessible to residents.

A number of recommendations were made relating to financing development. The authors called for the government to establish an independent housing and finance institute to help councils and their partners to access finance and investment. Councils should consider private finance options for supporting housing delivery, the report said, and councillors responsible for pension funds should consider investing local pension funds in local housing and social infrastructure.

The report recommended that the government should consider making any future housing revenue account (HRA) borrowing programme more flexible, enabling councils to borrow more. It advised the government to publicise the fact that homes could be built outside the HRA, to increase the number of homes that all councils could build outside HRA to 200 units and to simplify the process of building outside the HRA.