TALK | Affordable Housing and the planning system: From Margaret Thatcher to James Murray

Section 106 is an agreement between developers and planning authorities that the developer will fund something in the public good as a result of being given planning permission. This might be new public space, local improvements, highways or affordable housing. Colin Wilson, Alex Lifschutz (Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands) and Simon Harding Roots (Grosvenor) discuss its effectiveness as a way of delivering affordable housing, but also how it slow downs the delivery of housing more generally. 

Are private developers incentivised to deliver affordable housing, does its imposition drive up the cost of private for sale housing and drive down build and design quality of housing more generally? Could you design a system for the delivery of affordable housing that was any less transparent and as difficult for any one to follow and what is the consequent reputational damage inflicted on local authorities and developers alike?

Where does S106 affordable sit within a wider context such as Right to Buy, local authority borrowing caps, home ownership, Housing Associations using a taxpayer-owned asset base to drive up the land market, while the Green Belt remains largely brown.