Affordable housing target for Birmingham developments set to be slashed

Birmingham City Council has said the aim of the new policy is to set "honest, transparent and realistic targets"

Birmingham City Council has insisted it is not ‘watering down the need for affordable housing’ despite plans to slash a key target for developers. The council’s current local plan has a target of 35 per cent affordable housing on all schemes over 15 homes.

But a spokesperson for the local authority recently admitted that “it is often not financially viable” for a developer to reach this. In fact, several projects in the past year have been given the green light despite falling short.

The council has confirmed this month however that its new policy is set to provide a target of 20 to 25 per cent for brownfield sites. “The aim of the new policy is not to water down the need for affordable housing but to set honest, transparent and realistic targets,” a council spokesperson said.

READ MORE: Five major Birmingham projects that fell short of affordable homes target

“The current policy requires 35 per cent affordable housing on all schemes over 15 homes, but very few schemes have delivered this based on financial viability constraints, which the council are required to consider when making planning decisions". They also said the change in policy was about “pushing for delivery on sites and in schemes, avoiding extensive viability negotiation”.

They continued that the city council had recently concluded a formal consultation on the Local Plan, in which it received 175 individual responses. The plan will shape how the whole of the city area will develop up to 2042 and help “provide certainty” on future planning decisions.

“We consulted on a new affordable housing policy which changed the requirement of affordable housing, reflecting the difference in home values and land values across the city,” the council spokesperson said. “All Local Plan policies are required to be based on evidence and the new draft policy is aligned with independent viability evidence.”

The final version of the Birmingham Local Plan is set to be published in early 2025 and subject to further consultation before its adoption, possibly in autumn/winter 2026. The council's comments come in the same month that a protest took place in Smallbrook Queensway, with campaign groups claiming the local authority continued to grant permission to developers to demolish buildings to build “luxury apartments”.

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“This is damaging our environment and not helping the thousands of Brummies who are homeless or stuck on our waiting lists,” they added. A sign at the protest read: "People and planet before profit."

Birmingham City Council (BCC) has previously acknowledged that the demand for homes in Brum was at an unprecedented high.

“The surge in demand for housing is driven by several factors, including the cost-of-living crisis, as well as rises in rents making the private rented sector unaffordable for many," a spokesperson said recently. “BCC fully recognises the need for more affordable homes and is pursuing every avenue to produce more.

"We will work with private developers to find new and innovative ways to produce affordable homes, and we are lobbying the government to agree on a fairer funding settlement to build new council homes and to reform the right to buy". Along with several other councils, BCC were also involved in a report, published this summer, which set out a ten year plan to "secure England’s council homes for generations to come."

"Our solutions offer the new government an opportunity to turn this around - lifting the council homes we have up to modern, safe, healthy and green standards, and delivering the thousands more council homes that our country urgently needs," Cllr Kieron Williams, leader of Southwark Council, wrote in the report. Their recommendations to the government include announcing a Green and Decent Homes Programme and funding the completion of new council homes.

A BCC spokesperson added this week: “During the Local Plan formal consultation, the government have launched consultation on a new National Planning Policy Framework with new arrangements for transitioning into a new plan making system. Birmingham Local Plan would be impacted by the transition arrangements and are currently considering the impact of those on the next steps for the plan.”

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