This week sees two significant dates that will affect planning and housebuilding in England for at least the next two years.

Today, the Comprehensive Spending Review set out the future for government and local government expenditure for the term of this Parliament.

And on Friday, CALA Group’s challenge to the government’s decision to revoke all regional spatial strategies is due in the High Court.

The CALA challenge will be one to watch with interest.

If it is successful, approved regional spatial strategies, covering every English region except the South West, will resume their place as part of the development plan for determining planning applications and appeals. At least for a while.

The Localism Bill is due in Parliament before the end of the year and its passage into statute in due course will finally wipe away all vestiges of the regional strategies.

CALA’s challenge will only delay the inevitable, but it could provide an interesting further twist in the deeply confusing state of planning policy across the country.

More lasting will be the effects of the spending review. Reports already indicate a 50% cut in the level of expenditure on affordable housing provision.

I suppose in some ways we should be grateful for any expenditure at all in the current economic climate.  The Homes and Communities Agency has survived the ‘cull of the quangos’, so the vehicles for affordable housing delivery survive at least.

One day we will be able to afford to do more and hopefully those bodies will be in place when the money is available in greater quantities.

But local government is in for a torrid time.  Whatever the size of the local government settlement – and it’s likely to be tight – the emerging planning policy will still further affect what each local authority receives.

Slowly but surely, more details on the New Homes Bonus to encourage councils to build, are starting to emerge in hints and comments from Grant Shapps and his colleagues.

It will come from existing budgets, meaning that councils will lose out for every one that benefits.

It won’t apply to all new homes – it’ll reward net additions.  In other words, redevelop an existing estate and you’ll only receive the bonus for the extra homes created.  Develop a green field (or redevelop an industrial site) and you’ll receive the bonus for every home.

And more importantly, it’ll be one of the very few ways in which local authorities can gain extra funding.  Those local authorities that don’t deliver new homes (or who are unable to) will lose out significantly, especially if enough other authorities take up the opportunity with alacrity.

It remains to be seen whether local communities rise to the bait or whether it will take several years of declining services before the penny drops that they can help themselves by planning more homes.  But I have no doubt that this will bring a significant change to the thought processes behind housing allocations.  It will matter to District and Borough Treasurers throughout the land.  The Government must hope that it affects enough local planning authorities quickly enough to aid housing delivery this side of the next General Election.

What’s interesting is that, quietly for now, the government is starting to describe the ‘stick’ that will add to the financial ‘carrot’.  The presumption in favour of sustainable development could pose a major challenge to those authorities that don’t plan adequate levels of housing.

I believe it will go something like this: if the authority doesn’t assess its housing needs properly, or if it plans to release too little housing to meet those needs, it is unlikely to be able to adopt its new-style Local Plan.

The Secretary of State or his Inspector won’t be able toenforce a different answer: they’ll just prevent the inadequate plan from being adopted.

Meanwhile, those authorities that don’t have a new-style plan on the stocks in time to meet whatever deadline is set by the Government will find itself unable to resist proposed housing developments provided the developer can demonstrate that the proposal represents sustainable development.

None of this should come as a surprise.  For those who took the time to read it, the Conservative Party’s Green Paper on Planning – “Open Source Planning” of February 2010 – set this agenda out fairly clearly.

We may not have believed it at first, but the Green Paper is the clearest evidence we have of what’s coming in the CSR, the Bill and the future of planning.

___

Ian Tant is senior partner at planning consultancy Barton Willmore

• Pickles gives councils £55m planning grant
• Blog: We can’t let “big society” stop development
• Blog: Regional planning will crash and burn
• Shapps letter urges councils to build
• Blog: Quit playing politics with planning, Pickles