Michael Gove: I will act against councils failing on housing

Councils in England which delay or block housing developments for no good reason will be named and shamed, the housing secretary has said.

Michael Gove said that in extreme cases councils could be stripped of their planning powers.

But he reassured local authorities they would not need to redraw the green belt to meet housing targets.

Labour said the government had "sent housebuilding into crisis" and couldn't be trusted to take the steps needed.

And the National Housing Federation said the proposals "will result in fewer homes".

In a speech in London, Mr Gove said the government would publish league tables revealing the performance of council planning authorities in approving developments.

He said there was now "no excuse" for any council not to have a plan in place for delivering the homes needed in their area.

Mr Gove highlighted seven councils - St Albans, Amber Valley, Ashfield, Medway, Uttlesford, Basildon and Castle Point - which he said had failed to submit a local plan for housing since 2004.

He gave them three months to come up with a timetable for a plan and said the government would consider further intervention if they failed to do so.

Mr Gove also told two other councils - Chorley and Fareham - that developers could bypass them and apply direct to the government's planning inspectorate for permission to build.

He was particularly critical of the Labour mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, saying the homes needed in the capital were "simply not being built".

Announcing a review of the city's housing plan, Mr Gove said the mayor's approach was "frustrating delivery".

A source close to Mr Khan accused the government of "desperate distraction tactics".

"The mayor will take no lessons from a government - and a housing minister in Michael Gove - that have such a shameful record and have repeatedly intervened to block the new housing the capital desperately needs," the source said.

• Annual housebuilding target not yet met

• What's happened to the government's housebuilding target?

Last year, the government said councils would get more flexibility over meeting centrally-set housing need targets, after a threatened rebellion by some Tory MPs.

Many of these MPs represent rural constituencies and have raised concerns about what they see as overdevelopment in their area.

Mr Gove described the move as a "sensitive adjustment in meeting targets - not their abandonment".

He also reassured councils they "need not redraw the green belt or sacrifice protected landscapes to meet housing numbers".

The housing secretary denied caving in to pressure from Tory MPs, adding: "There are perfectly reasonable reasons to resist development if it is unattractive, if it's unaccompanied by infrastructure, if it dramatically changes the character of an area, if it harms the environment."

But the National Housing Federation said the changes "effectively relax local housing targets" and would result in fewer homes being built.

The organisation's chief executive, Kate Henderson, said: "Measures to get councils building and approving applications, whilst positive, won't be enough to offset this risk.

"We're concerned measures to protect the greenbelt at any cost will prevent otherwise sustainable developments, close to existing communities, from being built."

The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised to build 300,000 homes a year in England by the mid-2020s - a figure that has not yet been met.

Earlier this year the Commons Housing Committee warned the government was not forecast to meet the annual target.

Mr Gove said he was "confident" the figure would be achieved once interest and mortgage rates returned to "a normal level".

He said the government was also on track to meet its target of one million more homes by the end of this Parliament.

Housebuilding is set to be a key battleground at the next general election, which is expected in 2024.

Labour has pledged to "bulldoze" through planning rules and build on the greenbelt to deliver 1.5 million homes during the five years of the next Parliament, if it wins power. This broadly matches the government's annual target of 300,000 new homes.

The party's shadow housing secretary Angela Rayner said that despite "tough talk", Mr Gove and the prime minister had "stripped away every measure that would get shovels in the ground and houses built to appease their backbenchers".

"The Conservative government has sent housebuilding into crisis, with rock-bottom rates of planning permission decisions, spiking interest rates and housebuilding set to plummet," she said.