Planning for failure?

Another day, another strategic housing plan - but the Government will never make headway in meeting its minimum new homes target if the left hand isn't talking to the right.

- Rupert Bates

THE COLLECTIVE groan you heard was the property sector on hearing that the Government has yet another strategic housing plan. Homes England, the Government's housing and regeneration agency, has unveiled its five-year strategic plan to support communities... by enabling the delivery of more good-quality, affordable homes alongside the regeneration of towns and cities across England'.

If we had a home for every housing 'initiative' trumpeted, we'd easily be building the required minimum of 300,000 new homes a year. "Housing plays an enormous role in the well-being and prosperity of our country. As an agency, we firmly believe that affordable, quality homes in well-designed places are key to improving people's lives. Our updated strategic plan has been designed to enable us to deliver against that," says Peter Freeman, chair of Homes England, with £16bn of funding underpinning the strategy.

"Over the next five years, we will continue to work with housebuilders of all shapes and sizes to boost housing supply.

But we will also focus on the places those homes sit in, working ever more closely with local leaders and other partners to build communities as well as housing, be it through housing-led, mixed-use regeneration or new settlements."