MPs slam home extension plan

The government should re-run a consultation into its plans to relax planning laws around home extensions because the proposals run counter to its own principles expressed in the National Planning Policy Framework, a committee of MPs has found.

In a damning assessment of the plans, announced in September by communities secretary Eric Pickles, to relax so-called “permitted development rights” for homeowners in a bid to boost work for small construction firms, the communities department select committee said the department had “failed to address or evaluate the social and environmental arguments put forward against the proposed changes.”

It said this meant its approach to the consultation  on the changes, published on November 12, had “therefore disregarded two of the components of sustainable development as set out in its own National Planning Policy Framework.”

The plans would see the volume of development allowed to be undertaken by householders without planning permission effectively doubled. The plans said the size limits for the depth of single-storey extensions would increase in non-protected areas from 3m to 6m - and from 4m to 8m for detached houses - for a period of three years.

The committee said the impact assessment produced alongside the consultation was “inadequate” and the government’s assumptions that making the changes would speed up development and reduce cost were “so tentative, broad-brush and qualified as to provide little assurance that the financial benefits suggested will be achieved.”

The committee found that if the government was determined to go ahead with the policy it should exclude houses in multiple occupation from the policy, cancel compensation payments, and conduct a full review of the policy at the end of the three-year trial.

Committee chair Clive Betts MP said, “First, the Government has produced very little hard evidence, and its impact assessment was not credible. Second, it has ignored two of the essential requirements of its own policy on sustainable development as set out in its own National Planning Policy Framework – to take account of the environmental and social effects, as well as the economic.”

Betts said the Committee also had concerns that the relaxation in the planning rules would be far from temporary, and therefore that a temporary relaxation of rules was not appropriate.