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.

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 Castlepoint - 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" and the mayor's approach was "frustrating delivery".

Mr Khan has accused the housing secretary of trying to distract from what he described as the government's own "catastrophic" record.

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

But some have raised concerns the changes will lead to fewer homes being built.

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

He said some resistance to housebuilding in local areas was not "unreasonable", citing concerns such as a lack of infrastructure, the impact on the environment and developments that were poor quality or lacked "beauty".

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

However, he stressed this was "not a route to the evasion of responsibilities".

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.

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.