With an unusually warm 25th December forecast this year, the prospect of a white Christmas looks slim, but with the government’s Housing White Paper due in early 2017, The Year of the Rooster, we’re wondering what we might expect to find when we finally unwrap it in the new year.
The Housing White Paper is going to set out the government’s strategy for building new homes. With last week’s controversial Ministerial Written Statement on neighbourhood planning branded by some as a government U-turn on housing delivery, anticipation is building as to the contents of the White Paper.
With hints from the Housing Minister about anti “land-banking” initiatives, increased planning fees and changes to the plan-making process, we make a number of predictions as to the possible contents of the Paper here.
It will be interesting to see which of these make it into the published version and whether there are any big surprises in store. With such contentious topics, it is perhaps unsurprising that the government has taken its time over this one.
We do not yet know exactly when in 2017 the White Paper will be published, but in the great words of Muhammad Ali, “A rooster crows only when it sees the light”.