Government response to the Taylor Review
The Government has now published its response to the review carried out by Liberal Democrat MP Matthew Taylor into rural housing. RICS was heavily involved with the review making a written submission, hosting a roundtable discussion with Matthew Taylor and carrying out research. On 18 March 2009 the MP also attended a breakfast meeting at RICS HQ to discuss the rural economy.

RICS is pleased that the Government has accepted most of the review's 48 recommendations. Putting these in place will help more homes to be built and increase affordability in rural areas.

In particular we are pleased that the Government has chosen to look at ways to encourage landowners to bring forward land for affordable housing. A working group will be set up to look at this and RICS will be aiming to be represented on it.

Research carried out by RICS, which featured prominently in the review and formed the basis of two recommendations, shows that landowners are willing to sell land at below market price for affordable housing. To make this into reality they want to ensure that homes go to local people and are not sold on the open market in the future.

Guarantees must be put in place so the generosity of landowners benefits young people, farm workers and other groups who are struggling to afford to live in rural areas close to work, friends and family.

Ensuring affordable housing remains affordable for future buyers is central to achieving this and taking forward Community Land Trusts is a very positive step. Community Land Trusts can be set up in such a way to limit staircasing of shared ownership homes so they remain affordable for future buyers.

The report of the Matthew Taylor Review
The report of the Matthew Taylor Review into affordable rural housing and the rural economy which was commissioned by Gordon Brown has now been published.  The report contains significant input from RICS and adopts some of the recommendations we put forward to the review. 

In addition to making a written submission to the review RICS met with Matthew Taylor at the start of the process, held a roundtable with Matthew Taylor to discuss his initial findings and carried out a web based questionnaire of members to discover if the landowners they worked with would be willing to sell land cheaply for affordable housing 

The survey of member opinions on the action of landowners is the basis for the section of Matthew Taylor's report on getting landowners to provide more sites for housing. This highlights the view of Chartered Surveyors that one third of landowners would be willing to sell land at below market value for affordable housing.

It also picks out two of the key factors that would encourage landowners to put forward sites at below full market value.

Two of the report's recommendations come about as a result of these opinions and state that the Government should look at ways of:

• Allowing landowners to nominate someone such as a family member or employee to live in affordable housing
• Allowing landowners to retain some interest in or income from land released for affordable housing

Other proposals that were included in the RICS submission to the review and are include in its recommendations cover a range of areas:

• Further research and trials on implementing planning rules for change of use from full time homes to part time occupation
• Development in rural areas should not be turned down simply because it is not accessible by public transport
• The need to reduce thresholds for section 106 agreements on housing developments in rural areas below the 15 homes currently included in national planning policy
• Better pre-application working in the planning system between local authorities and businesses

Please follow the link indicated on the panel to the right.

The main RICS contribution is on pages 107 to 110. Contact: James Rowlands e jrowlands@rics.org