A consultation has been published on plans aimed at speeding up housing delivery, with new regulations on developer contributions to help fund roads, schools and infrastructure.
Developers are required to fund additional public infrastructure to support the building of new homes, with the Government's Community Infrastructure Levy collecting almost £1 billion since starting in 2010.
Launching the consultation, housing minister Kit Malthouse said "the billions of pounds already paid by the developers has been critical in delivering the more, better, faster homes this country so desperately needs, but we must go further".
"These reforms will make the system simpler, transparent and easy to understand and will accelerate the pace of homebuilding - it's now up to housebuilders and residents to tell us what they think".
The reforms will ensure that the infrastructure needs of communities are identified from the outset, saving time and allowing the provision of infrastructure to be costed into projects at an early stage. It also seeks to increase the types of project that can benefit from the Community Infrastructure Levy, ensuring that a wider range of community priorities are eligible to receive funding.
The Government plans to fund and deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.
A wider reform set out in the new National Planning Policy Framework adopted in July 2018 states that viability assessments are now integrated into the local plan process, giving communities upfront certainty on the infrastructure investment needed in their area when land is initially earmarked for new housing.
Figures show that between 2016/17 around £5 billion was successfully secured from developers to support local communities with new infrastructure and more affordable housing. Also, the Community Infrastructure Levy raised an additional £940 million for those areas that adopted it since 2010.
The consultation closes on 31 January 2019.
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