The Department for Communities and Local Government conducted recently a consultation on the housing white paper Fixing our broken housing market. The Law Society's Planning and Environmental Law committee has now published its response.

The consultation posed a large number of questions across a wide span of housing-related topics. The Committee agreed with many of the ideas proposed, although in some cases expressed concern over the details.

Conversely, in several areas the Committee was less convinced by the white paper's ideas. This was particularly the case over proposals for small sites, green belts, housing requirements and assessing applicants' track record of delivery.

More broadly, the Committee expressed concern that the concise and comprehensible nature of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) might be undermined by excessive additional detail, some of which might be better captured in planning guidance.