Angela Rayner has defended her decision to remove the need for “beautiful” buildings from Labour’s housing policy, claiming the word was “preventing and blocking development”.
The stipulation was added to planning rules by the previous Conservative government, with then housing secretary Michael Gove saying it would encourage communities to support new projects.
But his successor and now deputy prime minister said it was a “ridiculous” clause to include and there were already other rules and protections in place, adding: “I don’t buy this idea that I am just going to build a lot of ugly houses, that’s just not true.”
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Ms Rayner announced her shake-up of the planning system on Tuesday, including reinstating mandatory housing targets for England that had been scrapped by Mr Gove amid a backlash from Tory backbenchers.
She pledge to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years and said new rules would require 50% of all new housing to be affordable.
However, she faced anger from shadow housing secretary Kemi Badenoch, who accused her of giving the go-ahead to build millions of “ugly homes”.
The Tory leadership hopeful added: “People deserve to live in beautiful homes and the fact that the Labour Party doesn’t care about that shows exactly how they are going to develop their policies.”
Labour’s new housing plan physically strikes out former Tory policies, including the need for ‘beautiful’ buildings. Pic: Labour
Asked about the criticism on BBC Radio 2, Ms Rayner said: “This is ridiculous. I mean, ‘beautiful’ is so subjective. But actually within the planning framework, there are a lot of specifications about in-keeping with the local area [already].
“It is about protecting nature and having access to nature, it is about making sure that buildings are safe, they are warm, they are sustainable.
“So there are a number of guidelines and rules that developers have to follow so that actually ‘beautiful’? I mean, ‘beautiful’ means nothing really, it means one thing to one person and another thing to another.”
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Rayner sets out housebuilding plan to Commons
The housing secretary also claimed so-called “ugly” housing had already fallen through the cracks of the previous government’s plans anyway.
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But she added: “Like I say, all that wording was doing was preventing and blocking development and that’s why we think it is too subjective.
“And actually the guidelines and the rules that are in place mean that there has to be consultation, they have to follow the rules on what the buildings look like, the safety of the buildings, that they in keeping with the area, you know, Yorkshire brick in parts of our mill towns, things like that.
“It means one thing for one area and another for another, so there are rules and protections in place.”