Yesterday the Housing Secretary gave a speech held at the Royal Institute for British Architects called ‘falling back in love with the future’ with a range of stakeholders and journalists in attendance.
As part of this he announced a series of measures to build more homes and speed up the planning system. This includes publishing the National Planning Policy Framework Consultation Response and putting councils on notice that they would be held to account if they didn’t put a local plan in place.
The full speech is available here and was live-streamed on the DLUHC X account.
Ahead of the speech the Housing Secretary gave an interview to The Times, which ran on the front page on Tuesday, and there was coverage of the speech across national outlets. The Housing Minister undertook the morning media round to discuss plans to crackdown on councils who do not have local plans in place. This included interviews with GB News, Times Radio, Sky, LBC, Bauer and ITV. The speech was also featured prominently across broadcast on the day.
At the speech, Secretary of State Michael Gove said:
I want us to fall back in love with the future. Because the truth is that while the last 13 years has seen growth, regeneration and innovation flourish across much of the country it has not extended far enough, we have not grown fast enough.
My department, the department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, is on a mission to ensure that we see growth spread across the country – more towns and cities regenerated, more communities empowered to grow, more homes built and more innovation unleashed.