Number 10 revises section 106 affordable housing position

A press release published by Number 10 to accompany the Government's new Infrastructure and Growth Bill said that councils and developers should honour existing affordable housing requirements when renegotiating section 106 agreements, according to reports. The statement was removed in a later version of the press release.

A Number 10 spokesperson said that the Government simply intended to honour affordable housing commitments generally and the press release was rewritten to clarify this point, reports said.

Previously, parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Don Foster has said that up to 10,000 planned affordable homes may not be built as a result of relaxed section 106 obligations.

"If we go ahead with the schemes, as we hope to do, we estimate that around 10,000 affordable homes might be lost through section 106 agreements," said Foster during a House of Commons debate last month.

Foster said that the loss of affordable homes is "why we have put in place a funding scheme that will provide more than 15,000 additional properties and bring a further 5,000 empty properties back into use."

The Government's Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which was laid before Parliament last week,  contains new provisions to allow applications to be made to the local authority to modify, replace or remove affordable housing requirements where it "means that the development is not economically viable". The local authority must deal with the application "so that the development becomes economically viable". The DCLG said that this will deliver more housing by helping to unlock "some of the 75,000 homes already with planning permission that are currently stalled due to lack of commercial viability".