• SOME key facts were missing from last week’s CNJ article about “payments in lieu” agreements, (Revealed: Dozens of cash deals to avoid building affordable housing, July 30).

The most important omission is that, put simply, if a developer fails to build a building that they have planning permission for, then they do not have to still pay over money associated with it.

For readers less familiar with the ins and outs of the planning process, the council will levy “section 106” and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) payments to fund things like building or upgrading school facilities; or things like repairing the highways nearby or looking after local parks.

It is worth readers also knowing that, where developments do go ahead, Camden Council always attempts first to make sure the new affordable homes are on the same site as the other parts of the development (which could be private homes or offices).

If on-site affordable housing is not possible, then the council will look to obtain payments that go into our Affordable Housing Fund, which allows us to build new social-rent housing in Camden.

Since 2013, we have received £52million from developers to help us build much-needed new affordable homes, helping people in great need across the borough.

Camden is well known for having some of the most stringent policies in the country on developers around the need to provide affordable housing.

We were the first in the country to introduce a new tougher policy to ensure that smaller housing developments also have to make such payments in lieu.

Small sites make up most of the housing development in Camden. Previously they were exempt from affordable housing requirements by national rules.

We argued successfully this was unfair and our new policy is helping us raise significantly more funding for new affordable homes.

Collectively these payments are helping to fund over 1,100 genuinely affordable homes with 400 completed, 400 under construction and 300 planned.

It would be amusing, if it was not so galling, to see the Camden Tory opposition leader even dare to comment on the issue of affordable housing. His party flogged off council housing at auction when they ran the borough – something for which his party have never apologised.

And this year the national housing minister hurried through a major planning permission in Tower Hamlets to help a Tory party donor dodge millions of pounds of payments to the local community.

Despite that scandal, Cllr Oliver Cooper apparently felt no compunction about grinning for the cameras alongside the housing minister in Belsize just last week.

As the same government this weekend released plans that could mean developers are not obliged to provide affordable housing whatsoever, and that councils will lose the power to block bad developments.

Perhaps he can tell us what he will do to join Camden in campaigning against these plans and to genuinely fight for more affordable homes?

CLLR DANNY BEALES
Cabinet Member for Investing in Communities