Mr. Philip Jones:

I do not have the actual Bill in front of me but my recollection from reading it over recent weeks is that it says applications for permission for social and affordable housing would be exempt. They would have to make it clear in the planning application whether it was for social housing or affordable housing. They could not do it afterwards. A local authority might see that a person is looking for planning for 100 social and affordable houses and ask where is the market housing. The authority might decide it is not going to grant the planning permission for that type of development and it wants a mix. It might be that the land value sharing legislation would not be being used, but knowing the planning application the planning authority could say it wanted mixed development. That already happens with Part V applications where sometimes local authorities say they do not need social housing and they just want affordable housing because there is already a surfeit of social housing in the area. That has always been the case with Part V.

It is probably solvable on foot of the word being used, which is applications for social and affordable. The applicant would need to say at the time of making the application that the planning application is for social and affordable housing. It would not be for an applicant to say he or she was looking for planning for 20 houses and then, after getting the permission, not pay that levy because they were going to be social and affordable houses. As the legislation seems to be written or as proposed in the Bill, this does not seem to be covered. In that sense, it would be done through the normal planning process if the local authorities, as I am sure they will, have a general policy that they want mixed tenure type developments.

Of course, "tenure" is probably the wrong term because social housing could be council provided or it could be social rent or it could be affordable housing. I always have loved that word "affordable" from the 2000 Act. The implication was that the rest of it was unaffordable. We know what affordable means but nonetheless there was an implication, even back in the time of the former Minister, Mr. Noel Dempsey. Because it says applications for permission for social and affordable housing are exempt, it would mean that normal applications for housing that are not stated to be such would not be exempt.