Gove criticises housing design while backing brownfield regeneration and beauty agenda

New housing secretary Michael Gove failed to address reports he has demanded a complete rethink on planning reforms in a keynote address to the Conservative Party conference which did not mention planning at all and mentioned housing only once.

In a speech that appeared to confirm speculation that Gove sees the levelling up agenda as his priority task above addressing the housing crisis, he said he saw his job as “allowing communities to take back control of their futures, and creating greener and more beautiful places to live”.

However, his discussion of housing and development took up little over 100 words of a 1,300-word speech mainly focused on setting out his vision of what Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” slogan might mean.

戈夫在上个月的内阁改组中被任命，与此同时，首相鲍里斯·约翰逊(Boris Johnson)也赋予了该部门推动政府“升级”努力的工作，该部门更名为“升级、住房和社区部”。

Gove said he wanted levelling up to deliver strengthened local leadership, an increase in living standards and improved public services in more deprived areas, and people given the “necessary” resources to restore local pride.

On housing, Gove said the government will invest in urban regeneration to put new homes on “neglected brownfield sites”, while at the same time “helping more of those who currently rent to own their own homes”.

他没有提及计划体系和备受争议的计划白皮书，政府在该白皮书上有可能出现重大转变。然而，他提到的“允许社区重新掌控自己的未来”，很可能被解读为一种暗示，白皮书中更集中的提议——比如取消阻止增长地区个人申请获得批准的权利，或者强制实施地方住房目标——将不会得到推进。

Speaking at a fringe event launching a report on localism, Gove yesterday said he was an “optimist” who believed “we can build the hundreds of thousands of new homes we need in this country”, but that homes built in recent years hadn’t been well designed.

Gove became notorious among architects when as education secretary in 2010 he scrapped the £5bn BSF school-building programme, accusing architects of “creaming off cash”. He further antagonised the profession the following year when he told a free schools conference:“We won’t be getting Richard Rogers to design your school, we won’t be getting any ‘award winning architects’ to design it, because no one in this room is here to make architects richer.”

His comments yesterday came after Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden conceded the government was “looking again” at the planning reform proposals launched by Boris Johnson and former housing secretary Robert Jenrick last year. Dowden said the Conservative Party had “the wisdom to listen to people and the humility to learn how we can do better” and that the government wasn’t proposing to “rip up” planning controls.

道登暗示政府正在计划提案，“制定法律措施来保护我们的城镇、村庄和宝贵的农村免受丑陋发展的掠夺”。

Tom Fyans, deputy chief executive of countryside charity the CPRE, said the commitment to building on brownfield sites in Gove’s speech “signals the mood music on the government’s planning proposals has changed genre – and that our countryside and green spaces are now in safer hands since the reshuffle”.

He added: “We hope this ushers in an age of positive changes to our planning system. We look forward to working with the government, local CPREs and rural communities to turn the housing secretary’s words into actions for people and nature.”