Opinion: Can We Rely on Developer’ Promises of Affordable Homes

Published on: 28 Apr, 2026
Updated on: 28 Apr, 2026

By John Ferns

When a developer offers “affordable housing” as part of a planning application for new homes how much can we rely on their promises?

Should they be expected to demonstrate at the outset that those pledges have a credible delivery route? I would suggest that there are anomalies in this area.

Consider the case of the contentious application first lodged in 2018 and approved in February 2020, allowing 100 homes to be built at May and Juniper in Ash Green, including 40 affordable homes. That last inclusion – 40 affordable homes – was a key factor in making the scheme acceptable.

it may not be enough simply to ask whether the percentage meets policy…”

That later became 93 homes with 37 affordable under a second Deed of Variation approved in November 2023. Now a third Deed of Variation dated December 17, 2024, but only published a week ago, appears to recast what had been affordable rented and shared ownership provision for those 37 homes into “first homes and discount market sale units”.

That matters because, in this case, “affordable housing” was not some vague planning label from the outset. The original Section 106 specifically secured a tenure mix of affordable rented and shared ownership homes.

More significantly, the third Deed of Variation appears expressly to strip out core provisions underpinning that model — deleting definitions and mechanisms associated with affordable rented housing, shared ownership, housing allocation and nomination arrangements, and replacing them with discounted home ownership products sold at 70 per cent of open market value.

This is more than a technical adjustment; it looks much closer to a redefinition of what “affordable” means on this site. And if that can happen here, communities elsewhere may reasonably ask where else it may be happening unnoticed.

There may, of course, be practical reasons behind it. Housing associations are said to be increasingly reluctant to take on smaller or relatively isolated sites, particularly where public transport and services are poor.

That may well be part of the explanation here. But if so, that itself raises a larger and rather uncomfortable question: how often are planning permissions granted on one affordable housing model, only for deliverability problems later to trigger something materially different?

That question matters beyond one site. Affordable housing percentages often help difficult schemes through planning. They reassure planning committees, soften objections and can be central to the case that development serves a wider public good.

But if the tenure bargain underpinning those approvals can later be materially altered through Section 106 variations, often with little public awareness, there is a legitimate question whether too much reliance is placed on headline percentages, and too little on whether those promises are genuinely secure.

Affordable housing percentages often help difficult schemes through planning.”

That should concern more than campaigners. Is the planning system sometimes permitting a quiet slippage between what communities are led to believe they are accepting, and what may ultimately be delivered? If so, that is not simply a housing question; it is a transparency question.

May and Juniper may therefore offer a warning to residents’ groups elsewhere. When a major scheme is sold on the basis of “40 per cent affordable”, it may not be enough simply to ask whether the percentage meets policy. Communities need to ask not only whether the proposed tenure mix is policy-compliant, but whether it is realistically deliverable, whether a housing association or Registered Provider is actually lined up, and what safeguards exist against substantial changes later being negotiated.

Indeed, there may be a wider reform question here. As I have already suggested, if affordable
housing promises help justify planning approvals, should developers be expected to demonstrate at the outset that those promises have a credible delivery route? Should authorities be required to insist that affordable units have a committed provider before permission is granted?

And where substantial tenure shifts are later proposed, should they really be dealt with quietly by deed variation, or returned to fuller public scrutiny?

Those questions may become increasingly important as councils pursue ever more ambitious housing numbers. Because if ‘affordable housing’ can be materially redefined after consent, some may ask whether the system risks overstating one of the very benefits often used to justify development in the first place.

None of this is an argument against development, nor against flexibility where circumstances genuinely change. But there is a legitimate concern where what helped make a scheme acceptable in principle can be altered significantly after the event.

If May and Juniper tells us anything, it may be this: local communities should not just ask how many affordable homes are promised when major schemes come forward, but whether the form of affordability being promised is secure — and whether what is offered at committee may later become something rather different.

That may be one of the most important planning questions communities are not yet asking often enough.