Playing the Blame Game
Analysis by the Local Councils Network (formerly known as the District Councils’ Network) demonstrate quite clearly that planning alone is not the issue holding back housebuilding:
331,300 of 633,010 homes granted planning permission since 2013 have not yet been built, leaving more than 200,000 with valid consent but no construction started.
Most of these are in areas where the number of homes not yet built exceeds the requirements of current Government targets.
However, in a highly emotive (if not tear-jerking) speech last month, Secretary of State for Housing (and other things) Steve Reed shares the blame for the failure of the market to build between National Government Local Government and developers and promises to fix everything with:
- Planning and Infrastructure Act, and the National Planning Policy Framework, to be published between now and the Summer, followed quickly by:
- The Government’s Long-Term Housing Strategy, to be published thereafter, which “will lay out how we are fixing the foundations by reforming the planning system and the land market”.
The Home Builders Federation (HBF) commented that: “…planning approvals alone are not solving the housing shortfall… factors such as viability, market demand, developer behaviour, and infrastructure constraints as the main barriers.”
We accept that planning needs reform, and planning departments need to fix their staffing shortfalls.
However, there is a more fundamental problem.
They could grant 1.5 million planning permissions into a deteriorating economy facing relentless increases in the cost of living factors and growing unemployment affecting demand (not to mention site viability concerns generated by increasing tax and regulatory burdens) and housebuilders still won’t be able to meet those targets without an existential cashflow crisis when it turns out no-one wants to buy them.
We await the aforementioned Act, Framework and Strategy and can only keep our fingers crossed that they include at least a first time buyer support programme and cancellation of the new Mansion Tax.
(Steve’s speech can be read here: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/housing-secretary-delivers-call-to-arms-to-get-britain-building/ )
James Scott
MD
