The Guardian recently published an article citing concerns raised by Clive Betts (Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee) about the rate at which housebuilders were delivering units. He claimed that the speed that units were built out was based on ensuring that housebuilders’ profits were boosted rather than meeting housing need.

The story goes on to trot out the usual shaky statistics about half a million homes being held up in unimplemented planning permission. These figures are grossly skewed by the very largest sites which are phased whilst infrastructure is brought forward (which means all homes within the permission are deemed ‘unbuilt’), but let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Whilst The Guardian loves nothing more than bashing developers for making a profit from their business, the story does highlight a very serious and growing concern within Government that is likely to become the focus of planning reforms in the near future. The story goes on to quote to Planning Minister Brandon Lewis who has recently stated that: ‘When you have got housebuilders delivering, on average, 48 homes a year on some [large] sites that’s not good enough’.

This represents a school of thought within Central Government that they are beginning to reach the limit to which they can deregulate the planning system and now is the time for housebuilders to deliver. These comments appear to be the first shots of a battle to introduce planning reforms which could place onerous demands on developers to build out at a rate which suits the Government.

At Iceni we consider the reasons for delaying schemes coming forward are varied and complex. Notwithstanding this, planning reforms have been to focused on speeding up the Local Plan process and the time it takes to determine a planning application. This overlooks the considerable delays involved with the pre-application process (often more than 6 months even for relatively minor development) and the time it takes to get planning conditions discharged and thus allow developers to start on site.

Whilst a Conservative Government will always be cautious about putting greater burdens on business, they have put significant political capital on increasing housebuilding rates and they need to be appearing to deliver on this in the near future.