Captain’s Blog – Housing Crisis v Planning System

There is a housing crisis we are told. Not enough are being built. It’s the developers fault because they keep buying land and not building on it preferring to ‘land-bank’. Bollocks. Leaving aside why any organisation would buy in its raw material and simply sit on it instead of turning it into profit, the real reason we aren’t building enough houses is that, as in many walks of life, we are being strangled in red tape. The Economist magazine takes up this very point this week. Most people think that in order to build, a developer must draw up some plans and then submit them in the form of a planning application to the local authority who will then asses it against its own set of guidelines for land use in its area and either approve or reject it. Oh if it were that simple. Take a typical planning application for two or three hundred houses. In addition to the plans and the forms, the developer may and probably will need to submit a statement of community involvement, a topographical survey, an archaeological report, an ecology appraisal, a bat survey, a newt survey, an owl survey, a geotechnical investigation, a visual impact assessment, a tree survey, a transport plan, a design and access statement, a noise assessment, an air quality assessment and the answer to yesterday’s Times crossword. We often wait more than a year to gather this information and then another year to get the local authorities to say yes or no – if the relevant staff haven’t left or aren’t on holiday or on leave. Even if the local authority approves the application others can stop it. Natural England was set up in 2006 to protect flora and fauna. Very good. In 2018 it was tasked (by Europe) with ensuring ‘nutrient neutrality’ meaning any development must not increase phosphate or nitrate levels in rivers. The result is that unless developers can prove that (and in many cases they can’t) then they can’t build. Housing supply choked at a stroke with no real plan to solve it.

The planning system is broken and the only way to build more houses is to slash through the red tape and bring a dose of common sense to the system. Let’s be clear here, this isn’t the fault of the local authorities rather it’s the system they have to adhere to. Pay planners in local authorities more money and give them more authority so they can do the job they trained for so long to do. Leave all the surveys to genuinely sensitive sites and encourage building on others. Have the Government take a long hard look at how planning can be used to promote development rather than restrict it. Have local authorities engage with developers to bring forward sensible quality schemes in the right areas and prevent the blanket coverage of fields with houses of sub-standard design. That way we will get more houses, better houses and houses in the right places.