Local authorities ( particularly East Devon District Council) are rushing through planning applications and consenting to them at high speed. But what is the point if developers can then drip-feed and cherry-pick which of those houses they build and when? Doing this allows for house prices to be kept artificially high and to ensure that only those houses that make the most profit get built, as this article points out:
Even though there is some evidence that public attitudes to housebuilding are shifting, it is a major achievement to secure approval for a quarter of a million homes through a system that is still largely in the control of local politicians.
As Department for Communities & Local Government minister Brandon Lewis acknowledged earlier this year, the planning system can no longer fairly be accused of stifling necessary development. He told Planning’s national summit at the end of March that “the planning system is delivering and land supply is coming forward”.
Nonetheless, the housebuilding industry is urging the government not to take its foot off the planning system’s accelerator pedal. The Home Builders Federation (HBF) said many of the units identified in the report still had to navigate the remainder of the planning system, a process that “continues to take far too long, delaying work starting on many of the sites”.
Clearly, from the evidence of the Summer Budget and the Productivity Plan, the government is minded to agree. Amongst other measures, it is aiming to introduce automatic permission in principle for housing on brownfield sites identified as suitable, a tougher development management performance regime for councils and new sanctions for councils that fail to produce local plans.
Some of these steps, notably the focus on local plan-making, are welcome. But there is a danger that ministers are focusing too much on permissions, and not enough on completions. The statistics for last year show just over 125,000 completions. While there will clearly be a time lag between an increase in consents and a rise in completions, the statistics suggest that the latter are not growing nearly as fast as the former. Ministers need to take steps to ensure that developers make more use, more quickly, of the good work done by planning authorities.
Richard Garlick, editor, Planning richard.garlick@haymarket.com
http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/1358321/ministers-focus-completions-permissions-richard-garlick
East Devon Watch 