Government urged to invest in planning departments to eliminate ‘bottleneck’
The British Property Federation (BPF) has urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to better fund planning departments to improve the speed of UK housebuilding.
Currently planning departments are seen as a bottleneck when it comes to producing new housing supply, while the BPF also pointed the finger at an inefficient development approval system.
The organisation said there’s a need for 300 planners, adding that planning departments should be able to fully recover their development control costs, and income should be ring-fenced to protect the service.
Melanie Leech, chief executive, British Property Federation, said: “The government’s reforms to the planning system will not deliver homes, infrastructure and growth unless the regulatory and planning system is made more efficient and adequately resourced.
“To unlock the billions of pounds of investment needed to build more homes, employment spaces, infrastructure and to support improvements in key public services such as the NHS, we need the government to create a supportive fiscal and regulatory environment that will give the real estate sector the confidence to take long-term investment decisions. That requires a new smarter approach to regulation and ensuring that it is properly resourced.”
Alongside planning departments there’s a need for statutory consultees and other regulators to be better resourced, the BPF added.
As it stands, the backlog of applications going through the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) is causing projects to either be delayed or abandoned altogether.
Delays at Land Registry of between 18-24 months are saddling investors who no longer have an economic interest in a building with unnecessary legal commitments and is preventing new owners from taking full control of a building and making productive use of it.
The BPF calculated that legal teams waste 12,000 working days every year chasing applications, meaning targeted resources are needed to bring these backlogs down without delay.
The BPF argued for a 10-year rent settlement to support private investment to deliver an additional 240,000 affordable homes over a five-year period.
Stamp Duty Multiple Dwellings Relief should also be reinstated, according to the BPF, to support valuations and development viability of build-to-rent, which has the potential to deliver up to 30,000 homes a year with the right fiscal and regulatory environment.
The BPF said it wants to work with the government to review the current NHS funding system to enable private capital to address the NHS maintenance backlog, and support investment in new buildings. Public sector capital alone will struggle to deliver the improvement and upgrades needed in these estates to support productivity and address waiting lists.
