Planning director for the Home Builders Federation (HBF), Catherine Williams, reflects on government planning policy reforms and what more should be done moving forward
With Parliament now in summer recess, planners will no doubt be reflecting on the past year of government, particularly the flurry of planning policy activity in the first half of 2025.
Since the government came in just over a year ago, we have seen a number of very positive changes with regard to the NPPF that the sector has largely welcomed.
And whilst we are yet to see the uptick in planning application submissions or decisions that the government had hoped for, that is more as a result of non-planning related reasons, in particular the lack of demand due to a dearth of affordable mortgage lending, and registered.
Providers are not in the market for the affordable homes that builders deliver, among other challenges for the industry. Despite this frustration, it is clear that the government is motivated to push ahead with more planning policy changes to try and stimulate housing delivery.
This spring, the government launched a number of consultations, which closed before the summer recess, and published proposed amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
The focus of these consultations was wide-ranging, covering various issues across the planning ecosystem from Planning Committees and site thresholds through to build-out rates.
On one hand, these consultations will hopefully lead to changes that will further boost the confidence of developers and investors, but on the other, some appear to be bowing to the anti-development voices that, despite multiple independent reviews, including by the
Competition and Markets Authority still cling to the myth that developers sit on land or do not build houses quickly enough.
Planning committees need more extensive reform
The proposals in two of the relevant consultations continued the government’s drive to support developers to build more homes more quickly.
Firstly, the reform of planning committees: Technical consultation seeks to introduce a two-tier system, whereby the presumption is that applications are determined under delegated authority and not at committee. Only those applications that warrant further scrutiny, which the consultation suggests would be “significant new housing and commercial development” would go through a triage process and potentially be determined at committee.
HBF has responded to the consultation, welcoming in principle a two-tier approach and supporting the government’s drive to speed up decision-making and provide more certainty to applicants on the outcome of a planning application.
However, the scope of Tier A (delegated decisions) of the two-tier system is too limited. The absence of member call-ins or a level of objection triggering a committee decision is positive; however, allocated sites, of all scales, whereby the application accords with that allocation, should also be delegated.
There may be some complaining that increased delegated decision-making will degrade the democratic nature of planning. Still, these sites have been allocated in the Development Plan, which itself will have already been subject to democratic scrutiny, and provided applications accord with the allocation, there should be no need for these to be scrutinised again. Without such a change, the government’s objective of speeding up decision-making will not come to fruition, as there will be no meaningful change in the number of applications being determined by delegated authority.
Site threshold changes need to be balanced
Maintaining the positive note, the government also consulted on a new ‘medium’ site threshold for developments of 10-49 units. If implemented well, this could make a significant difference to SMEs who are currently caught up in an overly complex system.
Crucially, this new threshold needs to be accompanied by appropriate requirements in terms of the level of information that has to be submitted with a planning application, the infrastructure that such schemes contribute towards, and the speed at which they are determined.
To encourage them to come forward and ensure they are viable, these sites also need to be exempt from the proposed Building Safety Levy, have an eight-week determination period, and have a standardised s106 agreement to make a real difference.
However, we also need to ensure that this is not implemented at the expense of larger-scale developments. We cannot simply pass on infrastructure demands to larger sites or they themselves will not be viable, further threatening any attempts to increase output overall.
Build-out rates approach is misguided
In contrast to the broadly positive response from industry to those two consultations, the consultation and working paper on build-out rates has been resoundingly lambasted as a misdiagnosis of the country’s failure to deliver homes at a suitable rate.
Whilst improvements to transparency around build-out and delivery of new homes are welcomed, much of the information the government requires is already routinely provided by developers as part of s106 commencement notices and responses to 5-year land supply monitoring. The standardisation of this information, though, would be of benefit.
Additionally, the consultation seeks to put build-out rates in the hands of LPAs, with developers potentially penalised for not building at a rate deemed realistic by them. Whilst there are circumstances in which developers can submit reasons why they haven’t been able to meet the rate, again, it would be for the LPA, who have little experience of delivering development, to determine if these were acceptable or not, with seemingly no right of appeal.
Asking local authorities to determine what the respective markets for open market housing, rental, and Affordable Housing will be, in say, three years in the future, risks not only imposing more burdens on already stretched councils, but also furthering the adversarial nature of the planning process in a wholly unhelpful way.
Pandering to the anti-development lobby’s disproved claims about land banking and slow build-out rates by allowing LPAs to control the rate at which homes are built is a massive red flag to the investors needed to support developments. Doing so would hugely increase risk and make attracting investment – already a major challenge for industry, considering the growing tax burden and other barriers it faces – even more difficult, further reducing the chances of any increases in housing supply.
For the industry to help deliver on the government’s housing supply aspirations, ministers need to focus on measures that will encourage, rather than discourage, investment in new housing schemes. Even if the build-out rate marginally increased the delivery of homes on individual sites, without seeing more new build sites go live, the overall supply of housing will remain at the stubbornly low levels we have seen in recent years. Investment is not incentivised by making life riskier for businesses.
Meaningful planning policy change
Government should focus on improving decision timescales for planning applications, timely and meaningful consultation responses, statutory timescales, national standardisation of s106 agreements, statutory timescales for s278 and other regulatory agreements, and removing viability constraints.
NPPF reform was much welcomed and overwhelmingly positive, but it provides a route to housing delivery rather than the incentives and market signals to get homes built. This next phase of the Parliament should be about converting this theoretical pathway into real investment and new homes rather than numbers on paper.
These changes will improve decision-making timescales and ultimately speed up the process to get to the point where builders can begin work on site and deliver new homes. Once started, provided external economic factors allow, developers will keep building.
