The UK government is being urged to act swiftly to address the growing housing crisis in this country, as demand continues to heavily outweigh supply.
Bob Seely, MP for Isle of Wight, last week called for a planning system that is community and environmentally led that supports levelling up across the country at a Westminster Hall debate, highlighting that large developers land-bank large quantities of land that go undeveloped for decades.
The consequences of this, claimed Seely, were that new housing developments were often car-dependent “in the middle of nowhere” and against the wishes of the community, arguing that this is a key reason behind how over 1.1 million homes with planning permission are still waiting to be built, as reported by the Local Government Association.
Further questions were raised by the shadow minister for housing and planning, who pointed out several potential loopholes that local authorities could take advantage of in order to build fewer homes than their communities need.
In response, the minister of state for housing and planning Lucy Frazer reaffirmed the UK government’s commitment to building 300,000 new homes a year, and that the upcoming reforms to the planning system will deliver a cultural shift in the way communities actively pursue developments.
In December 2022, the Department for Levelling up Housing and Communities released a consultation on its upcoming planning reforms. Propertymark will be posting its full response soon and encourages any comment on the proposals to be sent directly to its policy team by emailing Policy@propertymark.co.uk
Timothy Douglas, head of policy and campaigns, said: “Propertymark has often stated that undersupply is and continues to be one of the key underlying issues facing the sector today. We therefore encourage the UK Government’s commitment to address the undersupply of housing.
“The historic levels of undersupply of homes, exacerbated by empty homes and unused brownfield land, all contribute to people having less choices of where they want to live. While there are several other factors impacting the number of homes that are built every year, we want to see reforms to the planning system that increase the supply homes across all tenures.”
Just considering new homes. The prices for these are set by the developers. They drip feed the market to keep prices high, they want to maximise profit so don’t want to build affordable houses. They might have to commit to providing some so called affordable housing on their development to get planning permission but always try to wriggle out of doing it once building starts. They have plenty of land. Some 40% of land with planning permission never gets built on. How are the developers punished for this? They are often given more land to not build on by hapless Councils who are way behind any imposed housing targets mainly because of developer inaction..
The Government could legislate for developers to have to pay upfront to get planning permission. Say around £30,000 per house, this money being kept in a deposit scheme. The developer would then have a given number of years to complete their site build. If they complete within this time they get all the deposit back (less any section 106 or Community Infrastructure levy already agreed to lessen the impact of their development). The deposit could be paid back as each house is actually built but after the build period the deposit would be forfeit for any houses that remain unbuilt. This would reduce land banking and induce developers to get on with the job rather than drip feeding.
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Housing programmes delivered by Homes England resulted in 38,436 new houses starting on-site and 37,164 houses completed between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022. Three-quarters (72%) of starts (27,509) were for affordable homes.
– 37,330 from 2020-2021
– 47,965 from 2019-2020
– 57,485 from 2018-19
– 47,355 from 2017-18
Pretty abysmal numbers if you ask me.
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