Springing into Construction Action
Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement may not have brought much joy to retailers and small businesses, with an increase in wages and National Insurance payments on the cards, but in the world of planning it looks like she may have offered a little hope.
It all comes down to the suggestion that the money injected into the economy by future house building will go towards providing better public services. The extra £3.4bn estimated to be generated may well encourage those in charge to push through planning improvements to allow this extra money to filter through, especially as people will be able to move closer to where the jobs are – as we mentioned recently with planning for new houses on the outskirts of cities such as Cambridge and Oxford.
But these developments will rely on changes to planning regulation.
Planning and Infrastructure
Improvements to the planning process will have to take place, including those in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, introduced in Parliament on 11 March 2025. The government issued guidance the same day. One of the amendments for this new national regulation will be looking at what types of decisions should be made not by local authority planning committees but by professional planning officers. Quite how this will be achieved is yet to be finalised, but it could see everything apart from a small selection of planning applications being taken out of the hands of the planning committees, where decisions are made by elected councillors.
It is hoped this will speed up the process, meaning decisions can be made under delegated powers, rather than waiting for the usual monthly cycle of a planning committee, but also it will remove emotive, non-planning considerations that can see perfectly acceptable planning applications refused, forcing applicants to use the appeal process to achieve planning permission; this can have a significant impact on the timings for delivering our much-needed new housing and increase the overall cost of the development. Of course, in extreme situations there is also the potential to avoid local people paying the costs of an appeal, which is paid for through the taxpayers’ own money.
Part of this is the likelihood of the Conservative-created national development management policies being used to form broad priorities that may override those in local plans. Areas would be ‘zoned’ rather than decisions made piecemeal on each application – we mentioned in our last blog how the Labour government is keen to see building on what it terms Grey Belt land.
Spatial Development
Another proposal is for spatial development strategies, although the government states this does not herald a return to regional planning, which was abolished by Sir Eric Pickles during a previous Conservative administration, it will be more closely described as a sub-regional model.
The objective of the spatial development strategies will be to provide broad policies for the delivery of housing, economic growth, infrastructure, and climate resilience, with local plan polices needing to reflect them, and continuing to allocate appropriate land for development.
Planning System
The Spring Statement noted that the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that the changes to England’s planning system announced last year, will boost housebuilding by 170,000 over five years.
It was also announced that £625m will be allocated in England for launching a construction skills package to train up to 60,000 more skilled workers over four years. This is good news as Paul Smith at Apex Planning Consultants has previously pointed out that all the plans for boosting construction were moot if there were no skilled workers to carry them out.
He adds that: “Housebuilders and developers maintain that skills shortages are a significant issue that slows the pace of development and needs to be addressed with radical approaches. Whilst they themselves have introduced and increased in-house apprenticeships, including partnering with colleges and universities, more needs to be done, and this is likely to mean government assistance.”
An additional £2 billion will also be invested in social and affordable housing.
Maybe there will be some good news for those retailers and small businesses too, as people coming into their areas to live in all these new homes will hopefully spend more with them too…
It certainly looks like Keir Starmer is sticking to his pre-election promise of backing the “builders, not the blockers”.
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