Chancellor’s planning changes “major step towards solving the housing crisis”, says FMB

Responding to planning reforms announced as part of the Government’s Productivity Plan, Brian Berry, FMB Chief Executive, said: “For some time, the whole construction industry has being challenging the Government to solve the housing crisis at  its root cause: supply. Ministers’ renewed focus on supply will in turn improve affordability, which is another top priority for the current Government.”

Berry continued: “Housing has for too long been put in a separate box from economic development, infrastructure needs and productivity. Today’s announcement marks a significant step towards correcting that imbalance. It also shows an admirable determination to free up smaller locally-based house builders to do what they do best and deliver high quality housing on small sites in sustainable locations.”

Berry continued: “All too often new house building programmes are heavily focused on large strategic sites. While this is an important part of the market, the resulting tendency is to ignore the great cumulative potential of the very large number of small sites dotted around the country. In doing so, we have marginalised smaller locally-based house building companies and failed to utilise the capacity of this section of the industry.”

Berry concluded: “Smaller brownfield sites are often the bread and butter of these firms, but the time and cost involved in obtaining planning permission even for the smallest of sites can be hugely disproportionate and prohibitive for many smaller firms. What we need are much more streamlined processes and real accountability from the planning system for delivery on small sites. Measures announced today, like the move towards more automatic planning permission for suitable brownfield sites and the extension of the planning performance regime to minor applications will help achieve precisely this and the Government deserves great credit for these bold steps.”