New research by the National Custom and Self Build Association (NaCSBA) has found that, since 1 April 2016, over 40,000 people have now signed up to Right to Build registers across England
Over 10,000 new registrations have been added, many via NaCSBA’s Right to Build Portal.
Even though the NaCSBA is happy to see the number of registered people growing, the figure still remains far short of the real underlying demand.
NaCSBA believes this is because of a lack of promotion of the registers by many local authorities and increasing action by many authorities to make it harder for individuals to sign up to the registers.
Michael Holmes, NaCSBA’s Chair said: “While it’s great news that the numbers who want to self build has increased, NaCSBA has deep concerns that, rather than meet the demand for custom and self build homes through the granting of planning permissions to match demand, some local authorities are instead seeking to minimise the number of registrations.
“This is a direct challenge, not only to members of all parties in parliament who supported the legislation, but also to the 60% of the public who are interested in commissioning or building their own home.
Through their actions these local authorities are reducing the number of homes that are built as well as depriving individual and families of the best and most cost-effective route to a well-designed home of real quality and value.”
In many cases NaCSBA believes that there are strong grounds to challenge the approach taken by local authorities and believes that, through such actions, individuals are being denied opportunities for a better-quality and better-value home.
In effect, this is creating a postcode lottery by shifting activity to those councils which continue to maintain open registers.
NaCSBA supports the fact that the majority of councils are managing their registers as part of a wider suite of evidence for demand for custom and self build, but in light of the uneven picture it plans to use this evidence to raise its concerns with the Government.
NaCSBA urges anyone wanting to build to sign up to their Right to Build via its Self Build Portal campaign site at www.righttobuild.org.
