With the ongoing pressure to create 300,000 new homes a year by 2025, Nathan Priestley – CEO of Priestley Construction, explores the barriers developers face when it comes to gaining approval within Britain’s planning system
It is no secret that Britain’s planning system is broken. It’s crucial we find a solution to the current planning system’s restriction of sustainable routes to development, inconsistent permissions and uncooperative discourse throughout the application process. Nothing short of radical change will fix it in time to deliver the housing stock our country so desperately needs.
Fixing the housing crisis relies heavily on one fundamental factor – recycling the hundreds of thousands of vacant buildings scattered across our towns and cities. This is undoubtedly the best route to take, simultaneously delivering massive ESG benefits through energy efficiency and removing eyesores from our dormant suburbs for acts of vandalism, squatting, arson and more. Transforming these buildings into safe, affordable, quality homes should be the priority over building on greenfield sites.
Local Planning Authorities (LPA) vs housing developers
Achieving this vision is currently made difficult by Britain’s planning system. The ongoing tension between Local Planning Authorities (LPA) and housing developers create issues where there should be collaboration to work towards fixing Britain’s housing crisis. Our experience as developers focusing on bringing to life dormant buildings has led us to see applications rejected for trivial reasons without any opportunity to deliver a feasible solution, which is almost always there. Often, even the prior notification and permitted development rights are overwritten, with planners finding an obscure reason why this doesn’t apply to the building in question.
I can’t help but feel that there is no sense of what a developer has to go through – the risks associated with providing this housing and the major costs we incur in the process. Delays in applications leave us open to rising interest rates on lending, ongoing council tax and business rate bills, and risks of vandalism and break-ins, which can lead to detrimental issues related to health and safety, not to mention increases in crime in the surrounding area.
A lot of the time, it’s as if we have a fight on our hands, going up against the LPA who will throw up roadblocks without a moment’s notice. Hoop-jumping is not something that developers are opposed to, we want to create safe, visually appealing buildings to last many lifetimes, and we’re happy to comply with regulations to reach that aim. To do this, we need consistency of regulation across the board and clear lines of communication throughout the 13-week application process. Instead, we often have no communication until week 13, when we’re told about a problem we have no time to fix. Before we know it, we’re facing the uphill, costly battle of an appeal.
The bottom line regarding appeals is that applications shouldn’t be allowed to get to this point. Throughout 2021, the Planning Inspectorate made 16,928 appeal decisions, averaging 1,430 per month. These numbers represent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ money, as well as huge financial implications to the construction industry, which has a lasting effect on our country’s infrastructure.
The solution? Privatising the planning sector
As a solution-driven individual, I feel there is only one way we can fix this problem. While we can try suggesting opening lines of communication between developers and LPAs, I ultimately know this would be in vain. The systemic issues rooted in the public sector have broken Britain’s planning system, and those in it focused on many different objectives rather than proactively fixing the housing crisis. There is no escaping from the fact that if planning permission were carried out in the private sector, it would be done in a fraction of the time.
We must follow a similar route to when Building Control was passed through to Approved Inspectors over 30 years ago. During those three decades, we’ve seen the sector evolve into a slick, well-resourced and highly competent service underpinned by insurance and regulation. There is an opportunity for planning to follow suit. This doesn’t mean completely writing off the public sector; there’s still an element of power there from the Council, they still get all of the notices from the private inspector, but the private inspector ultimately has control to get the job done in a timely and efficient manner. Most developers use approved inspectors now, and there’s a reason for that.
Two fundamental differences would come from privatising the planning sector. The first is the introduction of financial incentives to hit housing targets. This is impossible to impose within the public sector but would drive an upward trajectory of the delivery of homes to our communities. The second is introducing a policy that sees the applicant only pay a certain amount of the overall cost up front and the rest when a decision is made. This gives the planning department incentive to take a collaborative, solution-based approach, with clear lines of communication and minimal risk of appeal before coming to a final decision.
I know that privatisation is seen as a dirty word to some, but in my experience, it’s the best route to getting the job done. While this approach would take a sea change and probably won’t be seen shortly, the industry should be fighting for it now. Each year we see the housing situation in Britain deteriorate, and developers are left chasing our tails trying to fix it. In this instance, I truly believe that privatisation is the only way to collaborate towards a shared goal.
