Thumbs Up to Developer Planning Reforms

It’s an understatement to say that the landmark planning reforms from the Government are a step in the right direction. For too long big brand housebuilders have had a stranglehold over the sector, allowing them to drip feed developments as they see fit in order to keep house prices and their profit margins buoyant.

Enabling more competition from smaller developers will shake up a languid status quo and ensure we see an uplift in the number of homes actually being delivered and to a better standard.
For too long those failing to deliver have been able to blame a lethargic system – and as such, any changes to improve the speed of delivery are also warmly welcomed.

Many in the industry been calling on the Government to utilise brownfield land for some time, but we need to ensure that any wrongly classified green belt is also maximised to ensure the delivery of enough homes on a long-term scale.

It goes without saying that many hope the Government will stick to its guns and won’t fall at the first call from the nation’s NIMBY’s, who have long delayed the delivery of suitable homes at local parliamentary level.

The Government has done a sterling job of stoking the fires of demand in recent years which has caused house prices to increase due to the imbalance of supply to meet this demand.

Hopefully, we will now see a step change with many more logs on the fire. That said, anyone meeting today’s announcement with a degree of scepticism will be forgiven, as the Government’s failure to execute on house building promises in recent years has been seismic.