NEWS
LOCAL GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION REPORT SHOWS OVER 1.1 MILLION HOMES WITH PLANNING PERMISSION WAITING TO BE BUILT
More than 1.1 million homes granted planning permission in England in the last decade are yet to be built, new analysis by the Local Government Association reveals.
The LGA is calling for councils to be given powers in a Planning Bill in the Queen’s Speech to incentivise developers to build housing more quickly. Latest figures show that 2,782,300 homes have been granted planning permission by councils since 2010/11 but over the same period only 1,627,730 have been built. The number of planning permission granted for new homes has more than doubled since 2010, with 9 in 10 planning applications being approved by councils. While there will be in some cases legitimate reasons as to why development has stalled, and it is recognised that there is a time lag between permission being granted and homes being built, new build completions have only increased by just over half as much in that time. The LGA, which represents councils, says this shows that planning is not the barrier to house-building and that it is the housing delivery system that needs to be reformed. To help councils get developers building more quickly, the Queen’s Speech should bring forward legislation that enables councils to charge developers full council tax for every unbuilt development from the point the original planning permission expires, says LGA. There is also a call to make it easier for councils to use compulsory purchase powers to acquire stalled housing sites or sites
where developers do not build out to timescales contractually agreed with a local planning authority. But this falls far short of building the 300,000 homes a year the Government has pledged. The LGA says only by building more council homes can we tackle the housing crisis and meet the Government’s housebuilding target.
It comes as new polling by the LGA has found that 80 per cent of MPs and 88 per cent of Peers think councils should have more financial freedoms and powers to build new homes.
The LGA is calling for councils to be given the powers to kickstart a social housebuilding programme of 100,000 homes a year.
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www.sbhonline.co.uk
may/june 2021
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