The Government is already missing its housebuilding target, and now local authorities are reversing plans previously approved.
Up to 70,000 fewer homes will be built every year as councils exploit relaxed planning rules to block new builds, it has been claimed. The Government’s target to build 300,000 new homes a year was watered down in 2022 when Housing Secretary Michael Gove agreed to make it advisory rather than mandatory.
Instead, Gove later challenged councils to meet their targets or face being named and shamed. He also said that any local authorities which delayed legitimate planning applications could lose their powers.
SHAKE-UP
Planning rules were then given a major shake-up to ensure local councils allow more ‘brownfield’ development such as derelict and unused buildings, in an announcement by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Every council in England was told they had to prioritise brownfield building, with less red tape and more flexibility in applying policies. The bar for refusing brownfield plans was also made higher for big city councils which are failing to hit their locally agreed housebuilding targets.
ANOTHER BLOW
But the Government’s house building aims took another blow with a total fall last year.
There was an 8% drop in new build starts in the year to the end of September, official statistics revealed. The total was 165,990 in England, with a 4% decrease in completions to 166,310 over the same period.
BLOCKING
Now, The Times reports that some councils are blocking developments previously approved, and up to 70,000 new homes could be affected.
Wiltshire Council overturned approvals that it had granted in November for three housing projects totalling nearly 200 houses. And, North Somerset council has set lower housebuilding targets than was previously allowed under its local plan.
MANDATORY TARGETS
The Home Builders Federation said that 60 local authorities had put on hold or withdrawn their local plans for new housebuilding.
Matthew Pennycook, the Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning, said Labour would bring in “mandatory targets” for all local authorities.
Housebuilding Stabilises And Boosts Construction Activity
Construction activity during February also painted more of an upbeat picture – the latest S&P Global UK Construction PMI update reports that total activity fell, but only fractionally, which has been attributed to housebuilding stabilising.
According to Tim Moore, Economics Director at S&P Global “this was the best performance for the construction sector since August 2023 and the forward-looking survey indicators provide encouragement that business conditions could improve in the coming months.”
The positive picture was further reinforced by the fact new work rose for the first time since July last year, and business optimism remains the most upbeat since January 2022. Hopes of a sustained upturn in customer demand, as well as a more favourable economic and financial conditions over the course of 2024 have been widely echoed by construction companies. At the same time, more than half of the survey panel (51%) anticipates a rise in business activity over the year ahead, while only 6% forecasts a reduction.
Second staircase guidance to boost residential development
The long-awaited update to the government’s second-staircase guidance could help to kickstart residential development, according to industry experts.
Last Friday, the government announced that new residential buildings of 18m or higher should incorporate a second staircase from 30 September 2026, as it unveiled the update to its Approved Document B building safety guidance.
The guidance, updated in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, confirms the recommended minimum height threshold and introduces new definitions for evacuation shafts, evacuation lift lobbies, interlocked stairs and storey exits.
The changes also make clear that interlocked (scissor) stairs should be considered as a single escape route and do not constitute an alternative means of escape.
Ian Fletcher, director of policy at the British Property Federation, said “it is immensely frustrating that a lack of clarity has led to significant delays and slowed housing delivery”, adding: “The sector can now hopefully move forward with clarity and deliver badly needed homes.”
According to Fletcher, developers have been unable to move forward with buildings in planning and early development, because although the broad direction of policy was set out last July, they have not known what a second staircase actually means in practice, and the technical specifications that government sought.
Matt Kyle, partner at law firm Osborne Clarke, added that “stalled developments can now progress and the long-awaited guidance provides some clarification for developers. Schemes must still be managed with close and early consultation with all relevant agencies, and “adherence just to the guidance may not be sufficient.
The guidance is not the complete answer. Importantly the Fire and Rescue Services can still require provisions that go beyond Approved Document B or, for example, while the guidance confirms that there is no absolute requirement for evacuation lifts these are required by the London Plan.”
Mary-Anne Bowring, founder and managing director of property management and advisory firm The Ringley Group, questioned whether the market could evolve fast enough “not to further block the supply of housing. Developments that were unable to meet the 2026 deadline would have to go back to the drawing board. It’s not easy to redesign if you can’t extend the floorplate because you’re losing units. If you’re losing units you’re putting pressure on prices. If you’ve got pressure on prices then you’ve got a pressure on viability. It’s really hard right now for developers to make the business case to get the funding they need and get the units we need built.”
Meanwhile, James McNay, divisional director of fire safety at engineering consultancy Hydrock, said that "while it was good to finally have the guidance in black and white, he warned that developers should take a broader view of fire safety provision. Just simply having two stairs is not a silver bullet. It doesn’t mean the building is automatically going to be safe. It’s the complacency aspect that could creep in that we need to be very careful of.”