Recent research has confirmed what most planners already knew – what’s stopping house building is the state of the economy not council planners! The research demonstrates that planning permission has been granted for nearly 400,000 homes which have yet to be either completed or started! What does that mean, well at the current rate of building new homes it would take developers nearly four years to complete the homes now with planning permission! And given that that refusals of planning permission are at a 10 year low this demonstrates that councils and their planners are overwhelmingly saying ‘yes’ to new homes – the shortage of new homes is not caused by local councils and their planners!
What’s clear then is to get Britain building again we need to improve liquidity in the finance market and solve shortage of mortgages for struggling first-time buyers.
The planning system has been transformed under this Government and is delivering! Getting planning permission is not the problem!.
Planner Matthew Creedy said that “at ethical partnership we have numerous planners who have worked in local councils so we understand the pressures council planners are under, our experience ensures that applications that we make for our clients can be fast-tracked by being succinct and comprehensive”.
He said “We have an excellent working relationship with most planning authorities in the North East and are now expanding these into both the Borders and the North West as we take on new house building clients”.
Notes
The research was undertaken by Glenigan using data sourced in March 2012.
- In 2011/12 approximately 2,536 schemes obtained planning permission, totalling 135,179 potential homes.
- There were 399,816 unbuilt homes with planning permission on 31 December 2011. Building work had yet to start on 52 per cent of the developments.
- The average time taken for a development to complete from obtaining planning permission has lengthened from 20 months in 2007/08 to 25 months in 2011/12. One development completed last year came 8.75 years after planning permission was granted.