精东影视

The latest planning statistics make grim reading for a Labour government trying to increase housing delivery. The number of new homes granted planning permission is at it鈥檚 . Just seven out of 10 applications for new homes were approved last year, a 7% drop on the year before.

New housing land should, in theory, be identified by councils in local plans yet between them, England鈥檚 338 local planning authorities for examination last year, also the lowest number in a decade.

You can鈥檛 build homes without securing planning permission first. With the time lag from permission being granted to the new homes being occupied, it will be a year or two before those numbers impact housing supply.

1.5 million new homes by 2029 seems very far away indeed.

Yet the government seems determined to give it a good go. There are so many changes to the planning system being proposed for this year, it鈥檚 hard to keep track of them all.

We鈥檝e already seen a new National Planning Policy Framework - complete with a new category of 鈥済rey belt鈥� land - and a revised methodology for calculating housing need which has seen targets rise almost everywhere.

And over the last two weeks, there has been a flurry of announcements about yet more planning reform.

In , chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed the latest batch of changes. It will be made easier to secure planning permission for new housing development near commuter train stations, a in Auckland, New Zealand.

The slow response times from some statutory consultees and their often parochical approaches - Sport England recently objected to the conversion of a building in Bradford into flats because they weren鈥檛 happy with the cricket ball risk assessment - are also in her sights. Reeves said there will be no new statutory consultees until a review of the current ones is completed.

Reeves hinted, too, that the long-awaited National Development Management Policies (NDMPs as they鈥檒l be known - planners love an acronym) will soon be with us. Every planning authority in England currently produces their own policy on issues like flood risk, the green belt and protecting the countryside, all slightly different interpretations of national guidance. By sweeping away these local variations and replacing them with a single, national policy, NDMPs should make understanding those policies easier, and simplify both plan making and decision taking too.

The Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, is also in on the planning reform act, to limit the number of times spurious claims for judicial review can be heard by the courts. Although badged as applying to nuclear power stations and transport infrastructre, the changes will apply to new housing developments too.

A has recently been proposed too, perhaps prompted by the discovery that HS2 spent 拢100m on a tunnel to protect bats that might actually kill them. Rather than developers having to deliver site specific mitigation at a cost disproportionate to its benefits, they would make a payment to the Fund to support the delivery of large scale mitigation elsewhere. The result will be concentrated, high quality habitats rather than a large number of low quality, fragmented ones and a simpler planning system.

Those new announcements complement a series of other changes that were already in the pipeline. 

Strategic planning is set to make a comeback

A new Local Plan process will produce streamlined plans more focussed on how much development is needed and where it will be located, in an effort to speed up plan-making and see more housing land made available in a planned way.

Strategic planning is set to make a comeback, with local authorities tasked to work together to produce a high-level Strategic Development Strategy to cover cross-border issues - like the distribution of new homes and green belt review - that local authorities have struggled to deal with in the past.

鈥溾�� are being developed as a way to make delivering new homes on previously developed sites quicker and more predictable.

Work is also underway to , that is likely to result in a national scheme of delegation, making it clear what types of planning applications need to be decided by local councillors, and which can be left to planning officers. 

Let鈥檚 not be too critical. The trend is in the right direction

It seems odd, for example, to ask councillors to vote on applications for sites which are already identified for development - either in a local plan or becuase they have an outline permission. Rather than provide democratic oversight, this largely serves to expose councillors to political pressure from a vocal minority of opponents.

>>See also: The 1.5 million-home question: Does the government鈥檚 planning reform programme add up?

Despite all that activity, there is still work to be done. Local government reform - with many local authorities being replaced by fewer, bigger councils - is already seeing some councils delay local plan preparation. Flood risk policy and nutrient neutrality still need work.

But let鈥檚 not be too critical. The trend is in the right direction, and if the government follows through on these various proposals - and we all remember how hard that can be - planning statistics and housing delivery will start heading in the right direction too.

Paul Smith, managing director, The Strategic Land Group