House builders sitting on 400,000 undeveloped plots of land with planning permission

[Darren]

House builders are sitting on hundreds of thousands of undeveloped plots 
of land which have planning permission for new homes, The Daily 
Telegraph can disclose.

By Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent

10:00PM BST 05 Sep 2012

The new statistics raise further questions about the pressing need for 
George Osborne to relax planning rules to boost house building.

They will fuel campaigners’ belief that the problem is not with the 
planning system, but with the slow speed at which builders are 
converting approvals into new homes.

Analysis by the Local Government Association showed they were 400,000 
plots across England and Wales which had planning permission for work to 
start.

The figure is around 25 per cent higher than previously thought. Of the 
plots, actual building work had only started at half of the plots.

The LGA calculated that at current rates it would take three and a 
quarter years before the backlog of sites was exhausted.

Countryside campaigners are currently preparing for a major battle with 
the Government over further plans to weaken planning rules this Autumn.

In April ministers published a new planning framework which was amended 
to protect Greenfield sites after a campaign by groups like the National 
Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

The Daily Telegraph also demanded a rethink through its Hands Off Our 
Land campaign.

However, Prime Minister David Cameron and George Osborne now want to 
reopen the debate and further weaken protections for green belt land 
around towns and cities.

The news came after The Daily Telegraph disclosed that in the five 
months since the framework came in 85,000 building schemes have been 
given the green light – 10,000 more than in the five months before the 
rule change.

Sir Merrick Cockell, the LGA’s chairman, said the figures “should 
finally lay to rest the myth that the lack of new homes being built is 
the fault of the planning system”.

He said: “Even if planning departments did not receive another new home 
application for the next three years, there are sufficient approved 
developments ready to go to last until 2016 at the current rate of 
construction.

“Councils are also playing their part to unlock stalled sites by 
contributing land and assets, forming partnerships with developers and 
overwhelmingly saying ‘yes' to growth through the planning system.”

The LGA found evidence builders were taking longer than ever to complete 
work on site, with the longest taking nearly nine years from permission 
to homes being built.

The average time taken for a project to move from planning permission to 
completion has lengthened from 20 months in 2007/08 to 25 months in 2011/12.

Sir Merrick added: “To get Britain building again we need to address the 
lack of liquidity in the finance market and tackle the shortage of 
mortgages for struggling first time buyers.

“The planning system has been massively reformed under this government 
and it is clear that unlocking frustrated demand, not increasing supply, 
is now the most urgent problem in the housing market today.”

Neil Sinden, a spokesman for the CPRE, said: “Any further planning 
deregulation will simply place more countryside under threat of 
unsustainable development and do nothing to get houses built in the 
places they are needed.”

But Home Builders Federation defended builders for having land banks 
insisting that they “have to have a stock of land to enable them to plan 
their businesses”.

John Stewart, the federation’s economic affairs director, said: “It 
takes time to build and sell the homes on a housing development, so 
house builders inevitably hold stocks of land under development.

“In addition, long delays and enormous uncertainties in the planning 
system force them to hold even larger land stocks than they would like.

“Land is the raw material of house building. Just as a baker needs 
flour, house builders need land.”

Mr Stewart added that “even at current output levels it is well under 
three year’s supply which, with our slow and uncertain planning system, 
it is still barely enough”.