There's a tremendous amount happening in the sector, and you may have missed the Government's Planning Reform Working Paper, which was published over the bank holiday weekend.  

It invites comment on how the planning process can be sped up. This is all part of the growing acceptance that the current system just is not set up to deliver the number of homes promised in this Parliament.

Two of the constants over the last 25 years have been rates of development that stubbornly refuse to rise, and the promise of planning reform to deal with that fact. Will it be the same this time?

Well, the working paper starts gently. There is a five-pronged strategy, which seems uncontroversial: streamlining planning, supporting first-time buyers, supporting SME builders, encouraging tenure diversity, and increased strategic master-planning all sound unambiguously positive. 

However, the general theme is that if development is happening slowly, that largely lies at the housebuilders' door. That is not an entirely uncontroversial position. Readers may recall, for example, that the Competition and Markets Authority investigation found, as recently as 2024, housebuilders were not holding land for a disproportionate period. Where there has been slowness, developers would no doubt point to many other factors: shortages of labour, rising costs, market uncertainty.

It is also really important to be clear: although the emphasis is on housebuilders, the proposed rules would apply to anyone developing, including RPs on land-led schemes.

Taking this as its starting point, the paper then makes some fairly bold proposals. It is proposed that developers will have to submit a ‘build-out statement’ with their planning application, setting out a delivery timescale, which will be agreed with the LPA. They would then report annually on progress, but here is the real change:  penalties for slow delivery. These are proposed to include a power to refuse to grant planning permission where an earlier one has not been built out at a ‘reasonable rate’; however, that may come to be defined.  

There would also be a power to require completion by a notified date, or the permission will lapse, which seems a little bit of a double-edged sword to an LPA (will cancelling a permission for a part-built scheme get it delivered quicker?).  

Lastly, there is the idea of a Delayed Homes Penalty for larger sites: effectively, if development falls behind the notified schedule without 'reasonable justification', a penalty is payable to the LPA, possibly on the basis of the notional lost council tax. Again, the word ‘reasonable’ carries quite a lot of weight there. What could this mean in practice?

The working paper ends with a range of questions MHCLG is looking for views on.  These would be fundamentally new powers. Getting them right will be a challenge.  Is this the right thing to focus on to improve delivery?  

The consultation closes on 7 July, so make your views known!