Mike Burton, Director of Hampshire-based housebuilder Metis Homes, said: “The recent announcement by Michael Gove has missed a lot of the fundamental issues that are impacting the industry, and in particular SME housebuilders.
“The only positives that I took from his statement are the increased funding for council planning teams via increased planning fees – albeit this seems to be focused on improving skills, rather than immediately strengthening under resourced teams – a concern in terms of immediate impact and the fact that they are still aiming for delivery of 300,000 homes per year. What was worrying is that the funds generated from the extra planning fees won’t necessarily be ring fenced, meaning they may not actually be spent alleviating the real issue, which is the under resourcing of the planning teams. Aside from this, the rest was of little to no benefit to the majority of housebuilders, especially SMEs.
“The aim of delivering denser schemes on brownfield land has been a consistent view of the government, yet there seem to be a number of points missed. Brownfield sites are previously developed, and therefore in a lot of cases have higher existing values than greenfield land, impacting viability and therefore affordable housing delivery. One can’t just assume that landowners of these assets will start accepting lesser value for their property because the government has said so. Denser schemes tend to suggest more flatted schemes and smaller unit sizes, which doesn’t provide the necessary balance of accommodation types to meet the UK’s needs – especially larger families.
“What is for certain is that the Secretary of State has bogged everyone down with more consultation processes, which is clogging up – not boosting – productivity.
“What the government has avoided here is focusing on the things that genuinely matter in our industry; speeding up the planning process; educating the decision makers to ensure that unnecessary refusals and appeals do not continue to happen; freeing us from the nutrient issues which have plagued our sector; and getting local plan making back on track with a streamlined and sped up approach. These are the big fundamental points that will allow us to get housebuilding back on track in the UK.”