Select committee: Built Environment Committee
Conclusion 164
1st Report - Meeting housing demand
Published 10 Jan 2022
Built Environment Committee Meeting the UK’s housing demand All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
We heard that local planning authorities have a lack of skills, capacity and resourcing in their planning departments, which has led to delays, poor decision-making and greater reliance on the appeals process. Government spending on planning fell from £1.13 billion in 2010/11 to £961 million in 2017/18, a reduction of 14.6%. 244 More than half of this is recouped in income (mostly fees), which means that total net public spending on planning is now £400 million per year. 245 In practice, this has reduced councils’ abilities to undergo the complex negotiations required to agree a local plan, process applications effectively and in good time, and negotiate Section 106 Agreements and other matters with developers. Grant Butterworth characterised these shortages as a “crisis” in local planning authorities. 246 The Home Builders Federation said, “Chronic under-resourcing and under-staffing in local planning authorities is leading to discrepancies, administrative errors and additional delays for developers”. 247 McCarthy Stone said “The average time taken to determine our applications from validation is about 46 weeks, some 33 weeks more than the statutory 13-week period for determination”. 248
From: Built Environment Committee, 1st Report - Meeting housing demand, 10 January 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 28 March 2022 (deadline 10 March 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's report and says it is "taking action on a number of the issues identified", agreeing with some recommendations while disagreeing with others, including on home ownership schemes and the Apprenticeship Levy.
- It "disagrees with the report's assessment that homeownership schemes do not provide good value for money", citing independent evaluations and its own evaluation of Help to Buy.
- On older people's housing, it is launching a new taskforce "this year", chaired by the Minister for Housing, to look at better choice, quality and security of housing.
- It does "not intend to set out a proportion" of Affordable Homes Programme funding for social housing, though "around half" of the affordable homes are to be for social and affordable rent.
- On the Apprenticeship Levy it says it has "no plans to review" it. On planning fees it is "exploring options" to increase them, and on local plans it will make an announcement "in due course".