Collapse in housing starts shows planning reform alone is not enough to deliver homes Britain needs
- With volume builders experiencing lengthy delays for large schemes at the Building Safety Regulator, SMEs and small sites offer delivery salvation
- Tens of thousands of new homes across thousands of small sites could be unlocked with series of minor policy changes designed to create proportionate climate for SMEs
- Plan backed by cross-party APPG for SME Housebuilders
With housing delivery numbers plunging to near record lows, and the volume builders struggling to overcome lengthy delays at the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), a coalition of industry leaders have outlined a nine-point plan which could break the current impasse and get Britain housebuilding again.
This would enable SME housebuilders to step up to unlock tens of thousands of new homes across thousands of small sites nationally. According to the report, implementing the Nine-Point Plan could drastically cut costs for SMEs overnight, who currently face an average £60,000 higher cost building a home for a first-time buyer in high-demand areas like London compared with large PLC developers.
The move comes as volume builders and large-scale residential developers face the perfect storm of consented developments being held up by the Building Safety Regulator and weakening sales pipelines driving decisions not to progress with large-scale delivery commitments.
By contrast, SME housebuilders are ideally placed to bring forward much smaller individual schemes, less dependent on the scale of sales required to support the construction of large-phase developments, and schemes less likely to be captured by delays from the BSR.
The plan, The Road to a Proportionate System, outlines nine practical steps to reduce red tape, rebalance the cost burden, and unleash a new wave of SME-led housing. This includes introducing targeted exemptions for SME developers from burdensome requirements such as Biodiversity Net Gain, simplifying S.106 requirements, and using the forthcoming National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) to embed a principle of proportionality across the planning system.
Doing so, the SME housebuilding sector argues, will enable the government to focus on some of the bigger challenges currently blighting delivery across much of the country, while the smaller builders carry on building new homes. It would also provide a much-needed boost to a beleaguered sector of the housebuilding industry which has been in a state of decline since the 1990s.
The plan which is backed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for SME Housebuilders, whose Chair Sarah Edwards MP has thrown her support behind the recommendations, calling the SME housebuilding sector “vital” to getting the housebuilding sector delivering again.
Contributors include Nicholas Boys Smith MBE, former Chair of the Government’s Office for Place, and Jack Airey, former No.10 Special Adviser on housing.
Paul Rickard, CEO of Pocket Living, said:
“With the volume builders struggling to deliver the homes we need due a combination of regulatory delays and a softening sales climate for large-phase developments, in part driven by the dearth of support for first-time buyers, there is a golden opportunity for SMEs to step in and take up the slack. Our nine-point plan would unlock a wave of sector growth not seen since the 1970s, reversing decades of decline and unlocking the full potential of SME-led delivery.”