Unclogging planning restrictions to deliver 1.5m new homes. Letter from HRA Chair Professor Roger Brown – published in The Guardian Online

Concerning Heather Stewart’s article ‘Bulldoze through’ Can Starmer’s plan to unclog planning restrictions to deliver 1.5m new homes? (The Guardian, 24th June), the planning system is not the problem (although more local authority planners would certainly help). The issue is developers failing to build. In 2021 the Local Government Association estimated that planning permission had been granted for 1.1 million homes in the previous decade but only 60 per cent of them had been built. There is an obvious need for greater incentives including penalties for developers that do not use the permission within a specified time. Even better would be a land tax but it seems unlikely that even a government supposedly committed to ‘change’ would go for that.

Roger Brown (Professor)

Chair, Highfield Residents Association