A new report has been published by planning consultancy Lichfields that looks at the planning and development process and in particular the pipeline of sites for housing development.
Lichfields was commissioned by the Home Builders Federation (HBF) and the LPDF to undertake the research and the report – Feeding the pipeline: Assessing how many permissions are needed for housebuilders – is the third of three linked research studies exploring the current housing crisis.
The Lichfields report looks at how many additional implementable planning permissions on sites are needed to achieve ambitions of delivering 300,000 net additional homes per annum across England from the current base of 243,770 net additional homes achieved in 2019/20. It also explores the practices within the 10 major housebuilding companies to show the role of the continuing pipeline in the delivery of homes.
Andrew Whitaker, Planning Director at the HBF said. “If we are to get back to pre-pandemic housing supply levels, which were still well short of the Government’s target of 300,000, more land needs to be allocated and major improvements to the planning process will be needed.
“Building enough homes to match demand requires sufficient sites to be allocated applications to be processed efficiently to the point where construction can start. Far too many sites are stuck in the treacle of the planning process, delaying work starting, driving up costs and preventing desperately needed homes being delivered.”
