In his latest report on the Liverpool homes market, Alan Bevan of City Residential gives a cautious welcome to Labour’s planning reforms but adds Keir Starmer needs to back it up with hard cash. Tony McDonough reports
If the new Labour Government wants to hit its target of 1.5m new homes during this parliament then its proposed planning shake-up will also need lots of funding.
That’s the view of Alan Bevan, managing director of the City Residential agency in Liverpool. In his quarterly analysis of the residential market Alan welcomed planning reform but said that alone would not be enough to accelerate housebuilding.
On Monday Greg Johnson, managing director of Merseyside window and door manufacturer, Warwick North West, told LBN that new Government policies could lead to a “golden age of housebuilding”.
New Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Deputy PM Angela Rayner and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are leading the “get Britain building charge”.
Their plans include streamlining the planning system to make it easier for developers to get schemes approved and to reduce the power of so-called NIMBY (not in my back yard) power. It is likely there will be more homes built in Green Belt areas.
Mr Starmer said they would consult communities on “how, not if” homes are built in their area. Councils that don’t meet their targets will see more planning refusals overturned.
Supporting the new policies, Greg Johnson said: “It doesn’t take a genius to work out that to bring down the price of homes you have to increase supply. Labour’s commitment to build 1.5m new homes in the next few years is ambitious but doable.
“Those of us involved in or supplying the housebuilding sector have been crying out for planning reform. Of course local communities must have a voice but the balance needs to change. We have to discourage opposition for opposition’s sake and get building.”
Alan Bevan agreed that a pushback on the NIMBY culture was necessary but he fears planning reform alone may not be enough.
“The aim of building 1.5m homes is admirable and needed but will need a complete overhaul of how we currently build houses in the UK,” he explained. “It will not be possible through planning reform alone but will need a huge amount of extra funding.
“With the hope/expectation that a large proportion of these homes will be social/affordable there will need to be a coordinated, fully-funded, long term plan involving all stakeholders.
“While there is a huge amount of brownfield land across the country (especially in the North and in/around cities) many of these sites are not viable for housing without a large injection of public money.”
On planning, he added: “Our current planning system in the UK is not fit for purpose especially if we want to substantially “dial up” the number of homes built.
“As we have seen in Liverpool, developments are often thwarted at the planning stage by local councillors, NIMBYs and other “stakeholders” who don’t understand or want to understand that we must increase the number of homes built in the UK.
“Overhauling and/or improving the planning system will take a huge amount of effort, resource and commitment. While we would welcome the changes proposed we remain skeptical until such time as real progress has been made.”
Alan also addressed other legislation proposed by the Government including the Renters Reform Bill and Leasehold & Commonhold Reform Bill.
Using the Renters Reform Bill Labour will seek to ban so-called no fault evictions (Section 21s), empower tenants to challenge rent increases, stop rent bidding wars and punish agents or landlords who don’t quickly address issues such as damp and mould.
Other measures include creating a digital national database of landlords and their properties.
“While the majority, if not all, of the above proposals will be welcomed by the industry there is a big risk that the proposed legislation will continue to force landlords out of the market,” said.
“This will further reduce the supply of rental homes and subsequently continue the upward pressure on rents.”
READ MORE: Start date set for £20m Bootle Strand transformation
On the proposed reform of the leasehold system he added: “Despite previous efforts to radically overhaul the leasehold system many leaseholders still find themselves in extremely challenging and unfair leases with high and ever increasing ground rents.
“On ground rents they propose to ‘regulate ground rents for existing leaseholders so they no longer face unregulated and unaffordable costs’.
“There are also details of a potential ban on selling new leasehold flats. While it is unclear how this would work in practice it does show that the Government is keen to completely overhaul the whole system rather than just tinker around the edges.”