Will new measures to encourage house building have desired effect?

Angus Walker
05 April 2017

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New measures to encourage house building come into force this week. Will they have the desired effect? Angus Walker investigates. 

On 6 April it became possible to include up to 500 houses in applications for development consent for infrastructure, business and commercial projects and also to amend existing consents to include housing.

The regime introduced in 2008 to give a special one-stop consent for infrastructure projects regarded as nationally significant was first extended, optionally, to more general business and commercial projects.  From the outset, however, not one house was allowed to be included in such an application, as giving planning consent for houses was regarded as the exclusive domain of local authorities.

Meanwhile, the need for more housing has grown ever more pressing, and the government has been coming up with more and more ways to bring it forward more easily.  The figures have so far stubbornly refused to move (enough), and so the latest wheeze to encourage more housing to be built is to allow it to be included in projects consented under the Planning Act 2008, thus meaning it will be consented by the government rather than the local authority.

Will this step mean a lot more houses being built, or will it join the list of not-quite-successful-enough measures like neighbourhood plans? Time will tell. This change does have some unique features that may be appealing, though.

The first is that the convenient one-stop-shop of obtaining several consents at once, including compulsory purchase powers, will be available for combined infrastructure and housing projects for the first time. The extension in 2013 to business or commercial projects mean they, too, could include housing and use this regime.

If an infrastructure project could do with a boost to its viability, then the answer could be to bring some more profitable housing into the equation.  The housing doesn't need to have anything to do with the infrastructure project, it just has to be near enough, which under current guidance means within a mile.  On the other hand if it can be shown it is related to the infrastructure project, then it can be anywhere (although presumably the further away it is, the more difficult it will be to show that it is related to the infrastructure project).

On the other hand, if some housing depends on infrastructure, most likely roads, for it to be a realistic prospect, then the need of one for the other could work the other way round.   Where currently infrastructure on other land normally has to be arranged through someone else, from now on it can be included in the housing application, as long as it exceeds the threshold to be considered nationally significant.  

In the case of roads, the threshold is a rather counter-intuitive area-based one - it should be part of the trunk road network and if the speed limit is below 50 miles per hour, it should take up at least 7.5 hectares (plus greater areas for faster roads). Basing the threshold on area rather than length of road may seem odd, but something like a large roundabout could take up a lot of space without being that ‘long’. I believe that was the rationale, anyway.

So there may be mutual benefit to combining housing and infrastructure in terms of the business case. There is also a benefit of convenience: a single application under the control of the developer of, presumably, either the housing or the infrastructure, should pay dividends in terms of ease of use, timing and cost of the application. The developer can demonstrate to those funding the development that all the associated infrastructure is being applied for as well and is not dependent on any third parties getting consent.

Compulsory purchase powers will be available for the land the housing is to be on as well as the land the infrastructure is to be on, although they may well require different justification.  This could be particularly attractive to housebuilders who haven’t previously had direct access to compulsory purchase powers. Housing developments are often held up or made much more expensive because of ‘ransom strips’ of land that are in the way of highway access or some other necessary connection, but these would be ineffective under this regime as they could be the subject of compulsory purchase.

So for a new way to obtain consent for housing, using the Planning Act 2008 has some unique benefits and might take off. On the other hand, not many housing developers know enough about it to feel confident using it, and it is only cost-effective if the alternative is a planning appeal and/or a contested compulsory purchase order. We shall see.

Angus Walker is a partner at law firm Bircham Dyson Bell.