Planning, regulation and devolution: How to enable growth without lowering standards

Written by Tony Price, head of programme, innovation, commercial management and sales at Trent & Dove

There is no doubt that the planning system is currently under huge pressure.

The Government’s aspirational target of 1.5 million new homes by 2029, a ten-year Social and Affordable Homes Programme commencing in April 2026, and proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework all need to be delivered. To do this, we need quick and efficient planning decisions. 

Planning is vital for well-designed, high-quality and energy-efficient homes which are well connected to utilities and services and have sufficient infrastructure, such as schools, roads, shops, and health facilities, to enable people to play an active and sustainable role in their community. 

The need for new housing is stark: there are over 1.3 million households on Council and housing association waiting lists for affordable homes, with over 132,000 households in temporary accommodation, including 172,000 children. Essentially, one child in 80 is growing up in temporary accommodation with very little hope of a new home any time soon. 

No-one doubts that most planners are hardworking and diligent. 

However, prolonged pressure on local authority resources has, more broadly, contributed to the loss of experienced staff, significant delays in decision-making and in discharging pre-start on-site conditions, which must be met before any work can start. 

There is also the uncertainty of local government reorganisation and devolution and how this will impact on planning policy and administration of the planning system at a local and regional level in the future.

Our experience as a developing housing association is that we now need to factor into our plans that even a straightforward planning application will take 12 months to navigate the system from submission of application through determination and approval to discharge of pre-start conditions.

This has an obvious negative impact on our development programme, ability to claim and spend grants, and cash flow. Many costs need to be committed at the early stages of a development, and delays in completion mean delays in revenue from rent and service charges from new homes, hitting the income and expenditure account. 

There are also frustrations with the process of reaching decisions. We have recently had an application for one home take seven months to determine, following five extensions of time related to statutory consultees not responding to requests for comments. At the other end of the spectrum, a major site for over 90 apartments and flats took a total of 23 months to be determined, resulting in significant increases in construction costs due to the delay. 

These delays are not always reflected in official statistics. For example, the number of time extensions is not included, and the overall length of the determination target includes extensions that can extend long after the statutory eight or 13-week target. 

Once a planning approval is granted, there are pre-start on-site conditions to discharge. These are usually quite practical matters but do require the local planning authority approve them before work can start. This is particularly an issue with Homes England grant-funded schemes, which are subject to a compliance audit, including a requirement to evidence that all relevant pre-start conditions have been met before work starts. Failure to do this could result in non-compliance, and sanctions, including the need to repay the grant. 

We currently have several projects with planning approval for which we cannot start building due to difficulties in obtaining completion of conditions signed off by the local planning authority. 

To take a more positive view, and hopefully some or all of these will be part of any devolved or reorganised local authority planning ecosystem, there are some relatively quick fixes which will benefit everyone: 

• Limit time extensions to one or two per application.

• Include extensions of time in the official planning monitoring statistics. 

• Allow statutory consultees a set period to reply, say 14 days, and if no comments are received assume “silence is acceptance” and proceed.

• Allow pre- start conditions to be discharged by default after a set period (say eight weeks from planning approval) if sufficient evidence has been provided to the local planning authority. 

There are also some longer- term ideas which can hopefully be part of a future planning ecosystem: 

• More involvement of housing providers in setting local housing priorities and affordable homes numbers. 

• More investment in local authority planning. The Government announcement of additional funding for 300 new planning officers in 2025 is welcome, but this equates to less than one per local authority. 

• Also welcome is additional training for Councillors who make planning decisions, so they can be fully informed about relevant legislation, policy and good practice to assist their decision -making. Planning decisions are often complex and technical, and it may be helpful to reflect on whether the current decision-making process ensures they receive the level of expertise and focus they require. 

• During local government reorganisation, and as new authorities emerge, keeping existing Local Plans in place so there are some guidelines in place at a local level until a new Plan for the new authority is agreed. I appreciate this may mean a new authority has several different policies on a matter within their new area for a few years, but it will mean there is less risk of all development stopping while a new Plan is developed, in effect, from scratch. 

• Streamlining building regulations and other relevant regulations. For example, building regulations require electric vehicle charging points on all new homes, and there is a strong move to add solar panels mandatory. From a sustainability perspective, this is a good idea, however, fire regulations and health and safety compliance are at odds with building regulations, particularly around battery storage (essential for solar panels and some chargers). 

 If we can address some of these issues within a reorganised and devolved local authority structure, hopefully we can make progress on delivering new homes for local people.