Government handed 10 point plan to ‘save’ SME developers from ‘extinction’

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Housing developer Pocket Living has launched a campaign urging the UK Government to boost the small and medium-sized housebuilder industry.

There are 10 recommendations on how to improve development for small businesses and some of the industry’s biggest names backing the campaign include Berkeley Group, The Building Society, Clarion Housing Group, Southern Housing, British Land, Related and Peabody.

Currently, small businesses account for just 10% of the UK housing supply, a significant decline from the 1960s and 1970s, when they accounted for around 50% of new homes, and a significantly lower proportion than in many European countries.

Here’s the 10-point plan:

• Empowering Homes England – by Paul Rickard Create up to 25 new bespoke Homes England SME Managers and include in Homes England’s annual performance review an indicator requiring at least 15% of housing supply to be delivered by SMEs.
• Complete tax reform to encourage investment in new brownfield housing – by Andrew White. The tax reform would allow the construction costs of a new home to be expensed in full when the funds are spent, rather than when the home is ultimately sold.
• Planning Policy for Small Sites – by Marc Vlessing OBE. It makes some slight amendments to section 70 of the NPPF to allow for a presumption in favour of the development of small brownfield sites, allowing for the delivery of thousands of homes.
• Small but Perfectly Shaped – by Russell Curtis. It will provide suburban design guides to provide greater certainty and hopefully deliver 900,000 homes within a 10-minute walk of a major rail station in London alone.
• Implementing a National Public Lands Portal for Small Sites – by Hugo Owen Local authorities in England and Wales own more than 300,000 unused small plots of land. A national public land portal dedicated to small plots of land for small businesses could encourage the development of smaller plots.
• Implementing quotas for small and medium-sized housebuilders in the local planning process – by David Parry. We will set quotas for each local plan to ensure local small businesses can continue to play their role in the housing market.
• Exploring New Zealand’s approach to planning commission procedures – by Grant LeggettDrawing on the New Zealand approach, we will reform the committee process to ensure that only the largest applications are referred to and to depoliticise the process by including experts on the committee.
• Helping People Climb the Homebuying Ladder – by Gary Day and Suzanne Revell. We will revise national housing construction targets to set a minimum of 10% as specialist housing for the elderly, providing greater certainty through presumptions that prioritise smaller specialist housing units.
• Increasing certainty in planning decisions through the Chief Planner – by Georgina McCrae. Encourage local planning authorities to employ a chief planning officer who will be responsible for ensuring decisions are in line with the most recent adopted local plan.
• The Growing Agenda for the Right to Light – by Jonathan Lonergan and Jamie Parkes. Right of way liabilities can reach more than £1.5 million for a 100-home scheme, and the Government should encourage all local authorities to use existing statutory powers under section 203 to help smaller sites survive.

David Thomas, chief executive of Barratt Developments, said: “We welcome this report and its recommendations, which are a positive and creative contribution to the housing policy debate.”

“Small business are vital to housing delivery and I would urge the Government to consider ways in which it can support them, along with other providers in the housing sector.”

Paul Rickard, managing director of Pocket Living, said: “As an industry we face the threat of extinction and it’s time for the Government to act before it’s too late.”

“Without a thriving small business housebuilding sector, it will be impossible for the Government to fulfil its promise to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this administration.”