An increase in planning fees will inhibit homeowners making green improvements and damage smaller builders’ pipeline of refurbishment work, claims the industry.
- Planning application fees nearly double to £528
- Homeowners expected to delay green refurbishments
- Smaller builders will be hit hard by the changes
Increased planning fees will curb homeowner improvements and hurt SME builders
Smaller builders will be hit by new rules allowing councils to nearly double their planning application fees for green homeowner refurbishments such as installing solar panels.
The National Federation of Builders, NFB, has said the changes in the revisednational policy planning framework published on the 12th of Decemberwill make life harder for SME builders and developers.
NFB policy and market insight head Rico Wojtulewicz said: “Putting up planning fees for householders looking to instal heat pumps or external wall insulation will have an impact on green retrofits and it will hurt smaller local builders who rely on refurbishments to keep their businesses afloat.”
He said the fee increasefrom £258 to £528 would put homeowners off from making green improvements and restrict a useful source of income for smaller builders. He suggested this type of work should instead be included in permitted development rights.
Mr Wojtulewicz said this would avoid councils reverting to a ‘not in my backyard mentality’, witnessed recently with Westminster council plan to ban ‘for sale’ house signs.
The government expects the increase in fees to raise an additional £50m in revenue for local planning authorities.
Wojtulewicz criticisedLabourfor failing to support smaller builders in the new planning rules set to go live in mid-March.
Mr Wojtulewicz said the reforms should have made it ‘mandatory’ rather than advisory for councils to deliver 10 per cent of their local plans as small sites. And that a mandatory up-to-date small and medium-sized sites list would help them do this.
Currently, councils are often tempted to favour allocating large sites for housing as an easier way of meeting their housing target numbers. However, detailed planning requirements associated with larger sites, usually submitted by landowners rather than builders, often mean they are no longer economically viable to develop.
A small and medium-sized sites register key to quick delivery
If councils were forced to allocate housing to more small and medium sized sites, where planning requirements are usually easier or land ownership is controlled by the builders, then this would speed up new housing supply.
“This would helpsmaller builders get sites allocated in local plans and ensure councils can meet their housing targets because smaller sites are faster to deliver. They would also offer a greater variety of tenure and typology. It would also boost local employment as locally employing businesses would be winning more work.”
The NFB argues if local authorities were forced to maintain an updateable small and medium-sized sites register landowners with developer agreements and planning permission could submit their sites.
“Councils would then have a list of virtually shovel-ready sites which not only means fewer large sites but quicker delivery,” said Mr Wojtulewicz.
Brokers Hank Zarihs Associates said that development finance lenders supported the idea of councils providing an updateable list as this would improve information and prevent viable sites from slipping through the net.
LinkedIn Question: Would an up-to-date small and medium-sized site register help local authorities hit their housing targets?