A people-focused planning system where land will be zoned as ripe for development, or renewal, is to be unveiled later this week. Housing secretary Robert Jenrick wrote in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph his reforms would offer a faster and simpler system to deliver the homes and places the country needs. Mr. Jenrick said the slow planning system was a barrier to building affordable homes and vital infrastructure. “Local building plans were supposed to help councils and their residents deliver more homes [...]

New residential schemes encouraging people to exercise are at the heart of design guidelines backed by government housing accelerator Homes England.   Building for a Healthy Life covers the priorities for fitter stronger communities through travelling on foot or by bike or public transport and improving air quality by cutting emissions.   Co-author and Design for Homes chief executive David Birkbeck said: “A lot of developments don’t come with useable footways or if they do you get to a major [...]

Developers north of the border have slammed Scotland’s poor performance over planning decisions for the six months from October last year to March 2020. The latest stats show decision times for applications of more than 50 homes rising to 37.5 weeks – two weeks longer than the previous year and more than double the 16-week statutory timescale. Decision time for smaller applications also increased from 9.1 weeks in the previous year to 9.2 weeks despite an 11.5 percent drop in [...]

Developers will be able to build homes on disused commercial and retail sites without going through the full planning process from September. The government announced new legislation to extend permitted development rights for commercial buildings to be knocked down and replaced with homes without submitting a planning application. The new rules would also allow for empty commercial and retail properties to be turned into houses and for homeowners to add two storeys to their properties to create more homes or [...]