"The collapse in planning permissions is a direct result of the government’s increasingly anti-development policies and an overall negative stance on home building."
HBF’s latest Housing Pipeline report, covering Q4 2022, reveals that the number of projects granted permission fell below 3,000 for the first time since the data set began in 2006. During 2022, the number of housing project permissions fell to below 12,500, “well below” the 21,000 that were consented in 2017.
The report shows a particular drop in permissions in Northern England, which have declined 22% year-on-year. HBF said this undermined “any attempts to use housebuilding, a known economic driver, to support the government’s levelling up agenda”.
HBF said this data reflected a period “before the impact of the government’s latest capitulation to the NIMBY wing of the Conservative party even started to kick in”. It pointed to 55 local authorities which have withdrawn or halted their local plans upon the government’s moves on planning, including 17 since the housing secretary Michael Gove announced revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) at the end of last year.
HBF said that of the 58 proposed changes to the NPPF, introduced in 2012, only three could be regarded as supportive towards new development.
The latest report follows HBF’s Planning for Economic Failure report earlier this year, which warned that the government’s “increasingly anti-development policy regime” could drive a drop in housing supply to the lowest levels on record.
It noted that planning permissions granted had been “on a steady decline” since early 2020. With long lead-in times, completions had remained high. “The effects of this decline are yet to be felt but it is likely that the impact on housing supply will be much more clearly seen in the coming months,” HBF said.
Stewart Baseley, HBF’s executive chairman, commented: “The collapse in planning permissions is a direct result of the government’s increasingly anti-development policies and an overall negative stance on home building. We fear this may just be the start. Since the government capitulated to the NIMBY wing of the Conservative party, 55 local authorities have withdrawn their housing plans.
“This short-term thinking might be clever politics but its social and economic consequences will be felt for decades. The impact will be immediate and acute with even fewer young people being able to access decent, affordable and energy efficient housing, hundreds of thousands of jobs will go and local economies up and down the country will lose billions.”
