The British Property Federation wants the government to scrap what it calls “barriers and bottlenecks” holding back investment.
In its Comprehensive Spending Review representation – a consultation exercise staged by the Treasury – the BPF emphasises that the government’s overarching objective to grow the UK economy is being hindered due to inefficiencies in government departments and the development approval system.
The BPF highlights that the planning system – the gateway to the development of homes, business space and infrastructure – is currently a drag on delivery and requires appropriate resource to enable planning departments to make strategic long-term decisions. The BPF argues that the government needs to plan for more than 300 planners and allow planning departments to fully recover their development control costs, while ring-fencing the income to protect the service.
Alongside planning departments, statutory consultees and other regulators require a new approach and targeted resource to better support productivity, investment and growth. The backlog of applications going through the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) is causing projects to either be delayed or abandoned altogether, running counter to the urgent need for new homes. The BPF is calling for additional resource for the BSR to reduce delays and enable projects to move forward.
Delays at Land Registry of between 18 and 24 months are saddling investors who no longer have an economic interest in a building with unnecessary legal commitments and is preventing new owners from taking full control of a building and making productive use of it. The BPF has calculated that legal teams waste 12,000 working days every year chasing applications. Targeted resource is needed to bring these backlogs down without delay.
The BPF is arguing for a 10-year rent settlement to support private investment to deliver an additional 240,000 affordable homes over a five-year period. Stamp Duty Multiple Dwellings Relief should also be reinstated, according to the BPF, to support valuations and development viability of build-to-rent, which makes a critical contribution to housing numbers and has the potential to deliver up to 30,000 homes a year with the right fiscal and regulatory environment.
The real estate sector is poised to unleash investment and contribute to the government’s ambitious growth and productivity targets. The BPF wants to work with the Government to review the current NHS funding system to enable private capital to address the NHS maintenance backlog, and support investment in new buildings. Public sector capital alone will struggle to deliver the improvement and upgrades needed in these estates to support productivity and address waiting lists.
Melanie Leech, Chief Executive, British Property Federation, comments: “Thegovernment’s reforms to the planning system will not deliver homes, infrastructure and growth unless the regulatory and planning system is made more efficient and adequately resourced. To unlock the billions of pounds of investment needed to build more homes, employment spaces, infrastructure and to support improvements in key public services such as the NHS, we need the government to create a supportive fiscal and regulatory environment that will give the real estate sector the confidence to take long-term investment decisions. That requires a new smarter approach to regulation and ensuring that it is properly resourced”
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