Rayner’s ‘new homes accelerator’ is the right kind of big thinking to speed up housing delivery

No reader needs to be told that housing supply is one of the UK’s greatest challenges. Our industry clearly sees the need for the government to prioritise housing delivery, even if the target of 1.5 million homes looks a daunting one.

With the consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) closing soon and a new planning bill waiting in the wings, housing policy development will shortly move from the early phase of lightning-strike announcements to the attrition of draft legislation and parliamentary scrutiny.

As we know from previous regimes, it is difficult to maintain momentum through these challenging and important steps. Despite all the great ideas and effort, there remains a risk that new homes delivery will stubbornly remain in the slow lane.

Short-term action is therefore needed, hence the new homes accelerator, one of the first measures announced in office by the chancellor Rachel Reeves in July.

The accelerator is a welcome, pragmatic step made essential by the tortuous nature of land development in England and Wales

Further details of the scheme were revealed by the deputy prime minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner at the end of August, keeping the focus firmly not only on new land supply, but also on schemes that are stuck in planning or delivery.

The accelerator is a welcome, pragmatic step made essential by the tortuous nature of land development in England and Wales. A recent study by Lichfields, Start to Finish 3, based on a survey of nearly 200 developments, highlights that it typically takes five years to take large schemes from their start to detailed planning consent.

Assuming that the revised NPPF is launched this year, and its transition provisions are implemented in full, it will still take one to two years for the increased housing supply to flow and for schemes to start their long and convoluted route through the development system. But we need action now.

The launch of the accelerator is accompanied by a call for evidence, asking for developers and landowners to nominate sites for review and intervention. The ministry for housing, communities and local government (MHCLG) believes there are 200 large sites out there with the potential to deliver 300,000 homes.

Schemes such as Northstowe in Cambridgeshire are well established but need to bring forward infrastructure development to scale up to later phases. Others such as Stretton Hall Garden Village in Leicestershire are at a much earlier stage of planning and will need different support from the accelerator to speed up delivery.

What these two schemes have in common is their scale, reflecting a deliberate choice by the housing ministers to rely on faster delivery on big schemes to ramp up the numbers.

But this focus on the big schemes has an Achilles’ heel; the potential for slow build-out rates driven by local capacity for market absorption – an issue that currently affects affordable housing delivered under section106 planning gain arrangements as much as for-sale housing aimed at the open market.

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Readers with long memories might recall Oliver Letwin’s 2018 independent review into build-out. The review was tasked with determining why housing completions lagged the supply of allocated and permissioned land, having highlighted that the annual build-out rate was around 6% of total scheme size.

The report’s conclusion was that the homogeneity of housing product – mostly for-sale housing – was the main determinant for the rate of build. Availability of skilled labour and the timing of infrastructure provision were acknowledged as being key factors, but not the “binding constraint”.

Letwin rightly saw large sites as being a development problem that had a built-in solution – the opportunity to include a much more diverse offering of for-sale, for-rent and affordable housing. He proposed several potential solutions including a new planning class for large, mixed-tenure housing schemes and the establishment of locally led development corporations.

They were never adopted, but there is an echo of some of the thinking in current grey belt proposals, where generous affordable housing provision will be funded through a land value capture mechanism. New towns will need a similar approach too.

Neither new towns nor grey belt development will help in the initial dash for growth, so the accelerator could be stuck with schemes that just cannot be revved up enough. What options are available?

Smaller sites should be part of the armoury. The Lichfield analysis highlights that smaller sites – up to 499 units – are typically brought through the planning system quicker and then deliver a much faster build-out rate. The policy focus on large schemes certainly gives the impression that the accelerator is pulling the big levers of housing delivery, but following the grain of local housing markets might deliver more housing in the short term.

The new homes accelerator is an excellent initiative, highlighting the new government’s mission approach using carefully targeted actions to tackle intractable problems

One other opportunity concerns whole areas where development is stalled due to nutrient neutrality prohibitions. Reforms to facilitate development became bogged down before the election, but the new planning bill will include a provision for scheme-funded nature-based solutions.

Other blockers have been removed by the levelling-up act. Water companies are required by law to upgrade treatment works by 2030 and planning authorities are empowered to take future upgrades into account when considering planning applications.

Schemes at all scales have been caught up by the prohibition, but ironically, large sites with a slow build-out rate will provide the best opportunity to deliver new housing in affected areas while mitigations are put in place. Labour could be much more ambitious in releasing these stalled schemes with little risk of long-term environmental impact.

The new homes accelerator is an excellent initiative, highlighting the new government’s mission approach using carefully targeted actions to tackle intractable problems. To succeed, the accelerator taskforce will need ready access to political leverage and capital, as well as a functioning housing market.

By focusing on large developments only, opportunities might be missed. Stalled schemes are at the vanguard of Labour’s nascent housing revolution and call for the widest range of big thinking – not just big sites.

Simon Rawlinson is a partner at Arcadis