Delayed Homes Penalty sounds like footballers stuttering in their run-ups in front of their own fans in a shoot-out. I’m not sure what housing secretary Angela Rayner is like 12 yards out, but her latest policy ‘ball’ is going to sail into Row Z. Actually, if it was in regulation match time, she’d put it in her own net.
Yes, it’s another own goal by the Labour government. You’re never quite sure with this lot whether there is a sinister, ulterior motive and they know exactly what they are doing, or they are just extraordinarily stupid.
I’ve got bored with conspiracy theories (for the time being anyway) so I’m putting this in the thick-as-mince box; further evidence that the government front bench, the board of UK plc, is utterly unfit for purpose. The trouble is doubled when arrogance is layered over ignorance; when you become a bot to the soundbite and the truth does not remotely concern you.
Last month, Sir Keir Starmer posted on X: ‘This is my message to housebuilders: Get on with it. If you promise homes, you have to build them. As part of our Plan for Change, we’re introducing penalties if you don’t build them fast enough.’
Prime minister, you forgot to add ‘to deliver for working people’ which appears in just about every pronouncement since you took office. All Artificial, zero Intelligence.
At least try to understand how the business of housebuilding, make that any business, actually works. Angela Rayner wants housebuilders, when submitting planning applications ‘to say how many they are going to build as part of the planning year on year; to notify the council when they start it, and then annually to give us the amount of houses they’ve built, and penalties if they don’t meet those targets.’ Not sure where to start there, other than it will have absolutely the opposite effect.
It’s at the consultative stage, so maybe we should collect every pre-commencement condition ever imposed by a local planning authority and dump it on the government website.
People need the ability to buy or rent what’s built, whatever the rate and number and housing associations have to find renewed appetite to acquire S106 units to help make a site viable in the first place.
I went onto the government website and its planning reform working paper, which says that the Delayed Homes Penalty ‘would be available to local authorities for development which falls materially behind pre-agreed build-out schedules, as set out through the transparency measures’ with developers required to pre-agree a build-out schedule with the local planning authority before consent.
If a site does fall behind, even by just 10%, then the developer would be required to ‘justify the slower build-out rate to the planning authority.’ External factors ‘such as unusually severe weather’ are considered a legitimate defence, presumably with Michael Fish as ombudsman.
It’s not made clear if an under-resourced planning authority with NIMBY constituents is also considered a valid ‘external factor’ or if the treacle of regulations will miraculously become fast running water overnight.
‘If the Delayed Homes Penalty was applied, the relevant party – developer or landowner – would be charged for each home behind the pre-agreed build-out schedule. Penalties could be based on a percentage of the house price, or via reference to local Council Tax rates, given the loss of income that a local authority incurs when homes are not built and occupied at the expected rate.’
So, absorption rates are the only reason we’re not going to get anywhere near Labour’s 1.5million new homes? Brace yourselves Labour, there’s another one and a half million reasons why, and while yes, housebuilders as private enterprises are going to do what works for them as businesses, the inference again is that it’s all the fault of those pesky, greedy developers.
I’m now down a policy paper rabbit hole. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and others, while finding no evidence of current land banks ‘systemically distorting competition between housebuilders’, have concluded that most homes in England are not built as fast as they can be constructed once permission is granted, but ‘only as fast as the developer expects to sell them at local second-hand market prices’.
Housebuilders could be prevented from securing new planning permissions and even have their unbuilt sites seized under compulsory purchase orders by councils. Will the councils then get penalised thousands of pounds for every home they can’t build?
It’s Premier League gaslighting. Even Labour is beginning to wake up to the fact that their flagship 1.5 million new homes promise in this parliament is dead in the ground less than a year after taking office. So, get your excuses in early and blame it on the housebuilding industry.
The policy paper is inviting views on further action the government should take to speed up homes being built. Well, if the government simply got out of the way, that would be a start.
This article was first featured in Show House Magazine. Read more like this and the latest industry insight here.
