Report also calls for replacement of section 106 mechanism
The government should consider allowing developers to pay for faster planning decisions, a report has recommended.
The report, published by The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and the pro-development YIMBY Alliance, outlines several recommendations for speeding up housing development by creating ‘predictable and streamlined’ planning rules.
It said ministers should “consider allowing developers to pay for faster decisions and requiring decisions from local planning authorities to be delivered within deadlines that are enforced by penalties”.
It said they could also consider creating a “default permission to build”, with automatic permission for applications that have not been decided after six months.
The report suggests introducing “environment outcomes reports” to replace the environment impact assessment regime, “setting predictable rules instead of discretionary policies to be weighed against each other, which it said would enable greater use of artificial intelligence to triage applications.
It also suggested simplifying building regulations, requiring local plans to move towards “unambigious planning rules”, introducing common national standards through national development management policies and reducing or removing the limits on the number of homes that can be delivered through Development Consent Orders (DCOs)
>>See also: What does the collapse in section 106 demand mean for housing delivery?
>>See also: The ins and outs of Labour’s new National Planning Policy Framework
The report also said section 106 agreements, under which developers agree a percentage of affordable homes in a scheme as a condition of planning approval, “creates uncertain, lengthy and expensive arguments about what level of payment would make the development unviable”. It said where possible these should be replaced with a simpler mechanism.
It said: “An inflexible requirement for affordable homes to make up a certain percentage of the homes in a given development can mean fewer affordable and market homes being built in total. Care is needed to ensure that such requirements do not harm housing delivery.”
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