While the government has announced new planning policies this week allowing councils to compel house builders to build more family-sized homes – see our story today Planners to compel family home builds – new figures released by the Home Builders Federation show councils are already seriously failing against government targets in respect of planning applications by house builders.

Significant and systemic delays

The HBF says significant and systemic delays in the planning process have increased the average planning approval time to 248 days. The governments target is 91 days.

There are also significant delays in registering applications from developers – an average of 17 days compared to 24 hours as a statutory target.

The federation also produced figures which suggested an average delay of 98 days – more than three months – between a committee resolution to grant permission and the formal issuing of a decision notice.

Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation said, “At a time when Britain faces the most acute housing shortage since the industrial revolution, we are seeing significant and systemic delays in the planning process.”

• Appeals take an average of 309 days – over 10 months – from being lodged to a decision being received.
• It takes on average 475 days - over a year and three months – from the submission of an application to developers starting on site.

HBF’s research was conducted on a sample of 580 sites from 24 companies. All the sites were in the planning system over the last three years, although some started out earlier. Site size ranged between one house up to a scheme for 1500 dwellings. The average size of development was 100 dwellings.