They say: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” That’s certainly true for house builders and developers looking to gain planning permission. If they want to increase their supply of permissioned land on which to build houses they have to put in a residential planning application in the first place, which then may or may not be rejected. So with house building now back on the agenda in a big way we decided to use Barbour ABI data to examine…
I’ve been quizzed a bit in recent hours for my views on the residential planning system in the light of the reported drop in planning permissions. One graph that might prove interesting is one I have on file which tracks the figures from the communities department. It shows the number of decisions made within 13 weeks and the proportion of applications approved for major residential schemes. These are schemes of 10 or more homes. It is silly to read too much…
There has been a lot of screaming about housing projects being abandoned after a letter was sent in late May from the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to local authorities saying regional targets were, in effect, dead. The National Housing Federation recently claimed that 85,000 planned homes have been scrapped as a result. So as I was doing research for the forthcoming Housing Market Intelligence report analysing planning data produced by Barbour ABI, it seemed wise to see what the data suggested….
The data published today on planning applications on the face of it should provide house builders and their suppliers with some comfort. The figures show that in the final quarter of last year the number of planning decisions for major residential developments – those with 10 or more homes – rose for the second quarter in a row. Admittedly the number, 1,300 in the quarter, is about half that of the average during the boom years between 2003 and 2008, but…
The latest Government planning data on the face of it supports the view that there has been a bounce in activity within the house building sector. The topline data, released today, for residential planning decision show a fall in the September quarter compared with both the previous quarter and on the same quarter last year.