At the Autumn Budget 2024, Chancellor Reeves scaled back her interference in the planning process. However, in her speech today, she returned to the position that a well-functioning planning system is crucial to not only enabling growth but, more importantly, sustaining it.
Richard Beresford, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Builders (NFB), commented: “The planning system is the main barrier to growth. When decisions are delayed, or worse, intentionally stalled, it halts investment in essential infrastructure, such as clean water, transport networks that connect towns, cities, regions, and nations, the homes that create fairer societies, and the premises that investors and innovators need.
The UK has lacked a Chancellor that understands that their role is not to merely to make fiscal decisions but ensure the barriers to higher GDP and greater business confidence, such as the planning system, underpin their taxation strategies. There is a lot to unpick for the Government and the Treasury but after more than a decade of the NFB highlighting the need for major planning reforms, it is good to see that message get through.”
In her speech, Chancellor Reeves outlines several ambitions, primarily focused on enabling projects and planning permissions:
- Expansion plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport
- New plans to deliver the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor
- Unlocking £7.9bn investment to improve water infrastructure, including nine new reservoirs
- Review of the “Green Book”, which is used to evaluate large investment projects.
- Redevelopment of Old Trafford
- Wrexham and Flintshire investment zone
Rico Wojtulewicz, Head of Policy and Market Insight at the NFB said: “It is clear that without planning permission, the UK faces a range of critical barriers to growth. Too few homes have made housing unaffordable, limiting the workforce capacity of our town, cities, and regions.
An unwillingness to build reservoirs, treatment plants, pylons, and power stations has led to poor water quality and rising energy costs. Delays to road, rail, and airport projects have scaled back ambitions, increased transport emissions, and stifled clean energy innovation. Opposition to commercial premises, especially in regional plans, has deterred business from investing, expanding, and forming partnerships. We cannot even get the go ahead for schools, hospitals, and community spaces.
We must accept that there is no growth without business and innovation, and no business without a connected world, workforce, and investment. The Chancellor is correct to return her focus to fixing the primary barrier to UK growth: the broken planning system.”
