Use development orders to tackle housing crisis, ministers told

The UK government should use development orders to circumvent the planning regime, build homes and address the housing crisis, a new report has argued.

Ministers should deploy existing powers – known as local development orders, which allow specific development in certain areas without a planning application – to turbocharge housebuilding, the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) said in a report.

The report’s author Henry Hill, the deputy editor of the ConservativeHome website, argues utilising these tools will accelerate the creation of new towns and homes on the so-called ‘grey belt’.

The Labour government pledged in their election manifesto to deliver some 1.5m new homes over the course of this Parliament.

But according to chief executive of government agency Homes England, Peter Denton, who is in charge of leading the drive for new housing, the promises are “incredible ambitions”, but would require a “two parliamentary term approach”, as the i paper reported.

Housing delays

Denton’s timeline put the government’s manifesto pledge in doubt, but if housing secretary Angela Rayner opted for using more development orders, which were legislated for in 1990, house building could take place much faster thanks to the “potent weapon”, Hill said.

“Our systematic failure to build enough houses in this country has been a national disaster,” Hill said. “Britain’s young are facing a double-whammy of never being able to afford to buy a house, and being barely able to afford sky-high rents in our most productive areas either. 

“Even so, it still seems that neither Labour or the Conservatives will commit to full-fat planning reform.”

‘Cut through red tape’

Development orders “can be used to unlock a high volume of new homes at pace, precisely where the government has political space to build”, he added.

“Just as the Conservatives could, and should, have used them to their advantage, so should the new Labour government now use them to deliver on their manifesto commitments.”

While Maxwell Marlow, ASI’s research director, argued: “The nationalisation of the planning system in 1947 has been catastrophic for Britain. Local councils are incapable – and unwilling- to approve enough new developments to keep up with demand.”

He insisted using development orders would mean “ministers are able to cut through red-tape and bypass our current sclerotic planning system in order to build the new homes and infrastructure we need at pace, and without having to introduce any new legislation”.

The Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government (DHCLG) was contacted for comment.