Housebuilders in the UK are failing to supply much-needed new homes not because of restrictive planning laws, but because they are “very bad” at building houses, the head of one of the UK’s biggest nature charities has warned.
“There’s planning permission today for a million new houses,” said Craig Bennett, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts. “So why aren’t they being built? Why is it that volume housebuilders in this country are actually very bad at building houses, even when they’ve got planning permission?”
Ministers have boasted of their swingeing reforms to the planning system – in a bill that passed its second reading last week – claiming they will clear the way for the 1.5m new homes promised in the Labour manifesto.
But Bennett believes this hope will be in vain because the government is missing the point. “[The reason so few homes are built] is because they [the large housebuilders] love to hold land and wait for the prices to up. A lot of the way that a lot of housebuilders in this country make money is through speculation around land prices, as much as it is about building houses.”
Housebuilders rejected Bennett’s analysis. Steve Turner, an executive director of the Home Builders Federation, said: “Housebuilders deliver a range of high-quality environmentally friendly house types to meet all budgets, and customer satisfaction levels are at an all time high. The myth of land banking has been demolished time and again by independent experts. Housebuilders’ only return on investment is selling homes, and having purchased land and navigated the costly and bureaucratic planning process there is absolutely no reason not to build and sell.”
Bennett will mark five years in April as head of the Wildlife Trusts, a confederation of 46 independent organisations which together boast 2,600 nature reserves (“about 1,000 more than McDonald’s has restaurants”) and 944,000 members. Before that, he headed Friends of the Earth.
The Wildlife Trusts, as a charity, are careful to avoid being party political, but within Charity Commission guidelines there is still scope for civil society groups to take issue with the politicians of the day.
And planning regulation – and the supposed conflict between development and environmental protection – has become a political flashpoint. Green groups have accused the Labour government of “scapegoating” nature and fomenting culture wars, after Rachel Reeves, chancellor of the exchequer, called for businesses to “focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts”. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, has also weighed in, ridiculing the presence of “the distinguished jumping spider” for allegedly halting new homes in Kent.
