Give councils the power to act on unbuilt housing land, says LGA

Councils should be able to take control of land which had planning permission but had not been built on, the Local Government Association has claimed. New statistics show that more than a million homes with planning permission have not been delivered in the past decade.

The LGA said that 2,564,600 homes had been granted planning permission by local councils since 2010, but only 1,530,680 of these had been completed.

According to the LGA, the planning system was not the reason for the backlog of unbuilt homes. It called on the government to use its forthcoming white paper on housing to give councils the power to force developers to build.

It should also be easier for councils to compulsory purchase land where homes remain unbuilt and to be able to charge developers full council tax for every unbuilt development from the point that the original planning permission expires, the LGA argued.

The number of planning permissions granted for new homes had almost doubled since 2012-13, with councils approving nine out of 10 applications.

“While in some cases there will be a time lag between permission being granted and homes being built, new build completions have only increased by half as much in that time,” the LGA said. It said it was encouraged that completions in 2019 were the highest in any single year in the past decade.

David Renard, the LGA’s housing spokesman, said the number of homes granted planning had outpaced the number being built. “Councils need powers to tackle our housing backlog and step in where a site with planning permission lies dormant and house building has stalled,” he added.

Source: LGA