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The government is proposing that house-builders will have to commit to delivery timeframes before they get planning permission and publish annual progress reports of all their developments.

The new rules are part of wider government efforts to accelerate house-building and prevent developers sitting on land or building out sites too slowly.

Developers who consistently fail to build out consented sites and those who secure planning permissions simply to trade land speculatively could also face a ‘delayed homes penalty’ of thousands of pounds per unbuilt home, paid directly to local planning authorities.

In extremis, those deliberately sitting on land without building the homes promised could see their sites seized by councils and stripped of future planning permissions. 

According to the Ministry of Housing, large housing sites of more than 2,000 homes can take at least 14 years to build but where more than 40% of homes are affordable, build-out is twice as fast. Therefore the government is also testing a new requirement for large sites to be mixed tenure by default – helping to build more homes, including more affordable homes, faster.

Deputy prime minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner said: “This government has taken radical steps to overhaul the planning system to get Britain building again after years of inaction. In the name of delivering security for working people, we are backing the builders not the blockers. Now it’s time for developers to roll up their sleeves and play their part.

“We’re going even further to get the homes we need. No more sites with planning permission gathering dust for decades while a generation struggle to get on the housing ladder.” 

Local Government Association (LGA) housing spokesperson Cllr Adam Hug said: “We are pleased the government has acted on the LGA’s call for it to be easier for councils to penalise developers and acquire stalled housing sites or sites which have not been built out to timescales contractually agreed, ideally with the recovery being made at pre-planning gain prices.

“Local government shares ambitions to boost housebuilding and work hard with communities and developers to deliver new sites. Too often they are frustrated when developers do not build the homes they have approved. While intervention of this sort is a last resort, this move is crucial to help ensure meaningful build out of sites.

“The ability to apply a ‘delayed homes penalty’ is a power that councils have been asking for and means that local taxpayers are not missing out on lost income due to slow developers, but it must be set at a level that incentivises build out.

“Private developers have a key role in solving our chronic housing shortage but they cannot build the homes needed each year on their own. Ahead of the spending review, we have also set out the measures needed to empower councils to also be able to build more affordable, good quality homes quickly and at scale.”

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