This video from the New Economics Foundation gets it about right.
It shares the analysis of Ian Jack, which I quoted a couple of weeks ago:
A report in the Times last year showed that out of more than 1.7 million applications for residential planning permission granted between 2006 and 2014, fewer than half had been completed after three years.
According to the Local Government Association in 2016, councils consistently approved more than 80 per cent of major residential planning applications; but the difference between the number of houses being approved and those actually being built was almost 500,000 – ‘and this gap is increasing.’
The hardly radical figure of Oliver Letwin identified the real brake on house-building when he published the interim conclusions to his inquiry into low completion rates last year.
What governed the numbers, he decided, was the absorption rate – "the rate at which newly constructed homes can be sold into (or are believed by the house-builder to be able to be sold successfully into) the local market without materially disturbing the market price".In other words, the popular argument that it is all the fault of Nimbys and we need to weaken councils' planning powers is a load of nonsense.
Is this,therefore, to keep the market price high to maintain the builders profits .To control the market to their advantage.?
ReplyDeleteNow that I have looked at thevideo I think the people who get the most from .the system will be very reluctant to stop it.A new crash may help but catching the peoples mood into this (possibly Tory and theirdonors ) scam if widely publicised might help.
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