At the recently held Welsh Conservatives Annual Conference, the party leader in the Senedd, Andrew RT Davies called for the introduction of tough new rules to force developers to speed up their house building procedures. He followed this up with a piece in the Sunday Times where he wrote, ‘My party would change planning permission into a form of planning compulsion, which would mean that when developers are granted planning permission for housing they have to complete that housing, across that whole given area, within a limited time. This would help to prevent the land banking that has become all too prevalent.’
How widespread is 'land banking' in Wales?
I would vehemently challenge this assumption that the practice of ‘land banking’ is widespread. The burden of proof should lay with parties making such claims and I am yet to come across such evidence.
What I have come across is a Welsh Government commissioned report release in 2020 which was tasked with ‘establishing the current nature and extent of sites in Wales which have been identified for development but have yet to be developed.’ The research concluded that of the 1,600 residential sites that had been allocated within Local Development Plans (LDPs) in Wales, nearly a quarter were stalled, which is significantly high. The Welsh Conservatives are therefore not wrong in their assumption that unlocking these sites would drastically increase house building numbers. However, where they’ve gone wrong is in their assumption that this is down to land banking.
Why do home development projects stall?
The research identified a wide variety of factors behind sites stalling, and for a large proportion of these sites, there was more than one reason behind the lack of progress. These include matters such as finance, viability, and planning delays. Specifically on ‘land banking’ the report concluded that ‘…it would appear to be on a relatively small scale, with limited negative consequences on housing delivery.’
House builders are not choosing to build homes slowly. They are chomping at the bit to accelerate delivery but are being prevented from doing so because the planning system in which they operate is holding them back.
Addressing the broken planning system
Rather than focussing on land banking, the Welsh Conservatives should be calling on the Welsh Government to mend our broken planning system which is crippling the ability of developers to build homes. The planning system has become increasingly fraught with complexities, high costs, and high risk; to the point that many SMEs have over the years voted with their feet and ceased to operate within the house building sector. A statistic that reflects this is that in the late 1980s, approximately 40% of new homes were built by local SMEs. Today, that figure is down to just 10%.
An alternative approach to addressing housing needs
There is plenty of political capital to be made by opposition parties if they were to focus on the persistent failure of Welsh Labour Governments to provide the necessary environment for the delivery of homes. This is what the Welsh Conservatives should focus on instead of attacking the sector for allegedly squirreling land purely for their own financial gain; an accusation that is based on nothing more than hearsay.
Authors
Ifan Glyn
Ifan is the Director of FMB Cymru and in addition heads up of the FMB regional and devolved nations team. He is also a member of the FMB Senior Management Team. Ifan holds an MA in History from the University of St Andrews and an MSc in Welsh Government and Politics from Cardiff University.
