Backing the builders over the blockers to drive place-led growth

The announcement by the Prime Minister to remove the blockers that have held up progress for too long will be welcomed by the development sector, as the UK has experienced sluggish economic growth for nearly two decades.

We’ve seen few signs of recovery since the financial crisis in 2007, with low investment, stagnant productivity and political uncertainty all contributing to a general sense of dissatisfaction.

In July 2024, the nation voted for change, hoping the new government would deliver its mission to kickstart economic growth. The Government has acknowledged that the current planning regime is unfit for purpose, and promised a complete overhaul of the planning system that will facilitate the construction of 1.5 million homes in just five years.

This ambition and the commitment to back the builders over the blockers, is precisely what the country needs in order to reinstate healthy growth, align with other high-income countries and provide a much needed boost to living standards and prospects for much of the UK population.

Planning is at the forefront of growth, and for too long, an outdated and inappropriate planning regime has blocked progress and stifled much-needed growth.  Reducing the number of legal challenges from three to one is the right step if we are to prevent viable projects being caught up in years of delay in the courts.

Good planning has the power to open up the economy, create jobs and boost quality of life, generating significant social value through the creation of places where people can thrive.

The importance of infrastructure

We welcome the idea of releasing ‘grey belt’ areas for development – there are plenty of green belt sites that don’t add value to the environment, landscape or ecology area.

But, we also firmly believe in place-led development, where buildings and infrastructure go hand-in-hand to create meaningful places where people can thrive.

We expect to see more detail from government soon on its plans for infrastructure to connect these proposed grey belt sites – often on the edges of towns and cities – with transport links, amenities and metropolitan and commercial centres.

In order to truly unlock the potential of grey belt land, the infrastructure around it also needs to be unlocked: houses alone do not create places.

People and skills to build at pace

While promises to deliver 1.5 million homes and a generation of new towns sound great, there’s little detail on how – amid a chronic skills shortage – the UK is going to pull together the workforce, or attract the level of investment required to build at scale and at pace.

Some of the original garden towns conceived in the 1960s are still not finished: how is the government going to deliver its ambitious manifesto promises in just five years?

The launch of the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) will bring oversight of strategy and delivery under one roof to accelerate the delivery of major capital projects, but proposals don’t yet include how government intends to bring in more skilled workers from abroad or how it plans upskill the existing workforce for the digital age.

Delivery mechanisms

The UK does not currently have the right mechanisms in place to deliver housing and infrastructure quickly. The right groundwork needs to be laid to make the delivery of 1.5 million new homes possible, and this includes looking at decision making and optimising delivery mechanisms for permissions to actually move forward in a more cohesive manner.

Locally-led mayoral development corporations offer some hope of delivering large projects at pace, and AtkinsRéalis is keen to work with government to explore this further.

We’re also looking at ways in which the Development Consent Order (DCO) process could be adapted outside Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs). This opens up the possibility of reshaping how local planning systems influence the development process and get a head start on growth by bringing large-scale housing and infrastructure projects together.

Breaking the cycle

We’re encouraged to see the new government doing what is needed to unlock growth with ambitious proposals and assertive decision making. And we know change can be challenging, and that’s why it’s so important to use all the tools in our kit to change hearts and minds.

To achieve real progress and mobilise growth, government and industry must work together to break the cycle of distrust and antagonism. People need to see evidence of the benefits that development will have on their lives, and believe in the power of planning for growth and prosperity.

We need to move away from an endemic politicisation of planning, which the and let qualified professionals make the decisions they’ve been trained to make. We hope that Labour’s bold ambitions will create a positive cycle of growth that will do just this, and bring people on board along the way.